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?
(18 votes)
there = “that place over there”
their = “it was their choice to do that”
they’re = contraction of they are = “so what do you think they’re upto?”
As for UK AF and Government moving to AmerEnglish spellings – I doubt that this is a deliberate thing
Ya, English is the language of rules that get made up on the spot. And then changed later.
It’s very confusing, and even we native speakers have some bad grammar.
Moslty just by the definitions of the schools who haven’t updated to the modern language where nobody says whom. I still don’t know the proper time to use that.
And since everyone has already basically explained colour, I feel the need to add that we in Canada use colour, as well as the British.
color is american and colour is the canadian spelling. both are said the same way. if you try spell check you will see that it will correct colour to color. cheers!
Jim, pronounce thier as the-ar and u wont mix them up! not using proper english right now… :D
English is a very confusing language. So confusing, in fact, that many native speakers do not know when to use “its” and when to use “it’s”. For good reason: in most cases, “’s” at the end of a word generally implies a possessive sence to the noun preceeding the apostrophe, but that is not the case in this situation. When the noun is “it”, there is no apostrophe before the “s” to denote a possessive sense. The apostrophe is only used to indicate a contraction of the two word “it is”. I am not going to go into “there” and “their”, let alone “they’re”!
its is actually used all the time its the only word that dosn’t need an apostraphy at any time even though its a short hand for it is. The strange pronunciation comes from 2 things 1 the strange mix of languages that english is composed of (latin old french germanic norse briton(welsh/celtic)and some more) the 2nd is the fact the english dropped all the accents (eg è é ü æ Þ. As for the illusion its a very good effect though I’m sure I’ve seen it before
@jim
their is the 3.p.plural of “something they own”
there is -for example- when you tell somebody that something is in another place or just not here
The good old English language eh? Only last week did our youngest daughter ask why ‘minute’ has two meanings!
Just to throw you a few new curves in English, try these:
Raise, raze, rays, Ray’s. Raise & raze have exact opposite meanings.
Now in English we also have three (to, too, two)’s and three (for, fore, four)’s, but we only use the to and for sounds once when we speak the above sentence.
There are many other crazy usages of words in English.
For the meaning of words, the besst site I have found is:
http://www.etymonline.com/
The eye will judge the thickness of the appearant line and the brain will think the line length will match the line thickness.
color is the american was of spelling colour. if you are leaarning english i sugest using colour and spelling it the RIGHT way.
@ Alan P-J
You say that the British Govt is changing its spelling of “colour” to the lazy American way . . . well, that will be over my dead body! It is our language so maybe they might be better off trying to persuade the Americans to spell and pronounce English language words correctly. What really bugs me about the ‘net is that, in the majority of cases where you need to choose a language, you are only given the choice of American English! What happened to good old ENGLISH English!
There’s also “your” (which is possessive) and “you’re” (which is a contraction, like “it’s”). I love that people are interested in grammar and spelling.
And yes, those lines in the illusion look to me as though they’re (not “their” or “there”) different lengths, even though they’re not.
The colour/color difference is spanned across the Atlantic, however, within English there is even more fun to be had, per se:
Bow (noun) – length of fabric/string tied leaving two loops showing.
Bow (verb) – to bend at the waist, to curtsey.
Bough ((noun) – pronounced like the word meaning curtsey)) – limb of a tree
Rough (noun) – Pronounced ‘ruff’)) – coarse, harsh, not smooth
Ruff (archaic, noun) – that neckwear seen being worn around the time if Shakespeare, in modern terms using the word ‘ruffles’ conveys a similar meaning. for ‘ruffles’ see the front of some evening wear for men.
Tuff (noun) – a type of igneous rock.
Tough ((noun) – pronounced ‘tuff’)) – hardy, able to cope under stressfule situations, strong.
English, a great language, and one day those that invented it will understand it fully, currently those that do use it have very little care for it.
As a Greek guy living in England, I had to learn many differences between the American and the British ways of spelling and pronouncing things.
As everyone else says, “colour” is the British spelling. In non-USA and non-British countries, the difference has been dilluted.
