What's Up With Up

I read this today. I don't know the original author.

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Lovers of the English language might enjoy this. It is yet another example of why people learning English have trouble with the language. Learning the nuances of English makes it a difficult language. (But then, that's probably true of many languages.)

There is a two-letter word in English that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that word is'UP.' It is listed in the dictionary as being used as an [adv], [prep], [adj], [n] or [v].

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP?

At a meeting, why does a topic come UP ? Why do we speak UP, and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report? We call UP our friends and we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.

At other times the little word has a real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.

To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is special.

And this up is confusing:

A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.

We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night. We seem to be pretty mixed UPabout UP !

To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP , look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takesUP almost 1/4 of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions.

If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more.

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP . When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP. When it rains, it wets UP the earth. When it does not rain for awhile, things dry UP.

One could go on & on, but I'll wrap it UP , for now. My time is UP.

Oh...one more thing:

What is the first thing you do in the morning & the last thing you do at night?

U - P

Right-brained Or Left-brained

Which way is the girl spinning? Clockwise or counter-clockwise?

If clockwise, then you use more of the right side of the brain and vice versa.

Most of us would see the dancer turning counter-clockwise though you can try to focus and change the direction.

See if you can do it!

Those Cars Are Ours

If you read the headline and it sounded like "Those cars R R's," I would say that you have fallen into the trap of lazy speak. What's lazy speak? It's when you become so apathetic about the spoken word that you voluntarily choose not to pronounce words correctly, either by deleting letters from words, not turning the diphthongs, or worse, using an entirely different word that sounds close (on some other planet) to the word you are actually trying to say.

Let's take a look at two words that seem to be the worst for deleted letters - "February" and "fifth." I would venture to say that these two words are mispronounced by 95% of the United States' population. February almost always becomes 'Febuary' when spoken because it's "just too hard to say it correctly."

Take a look at the following words:

• kith
• pith
• sith
• with

Now, look at this word:

• fifth

Are "sith" and "fifth" pronounced the same excluding the first consonant? They will be if you have become a victim of "lazy speak." Astute readers will notice that there is extra "f" in fifth. No, it is not a silent "f"; it should actually be included in the consonant sounds of the word. "But it's so much easier just to say 'fith'!" Lazy speak.

In the Southeastern United States, there are words that don't receive proper diphthong treatment. They included:

• you're (becomes yer)
• smile (becomes small)
• fire (becomes far) (there's that "are" / "R" thing again)
• ice (becomes oss) (seems to be rare these days)

They are all one-syllable words, but for reasons unbeknown to me, some folks try their darnedest to take that one, small syllable and make it even shorter. Have we become so pressed for time that we can't properly speak to one another?

Oh, and if you are wondering what in the world a diphthong is, then go to Diphthong at Wikipedia to learn more about it.

We're finally to the main reason why this article exists. While there are plenty of word substitution examples such as "their/there/they're," "than/then," and "you're/your," these substitutions and misspellings are not easily detectable during speech given slight changes in dialect. However, the ultimate lazy speak substitution in my opinion is using the word "are" in place of "our" and "hour." How about that - two words with one stone! Hahaha! But I digress...

Over the past few years, I've noticed that more and more people are falling victim to lazy speak regarding the words "hour" and "our." They seem to have forgotten that both words are supposed to rhyme with sour, flour, flower, power, and tower (as in Eiffel). It would be interesting to know if those same people pronounce the rhyming words as sar, flar, par, and tar. Probably not.

So why, then, does "our" and "hour" fall victim to lazy speak? I've read that some argue the point of "connected" speech and how the sentence flows better when "our" is mispronounced. I call it just plain being lazy. The kicker in all of this is that the spoken substitution of "are" for "our" is slowly making its way into written word - personal posts from users, blogs, and even professional news websites have been guilty of writing "are" when the correct word should have been "our."

Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to simply pay attention to how you are speaking.

1. Try to pronounce words correctly. If you don't know how to pronounce a word, look it up in a dictionary; don't just make something up.
2. Try to include diphthongs in words that have them.
3. Try not to substitute the word "are" for "our" and "hour."

Lastly, don't be in such a rush when speaking and enjoy the time you are spending with people.