english

This guy made a grave mistake. And that mistake was one of him trying to tell a lady asking for money that he didn't speak English, while he very well did the whole time. It's tough to pull off the whole "I don't speak your language" thing when you're literally speaking their language right back to them. 

It's that time of the year again. With the holiday season in full bloom, it's time to steer our attention to that one Christmas song that never fails to stir up the spicy debate about what it's exactly getting at. We have a former English teacher chime in on a tweet that condemns the infamous song, "Baby It's Cold Outside", with their analysis of what the song actually represents. 

Most everyone loves a good old fashioned riddle. They make your brain run around in circles, desperately trying to dig up the answer, and they also make for great distractions during stressful times. Maybe this Tumblr post will inspire everyone to share their own favorite riddles. Check out some more gold from Tumblr with this thread that delves into the unsettling reason for unrealistic animation.

The English language has some confusing peculiarities to it that result in English struggles, but heck, most languages have some phonetic and semantic weirdness winding through them. And English isn't the only strange language. Here's a post defending the English language and how it's not the only weird language out there.

You can't sit down and make everyone spell the way you'd like them to, so you're just kind of left with seeing the mistakes where they arise and laughing about them when you can. Who knows what the cause is for all of these spelling fails. It could be public schools, sheer ignorance, aggressive autocorrect or a combination of all three.

This quick and entertaining Tumblr post makes some solid points about how much more complex and confusing the English language could truly be. 

This fun Tumblr thread captures the hilarious misunderstandings that can result from translating an English book. In this case, it's an innocent book about summer camp that results in all kinds of misinterpreted sentences. Sometimes getting lost in those translations is a fun business. It would be just a little frightening if one had chipmunks ("tiny wolves") running around their summer camp. Check out more completely random, strange, and hilarious Tumblr gems over here.

Just a quick reminder that you're great, and the english language actually supports that theory! 

Fully grasping any language is no easy matter. It's tough. And the English language is filled to the brim with difficulties it doesn't get enough credit for. Especially those strange spellings that just don't match up with how we envision the word being spelled, due to how it sounds. These attempts at the English language just crashed and burned in a pit of fail. 

Someone on AskReddit got a fun thread going that has people who picked up English later in life, or as a second language, describing the parts about the language that baffles them the most. Learning new languages is certainly not an easy thing to do. Maybe some folks that have muddled through the disorienting process of learning a new language, or picking up English, will connect on a deeply painful level with these replies. 

Word nerds will love this. Everyone else might have some mixed feelings about the strange complexities of the English language. 

Turns out those seemingly indecipherable scribbles actually do mean something. 

This makes my head happy. 

We know that languages are all weird, and the one we use can be particularly confusing, but that can make it a more fun and nuanced thing to explore. We're all for seeing some creative uses and misuses of the English language. If you just wanna see people totally suck at English, then here are people who failed at using the English language.

Learning the words for things in other languages can be particularly eye opening. From overly literal German translations like "hand shoes" to more poetic euphemisms you'd never think you'd hear, every culture has come up with it's own particular brand of funny words for things. For more, here are non-native English speakers sharing common phrases they wish we had.

The English language is frustratingly confusing, and seems to make zero sense at times. The following list of definitions, sayings, terms, etc. serve as a solid testament to the fact. For such a widespread language, it has an uncanny knack for confusing the shit out of people. If you're looking for more language struggles, it's worth checking out the following times people utterly failed at their spelling attempts.