English Confusion

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Hi friends,
I found this is my father's mail,sounds interesting !

One Word Changes The Meaning..

Professor Ernest Brennecke of Columbia is credited with inventing a sentence that can be made to have eight different meanings by placing ONE WORD in all possible positions in the sentence: "I hit him in the eye yesterday."

The word is "ONLY".
Hmm, sounds interesting?? Let's take a look it...

=> ONLY I hit him in the eye yesterday. (No one else did.)

=> I ONLY hit him in the eye yesterday. (Did not slap him.)

=> I hit ONLY him in the eye yesterday. (I did not hit others.)

=> I hit him ONLY in the eye yesterday. (I did not hit outside the eye.)

=> I hit him in ONLY the eye yesterday. (Not other organs.)

=> I hit him in the ONLY eye yesterday. (He doesn't have another eye.)

=> I hit him in the eye ONLY yesterday. (Not today.)

=> I hit him in the eye yesterday ONLY. (Did not wait for today.)

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English has official status of assistant language in India.
This language is little confused to people.
nice thread.

thanks for sharing Swetha.
very informative thread and information shared are really thingable. All examples are very well explaining how tuff english is. Thanks for swetha and kalyani mam.
Sequence of words or their placing in a sentence has significance in most languages including English and Hindi. Sanskrit is probably the only language that allows you to place a word anywhere in a sentence- beginning, end or middle as long as the word grammatical form (roopa) is correct. In English, adjectives and adverbs will give different meaning by placing before different words.
Very nice Topic Thanks For sharing With Us :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil:
English has official status of assistant language in India.
This language is little confused to people.
nice thread.

thanks for sharing Swetha.


English is associate (not assistant) official language of Union Government. In fact, this is not confusing. Wrong usage may evoke confusion and amusement in any language.

Examples: A man told Bus conductor: kripya mujhe yahan girado. He just translated the English word (drop). But in Hindi, this meant - throw me here.
Very expressive difference between each sentence. Thats right each sentence has a different meaning however words are same.
This is Really Great to Read one cannot Imagine that same thing can be written in to many words.I was little bit Weak in English try to develop my English languages.

Topic Author

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Swetha Shenoy

@swethashenoy

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Created Tuesday, 15 March 2011 19:30
Last Updated Tuesday, 30 November -0001 00:00
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