Up Yours!

Our youngest daughter has just about completed her 3 year BA (Hons) in English with QTS degree course. This got me thinking about our language. There are some very strange and problematical words and pronunciations to master in our language. I wonder if you have ever seriously thought about how you pronounce the "ough"

Is it as in thought?

rough?

cough?

bough?

Then there are the different meanings we attach to a word. Take the word "up" - this would usually be understood as "in a rising vertical direction", but link the word up to many other words and it begins to have lots of different meanings. Take a look at this piece I recently found:-

UP
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 garages fix UP the old car.

At other times the little word has a really 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 UP about UP !

To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary.

In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP 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, so time to shut UP!

Oh....one more thing: What is the first thing you do in the morning & the last thing you do at night?

U P

Think about it!