Isthmus. I don’t claim to know if it’s the weirdest, but it’s gotta be one of the most difficult to pronounce!
Onomatopoeia - the word for making a word for a sound
Vainglorious.
Kumquat
I suppose technically it’s Latin, but I’ve always been fascinated with “syzygy”.
That looks like something Snoop Dogg would say.
I really only know of this word because of Scott Manley
Be, is, are, was, am, were, being, been… are all the same word.
“To be” being highly irregular il a common feature of a lot of Indo-European languages. But there’s worse. In Spanish, “ser” and “estar” both mean “to be”, but have wildly different meanings and cannot be substituted for one another.
Languages that conjugate every verb for every person:
“To be” averbs, at least in romance languages usually have a bunch of different forms. “To have” usually too but English is a bit of an exception there.
Or not to be…
Or not to have…
“be” is an irregular verb in all languages, so it’s not unique to English. Bonus fun fact: Russian doesn’t have the verb “to be”.
Yes, and I feel like it’s even more irregular in Russian than just not existing. It’s not used in present tense as a copula, so in most cases where you would expect it in English. However it absolutely exists – быть – and is used like normal verbs in both past and future tense.
For example: «я здесь» – “I am here” (same word order, but this sentence has no verb), but «я был здесь» – “I was here”
And in the cases where it is used in present tense, there is a single conjugation regardless of subject: есть (in contrast to all other verbs, I assume at least, which all have distinct conjugations for 1/2/3rd person singular/plural).
A simple example for this would probably be sentences with “there is”, affirming the existence of something, as in “there is a bathroom” – «ванная есть». Contrived example for sure but I can’t think of something better right now.
Was going to reply that, it’s not that Russian doesn’t have it, it just gets omitted in the most common form.
But also one interesting thing is that from the examples you gave I can know your gender, because the verb to be is gendered in the past in Russian, which is very unique, I don’t know of any other language where verbs are gendered.
Not in Turkish. It is “olmak” but the actual “to be” as it is used in “I am, they were, etc.” is, now unused “imek”. it has become a suffix and it is completely regular. Just i + person suffix.
And it has multiple meanings. “you are sick” can mean that you’re currently sick but can also mean that you’re a sick person. Other languages usually differentiate the verb in those two cases
Same with “go” and “went”.
I god.
I came
queue
Most “Q” words are weird to start with, then just adding a bunch of silent vowels at the end doesn’t make it any less so.
It’s a Q: a bunch of vowels are lined up behind it!
God damn it. That’s good.
Thank the French for this one
Ah the french…alwaysbeencelebrated for it’s…excellence!
oiseau – for when consonants are overrated. (it means bird).
Eau - for when consonants are unnecessary
How is that pronounced?
wazo
You can toss it into google translate and listen to audio. It would probably be better than any attempted typing I can do here.
Wiktionary has a lot of audio transcriptions too: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/oiseau
I knew an English speaking American born well off white dude that pronounced this as “kway”. It was the most annoying thing that came out of his mouth besides all of the bragging and “I’m smarter than everyone” attitude.
Gerrymandering sounds like some sort of magic class.
I always thought it sounded like Jerry Seinfeld between takes/shoots just hanging around the set. Not doing anything. Just ignoring everything around him. He’s just gerrymandering around the studio.
Gerry meandering
It’s from a political cartoon depicting a corrupt districting plan as a salamander.
A plan proposed by a man named Elbridge Gerry.
I love salubrious as it sounds like the exact opposite of what it is (health giving or healthy.)
Myrrh
I think thats just the sound a cat makes when it wakes up.
Here Baby Jesus, we brought you some nice smelling stuff, pretty shiny metal, and a kitten.
Damn. I wish someone got ME a kitten for my birthday. I would be like “Hey! Kitten! Why you so cute???” and she would just look at me, because she’s a kitten and doesn’t speak english. She might meow though.
pork
From French porc from Latin.
Same as beef from boeuf.
I can’t say for certain, but it’s probably one of these.
Moist
Indubitably
My friend used to always say this to mean “definitely”. He was wrong, but it sounded sophisticated.
Kerfluffle
Kovfefe?
Only has one “l”
Brouhaha is its twin brother!
