What is the opposite of Feminist?

A feminist is a person who supports the belief that women should have the same rights and opportunities as men. Feminism refers to all the movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. The feminist activities have undoubtedly helped a lot in changing the position of women in the society.

Well, it is now clear that a feminist is one who advocates equal rights for women. But what about a person who supports and defends the rights of men? The word is ‘hominist’! Don’t think it is a newly invented word; the term was coined by George Bernard Shaw, more than a century ago.

However, the word hominist did not gain much popularity. Now another word ‘masculinist’ (also masculist) is widely used instead.

Poor Silent Letters!! Crazy English Spelling & Pronunciation. Part 3

Here are a few more illogical spelling-pronunciation disparites in English...

Gnat, gnaw, gnome, gnarl, gnat, deign, foreign, reign, sovereign, sign, ensign, design, resign, etc have a ‘g’ in them when they are spelled but the poor ‘g’ is totally neglected when people pronounce these words!

And where did the intruder ‘k’ come from and place its butts at the beginning of these words: know, knee, knife, knit, knickers and knuckle? Linguists may have come up with some theories but they are not at all digestible to the laymen!

Learners of English take weeks, if not months, to be confident enough to spell the following words correctly although they are able to pronounce them:

psychology, psychiatrist, pneumonia, psalm, psoriasis – the list is too long. The letter ‘p’ in all these words stands as a mute spectator of the illogical rules of the English language spelling reforms! Thank God, at least the ‘p’ in psalm got a dumb friend (l) to company with!

Cousin, Second Cousin, Third Cousin, Distant Cousin....

Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines cousin as ‘a child of your aunt or uncle’. The word cousin is a neutral term which applies to both males and females. Many people especially in South East Asia incorrectly use this word as cousin brother, cousin sister etc. Remember the word cousin is used to refer to:

1. Your uncle’s son/daughter (uncle can be your father’s brother or mother’s brother)
2. Your aunt’s son/daughter  (aunt can be your father’s sister or mother’s sister)

The listener can understand whether the ‘cousin in context’ is male of female from the pronoun which is used to describe them for example, in sentences like ‘He’s my cousin’, ‘My cousin is coming today with her children' etc. , the pronoun ‘he’ and the adjective ‘her’ clearly resolve the ‘gender confusion’. In some cases, it’s also possible to say ‘male cousin’ or ‘female cousin’ for specification or emphasis.

First cousin is another word which means exactly the same as cousin. Well, a (first) cousin is the child of your uncle or aunty. Who is your second cousin? It’s the grandchild of your grand uncle/aunty*.

Then comes the third cousin: the great grandchild of your great grand uncle**.

Of course the description of relationship tree in words is very confusing. The following graphics will make it a lot easier for you to understand the kinds of cousins:

*brother/sister of your grandfather/grandmother.

**brother/sister of your great grandfather/ great grandmother.

Crazy pronunciation Part 3

Here are a few more examples of illogical inconsistencies in English pronunciation:

The past form of say is said. It is pronounced as /sed/ but the past form of pay and lay are not pronounced as /ped/ or /led/! Rather you have to pronounce them as /peid/ and /leid/.

Bomb is pronounced as /bom/ and comb is pronounced as /com/ but what about tomb? It’s pronounced as /toom/!

Come and some do not agree with dome and Rome when it comes to pronunciation!

There is logic in pronouncing eve as /eev/ but I don’t understand why ewe is pronounced as /yoo/

Curry and hurry are two words that all of you might pronounce with ease. However, bury is a word a good number non-native speakers find difficult to pronounce; it is pronounced /bery/. It is rather crazy!

Crazy English pronunciation. Part 2

When I was in fifth class in which I started learning the spellings and pronunciation of English words, my English teacher used to tweak my ear for mispronouncing the word 'hood'. I used to pronounce hood with a long u – something like /hoood/ instead of /hud/. My budding mind, as in the case of any children, thought all the words with ‘oo’ should be pronounced in the same way as in food, fool, noon, mood, soon, moon, loo etc.

Crazily enough, while a number of common words like moon, food, noon, broom, zoom, boon, proof, roof etc are pronounced with a long ‘u’ sound, so many other words with the same pattern take only a short ‘u’ in pronunciation e.g. book, cook, hood, look, wood, foot and so on.

If you think that the confusion is over just after learning these two rules, what about the words like ‘door’ and ‘floor’? Though they follow the same pattern of spelling, the pronunciation is different!

Is that all? Wait! A fourth small group of words (thank God, only two words in this category!) behaves in a totally different way: blood and flood. The ‘oo’ in them rhymes with the ‘u’ in ‘mud’ ‘thud’ and ‘dull’ !

Isn’t English crazy? Please comment…

GHOTI = FISH (?)

GHOTI

The pronunciation of this word is “FISH”! Surprised?This is a well known example which demonstrates the inconsistencies in English pronunciation. How can we prove that GHOTI is pronounced as FISH? Here’s how:

gh, pronounced /f/ as in tough /tʌf/;

o, pronounced /ɪ/ as in women /ˈwɪmɪn/; and

ti, pronounced /ʃ/ (sh) as in nation /ˈne͡ɪʃən/.

This sarcastic example was first made by William Ollier, a 19^th century English spelling critic, but was popularized by Bernard Shaw in some of his writings. Indeed English spelling rules are crazy. Look at the different ways ‘ough’ is pronounced:

1. thought, bought, fought, brought etc. /o/
2. enough, rough, tough etc. /ʌf/
3. through /oo/
4. though, although, dough etc. /əu/
5. cough /ɒf/
6. bough, doughty /aʊ/
7. thorough /ʌ/

Funny English spellings! Right?

Good at or Good in?

Prepositions seem to be the most confusing aspect of English grammar for the speakers of English all around. While many people say ‘she is good at English’, the number of those who say ‘she is good in English’ is also growing. So, which sentence is the correct one?

Practically speaking, it is unwise to say only one of these two sentences is correct. The reason is English language is constantly undergoing a process of being plain, straight-forward and flexible. In spoken English, you may either say ‘good at’ or ‘good in’ as both these prepositions are nowadays interchangeably used by an increasing number of English speakers across the world. However, the standard form appears to be ‘good at’. Therefore, in formal contexts try to use ‘good at’ and in informal English either of the two!

More examples:

John is bad at Mathematics.

Jane is better at French than (at) Spanish.

Sania Mirza is very good at tennis.

The footballer was at his best performance last year.

(The sentences above can also take ‘in’ in the place of ‘at’ though the former (in) is not considered standard especially while talking about one’s ability in a subject. However, by convention, only ‘at’ is widely used with sports and games)