Contrary to AlanP-J, the British spelling is very strongly enforced in England by the british people themselves. There is no central control of the language. In contrast to the French Academie, who create the French language rules, the british-english language evolves by the people and eventualy becomes the norm. There are no central plans to move over to the American spelling.
It is in fact such linguistic differences that enforce the sence of “belonging” to a different group. As Paul Merton, the actor and comedian, said once about language, [paraphrase] “people in one village share a very strong dislike of the people in the other village down the road, just because they all talk funny over there”. Don’t read too much into it, other than, groups of people need differences in language and expressions so they can have an identity.
See:
“theatre”[uk] vs “theater”[us]
“centre”[uk] vs “center”[uk]
Quiz: How many different spellings of the letters “ough” can you think, when these occur in words?
Hint:
- Though
- Through
- Tough
- Slough [town in Berkshire]
Apologies, the word ‘tough’ is an adjective and there is no extraneous “e” at the end of ’stressful’.
this is a great illusion!
Its is for belonging to it, it’s is for it is
Colour and color, like a few other words, are spelt differently in England and America, and sometimes they have different words for the same thing: like Pavement and Sidewalk
Going offtop I see.))
I believe “there” is the opposite of “here”
(Eiffel tower is in Paris, let’s go THERE.) and “their” means “belongs to them”.
(It’s not my but their problem.)
You Americans just stole our English language and removed all the ‘u’s, and not to mention changed all the ’s’s to ‘z’s! (and that’s a zed, not a zee)
:(
Their is related to its,:
My (belongs to me),
Your (belongs to you),
His/Hers/Its (belongs to him/her/it),
Our (belongs to us),
Your (belongs to you plural),
Their (belongs to them)
There is a place.
It’s is a contraction of it is.
On color and colour, as others have said the difference in spelling and country of origin. There are quite a few of these things out there. Labor and labour, favor and favour, some more common than others. Another similar class of words are theater and theatre, center and centre. In all of these the US spelling precedes the UK spelling. Generally speaking -or and -er = US. -our and -re = UK.
Glad to know you have the same difficulties as I do. It is not easy for a non-English native understand such “small” differences. Like you, I do my best to practice and have a perfect written English. I love your site and I love you as well. Since many people have already explained your doubts, I have nothing else to say… :)
There is such as a place and their is a person.
There you are
It’s over there.
It’s their object.
They went to their house.
Color is the American spelling, colour is used by the rest of the countries which were once part of the British empire.
This is actually because of the American war for independence. Noah Webster (who served in the Connecticut Militia during the revolutionary war) when he decided to write a dictionary for Americans wanted to differentiate American English from British English. He felt that the British spelling was overly complex and so he made a number of changes to his “An American Dictionary of the English Language” (Now known as “The Webster’s Dictionary”)
Colour became Color,
Theatre became Theater
Labelled became Labeled
etc.
If you want a more exhaustive list you can just Google “American spellings” there are a number of web pages on the different spellings.
There can indicate a statement of fact, or indicate the existence of an object: There is a hole in my shoe. There can indicate location: The book is there, by the lamp. Their is possessive: That is their house.
There can be no doubt that English is a crazy language. It can drive non-native speakers out of their minds. :)
Another example of American vs. UK is theater and theatre. Basically, Americans have changed words, like dropping the e in the middle of judgement.
Jim, their is the possessive.
there – refers to a place (over there, under there etc.)
their – refers to a group of people (look at their hair etc)
they’re is short for they are (they’re being silly)
there is as in ‘my car is over there’
their is as in ‘that is their car’.
Their is a plural possessive, and there refers to directions. Hope that helps!
Their is possessive (pronoun),
“I don’t know their names”
“I wonder if this is their cat?”
There is an adverb (modifies a noun, adjective or other adverbs)
“Let’s go over there”
“There will be a fight tonight”
As submitted by other people, colour is the British English version of the word. With one small addition; some of the past and present British Colonies use this spelling. Canadians, for example, use the word “colour” as well as the word “grey” in place of “gray” which is used in the US. As well, by pronouncing the letter “z” as “zed” instead of “zee” as the US does. ….English truly is one of the hardest languages to learn.
