We talked about a lot of weirdnesses in the English language
Saturday July 29th 2017, 11:03 pm
Filed under: Friends,Life

Happy Birthday to our friend Phyllis!

I loved listening to her explain to friends for whom English was not their first language and America was not their original country that Boston cream pie isn’t cream, and it isn’t pie, but it’s really good, though–here, have some! (Let me quietly disagree with Wikipedia and say I’ve never seen it served with anything other than pudding as a filling.)

There was a side conversation about, like, take the word nature, but if something is of nature it’s natch-eral not nature-al and how do you know that unless someone corrects you for doing it wrong. The other immigrants chuckled knowingly.

Phyl added whipped cream on top to make a more honest dessert out of that, um, pie.


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The English language is very confusing sometimes. Back in my younger days I taught high school English for a bit (wasn’t really my thing in the end though) and it was always amazing to me how quirky it is to explain to non-native speakers. Don’t know a whole lot about other languages, but it seems that we Americans are chock full of unexpected rules that often defy any logic at all. This doesn’t even take into account the straight up crazy idiomatic expressions we are graced with! You have made me crave some Boston Cream “Pie” now! ~chris

Comment by chris 07.30.17 @ 5:04 am



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