Sine Line Optical Illusion
SINCE by now all of you are ware that English isn’t my mother language, there are still some minor details I’d like to check. One of the major steps I surpassed recently is learning the difference between it’s and its. Yeah, it may sound dumb but this little thing made me uncertain for quite some time. It took years before I finally understood how the hell verb read can be written the same in present and past form, even though in each case it’s pronounced differently. I think some of these rules were explained to me by one of my readers. Next on my quest of knowledge is to distinguish the difference between color and colour. Anyone cares to explain? I’ve seen both of them in use.
Concerning the illusion of the day, I posted it to the left. The line you see fluctuating is composed of many vertical lines. Do some of those vertical lines seem to be unequal in length? The strange case here, is that all of the vertical lines in this example are identical! Strange, ayeh?
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and there their and they’re are all the same too.
The to problem:
Too can be used instead of as well or also.
Two is the number
to is pretty much the basic form when you don’t need anything special for ‘to’.
Re: Color and Colour. Color is american, colour is British. Same goes for quite a few other words with …or vs. our. American spelling drops a lot of extra letters, which are retained by the Brits. Also, the Brits spell many words, such as theater, with the e and r reversed, thus theatre.
A good deal of native English speakers don’t know the different between its and it’s. So, give yourself a break.
color / colour is simply a difference in dialect. Many words are spelled differently in the US when compared to their Irish or UK forms.
I also speak Spanish and a similar thing occurs with that language — words change spelling from one country to another (primarily just a change in accented syllables but a spelling change none-the-less) and one particular word comes to mind as meaning “bug” in one country, “thing” in another, and being quite profane in a third.
Hey,
the difference between color and colour is the country. British use the ou in a couple of words, where Americans just use the o.
Hope it helps.
Color is the American spelling and colour is the British spelling. We do the same thing with rumor & rumour as well as other similarly spelled words.
As I have said before in your blog, “English is the language that makes the least sense.” I don’t understand why it is prevalent. It is an ugly language. It is difficult to learn, cumbersome, there are a lot of rules and twice as many exceptions to every rule.
I think it is impressive that you speak it as well as you do.
Color is the American spelling; colour is English (as in the United Kingdom)
The same goes for neighbor/neighbour; flavor/flavour; favor/favour and many other words.
There are a fair few words that are just completely different for Americans and Brits as well.
Faucet and Tap
Drapes and Curtains
Truck and Lorry
Elevator and Lift
Sidewalk and Pavement
Candy and Sweets
I can’t think of any more right now, but there are quite a few little oddities like that.
Just want you to know that the grammar issues are not a problem for me. I have seen posts regarding this matter, but I don’t care. I understand that you want to understand English grammar for yourself, and I totally support that. But as far as it’s affect on how I view your web site…dosen’t bother me. I just enjoy your site. :)
I love this illusion it’s very effective. And judging by the comments I don’t really have to explain the difference between color and colour. I’d just want to add that us candians follow the british… That’s all…and this situation also occurs in the words flavour and flavor, neighbour and neighbor, rumour and rumor, labor and labour, honor and honour…the most funny thing is that until you brought this up…I didnt realize about the other words…so now I know why certain words look funny in american books. Anywho back to the illusion. It’s quite fascinating I would have never guessed they were the same… it’s probably because of the elevation that makesyou see tem lines as bigger.
omg lol what IS the difference between its and i’ts… i feel silly now!
You think that’s confusing. I can think of certain words that are only spoken in certain states here in the US. For example here in WI instead of drinking fountain we say bubbler.
I noticed something about this illusion – well, i dont know if that is what you were showing as part of the illusion, or if i had just luckily spotted it. You mentioned that the illusion was that the lines were the same length. I noticed that this illusion, if you looked at it closely, concentrating on the lines on the left side, it looks as though the image is closer than the lines on the right – almost like a fence. If you then look at the lines on the right, it looks as though the line is like a bridge, as the lines go ‘over’ and curve under!
Agreed, you make yourself perfectly understood as far as I’m concerned, vurdlak. I understand though, English is a confounding language. Cough, rough, bough, through, etc…
The most important difference in vocabulary between US and UK is that what we call beer in the US, they call lager.
Oh, and nice illusion, very simple and subtle.
colour is canadian also.
Also in Australia/Britain we use an ’s’ rather than a ‘z’ in words such as ‘organisation’.
Actually, Meisha is wrong about “there,” “their” and “they’re.”
“They’re” means “they are.” EXAMPLE: They’re outside.
“There” refers to a place. EXAMPLE: The books are here (in a place close to me) and the pencils are there (far away).
“Their” means that it belongs to ‘them’. EXAMPLE: It’s their bike, not yours or mine.
So, if I said “They’re over there, but their stuff isn’t there.” it would be like saying “They are in that are farther away, but the stuff that belongs to them is not in that place.” ^-^
Nice illusion, by the way.
color is american and colour is british
my island was british but is now dependent so we use colour instead of color eg.
labour/labor
I also enjoy your site regardless of little grammar issues :-) You speak/write in English just as well as many people who were born in the states. English grammar can be such a pain in the butt that lots of people born and raised here don’t totally get it. I, for example, passed all my Spanish classes in high school and college with A’s, but nearly flunked English grammar every time!
colour is British for color….English/American would be color…
soo…
American:color
British:colour
sooooo…..yeah
It’s and its, read or read… yeah messed up… but what about the “had had” situation… Like for example. Bob had had that before.
It´s more difficult to speak Portuguese than English. I´m brazilian and I´m very sure about it!