Fun Fact: The reason Prince is referenced in this song is because he has never allowed Al to parody a song of his. It even got to the point that when they were seated next to each other at the Grammys, Prince's lawyer told Al to not look a him.

I love how brutal Al is on this song, haha. He's such a famously nice guy that it just makes it all the funnier when he drops insults.

Most people don't realize that Weird Al is actually a very intelligent person. He graduated High School at the age of 16 as class Valedictorian then went on to California Polytechnic State University where he graduated with a Bachelors in Architecture at the age of 20.

Favorite Line: Unless You're Seven (Or Your Name Is PRINCE)

My English teacher used to tell us grammar is important, because there is a huge difference in, Let's eat Grandma and Let's Eat, Grandma

Weird Al is a real master of the English language. He got all but one line (the explanation of what a contraction is) to match the rhythm and syllable count of the original song, and make it not only make sense, but rhyme.

The "Irony is not coincidence" line is a direct dig at Alanis Morisette's song "Isn't it Ironic" --> Rain on your wedding day? Not ironic. A fire truck that is on fire? Ironic.

No roasting... there are still folks online with atrocious grammar. English classes all over the globe should watch this, especially in the US

This is my favorite Weird Al parody! I just love how he crafts his parodies, that really takes takes some talent! Thanks for reviewing!

There, Their, and They're... "They're" with the apostrophe replaced by the accurate letter and space, the result is: "They are". Take the "T" off "There" and you have "Here". "There" is connected to location. Take the "T" off "Their" and you have "Heir". Hence, "Their" deals with people. I know the three of them are tricky. That's how I double check myself. I get them wrong. There you have it.

Dude, I upvoted real hard for being an American who knows not to say "I could care less"..

If you hate words with letters you don't use, never study French.

Shout out to the cunning linguist pun. Also, Minesweeper in the background.

So true story...My mom showed this video to her middle school class when it came out.

Sadly, proof reading doesn't exist anymore. Makes me crazy that news sources don't seem to have an editor anymore who proofreads what they write before it goes out.

Most annoying word with silent letters is QUEUE. It's literally pronounced Q, followed by FOUR silent letters! WTF?

At 1:05, where he talks about "conjugate", it scans to his HR (homeroom) teacher as Mrs. Krabappel. This is in reference to The Simpsons, on which Al has made at least 3 appearances. Mrs. Krabappel was a regular character on the show for many years until Marcia Wallace, the voice actress who provided her voice, passed away.

Love this one!! 💁🏻‍♀️🙌🙌 “Blurred Lines” was the song you were thinking of here, Doc. As for Weird Al’s Catalog, it literally goes back decades! 😁

Bruh this man is spitting fire, facts, and being halarious at the same time what a genius.

Rich: The English language is hard. Germans: Hold my beer

The saddest aspect of this is that this entertainer is teaching things that teachers have stopped teaching.

Dude, Weird Al is an extremely skilled songwriter, singer, and rapper, as well as a comedic genius. He's a flipping national treasure. Check out his skills on Hardware Store, and his creativity on his Star Wars series. Every artists knows they've made it if Weird Al parodies one of their songs. Michael Jackson actually helped him on two!

"You should never write words using numbers, unless you're seven.. or your name is PRINCE!" damn.. just damn!!!!

My pet peeves are people not knowing the formal distinction between can and may or the difference between less and fewer. For the record the word can asks if you are physically able to do some thing. The word may means you are asking permission. "Can I walk to the kitchen and get you a cup of coffee?" "I think you should be able to because your legs don't look broken." is the proper response. The usual and average response is "Yes please get me some coffee"

5:48 I can, definitely, agree with this sentiment. English is, unfortunately, one of the more complicated languages to learn for those whom aren’t native speakers. This is due to the fact that English has borrowed from so many other languages that it’s ended up being remarkably inconsistent

Silent letters usually mean that that letter was pronounced somewhere at some time. English pronunciation used to vary by region. Somewhere people did, for example, pronounce the k in knife. That spelling survived and the pronunciation from a different region survived. After dictionaries came along, spelling stayed more static. There are some exceptions to that, such as American vs British English.

I remember in first grade, I had to read the word "knife" when the teacher called on me. I said "ka-nife", using the K. She was all, "That's wrong. The K is silent, so we don't say it.". It pissed me off (and I think some of it was to do with my undiagnosed autism at that age - almost 40 years ago now). I was angry and snapped at her, "Well, if you aren't supposed to say it, then they shouldn't have it in there! Why is there a silent K? That's stupid!". I had a similar rant when we were learning phonics and the "ph" as an "f" sound came up. "If it sounds kind an F, why don't they just use an F?!?". Needless to say, I spent a lot of time in the principals office when I was in grade school. I'd learned coping mechanisms by Junior High and kept my mouth shut.

