Dressing up the verb

English is famous (or infamous) for words having multiple meanings, some with no apparent connection with them.  A charming subgroup of such words involves articles of clothing.  These have clear, commonly understood meanings as nouns in their usual context, i.e., the items covering up a person’s birthday suit.  Yet, as verbs, they stray, to one degree or another, and take on a different persona.

An example of this is the word dress, as celebrated in one of the wonderful stories of Peggy Perish, Amelia Bedelia. In it, the literally minded maid puts a dress on a chicken instead of preparing it for cooking or eating as in the expressions dress a turkey or dress a salad.










Keeping with women’s clothing, to skirt an issue is to avoid it, not to show off its nice legs.

As any fan of the original Batman TV series knows, to sock or belt someone does not send a person to work but instead to the hospital.

To meet a man that suits you may involve a tailor or but most probably leads to a wedding as he fits your needs.

Speaking of tailors, coating the fish with breadcrumbs is not a cheap way of keeping it warm. The bread crump coat in this case just keeps the dinner tender.

To shoe someone out may sound violent but actually must done very discretely, without too much fuss, unlike being booted from a tournament, which is very unceremonious.

It is advisable to both to wear a cap when hiking and cap an appetite or temper.  Everything in moderation.

Staying in the area of the head and neck, a scarf is elegant and keeps you warm.  By contrast, scarfing down food, i.e., uncontrolled eating, can look rather disgusting and be unhealthful.

Finally, while a tie may seem extraneous in some cultures, notably Israel and Jamaica, a proper speaker ties everything together with a summary.

In that light, if clothes make the man, they also confuse him, especially if he is a foreigner.

Language Inequality or the Joy of Challenges - Part 1

Learning a foreign language can be one of the most satisfying or frustrating experiences.  Success depends on age, environment, motivation, innate skill and the language itself.  The latter is relevant because not all languages are equally difficult, with several factors influencing the “challenge” factor.

      A.      The first aspect a learner notices is the visual one, the alphabet.  Psychologically, unfamiliar alphabets seem quite daunting.  While they do require some effort, most alphabets can be mastered in terms of sound identification within a month using a decent book and some practice.  The most difficult system is the traditional Chinese (used to a certain degree in Japanese) character writing, which is strictly speaking not an alphabet at all since the pictures has no relevance to the pronunciation.  Even native speakers of Chinese require years to attain a decent vocabulary.  So, a strange alphabet can quickly become comfortable.

      B.      Spelling is a complicated issue.  The easiest languages to read and spell involve few letters, consistent pronunciation and minimum opportunities for error. Italian is a wonderfully easy language to learn how to read.  The rules of pronunciation and therefore spelling are simple, based on consonant/vowel combinations (co = /ko/ while ci = /chi/) and no letters with the same sounds. Other languages are not as easy.  Polish consonant use may be consistent but the combinations (cz, dz, etc) are confusing to foreigners.  It demonstrates by counter example how efficient the Slavic alphabet is, i.e. one letter for each sound.  French is also very consistent with its vowel pronunciation but has too many ways to make the same sound, such as the long “a” sound, which can produced by ai, é, ais, ait, aient, et al. Standard Hebrew avoids the latter problem by mostly not inserting the vowels and trusting the speaker to figure it out.  On the other hand, Hebrew has many letters that once were  pronounced differently but are less and less frequently being distinguished now, including tet and tov, alef and ayin, and het and hof, to name a few, complicating spelling for the foreigner.  English is the monster of the group, failing in all aspects.  There are many letter combinations, many of which are completely different than their component parts, as in the ti in the word “vacation”, pronounced sh.  It is famous for lack of consistency.  Try explaining how to pronounce “gh” in the words enough, though, and through.  The reasons are historical but that does not help the latter. Worst of all, it offers almost endless ways to make the same sound and confuse the foreign learner.  Thank god for spellcheck!

      C.      Verb tense structures vary from language to language and require different amounts of time to master.  The easiest ones have only three tenses: past, present and future. Semitic languages are a breeze in that respect.  Latin languages muddy up the waters by distinguishing meanings within those times and constructing complicated forms.  The ability to understand and produce these various tenses forms does take some time and instruction but learning time is quite finite.  Slavic languages are deceivingly simple, only having two tenses but at least two forms (perfect and imperfect aspect) of each verb, creating all three tenses.  The catch for the foreign learner is in the past form, where both aspects can work. It takes years to understand what a native speaker grasps intuitively in regards to the difference between the forms.  For example, depending on which form is used in the past, perfect or imperfect, if I closed the window, the window is now either open or closed.  So, the complexity of the tense structure does help determine the time and effort required to learn the language.

[To be continued]

Verb(al)izing

In root-poor languages, such as Hebrew, all roots are used to their maximum in terms of producing noun, verb, and adjective forms.  For example, in French, the root grand comes out grandir, grandeur, and grand in the verb, noun, and adjective forms, respectively.  Likewise, in Hebrew, the root גדל [gimel, dalet, lamed] produces גדול, גודל ,לגדול [legdol, godel, and gadol].  Therefore, a learner can quickly ascertain the pattern and make educated guesses as to the relevant form of a word.  This clearly makes learning to speak a language much easier.

Alas, English is extremely rich in roots, deriving them from a multitude of different languages and developing them at different times in history.  All this renders it very difficult to “guess” the verb form.  In countless cases, there is no verb while in others the change is unpredictable.  An example of the latter is the relation between effect and affect, advice and advise, and satisfaction and satisfy.

The following are a few patterns that allow a reader to guess the meaning of a verb:

a.      Ize  / (UK)  ise – Modern English tends to add this suffix to a noun or adjective to create an easily understandable verb.  Examples include capitalize, modernize, standardize, and that old law school classic, shepardize.

b.      En- or –en – Following old German grammar, adding an en at the beginning or end of some words transforms them into verbs, often adding the meaning to give: encourage and empower as compared to widen and threaten.

c.       ception -> ceive – All nouns that end in ception become ceive in the verb: reception – receive, conception – conceive, deception – deceive, perception – perceive.

d.      Drop the tion – By droping the tion in the noun form, many verbs are formed: relation – relate, construction – construct, investigation – investigate.

As mentioned, it is unfortunately quite difficult to verbalize all of the strategies for making verbs.  The best way to know the form is to listen and read English, learning intuitively.