7 INSANE Grammar Rules from the DARK SIDE of the ENGLISH Language

was I gonna say I know I'm doing I know I'm doing thing I don't have a plan you think I don't have a plan you're wrong I do you're wrong so English is an easy language is it some people tell me that anyone who says English grammar is easy show them this video now I teach English I've been doing it for a long time and most of the time what I need to explain is the standard grammar that you get asked every day what's the difference between the present perfect and the past simple how do you use much and many how do you pronounce the word mischievous its mischievous by the way how do you spell chrysanthemum now this is the bread and butter for every English teacher but sometimes in my research I came across some English grammar rules that make you go WOW or no and this is what we are going to look at today the top seven ridiculous or obscure grammar rules in the English language that will make you want to pull your hair out let me tell you that even most native English speakers won't be able to explain these rules most teachers won't know these rules so what's this video then ask your teacher if they know the answer okay that would be mischievous wouldn't it this video is not for everyone but if you are a little bit of a geek like me or you just want to know all the rules of the English language even the strangest then join me in these tales from the dark side of the English language ah ha ha ha ha [Music] hello welcome to let them talk so let's get straight into this the strangest and most obscure English grammar rules and we'll start with the plurals of fish now the word fish is singular and plural but the plural can also be fishes both are correct I'm sure you know that but did you know that some species of fish take an S plural and some don't so for example one salmon two salmon that's right no s but one sardine two sardines with an S one chord to Cod no s1 tilapia to tilapias s one herring to herring no s it's crazy seafood usually ten CS one lobster two lobsters although krill that doesn't one krill many krill some animals which are also food such as sheep do not have an S one sheep two sheep the rules seem to be pretty vague and I'm not sure I quite understand when you use the S and when you don't use the S myself and just to add something even more crazy into the mix tannin the word cannon boom now one cannon two cannon before the battle we have five thousand cannon so for number two we're going to stick with the subject of plurals now the English language has always been something of a sponge soaking up words from different languages especially French which makes up about 40% of the origin of English words as French or Norman French so there is the utmost respect for foreign languages and foreign words that enter English we don't have an Academy of the English language so when a foreign word enters the language it kind of just sits there and if it's a noun do we respect the origin of the word and give it the same plural as in the source language or do we use an English plural the s nobody seems to agree and so in some cases there are two correct plurals that have the original language and the English one so for example Stadium is the plural stadiums the English plural or stadia from Latin octopus is the plural octopuses the English are octopus from Greek I'm not sure I'm pronouncing that correct in other cases only the foreign plural is considered correct Oasis the plural is Oasis are not Oasis the ploor of crisis is crises not crisis's sometimes the plural word is more common than the singular so the question is what's the singular look at these Italian words graffiti is a plural now what's a singular is it graffito oh look it's a lovely graffito on the wall there by Banksy what about spaghetti I've got one spaghetto paparazzi is the singular paparazzo although yes I have seen that one so if possible respects the original plural or singular but be careful because you can sound very pretentious so you could try to use the forum Perl if you know it but if not just use the s don't worry about it anyway so over to you what's the plural of these English words of foreign origin Banzai serif virtuoso flamingo Chateau wunderkind answers in the comments the fund akin stole a bonsai from the Chateau bar punctuation god I hated punctuation at school and even as a teacher I still get headaches with punctuation but I guess it's important M dashes n dashes and hyphens now you might think that all lines between words are the same but let me tell you that they are not there are three different lines with varying degrees of length and believe or not this is pretty important when writing so let's start with the - the - the most common use of the hyphen is to separate compound words and phrases and names so for example well no mass-produced a five-year-old child jean-paul some names are hyphenated is your name - ated now the in - is slightly longer than the - and this separates numbers or dates in arranged so for example pages 1 1 7 2 1 2 3 1925 to 1985 July - October now the M dash is slightly longer still and this separates words a bit like a comma and it's used to add some new information to a sentence so for example it's the British a rather the Scottish who make the best whiskey nobody not even his wife suspected he was the murderer you can separate a phrase just like this if you really want now the next one is