English: A Broken Language?

[Napkiraly]

Never try to learn Tibetan.

The writing system is nice, though. Difficult to understand, perhaps, but nice.

But Thai... Now there's an evil language.

Tibetan is worse imo.

[Sanctissima]

Baggorah, t'is like a second Potato Famine!

Give back Ulster ye Sassanach. 26 + 6 = 1!

Over my dead body, bog Irishman!

It's okay, pretty soon there'll be another Labour government, and we both know what tends to happen to British territory when the Reds are running amok in Westminster. The Emerald Isle will simply ask nicely, and self-hating Jeremy "I hate my own country" Corbyn will come calling. :^)

[Ethel mermania]

I wonder. If some people claim English is broken, then perhaps we need to remind them that so is every other language, with very few exceptions.

i wouldnt know, i barely speak brooklynese

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

The writing system is nice, though. Difficult to understand, perhaps, but nice.

But Thai... Now there's an evil language.

Tibetan is worse imo.

Usually those Asian scripts can be hell to learn. Sanskrit, Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji, Hangul... My head!

[Napkiraly]

Over my dead body, bog Irishman!

It's okay, pretty soon there'll be another Labour government, and we both know what tends to happen to British territory when the Reds are running amok in Westminster. The Emerald Isle will simply ask nicely, and self-hating Jeremy "I hate my own country" Corbyn will come calling. :^)

NO

You take that back right this instance. Ulster will remain British or the avatar of Ian Paisley will come back and destroy the world's potato supply.

[Purpelia]

Tibetan is worse imo.

Usually those Asian scripts can be hell to learn. Sanskrit, Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji, Hangul... My head!

Out of curiosity what is it that makes them difficult? Is it just the sheer number of characters or the fact that they are often pictographic to some extent or what? Am genuinely curious.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

I wonder. If some people claim English is broken, then perhaps we need to remind them that so is every other language, with very few exceptions.

i wouldnt know, i barely speak brooklynese

I think we already know just how broken your English is.

[Arvanon and Vortes]

Tibetan is worse imo.

Usually those Asian scripts can be hell to learn. Sanskrit, Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji, Hangul... My head!

Come on, Hangul is simplicity itself! You don't even need to know other scripts before you learn it, as the different parts are just the shape the mouth makes, and each type of sound is linked by some commonality.

[The Black Forrest]

As Shaw once said 'England and America are two countries divided by a common language'

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Usually those Asian scripts can be hell to learn. Sanskrit, Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji, Hangul... My head!

Out of curiosity what is it that makes them difficult? Is it just the sheer number of characters or the fact that they are often pictographic to some extent or what? Am genuinely curious.

For me, and only me, it's the pictograph and then the grammar. Object and verb placement can also come into play for me.

[Purpelia]

Out of curiosity what is it that makes them difficult? Is it just the sheer number of characters or the fact that they are often pictographic to some extent or what? Am genuinely curious.

For me, and only me, it's the pictograph and then the grammar. Object and verb placement can also come into play for me.

Object and verb placement?

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

For me, and only me, it's the pictograph and then the grammar. Object and verb placement can also come into play for me.

Object and verb placement?

I may be explaining it wrong. The way the subject/object and verbs vary in placement in speech/sentences in many Asian languages.

To me, the hardest I have come across have been the Tai Kadai family of languages and the Dravidian family. The pictograph system is hard AF for me to learn to write and read.

For example, Mandarin is Subject-Verb-Object. While Japanese is Verb-Subject-Object.

[Sanctissima]

It's okay, pretty soon there'll be another Labour government, and we both know what tends to happen to British territory when the Reds are running amok in Westminster. The Emerald Isle will simply ask nicely, and self-hating Jeremy "I hate my own country" Corbyn will come calling. :^)

NO

You take that back right this instance. Ulster will remain British or the avatar of Ian Paisley will come back and destroy the world's potato supply.

Now now Nap, don't cry. This has been the trend for the past little while now. Just let nature take its course as British Labourites slowly eviscerate their own country while the Tories decide how much more money they want to launder in the Cayman Islands.

[Former Citizens of the Nimbus System]

I myself prefer Ciceronian Latin and Classical Greek to English; the former is incredibly flexible and efficient, while the latter is capable of incredible levels of nuance. Compared to those, English is clumsy and internally inconsistent, though it does have a large range of vocabulary to play around with.

Note: I am fascinated by the ancient world and am fully aware that I am biased.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Purpleia, check link to see what I mean. I think Wikipedia explains it better than I can.

[Purpelia]

Purpleia, check link to see what I mean. I think Wikipedia explains it better than I can.

Thanks. This is truly fascinating.

[Proctopeo]

Isn't there a specific term for conlangs that use the native speaker's language's grammar?

Umm, I forgot the specific word.

Relex, short for "re-lexicon", I believe.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Purpleia, check link to see what I mean. I think Wikipedia explains it better than I can.

Thanks. This is truly fascinating.

It is. I hope the link was able to explain what I meant.

[Purpelia]

Thanks. This is truly fascinating.

It is. I hope the link was able to explain what I meant.

It reinforced my desire to learn more languages if nothing else.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

It is. I hope the link was able to explain what I meant.

It reinforced my desire to learn more languages if nothing else.

Hey, more power to you. But that is the issue I have encountered with several Asian languages. Not to mention that I struggle learning the syllabary of each, like in Japanese and in languages of the Dravidic family, like Malayalam, Tamil and Telegu. Or Indo-Aryan languages like Sanskrit (from which Hindi comes from).

[Katganistan]

And the folks who misuse there, their and they're as well as too and to as native speakers are speaking English. Just badly.

That is, they use broken English. English most definitely isn't my favourite language, but watching it being turned into gibberish just fills me with an unbearable sadness.

It's pretty hard for me as well. I know I tend to typo (and then correct) on here, but after a while grading I will see something misspelled so many times I have to check the dictionary to make sure that *I* am not the one who's wrong.

(My particular peeves -- not knowing the difference between its and it's, then/than, and those students who even after multiple corrections do not grasp that you can have a final s in a word without an apostrophe -- that apostrophes indicate ownership or a contraction, not 'heads up! S coming at the end of this word!')

That said, I try to avoid being that person who has to correct everything online. First, it's rude and second, I'm off duty. Particularly egregious examples may occasionally excite comment from me, however.

[Liriena]

If English is a broken language, then Spanish is a radioactive post-apocalyptic wasteland. We have to repeatedly remind ourselves that "morido" is not an actual word even though it would make far more sense than "muerto". Grrrrrrr

[The Liberated Territories]

Different languages have different rules for spelling and pronunciation. The idea that proper nouns and such need to be capitalized isn't even universal in European languages, and capitalization itself didn't exist prior to the Middle Ages as everything was written in "capitals."

English's primary strength comes through the fact that it can easily naturalize almost any word regardless of origin.

[Liriena]

I will say this, though: the fact that the continued existence of the Oxford comma is necessary is a bloody disgrace.

[Katganistan]

I'd agree that English is not broken, however I would also assert that there are some much nicer, more interesting and, generally, cooler languages out there.

Like languages that don't have a huge emphasis on being specific about the gender all the damn time.

I'm looking at you, English, but more specifically you two, Spanish and German.

We're less about gendering everything than other romance languages. We don't change articles based on an inanimate object being a masculine or feminine noun.