ok, i forgot ‘doughnut’.
so we have:
through
though
thought
tough
plough
doughnut
cough.
oo
oh
aw
uff
ow
oh (again, cos i like the word ‘doughnut’)
awf.
am i obsessed with english phonetics? yes. it is my fetish.
in order to get turned on in any way i need to have the oed open in front of me, or preferably with someone(a dwarf or an azerbaijani hermaphrodite) dissecting the etymology of various arcane english words. ‘chapparal, from a basque dialect, northern spain, colloquially adopted 19th century by…’
but i was born in an english speaking country.
i’m actually in awe of people who have learned english as a second or third language and can speak it fluently. i’ve met lots of people who speak english with greater proficiency, as a second or third language, than people who were brought up speaking english in an english speaking country.
it’s such an odd language.
there is, of course, no such thing as a hierarchy of languages.
they’re all interesting. but english is probably the most confusing.
there are 100,00 words in the french language.
there are 185,000 words in german.
there are over 1,000,000 words in the english language.
the oed (oxford english dictionary) lists 615,000 words in english, but that’s without the majority of scientific and technical terms that exist only in english.
oh look, it’s dawn.
but because of jet lag i won’t be falling asleep until 8 or 9 a.m, most likely.
someone loaned me the dvd of woody allen’s ‘manhattan’. i haven’t seen it in years, so maybe i’ll watch ‘manhattan’ while the sun comes up.
ok, goodnight.
moby