about collective nouns in English now one cow two cows many cows you say a herd of cows you might know that that's quite common she could be a flock of sheep also a flock of birds a swarm of bees but some animals have really bizarre collective nouns a parliament of owls a mischief of rats an ambush of tigers an unkindness of Ravens unkindness of Ravens it's not only animals people - some collective nouns of people include a pound of pianists a pratfall of clowns a shuffle of bureaucrats oh no there's an unkindness of Ravens flying around in the sky above my partner now this next rule is a minefield even the scholars of the English language can't agree and I've been teaching it one way for years and I find out that maybe that's not correct anymore so this is about possessives with s when you have a noun that ends in an S how do you make it possessive okay sounds simple but it's not let me give an example the witnesses statements okay the witnesses does it have s apostrophe s at the end or just s ' now for years I've been teaching that both are correct you just need to be consistent but after doing some research many don't agree some style books insist that you add an S if it's a singular noun the boss's birthday Dennis's signature but but some style books say that for biblical and classical names you do not add a second s so Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus is sandal apostrophe s apostrophe no ii s Moses's stick s no apostrophe now it seems crazy that biblical and classical names should have its own rule but I know that Achilles heel is written s apostrophe and there's no second apostrophe that seems wrong so maybe some some truth to that I don't know I don't know okay are we agreed no because the New York style manual says that all singular names should have one s followed by an apostrophe and no second s for example Dickens his book Paris's best restaurant but if the S at the end of the word is not pronounced then you add a second s Arkansas's governor it's a minefield and nobody seems to agree in the end so the best rule is probably the one that I started off with choose the one you like and stick with it now this is maybe the most obscure piece of grammar that I found in English we use apostrophe s to mark a possessive don't we Bob's book not the book of Bob okay so possibly s or s are possibly that's how it is that is a possessive case sometimes refer to as the saxon genitive hacking back a thousand years when english had a much more complex grammar with lots of different cases all of which died out except the saxon grammar we use it for names we use it for times as well monday's lesson yesterday's breakfast i'm sure you know that but did you know did you know that in that in one case in one case in english we do not use the saxon genitive in astronomy when we were talking about stars in a constellation we use the latin genitive so for example the star far far away called alpha centauri up there somewhere it's name of the constellation is son taurus and the first star belonging to this constellation so we use the latin possessive alpha centaury and not the saxon genitive which would be centuries-- alpha so in english we usually use a saxon genitive except in astronomy where we use that Latin genitive remember that it's important actually probably not so did you know there are about a thousand French expressions that we use in the English language some of them are very common some of them less so so in it some examples of common French expressions that we use in English DejaVu creme de la creme faux pas Bon Appetit bull voyage au contraire but the question is how are you supposed to pronounce these words in English now let's have a look at the Bible of style guides for British English fowlers in this usage who says to say a French word in the middle of an English sentence exactly as it would be said by a Frenchman in a French sentence is a feat demanding an acrobatic mouth the muscles have to be suddenly adjusted to a performance of a different nature and after it has suddenly recalls to the normal st. it is a feat that should not be attempted all that is necessary is a polite acknowledgement of indebtedness to the French language indicated by some approach in some part of the words to the foreign sound so if I understand that correctly you are not supposed to sound French when you use a French expression in English that's wrong sorry French people you're getting it wrong you mustn't sound too English either you have to occupy that middle ground where people know you are using a foreign word but not so much as it sounds like you are a foreigner so for example you say faux pas look bah you say creme de la creme not creme de la creme you say savoir faire and somewhat their huh so the bottom line is if using French words in English don't sound too French so if you know any weirdness grammar rules that I haven't mentioned then put them in the comments or if you know any strange bizarre grammar rules from your own language then we'd love to hear them to put them in the comments thank you for watching see you soon

Channel: LetThemTalkTV

Views: 62,337

Rating: 4.9397116 out of 5

Keywords: Yt:cc=on, LetThemTalkTV, English grammar, advanced grammar, weird grammar, Learn English, Gideon, English teacher, British pronunciation, Grammar rules, ESL, EFL, ELT

Id: 34O33fbAVfU

Length: 16min 39sec (999 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 01 2019