"You really need a full-time proofreader, you dumb mouth-breather." That kills me every time. Something I should have printed out and posted over my computer when writing papers so that I'd remember to proof read the things carefully.

My favorite line...." Everybody Shutup"! Lmao People know Math, I know Grammar!

"white and nerdy" and "tacky" are also great and "trapped in the drive thru"

Autocorrect is the worst!!!! Who's with me?!!?!???!! Weird Al is a genius I've been loving him since the 80s when he took over MTV!

Weird Al took one look at Blurred Lines said nope and turned it into a hilarious song to teach people about proper grammar.

I always preferred saying "I could care less, but that would require you shutting the hell up."

the most annoying is when people say "would of" and "should of" IT'S SHOULD'VE AND WOULD'VE 🤣🤣

the English language has multiple sources; words from Latin, Greek, Germanic, and others have been added to create the words we used and abuse today.

His dictionary is the twenty-seventh edition. Weird Al is known to use the number 27 as a running gag in his songs.

Fun fact: There is a grammatical error purposely inserted into this song to see if anyone notices it... SPOILER it's at the end, "Try your best to not drool." is a split infinitive or "a construction consisting of an infinitive with an adverb or other word inserted between to and the verb."

English snatches words from lots of other languages all the time. The truth is that the spelling is kept the same even when the word is pronounced quite differently in English than in the original language. Therefore, the letters that have a sound in the original language are kept in the word even if they are silent in English pronunciation.

No one ever does Weird Al's Everything You Know Is Wrong....

The reason silent letters are in there is because hundreds of years ago they actually weren't silent, and nobody changed the dictionaries.

I appreciate whoever said that English was three languages stacked on top of each other, and wearing a trench coat.

There are examples like people using "loose" when they mean "lose", where spell-checker can't help because "loose" is the correct spelling of *A* word, just not the RIGHT word. I once saw in a small (and pretty incompetent) Print Shop where they promoted the fact that they sold writing paper by putting the large word "STATIONARY" on the wall. To help them avoid further embarrassment, I pointed out the mistake to them, and they replied that spell-check had accepted the word as is. I said that was true as long as they wanted to use a word meaning "not moving", but not for paper. I suppose to be fair, the wall indeed never moved, and maybe they were bragging about that. Another time, I saw through large glass windows of a small day-care during its off-hours that they had various phrases displayed on the walls to educate the kids about things they should learn to say, such as, as it said, "Your welcome". I left a note in the door explaining their mistake, and later I saw (again during off-hours) that it had been corrected.

Hyphenated ... Non-hyphenated ... That's irony at its best ....

English really is very complicated. It started with the Celts, then the Romans invaded, introducing Latin, then it was invaded by the Anglo-Saxons, introducing German, then it was invaded by the Normans introducing French and the Norwegians. With all those differing words, sounds, and rules, it's a miracle the whole language didn't just implode.

A lot of words have letters that are silent now, but were originally pronounced. The word 'neighbor', for instance, comes from the German 'nachbar', in which the 'ch' is pronounced as in Bach. Language pronunciation does change over time, like the consonental shift identified by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm (of fairy tale fame). However, once mechanical printing become commonplace (thanks to Thomas Caxton in England), spellings were fixed based on the pronunciation of the time. (If you think English is bad, try classical Latin, which has *nine* declensions.) If you can find it, watch Robert McNeil's nine-part series 'The Story of English'. It's fascinating.

