Digenis.org

Well, in Russian we have здорово. I’m sure you know both of the pronounciations.

One pair they left out: ENtrance (noun) vs enTRANCE (verb) (unrelated to each other, of course, but that just adds to the fun).

i thought that you were in college you shouldn’t have that much time to just fool around and find useless information.

Katie, my dear sister, you have so much to learn:

1. College is about learning both useful and useless information. You are forced to take classes to learn the useless crap, but if you actually play your cards right, you can take classes that will give you valuable information. Forthcoming blog entry about that, in fact.

2. This is anything but useless information. I use it all the time. In case you have forgotten, I am a language nerd. This is the type of stuff that I think about for hours upoun end (and I actually enjoy it!). These are the things that cause me to lay awake in my bed at night.

Homographs (also called heteronyms) are cool!

Ah, yes, I did neglect to mention a few Russian infinitive endings (German ones too, in fact). I guess while you mention it, we can add -есть, -йти, and -езти to the list.

If you want some insight into the history of these forms you can find Donald Sherman’s analysis easily enough, just a google away: NOUN-VERB STRESS ALTERNATION: AN EXAMPLE OF LEXICAL DIFFUSION OF SOUND CHANGE IN ENGLISH.

If you want something deeper then you could try asking yourself why these words should be exceptional within the whole Latinate/French Part of the English language. I can tell you that the answer lies in the conflict between Anglo-Saxon and French that began under feudalism and continued with the rise of Capitalism. If you don’t know that history then try to imagine what would happen to the Russian language now if the current mob of leaders were all kicked out and replaced with another mob of say English speakers who then ruled for 200 years a la RasPUTIN without educating any of the natives except in the churches once a week and in Latin, not English or Russian. English is the language of the law courts, so if you get caught doing something and can’t speak any English then forget it! Only Plebs and rulers with a few nasty bourgeois types kow towing their way up. The rulers don’t speak any Russian, and they all go home now and again to their ‘homeland’ for a bit of a rest and a laugh or two and the like. Then one day the trouble starts after this period of 200 years: trouble in the ‘Homeland’ While the cats away the mice have run amock. The greedy old leaders want the best of both worlds: They want their Homeland and they want Russia, but they can’t have both and have to settle for Russia as their only Homeland now. They have a long drawn out war with their old Homeland, and all the plebs doing their dirty work are all speaking Russian still! Why don’t they all speak English now? Because we only taught them Latin on Sundays. They may know a few words which get Russianized. Slowly all the thousands of English words that have been knocking about in one form or another all start being Russianized, but maybe not all at the same time. Some good old Russian words might make a come back and kick out the English word here and there. In this whole process how would the Russian language emerge after another 400 years of words being imposed from above and rendered into the vernacular from below? Would they all fit nicely into the Russian declension and stress system: Probably the whole thing would end up a mess, and some unsuspecting intellectual in the still English speaking Universities of Russia would be called upon to explain it all to the plebs who can’t figure out anything much about their own language. Throughout this whole process the borgeois types and other dubious characters with money are continuing to kow-tow to education in English which is still seen as the guarantee of a well paid job. No one really gives a toss about this Russianized English language. It’s only good for the plebs. Finally however the day comes when English finally gets kicked out of the Ivory Tower and suddenly things change. This Russianized English is now official, and it’s such a mess by now that no one can really understand it or explain it. Now, of course it can be explained, but who will do it? If it’s in no one’s interest to explain it financially who will do it. Only the State has the resources to do it quickly, but the state is not interested in education, because it’s busy fighting wars in the name of Capitalism and so on, and passes the buck to a group of scholars who undertake to create a dictionary of our Russianized English which takes them 70 odd years to complete, and runs to 20 volumes.

Well, anyway I think you can figure it out for yourself. I can’t find a better analysis than the Marxist one which has everything in conflict.

Sweet dreams
Yun Zhong Jian

Thanks for the list!! It really helps to know the difference in pronunciation. Thanks again!!