The weirdest things about English

English is special. It's unique. It's weird.

In this video, I run through 10 aspects of English that make it bizarre in comparison with other languages. These include its "meaningless do", dreadful spellings, odd use of tenses, missing pronouns and the strange array of sounds in English.

Check me out on the web, on Twitter & TikTok:

==CHAPTERS==
0:00 Introduction
0:17 1 - Weird noises
2:46 2 - Odd questions
4:48 3 - Meaningless do
6:05 4 - Phrasal verbs
7:55 Babbel
9:16 5 - Why no genders?
12:13 6 - Pronouns
14:06 7 - Silly spelling
15:43 8 - Tenses
17:45 9 - Articles
19:37 10 - Things English doesn't have

[graphicmaterial]

As a Swede, I'm so jealous of your access to single words to describe certain bodily movements like "shrug", "squat", "frown", "nudge" and "poke". In Swedish, you often have to describe it with a whole sentence, like "sitting down in a crouched position" or "push someone gently with your elbow". A terrible waste of time for us..

[-Subtle-]

English is weird. It can be understood through tough thorough thought though.

[stevencoghill]

When only a contraction sounds "right" but the full words do not. Don't you dare! v. Do not you dare!

[exvagoergosum]

As a Frenchman (so not really objective on this one) I really loved that video. I even learnt some things about my "home words" which happens quite often with your videos Rob. There's obviously so much work behind all this !! Kudos for your accent !!

[absurdbird]

A conversation with my Italian friend...
"How do you say your alarm wakes you up in the morning?"
"My alarm goes off.."
"NO! Your alarm goes ON!"
Gave me pause for thought.

[jamesdewane]

A: You didn't take the bins out again.
B: Rubbish!

[BensBrickDesigns]

A friend of mine started using "grandboss" for boss's boss and I love it.

[JoeVolution]

I have to say I am so happy that there's someone on Youtube who is so passionate about words, languages, and their structures. Also, I agree- yorkshire tea is divine

[amedina.mobile]

Loved the "medieval Youtube" screen 😂 The little details like "brethren", "subscribeth", the video with the boar. That's quality: taking time to produce a result, even if that product is there for a few seconds.

[anotheruser]

Indefinite article in Dutch created the word 'Decoy'. It came from 'Eendekooi', duck cage (Eend = Duck), which was used to catch wild ducks by putting tame ducks in a cage. Wild ducks would flock with the tame ones making it easier to catch them. Anyway, it was wrongly assumed the 'Een' at the beginning was the indefinite article, thus 'Een dekooi' which turned into 'a decoy'.

[ivanheffner]

“Rob, you didn’t take the bins out again.”
“False.”

[INNOCENTWIZZARDS]

Its surprising how many grammar features Bulgarian/Macedonian shares with English. We also have sort of a meaningless "DO" – its "DA" and Its not the same DA as YES it has different function. The verb infinitive is formed with it. So if you listen to people speaking those languages you will hear a lot of DA's but they don't mean YES. Example: Da Vidya, Da sedna : to see, to sit. The articles are post positioned but there are one for each gender and in some dialects there are 3 types of articles for close, medium close and distant objects.And also the structure of the tenses also uses operators as in English. Fo example the future tense is formed with shte, which is another verb for "want"...

[chriswhitham]

The missing word I've been asked about several times by learners of English is the question word asking for an ordinal number.
"Whichth wierdness was the pronouns?" - "The seventh."
"Whichth president was Obama?" - "The forty-fourth."

Thanks for the video!

[MrHypnofan]

The part about phrasal verbs reminds me of a joke that Victor Borge used to tell about how, in English, it is odd that you have to cut down a tree before you can cut it up.

[twincast]

3:16 RIP, Rob. Eaten by his Kitten. Another tragic instance in which a comma could've saved a life.

[danwilliams]

I wish I had come across this channel sooner! As a native speaker of English (mid western American), I struggled with all the inconsistencies and weirdness, particulary spelling! Thanks for all the insight into why!

[mjsubterra]

The episode should be shown at the beginning of every B1 ESL course - the best one so far. Thanks Rob!

[JazidContreras]

As a native Spanish speaker I can tell you that learning all the vowels sounds in English can be a nightmare for us. I think I intuitively picked them up over the years, but nobody explains it like you do in the beginning of this video. Thanks for that.

[CamerTheDragon]

20:26 We should bring back overmorrow and ereyesterday into common usage, they could be pretty useful (although maybe change "ereyesterday" to sound better since it doesn't sound as nice as "overmorrow" to me).

[nathanwheeler]

As an English major in college, just wanted to tell you how much I enjoy your videos, Rob. So well done. Thank you, Englishman.