In 5 BC Julius Caesar invaded Brittan and made it part of the Roman Empire and they tried to get the Celts to speak Latin. Around the year 400 Germanic Tribes from central Europe pushed into western Europe (because the Huns from eastern Europe and Asia were pushing into central Europe), and with the Roman Empire falling apart there was nobody left to stop them. The Angles and Saxons moved into Brittan and it became Angle-land (or, England) and they brought their Germanic language with them and it mixed with the local Celtic language to become something rather different from the Germanic languages back on the Continent. Around the year 800s Viking Danes invaded and settled in the north part of England. They spoke a Germanic language, but one very different from Angle-ish. They found that, if they dumbed the language down (getting rid of most of the grammatical endings for words common in European languages) they could make words out better, and the strategy became more common. So English started using word order instead of suffixes for grammar. (They did keep a couple like -ing or -ed for verbs or the -s for plural nouns.) In the year 1066, a French Duke named William the Bastard, got sick of being called "the Bastard" all the time and so he invaded England and conquered it, ever after being known as William the Conqueror. He then tried to impose French on the English - but it didn't work out too well. But it left English with a lot of French words in their vocabulary that would retain their French spellings but with an English pronunciation. (Like the word French word language we spell lan-guage but pronounce Lang-wedge.) Of course the Academics still spoke Latin and Greek in the universities, so a lot of technical language borrows a lot of words from those languages. To summarize: English is a mish-mash of German, Celtic, Latin, Greek, and French words with a slightly dumbed down grammar based on word order. But those words borrowed from other languages often retain the spelling of their original languages that have different pronunciation rules so they become very hard to spell, because they follow the spelling rules of a different language. And, over time, vowels and consonants shift in their pronunciations, but, especially once the printing press forced people to come up with spelling rules to keep things consistent as more people learned to read, the spelling didn't change to reflect the new sounds people used when speaking (for example, many people today use the "d" sound when pronouncing "th" and say "dis", "dat" or "du" for this, that, and the). So the word "friend" didn't used to rhyme with "trend", but we keep the "i" there, because that's just how friend is spelled. For most of us, though, the first spelling rule we learn is "when two vowels go walking the first one does the talking, and it says its name." The second rule is "i before e except after c". Those two rules are mutually contradictory, so we give up on spelling as a fundamentally irrational arcane art invented to torture us on our weekly spelling tests. So we invented spell checkers to handle it all for us.

The reason why there are silent letters in english is because they WEREN'T ALWAYS SILENT--we used to pronounce them, then stopped, but that doesn't mean the spelling changed. 'Knife' used to be pronounced 'K'nyf' in Roman times, an English word, but for convenience we stopped pronouncing the K.

The cause of silent letters is from multiple spellings for words that sound alike, as the vocabulary grew, it had to get increasingly more inventive to spell them.

I wish he would’ve addressed to, too, two or their there they’re

Weird Al is just great. Thank you for reacting to this. I stumbled across you and I must say, I like you. Keep up your good spirit.

Hey Doc Rich! Love your reaction to this song! Yes, Weird Al did tell us to get out of the genepool if we're screwing up the English language, spelling and punctuation like this!😂 As you said though, English language is indeed complicated! Keep up the good work!

I don't know what is more impressive; is it his abilities as a lyricist or a rapper? He can even sing really well. Just check out "eBay" or " The Saga Begins."

English language is in fact three languages stacked on top of one another wearing a trenchcoat.

Al was the "Valedictorian" of my Aunt's high school class!! She loves him for what he has become!!! He is REALLY, that smart!! LOL

"The word Crumb ends with a B but you never hear it. What's it doing back there, and how can you protect yourself?" - John Oliver reporting on W-ORD Channel 7 news.

Did anyone notice that Al committed a word crime? In the last phrase, he said "try your best to not drool" , which contains a split infinitive. It should read "try your best not to drool" . LOL

5:38 They say English is the hardest language to learn. On the other hand I'm studying Japanese and I wonder sometimes.

I have cousins from Burma and Korea and a sister in law from Poland who all agree English is freakin' hard to learn! I believe them.

LOL! Love your reaction! And yes, English is confusing because.... an 11th-century Germanic language married an 11th-century Latinate language and we are stuck with their offspring... 😲

With 14 studio albums to pull from, weird Al could keep you occupied for a while.

I've been binge watching your reaction videos. I LIKED you before, but I RESPECT you now that I know that you respect the language! :D

laughter - "laff ter". daughter - "daff ter?" no! DAW-TER!

English is complicated. It is one of the hardest languages to learn to read and write. That is because it has incorporated words from many languages over hundreds of years.

The 'could(n't) care less' thing drives me crazy, but what annoys me even more is when people talk with double negatives. The their/they're/there thing annoys me, too!

Doc Rich: "Have y'all ever had that thought, like, 'Why in the f@*k is this letter in here?' " Me: More times than I can remember. 😀

The mistake I hate most is people not understanding the difference between THEN and THAN. It’s kinda important… because, I’d rather be pissed off than pissed in. As opposed to, I’d rather be pissed off then pissed on.

I actually had to study the history of English to understand where our spelling, pronunciation, and grammar rules come from. Most of the inconsistencies can be explained by word origins. A major event called “The Great Vowel Shift” explains why house and could are pronounced differently. The words steal and steel originate from different places, which is why stole is the past tense of one, and steeled is the past tense of the other, respectively. I don’t think most public schools go into this much depth when explaining grammar. For those of you taking English as a second language, I wish you the best of luck! For those who speak and write it your own way, remember what’s considered proper is a social construct independent of language, so more power to you! The more educated about language one is, the less one should really care.

More Weird al for sure!!

0:41 got his picture in the dictionary. 6:29 playing mine sweeper for days.

