English Makes No Sense: Flammable vs. Inflammable

[limalicious]

Flammable: Capable of being set on fire
Inflammable: Capable of bursting into flames without ignition.

[intelligencecube]

I love how French had a mini stroke there trying to understand our weird bastard tongue 😂

[singersmiles]

Not me, a native English speaker, learning the flammable and inflammable bit just now 💀✋

[QCaffeinated]

"but very MUCH catches on fire?!" Killed me 😂

[VINCEINTHASADHD]

English: done explaining
French: *has sesure*

Edit: 77 has been the most likes I have gotten 😭 ty

Edit: so far I've gotten altogether maybe 1100 likes altogether idk. If only my vids got as many likes as my comment do :, )

[augiemusky]

My international student said that COME and GO mean the same thing in English. No, they are opposites, says I. But the student pointed out I will say both "Come with me" and "Go with me" somewhere.

[LyingSpigot]

Inflammable was the original word, but then people thought it meant it couldn't catch fire. Flammable was created to stop the confusion.

[Blue_Beta]

Italian joined the channel:
This is because it's derived from latin and english adopted the same words as Italian did.
So: invaluable = inestimabile (not valuable, priceless)
Inflammable= infiammabile (not ignition required to have a flame)
So the "in" suffix is always a negation of something

[ibrahimdiarrassouba]

As a native french speaker I have to say that inflamable in french means the same thing

[Ale.Aurora]

I'm not sure if it applies here but even though in Spanish "Famable" and "Inflamable" are both consider the same (it catches on fire) in any common conversation, technically the difference is that a "Flamable" object burns [slowly] while an "Inflamable" object explodes (or has a more violen and energetic combustion). Like the difference between gasoline and black powder.

[bluefire]

the knowledge this video gives is priceless

[Kadagirl]

This just spawned a memory of memorizing all the Latin/Greek suffixes in Middle School 🤣There are actually technically _two separate_ "-in" prefixes, each with a different etymological origin: one means "not, " and the other means "in" or "into", so "inflammable can be like "able to burst _into_ flame." Apparently it used to really screw people up all the way back in Latin as well, so it's lovely dysfunctional hand-me-down from a bygone era 😂

[postfactumlauda]

You are so good at playing these roles that I lost trace of the fact that you are one person. Fairly great performance, ando vey funny, invaluably funny...infunny
:)

[te-m]

I’m a English speaker just learning that inflammable mean it catches on fire and not it doesn’t. This explains so much

[youdidntseeanything]

Poor French!!
He started skipping like a CD in my portable CD player, even WITH skip protection on!

[lilpepps]

I do know english well but that's a new one for me i thought it doesn't catch fire😂😂😂

[TheBaileyandashlyn]

For anyone curious:

Valuable (valuABLE) is something you are able to value. You can put a price on it.

Invaluable (INvaluABLE) is something you are not able to put a price on, because it means so much to you, that you cannot fathom a price you would even consider to sell it for. 😊

[Thisgoosedraws]

"Flamable inflamable flam in flam flamable is inflamable is flam they both *explosion noise* flamable inflamable flam flamate flam inflamable ok ok k"

[Sac_O_Dawson]

As an English speaker I feel so bad for French 😅

[Fred]

English really should have a Brittish accent, they 'invented' the damn language...