luninosity: windycityteacher: burntcopper: things english speakers know, but don’t know we kno
luninosity:windycityteacher:burntcopper:things english speakers know, but don’t know we know.WOAH WHAT?No, but this gets better.This is from a J.R.R. Tolkien essay in which he remembers the moment he fell in love with philology, linguistics, and the intricacies of language, because as a kid he had said “a green great dragon” and had been corrected to “a great green dragon”, but the person correcting him (his tutor? I forget, it’s been a while since I’ve read this one, maybe since my qualifying exams) couldn’t explain why.So he wanted to know why.So he began studying languages and looking for patterns and word-stories. And then inventing and playing with them. -- source link