Wallace the Brave by Will Henry for April 07, 2021

Homonyms ‘r’ us

Here hear!

Madness threw and through!

Four sure, for sure!

Oh, deer!

Eye ate flour hear, deer. Good thing you can’t mess up mayonnaise…

English doesn’t borrow from other languages, it follows them down dark alleys, hits them over the head, and then goes through their pockets for loose grammar.

To too two. For fore four. Sight site cite. Rain rein reign.

Could be worse. I’m told French has six words pronounced “oo”.

But at least we are spared the horror of grammatic gender.

An Iranian friend of mine (before Ayatollah Khamenei) stated the exact same thing 40yrs ago. English is difficult. I’m kind of puzzled by it. Why all the words that sound similar?

It gets even worse. “Read” is also the past tense of “read” but it’s pronounced “red.”

English is tuff stuff, enough!

Seems to me it’s Wallace’s education that’s lacking here.

There’s a book by Richard Marschall: “The Tough Coughs as He Ploughs the Dough: Early Writings and Cartoons by Dr. Seuss.”

I think Spud’s whole life is filled with madness.

That is some incredible luck, having those three words come up.

I’m thinking Spud is more of a ones and zeros kind of guy.

I might have been able to spell the words, but WRITING them was a different matter entirely.

I would love to know if, in Will’s mind, the bird has a name. He’s one of the little gems of this strip.

“Ghoti” is pronounced “fish.” You’re welcome.

Have comfort in the knowledge that we all went through what you are going through today but probably without having as good a friend as Wallace helping us…..

And English-speakers wonder why foreigners are so slow to learn English…

Will “Henrie” — nice Easter egg.

This is why we always defined the these types of words. Spell flower, like in, I like to smell the pretty flowers.Spell flour, like in, what mom uses to make bread.

That’s why the teacher gives each word in a sentence.

I know a few languages and have friends who speak many more and every language has things like this – some are worse than others. I think the cases where the languages are really similar -like Indonesian and Malay have more of this than others.

And yet, for their age they are quite articulate! That either means Spud is succumbing to the madness … or knows more than he thinks. Could be both?

Could this be the reason why many English speakers find it hard to learn other languages? We are suspicious of all the exceptions.

Notice that two of the three words are associated with eating, so that makes sense for Spud.

I always wanted to create a blog about this topic but realized I was lousy at typing and even worse at writing…

English is possibly only second to Chinese for a new learner older than a toddler because of many of the reasons people have stated above. Because the Islands of Britain and Ireland were if not conquered, highly influenced by neighboring conquerors, the language had to adapt to the language of the conquering peoples. English still adopts, or steals, words that come from foreign languages.

Man I feel ya Spud

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Whil Hennrie. Heh.

It might help to put the words in context, in a sentence. And it’s not very useful to tell the confused student, “Wrong.” and never explain why. Spell out correctly the word that he just got wrong. And again, what grade are they in? These are some basic examples, used more for humour but this can’t be much beyond a 1st Grade Level Spelling Vocabulary.