Musings about English (in English)

As a linguophile, I frequently find myself pondering the workings of various languages. Sometimes my thoughts are grammatical in nature, sometimes etymological, and sometimes it's a random exploration of whatever accidental synaptic firings happen at that moment.

A few days ago I found myself remembering a childhood incident in which my friend Mike had come to my house bearing some object, and he exclaimed "Look what I brang!" My mother looked at Mike and said "Brang?" Mike 'corrected' himself: "Oh sorry. Look what I brung!" My mother rolled her eyes and said "It's 'brought', not brang or brung." Mike said "OK, whatever" and we went about playing.

The word "brought" is a doorway to English-language hell. Brought is the past tense of the verb "to bring". That sounds like a rule: verbs that end in "...ing" get changed to "...ought" to form a past tense. So now we can safely assume that "bought" is the past tense of the verb "to bing." Oh no... that's not right, it's the past tense of "to buy." Hmmm.... Well, the word "sought" should be the past tense of "to sing", but that's not right either. It's the past tense of "to seek". I fought with this oddity for a while (past tense of "to fing"? Nah. "to fight") I thought about it, which does not mean at present I thing about it. I think about it though, maybe too much.

Apart from the plethora of irregular verbs that all end the same way, what about the letter combination o-u-g-h found in the word "brought". How is that pronounced? Rather, how many ways is that pronounced? Let's see, there is the "aw" pronunciation like in all those past-tense verbs (1). There is the "oh" pronunciation like in "though" as found in the final sentence of the previous paragraph (2). There is the "oo" pronunciation as in "through" (3). There is also the "ow" pronunciation as in "drought" (4). Four different ways to pronounce this o-u-g-h combo shouldn't present too much of a challenge for speakers of other languages when they try to learn English. To hell with those foreigners! Let's make more variations! How about pronouncing it like "uff" in the word "tough" (5). And what about "off" as in the word "cough" (6). Now we're getting somewhere.

The value in such mental exercises as thinking about the above peculiarities of the English language is that it keeps me from going insane when I hear people say "Me and Tim are going to lunch now" or "Myself and Jim will provide an update later today" or "Please send an email to Mike and I" (all of which are the grammatical equivalents of nails on a chalkboard or a head-shaving performed with a cheese-grater).