Elaborate/elaborate. A friend (non-native but close to native speaker) and I have been discussing that nasty “ate” ending. When’s it a verb? When’s it an adjective? When’s it a noun?
It’s more or less this: “When a word containing an -ate suffix is a noun or an adjective, the vowel sound of the suffix is unstressed and is pronounced with a short i /ɪ/“
Lots of people complain about English being complicated, but compared to a lot of other languages I’ve studied, it’s pretty simple. The thing is, no language we study is ever as “easy” as the one we already know.
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/07/18/rdp-thursday-elaborate/
Women's Wilderness Legend “Summer is the season of inferior sledding” - Inuit proverb 
Thanks for elaborating. It will probably come as no surprise to you that I never learned grammar at school.
I had it in 6th grade and then when I took Spanish and then had to teach grammar to students learning English as a second language. 🙂
Perhaps I should do an ESL class.
Ha ha ha!
English can be challenging and it without doubt it has its quirks, but believe me, it’s nothing compared to Latin! 😀
I know! Or Greek, French, German or Chinese (though Chinese grammar is awesomely simple).
Greek, gosh yes, I wouldn’t even try that! They all need to take a leaf out of China’s grammatical book…😊
Yeah, no verb tenses. 🙂
Oh wow, heaven! 🙂
Well, there are the characters…
Ah yes, I wouldn’t want to write in Chinese. Way too difficult, and artistic for me… 😊
😀
The English language! Spelled alike, but sounds different. Bear (grrr!) and bear (tolerate). Sounds alike, but is spelled differently. Bear (see previous) and bare (naked). Words, words, words. Got to love them.
Took some thought 🤔 Record (noun) short “e”, and record (verb) long “e”.
Whoa. I didn’t think of that…
Lots of people complain about English being complicated, but compared to a lot of other languages it is very simple to learn. Great post!!
It is. It’s a combination of so many other languages and the grammar is relatively simple — and no gender!!! 🙂