Amature vs. Amateur

Many words in the English language are greatly influenced by French spelling. Since English "borrows" many of its words from both German and French, this is entirely understandable.

French is a very rich and sophisticated language | foto: Lucie Kratochvílová

Angličtina na iDNES.cz
VŠECHNY LEKCE ZDE

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Note: We were originally going to print this column in December, but due to the emails we have received from several English instructors here in Prague, we are publishing it now.

However, a new trend in American English, which is considered by many non-native speakers to be easier to learn and understand than traditional British English, is literally dumping or getting rid of, what are called "Frenchisms."

French
French is a very rich and sophisticated language. French also has a very special characteristic compared to German: quite often French words include letters that one does not bother pronouncing.

A simple example of this is the word deux -- which sounds (roughly) like du in German or do in English, minus the French accent of course.

To most Americans, if you asked them to spell the French word deux, they would have no idea how to do so.

In short, French uses lots of what are called silent letters. These are letters which are necessary in the French language in order to spell a word correctly, but they are NOT pronounced or spoken.

Enter America and Phonics
One of the single, most important trends in the development of modern English today, is the replacement of such silent vowels or letters with more phonetic spellings instead. This is now happening very fast in the USA, with words like cousin now being spelled as cuzin.

The same thing has now occurred with the word amateur.

Today, many spell it as amature. While the definition of this word remains the same, many Web sites now also spell it this way.

   Jokes of the Day: More "Dumb" Laws

1. In the state of Florida, it is against the law for a woman to jump up and down, naked, before 12:00 noon.

2. In the state of Colorado, a dog catcher is required by law to notify the dog they intend to "catch" three days before they proceed to do so!

3. In the city of Denver, Colorado, it is against the law to drive a black-colored car on Sundays!

4. In the state of Illinois, it is illegal to fish while sitting the neck of a giraffe. As everyone knows, Illinois is the "giraffe capital of the world." It has so many giraffes , that Africa imports them to make up for all of the ones killed by poachers. Yeah, right!

Angličtina vychází od pondělí do pátku.

Najdete ji také v bezplatném deníku Metropolitní expres.

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