this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2026
15 points (100.0% liked)

No Stupid Questions

48776 readers
571 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)

Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.

Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.

Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.

Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.

Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.

Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.

Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.

Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.

Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.

Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
jeffw@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
L4s@lemmy.world
15
What's the weirdest thing in english? (lemmy.world)
submitted 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) by nerdhd@lemmy.world to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
27 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Is it the definite article?

So, to reiterate, when it comes to when to use the "the", the only universal rule is this:

Some rules (such as the two you've given) might hold 95%+ of the time, but unfortunately there may be weird and arbitrary exceptions that you'll just have to learn.

Source: https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/365074/the-use-of-the-definite-article-with-the-names-of-museums-art-galleries-etc/365083#365083

Is it capitalization?

Because a cursory look at the Wikipedia page for capitalization also reveals that it is not without its quirks.

For example:

planets and other celestial bodies: "Jupiter", "the Crab Nebula"; and "the Earth", "the Sun", or "the Moon" should be capitalized according to the International Astronomical Union based on its manual of style, but style guides may suggest differently.[19]

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalization_in_English

Is it the fact the way something is written almost has no bearing on how it's pronounced?

Please tell me your thoughts.

all 29 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 3 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

I always thought the celestial bodies thing was just another case of proper nouns. Jupiter is always capitalized because it’s a proper name.

But “the Moon” can be either. “the Moon” is the proper name of Earths natural satellite so should be capitalized, but “the moon” is a description of any planetary body’s natural satellite so should NOT be

Similar for “the Sun”. “the Sun” is the proper name of Earths star, but “the sun” is any solar system’s star. I like that in so much science fiction they’ve figured this out and use a distinct proper name, “Sol”

[–] Dookieman12@piefed.social 17 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

IMO, the weirdest thing about English is something every speaker does but probably never thinks about.

Whenever multiple adjectives describe a single noun, there's a particular order in which they must go. If you have big tractor that's also green, you would call it a "big green tractor" but you would never call it a "green big tractor". Not only does it sound wrong, it's grammatically incorrect.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/one-weird-trick-for-adjective-order

[–] pwnicholson@lemmy.world 8 points 4 hours ago

100% this. No one is ever taught it as a rule in school. You're never tested over it. But all native English speakers intuitively know it.

[–] Diddlydee@feddit.uk 15 points 5 hours ago (3 children)

Pronunciation of same letters differently.

Rough. Bough. Cough. Sough. Lough. Dough. Though. Tough.

I also think the way we insert curse words is abso-fucking-lutely unique.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

I like that different pronunciations and spellings are a history of integrating different languages and cultures. Especially now with all the hatred, spite and racism, at least I get to be amused that the language they claim as their own has a fundamental “diversity, equity and inclusion “

And no the Brit’s can’t claim to be the mother language - maybe they were the melting pot that spawned its birth, but as long as their fanny’s are on the wrong side …

(As someone who has historically been too sheltered so thought some societal issues were over dramatized, nothing could make me so pro “diversity, equity, and inclusion” like today’s US politics.)

[–] volore@scribe.disroot.org 3 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

My favorite example: Lead and lead are both spelled the same, but pronounced differently and don't rhyme with each other. They do, however, rhyme with read and read, which are also spelled identically but don't rhyme with each other.

I still think this is less bullshit than languages with gendered nouns, however. Who the fuck gets to decide if a chair is masculine or feminine, and how is this decision reached? Why do different languages determine the gender of a chair differently? We already have plenty of human beings in the world with gender dysphoria, we do not need to be giving it to inanimate objects.

(I tried to learn German once and am still salty about this)

[–] leftascenter@jlai.lu 1 points 3 hours ago

This is my biggest gripe with English

[–] No_Money_Just_Change@feddit.org 4 points 3 hours ago

Dearest creature in creation, The weirdest part is pronunciation...

[–] Nibodhika@lemmy.world 4 points 5 hours ago

Probably spelling, but there's one quirk in English that makes it so you can build the arguably weirdest sentence in any language. Here's the short version and explanation for people unaware of the 3 meanings of the word (which I'll use 3 different spellings to make it easier to understand):

  • Buffalo is a city in USA
  • a buffalo is another name for an animal also known as a bison
  • To BUFFALO means to bother, or bully.

So a Buffalo buffalo is a Bison from the city of Buffalo. If a Bison from Buffalo were to bother another Bison from Buffalo, you get the common example of this phrase which is Buffalo buffalo BUFFALO Buffalo buffalo which means Buffalo bison BOTHERS Buffalo bison. You can add an extra Buffalo at the start to make it a headline of a newspaper telling you where this happened, but that only gives you Buffalo, Buffalo buffalo BUFFALO Buffalo buffalo....

But we can make it better. See, in English you can add specifiers to a noun, the way we're doing with Buffalo to specify this is a Bison from Buffalo, but the specification can be a full sentence. For example if we wanted to say that specify that the bison is known to bother other bisons you can call him a "bison bully" bison, or even if he's from Buffalo and only bullies other bisons from Buffalo he's a Buffalo "Buffalo bison bully" bison, or a Buffalo "Buffalo buffalo BUFFALO" buffalo.

