A covey of quail!
A brace of pidgeons!
A pride of lions!
A gaggle of geese!
A murder of crows!
No wonder my dictionary gave me a hernia!
Actually, most dictionaries note that “regardless” and “irregardless” mean the same thing and although “irregardless” is less common in usage, it is perfectly acceptable.
Just my two cents . . . .
-Jonathan
Most dictionaries suck! Irregardless is a double negative. They should include a disclaimer like this:
I see your [2c] and raise you [2c]! [;)][:p]
As in the process of thinking[%-)][swg]
I see you use the same dictionary I do[;)]
Dictionary dot com is merely one of the dictionaries I use. It just happened to be the one I could cut and paste from!
Don’t be so defensive, sheesh, not like I was infering you were Bi lingual[:D]
Don’t get me started on countable and uncountable nouns, they are more trouble than you can imagine to teach.[:(]
The biggest problem with English by far is how much interpretation and extrapolation abilities you need to figure out whats going on when somebody says something. English has so many redundancies in its vocabulary and situations where one word spelled the same way can mean three or four different things. The demands it puts on a person’s ability to put something into context are substantial.
That is one of my girlfriend’s pet peaves; she speaks English very well, but is a native speaker of Czech. She always bemoans the “limited vocabulary” of English and how a single work can mean so many different things. She tells me Czech has no such redundancies in its vocabulary, so very rarely is something taken out of context.
For myself, the thing is, at the end of the day, when all is said and done; what annoys me most is people who have a propensity for talking in cliches![xx(]
I’m aware that all languages develop such things as cliches and idioms. The idioms are no problem for me, but the cliches are so uneccesary!
Only marginally less annoying is when someone tells you what the “best” or “worst” aspect of something else is and go on to list various aspects. Wake up! “best” and “worst” are superlatives, there can only be ONE of each, otherwise, use a comparitive term.
Well you certainly list some of the worst [;)] aspects.
Interesting discussion.
I wonder how many of us here are multilingual?
You really get a different perspective and understanding of your mother toungue when you study, speak, read, and write other languages.
To the stereotypical English speaker, speaking in cliches is just par for the course!
In defense of English, and because I cannot successfully resist a good pun, redundant words and homonyms allow us to say this like “Can you cache a small Czech?” with almost a straight face,
Heh, heh, heh! [}:)]
I speak Canehdian and Amerucuhn, and also English!
[:D][:D] Almost a straight face, but not quite.
I’m not fluent, but I “do” a little Russian, Hebrew, some French and German, and one line in Spannish[:D]
Realize too, that a spoken language is different from the same written language. If I said ‘Matte’ no one would say; do you mean mat, or matt, or matte.
My mother language is Dutch and I consider my self a fluent english speaker.
I can read, hear and speak French and German, but not as good as English.
Remco-I speak a little French (used to be better but no call for it now) and a little Latin-from Art and Geology. Used to be well-versed in German but that was looooonnnnggg ago. Man-what a melting pot this site is!
I’ve “done” a little French and German, but the Russian and Hebrew slapped me and the Spanish wouldn’t talk to me because I’m not Catholic…[;)]
Seriously though, I can swear real good in most of those languages, but I can’t prove that here, anymore! [V]
Vapo, is the one line of (sic) spannish “dos cervezas, por favor”?[:p]
Don’t forget “frio”. (love the ‘sic’)
Nah, he’s English, so it would be “temperatura ambiente” [:D]
Or, AKA my favourite actor: Luke Warm!
Actually it’s room temperature-but not as humourous as Luke Warm-which may not be very humourous at all.