Comments by "Laurence Fraser" (@laurencefraser) on "The weirdest things about English" video.

@leslieaustin151 The fun part is that if you go back far enough, 'let' meant... I forget if it was prevent or forbid, but the opposite of 'permit or allow', anyway!
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@Scrimp22 Well, for one thing, somehow 'Let's Goooo!' has come to mean something more like 'do well' or 'you did it!' depending on context <_<
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@britcom1 that would be rhotic vs non-rhotic speach, where what is written as an r character in the coda (that is, the part after the vowel) in rhotic speach produces an r sound, but in non-rhotic speach instead acts as a modifier to the vowel. For reference, rhotic is more common the USA, non-rhotic is more common in commonwealth dialects, but there are still quite a number of non-rhotic American, and rhotic commonwealth, dialects kicking around.
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@susanholler2128 actually, the logic behind that one is weird. It's actually should be "am not I?"... which gives "amn't I". which is a bit awkward so say, so becomes "an't I?". Yeah, that's right, "an't" is actually the 'correct' word here! (though it's Only correct for "I", because nothing else uses the 'am' forms of the verb.) Edit: oh look, grammar ninjas!
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@massmanute I mean, the 'proper' way of doing this in English is... don't ask questions in the negative, and while you can't use a single word to unambiguously negate a negative statement, the phrases used (if you don't feel the need to add any additional information) are Very short. Of course, as with the 'proper' way of doing anything, many people don't.
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The large vowel inventory isn't so much 'English is weird' as 'Germanic langauges are weird', to my understanding. Well, mostly, at least.
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English pronouns aren't gendered either, they're Sexed. As are Many English nouns. (actually, the only context in which 'gender' applies to any word in English is as a euphemism for sex (not the verb), which came about to get certain immature idiots and whiny busybodies to stop causing problems for officials due to the word 'sex' appearing on official documents) The distinction is pretty basic: If they were gendered in the usual meaning when talking about langauges, then it would interact with other parts of the grammar, and wouldn't actually care about the reality of the thing being refered to. Meanwhile, English nouns care about the physical sex of the thing being refered to (where applicable). This can be extended out to refer to things that Appear male or female, or to anthropomorphise inanimate objects (because English doesn't have the ability to stick something in the 'animate' catagory without also sticking it in the 'male sex' or 'female sex' catagory. This is also why refering to someone as 'it' (other than a newborn baby when you've not been told their sex yet) is Very insulting. You're not just not refering to them as male or female, but are in fact actively declaring them to not only not be a person, but in fact less capable of thought and voluntary action than most animals.))
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properly speaking, your aunts and uncles could be refered to as... I think it'd be 'siblings once removed'? but that's not really any less clunky than 'aunts and uncles'.
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@b.a.erlebacher1139 would that be intrusive r, linking r, or 'actually just straight up part of the standard word but not represented in the writing system for some puzzling reason' r? (I'm pretty sure it was r that last one applied to, though I might be getting it muddled up with a different sound).
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@Elesario depends on the gesture in question, and the range of how universal a given gesture is caps out at 'very' rather than 'absolutely'.
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