Simple: the word COLOUR is the british spelling and the word COLOR is the american spelling
responce to alan P-J’s post: the goverment is definitely not starting to spell colour without the U.
Jim,
There = over there, a place.
Their = their house, ownership
Hope that helps
The exact reverse of this effect works too (different leghts of lines will appear equal once curved) the link below provides more explication
http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/sze_sineIllusion/index.html
Color = American English.
Colour = British English / The Queens Language.
When people moved over to the US years ago to populate it, most of the people who went were after a new life and had little or no education…spelling wasn’t their forte and that is why there are missing letters in English words like colour, neighbour, etc and replaced S with Z and also swapped letters ER RE
if you want to learn the ENGLISH language learn ENGLISH not AMERICAN if you want to learn the AMERICAN language learn that their pretty much totally different and the ENGLISH language is the better 1 by far if you want a challange live in liverpool n learn SCOUSE (its ment too be an ENGLISH accent but it sounds like a totally different language :))
oh another point i noticed about the changing to american from chemistry the element sulphur is now getting spelt the american sulfur on english exam papers why cant the english stay ENGLISH for goodness sake its not like our prime minister already follows the american president blindly into every thing why not change the united kingdom of great britain and northen ireland into the united kingdom of america sorry bad subject 4 me
I believe that some influential Americans had a bash at simplify the spelling of various words in the latter part of the nineteenth century and ‘color’ was one of their more successful targets. Simply ghastly :)
Google “american spelling reform” for further info.
color is American english, colour English english
American English (spelling/pronunciation) is a cultural thing, and I’m glad that Greg Elfers commented with the info about Webster-it really explains the American approach to the English language.
What’s great about MO Illusions is that our friendly Illusion Master is conscious of the influx of new visitors to the site from the UK, and he is doing his best to make sure that the language (spelling/grammar) he uses is understandable to all-especially remarkable since English is not his ‘mother’ tongue.
I’ve been a fan of this site for a long time, and a lot of it has to do with the great images and stories provided, not necessarily the grammar aspect involved in the writing. Thanks for such a great site!
Colour = Canadian / British spelling
Color = American spelling.
Same word, same meaning. The two different countries spell things differently alot.
The difference is that colour is mainly seen used
in Britain or something.And color is mainly seen used in USA(im not so intelligent on this stuff :|).I love ur site.The illusions can be hard lol.
color is American English
Colour is ‘the Queens’ English
colour is how the german english ppl do it. and others whom im not sure of. same for neighbour, labour, and favourite. I take the ‘u’s out of it all.
not a very good illusion considering i knew they all were straight. I see ur havin trouble with homophones and homographs. words spelt the smae but meen diffrent and words that sound the same but meen different.
They’re = They are.
Their = defines owner ship of a group of people.
There = a place.
Read = pron. reed. means like ‘as i read this’
Read = (pron. red) Past tense of that that is pron. reed.
Lead = To guide something. (pron. leed)
Lead = That stuff in your pencil that is down right deadly if consumed. (pron. led)
I have problems with its and it’s also. I believe its the only noun needing to define ownership whereas you put an apostrophe at the end yet it’d be wrong.
It’s = it is
Its = defines ownership of a thing.
There are many nouns that can be used as a verb such as ‘guide’
Guide = Someone that leads you.
Guide = Something you read that leads you.
Guide = A verb telling someone to lead you.
Now I hope this helps.
Yeah theater is supposed to be theatre. and ill have you know we didnt drope the e in judgement.
Ill = sickened.
I’ll = I will
They’re there with their stuff, and those two are to go there too. :)
Color and colour are the same thing except in Canadian (I think British aswell) english we spell “colour” and in the USA they spell “color”. They are pronounced EXACTLY the same ^_^
Color= american spelling
Colour= British spelling
Like
grey= british spelling
gray= american spelling
There are also some words like theater that are spelt differently but still are the exact same thing and still spelt correctly
Theater or theatre