You may or may or may not know this about me, but I'm French. Ok, well obviously I'm bilingual since I'm writing to you in English, but I was raised in Quebec and went to French school.
What I've learned about writing English is basically what I've memorized, and what my photographic memory has registered. I can often tell a word is misspelled because it "looks" wrong. This being said, I'm sure I make tons of mistakes, but that's not about to shut me up.
However, today I'd like to have a little bitchy rant about two words in the English dictionary that really bug me.
First up, the bass (as in the musical instrument)
Bass, to me, is a fish. Basic reading teaches us that the letters a s s produce the sound "ass". A base is something you rest an object on. In this case, the letters a s e produce the sound "ace". Then for some unexplainable reason, you have the musical instrument, which is spelt b-ass but is pronounced b-ace. What the heck?
So every time I see it written down, and read it out loud, I'm like "oh cool, this stereo has extra bass" and then everyone makes fun of me. Which is even worse now that I've picked up trying to learn the instrument. My boyfriend keeps calling me far from pro every time I say it.
Grrrr
The other one in tough, and worse tougher. If though is pronounced tho, how does it make sense that tough is pronounced tuff? And worse is tougher, which always looks like to-er to me.
Damn you English language. They say French grammar is tougher to learn, but this language has it's own oddities!
:)
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