English is something I made myself focus on when growing up. I don't have an awesome career, but at the very least I'm able to come across to a wider spectrum of people with authority. I'm cool with that.

Now you understand why English is the hardest language out of the thousands of languages used on Earth, for non-anglophones to learn. I remember one of my HS English/Literature teachers told us that the English language gains 4,000 words per year! (And that was in the late 90s, the internet was still relatively new, there was no social media, etc.) Loved your point about silent letters! English: Telephone Spanish: Teléfono My guess is because English is an amalgamation of several languages. English is made up of Anglish (language of the Anglo Saxons), French (starting with the Norman Conquests), and a lot of German influence. Somewhere in all that mess we forced silent letters on ourselves. 🤷🏽‍♂️🤷🏽‍♂️🤷🏽‍♂️

Weird Al’s the only guy who can kick my ass in grammar. Except for the one person who still says “whom” in casual conversation.

To me, the funniest line in the song is, "Unless you're seven..... Or your name is *PRINCE!!!* " First time I heard that it had me howling.

This is the anthem for all of us grammar geeks.

What’s worse is that American English is a derivative form of English from England, which is turn is a derivative form of German. Which is part of the reason for the extra letters you mention; an example would be ‘grey’ and ‘gray’ or ‘color’ and ‘colour’. Both versions being correct, but one form used over the other.

I have a love/hate feeling toward the question, “can I go to the ___?” Always always always retort with “idk, CAN you!?” 🤦🏼‍♂️

To quote S. Griffin... “Cool Whip”

When people use “lose” when they meant “loose” it drives me crazy!

Since you have done reaction to "Weird Al", and your phrase is "On the surgeon's table..." I wonder, have you heard "Weird Al" do "Like A Surgeon"? If not, you should; his parody of Madonna's "Like A Virgin" is awesome.

I a writer in poetry, books, song writing etc. I love the eras od the 1800s up to the 1990s too. I'm with you on the complexity of the English language. I'm also with you on the take silent letters out of words. I recently learnt from the American restoration show that shop used to be spelt shoppe but somewhere in history someone decided the last two letters weren't needed. I also learnt years ago from an antique store where I live that recently closed down they were called olde memories and treasures the the word old used to have a silent e at the end of it bur again somewhere in history someone decided the silent e wasn't needed.

If every teacher spoke like weird al we would all pay more attention

english used to have additional letters that fixed some of the reasons for weird letters in words. the ones this doesnt fix are because they arent english based words and have different rules.

I've had a typo or two, though that is mostly due to the fact that I obsessively write and rewrite my comments before I post them in order to get what I consider the "perfect comment" across. Often that leads to me not completely deleting a part of the last comment and just looks let's kind go of fishing odd.

With spell check on our computers there is absolutely no excuse for any spelling mistakes, ever!

Weird Al says you gonna learn today!

If Weird Al decides to make a diss-track.. he does it well, very well... This man is a all-round genius and we're lucky to have his humor in our world :D Check out anything Al... his works go back to the late 70's up till today.. so there is plenty to discover.

"I took out my bow (made of a yew bough) at the bow and bowed."

Silent letters tend to change a vowel sound in a word from short to long; so there is a substantial difference between “hat” and “hate.” That is the general rule. Given that, the English language is basically 80% exception, so I don’t correct people often 👌

05:40 Such as most people think it's "Possum" when it is actually "Opossum" (the O being silent)

I disagree with one part of this song, though it's more of a personal preference. I prefer the Oxford comma because if you list things like this Purple, green, black and red it looks like you are grouping black and red together specifically as though they are part of the same thought apart from the other items, but in reality, they are all equal items on the same list. If they are equal, then separate them all out individually. It's not that hard and it's much less confusing.

My grandpa was hard of hearing and hated silent letters too.

IMHO, EVERY English teacher should use this video in class. At least once. Tell me I'm wrong. This would be so perfect to pound in lessons so quickly in dense heads, and in a fun way at the same time.

@2:28 he's showing how he would correct a student who does not know how to spell. In this video he is the teacher

Typing something wrong, wording something wrong, and don’t forget autocorrect. At times autocorrect is my worst enema.

FYI Americans speak Olde English not King's English. We write different than we speak. If you could time travel to Shakespeare's England, you could talk to those people and understand them, the British cannot.

This must become mandatory viewing in school....

THAT is a substantial list and an impressive rabbit hole when listening to Weird Al.

His catalogue is quite extensive and he raps better than 99% of rappers. Try his newest version of Hamilton.

As for a recommendation, Hardware Store has some of Al's best rapping.

English can be hard to learn, but it can be taught through tough, thorough thought, though.