We have all heard the saying, ‘English’ is a funny language and we have all come across instances that really don’t make much sense. But, have you really considered how funny the language is? You will probably be surprised. Here is a list of strange things about the English language.
1. Collective nouns
One of the strange things about the English language is the number of as well as the kind of collective nouns it has. Every collective noun is specific to the group it is describing, but very often it makes no sense at all, for instance, a murder of crows, a sleuth of bears and a parliament off owls.
2. Negatives without positives
Typically, we add ‘in’, ‘un’, ‘dis’, ‘non’ etc. as prefixes to create a negative of the root word. But, there are many words in the English language that are negative and contain these suffixes. And yet, removing these suffixes does not give you the root word, for instance, inept, disrupt, ungainly, nondescript, etc.
3. Changing antonyms
There are many words are spelt the same, but mean different things in different contexts. The big problem with this is that their antonyms, or opposites keep changing based on the context they are used in, for instance, the antonym for right can be left or wrong based on how it is used.