Cool, so if a Bison from Buffalo known for bullying other bisons from Buffalo is bullying yet another Buffalo bison you can say that a "Buffalo Buffalo buffalo BUFFALO buffalo BUFFALO Buffalo buffalo".... But what if the bison it's bullying is also known to bully other bisons from buffalo? Then Buffalo buffalo BUFFALO Buffalo buffalo BUFFALO Buffalo buffalo BUFFALO Buffalo buffalo

But our bison might actually EXCLUSIVELY bully bisons that bully other bisons, so he's a Buffalo bison BULLY BULLY, and if he's from the city of Buffalo he's a Buffalo Buffalo buffalo BUFFALO BUFFALO. So if our heroic bison made a mistake and bullied another Bison who only bullies bullies then: Buffalo Buffalo buffalo BUFFALO BUFFALO buffalo BUFFALO Buffalo Buffalo buffalo BUFFALO BUFFALO

And you can keep making the sentence infinitely long by specifying that tach bison in the story is a Buffalo bison Bully bison.

[–] palordrolap@fedia.io 3 points 4 hours ago

I don't think articles, definite or indefinite are the weirdest things about English, if only because other languages have the same features.

There have to be weirder things that are specific to this one language, but it's hard to find something that isn't shared by any other language, especially not the closely related ones. German goes one step further with the whole capitalisation thing, for example, where all nouns are capitalised, not just those that are names.

Perhaps we could go for how vowels all become, or at least move towards schwa in unstressed positions. That's the vowel at the end of "the" when unstressed and before a consonant. (German has some of this with final -e (and to some extent, the same with older French pronunciation), but it's not necessarily the same thing going on there.)

Consonant aspiration might be another oddity. Aspiration depends on position in a word in English and doesn't hold any semantic or grammatical meaning, but in other languages, an aspirated consonant can completely change the meaning of a word. I think Korean is one such language. They even have different letters for the different sounds.

If you don't know what aspiration is, it's the burst of air that follows some consonants. English speakers generally don't even know they're doing it. The often-used example is "pin" versus "spin", where the leading "p" of "pin" has far more air after it than it does in "spin".

[–] farmgineer@nord.pub 5 points 5 hours ago

I would say orthography and/or the great vowel shift. Or, further, that it's very weird as Germanic languages go. Or, even further, the mix of old Norse and the various Saxon/jute/angle languages before the Normans came along (itself Norman french with old Norse admixture). Then throw various Celtic languages on that mess

[–] FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 5 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I vote spelling. English spelling makes less sense than French or Danish and they take mothereffing liberties as well. No naturally occurring, alphabet using language will probably score perfect on that but I suspect English will be in the relegation zone of that table.

[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 5 hours ago

Beware of meat and great and threat, they rhyme with suite and straight and debt…

It's hard, can be understood through tough thorough thought though.

Final boss: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ruize-rijmen/De_Chaos

[–] Nemo@slrpnk.net 3 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

Per formal linguistics, it's "respectively".

Like: Bob, Alicia, and Siobhan are a teacher, plumber, and electrician, respectively.

We know this means Bob is a teacher and Siobhan is an electrician, but trying to write rules for how English works that account for this usage is thorny.

[–] Dookieman12@piefed.social 4 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

Let me try writing a rule for it.

"Given two lists, the word "respectively" indicates the n-th item in each list corresponds to the n-th item in the other list."

[–] Nemo@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 hours ago

It's not that it's hard to write a rule for "respectively". It's that it needs its own rule, specifically. The general rules don't cover it.

[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 5 hours ago

German has this too, "beziehungsweise", but it replaces the "and" instead of being added to it. It is common enough that it's usually abbreviated "bzw.".

[–] dgriffith@aussie.zone 6 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

You can verb pretty much any noun you like and get away with it, when used in such a manner the verbnoun takes on the typical action of the noun.

"Gunned down" is an example.

[–] IcedRaktajino@startrek.website 5 points 6 hours ago

It's so prevalent we can literally say "I'll verb your noun" and it still gets the point across.

[–] Nibodhika@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

It's possible to do so in other languages as well, we rarely need to because we have other words for things though.

[–] Cheesus@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 hours ago

In my experience, nouns and verbs are generally strictly separate concepts in Romance languages, making this not viable, although there are exceptions.

[–] TabbsTheBat@pawb.social 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Is it the fact the way something is written almost has no bearing on how it's pronounced?

For me as someone who speaks english as a 2nd language this is definitely a big one

Though on the topic of the definite article, as a kid I found articles in general to be weird as my native language has none, so there were just these "untranslatable" words in front of some nouns for some reason

[–] nerdhd@lemmy.world 5 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Though on the topic of the definite article, as a kid I found articles in general to be weird as my native language has none, so there were just these "untranslatable" words in front of some nouns for some reason

Funny you mention this, cuz I have been trying to learn japanese lately and it not having articles is a big obstacle for me.

[–] TabbsTheBat@pawb.social 2 points 6 hours ago

You know, I never thought about the opposite being a problem lol.

It's mildly interesting to think about

[–] Canopyflyer@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

Gallagher on the English Language.

[–] luthis@lemmy.nz 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I vote for standardisation. So it's 'wierd.' I before e. It's more Germanic that way too. Food, moon, and good all pronounced the same way. Etc

The wierdest thing? That it's used in so many places instead of good, solid, consistent Latin

[–] zikzak025@lemmy.world 5 points 6 hours ago

English was screwed by the advent of the printing press.

From the beginning of the renaissance up to the 1700's, English underwent a vowel shift which saw a lot of words change pronunciation. When the printing press arrived in England in the late 1400's, there was a push to set standard spelling. But because the printing press arrived while the vowel shift was still ongoing, the new pronunciation of some words was revised with updated spelling (consistent with other words at the time) but other words would receive new pronunciations after their spelling was already set in stone.

If a language undergoes a vowel shift after its spelling is standardized, the phonetic rules remain mostly intact because they will trend towards changing consistently. If a language completes a vowel shift before its spelling is standardized, then the new spelling will just reflect its current phonetics. English was unlucky enough to be locked in time during its blunder years.