English: A Broken Language?

[Proctopeo]

Esperanto failed because people do not want of an universal language.

Not even a universal language, a euro-centric "universal" language. When really only 3 of the top 10 global languages influence it, it's hard to call it anywhere close to universal.

Lojban is much more universal language.
But also much more absurd than Esperanto.

[Petrolheadia]

Not even a universal language, a euro-centric "universal" language. When really only 3 of the top 10 global languages influence it, it's hard to call it anywhere close to universal.

Lojban is much more universal language.
But also much more absurd than Esperanto.

[New New Serrland]

Lojban is much more universal language.
But also much more absurd than Esperanto.

There truly is an XKCD for everything.

[Orrovia]

Every person who was in public school under 30 in Europe knows English.

Speaking for Italy at least, this is absolutely false. Most of my university friends in Italy could not speak English outside of a few phrases.

That's not proof of anything English.

It shows that English has so many weird rules due to stealing 3/4th of its words

A lot more languages would be broken too then. English is hardly unique in borrowing words from other languages.

The only real weird rules I can think of right now that English has from Romance/Latinate influence is the difference in spelling rules for Old English vs. Romance roots: "nation", not "nashon", the fact that Romance suffixes are more restricted than Germanic ones, and some funny plurals borrowed directly from Latin. e.g. curriculum > curricula.

[Corpus Magnus]

Why is it "Geese" for "Goose", but not "Meese" for "Moose"?

Wait... it's not "meese"?

[Katganistan]

Okay I got the proof I needed to say English is broken. I was at the airport and I saw a French sign and could read half of it despite never learning a word of french.

That's only proof that the romance languages have similar roots, and that French is one that English has borrowed from.

Look at this thread. Look at how many people here, both native speakers and non-native speakers, can write and read English fluently.

Your imperfect acquisition of your native language, your imperfect use of the language, and your insistence that it is the language's fault and not yours is not the reality here. I can't imagine why you'd want to gravedig this thread in order to make such a silly claim. Again.

Non-native speakers on average become fluent in a language in seven years. Think about that for a bit.

[Katganistan]

English has alot of medieval French and Norman loanwords, and our spelling is somewhat influenced by this fact. Not evidence of it being "broken". If that were the case, Japanese would be broken too, since they can read alot of Chinese since their kanji is based on Old and Middle Chinese hanzi.

Japanese and Chinese can read the same text because they both use the same pictographic writing system.

People who speak Mandarin Chinese and people who speak Cantonese Chinese often can't understand each other's speech, but can read their common language.

As for using the same writing system: not really.

[Katganistan]

Honestly the UN should just create a Universal pictographic writing system using symbols that look like everyday items and then a few things for the other words that. Then teach it all around the world. That way everyone could write to each other even if they did not speak the same language

They have that already. The pictures on cash registers in McDonalds so that the people ringing don't have to know anything other than matching the picture to the meal no matter what language they speak, and the menus on the counter that people who can't speak the lingua franca of the nation they are in can point to to make themselves understood.

You do realize what you propose is that we all scrap our languages and leave off at the point at which toddlers are learning language, right? "This is an elephant. Point to the elephant."

It will never happen, and it will never be worked on, let alone adopted by the UN.

The last conlang anyone tried to get accepted universally was Esperanto, and it really did not catch on.

[Republic of Keshiland]

Honestly the UN should just create a Universal pictographic writing system using symbols that look like everyday items and then a few things for the other words that. Then teach it all around the world. That way everyone could write to each other even if they did not speak the same language

They have that already. The pictures on cash registers in McDonalds so that the people ringing don't have to know anything other than matching the picture to the meal no matter what language they speak, and the menus on the counter that people who can't speak the lingua franca of the nation they are in can point to to make themselves understood.

You do realize what you propose is that we all scrap our languages and leave off at the point at which toddlers are learning language, right? "This is an elephant. Point to the elephant."

It will never happen, and it will never be worked on, let alone adopted by the UN.

The last conlang anyone tried to get accepted universally was Esperanto, and it really did not catch on.

I was not saying to stop teaching their native language I was saying to learn how to write in both your native way and the global way. It would I feel make things easier you would never need a translator again you could just write to someone if you didn't speak the same language

[Proctopeo]

Japanese and Chinese can read the same text because they both use the same pictographic writing system.

People who speak Mandarin Chinese and people who speak Cantonese Chinese often can't understand each other's speech, but can read their common language.

As for using the same writing system: not really.

Note that while Japanese Kanji is very similar in appearance to Chinese, they don't always mean the same things, are usually written in a different order, and are never pronounced the same. That last one is a consequence of their pronunciations in Japanese evolving from how people speaking Middle Japanese heard people speaking Middle Chinese.
For instance, take the "rice paddy" 田; in Mandarin Chinese, it's pronounced "tian" (with a rising tone). In Modern Japanese, it's pronounced "ta", both clearly descending from the Middle Chinese "den".

[Katganistan]

Why is it "Geese" for "Goose", but not "Meese" for "Moose"?

Wait... it's not "meese"?

Nope. One moose. Thirty moose. Anyone who says meese is kidding you, or remembering Mr. Jinks and Pixie and Dixie. "I hate those meeses to pieces!"

[Petrasylvania]

Well every Euro nation requires English to be taught. It was just that they tried to merge EU languages into 1

Then why would we need a picture language if English is being taught in all Euro nations?

Hipsterism.

[Jelmatt]

I think English would be a lot more neat if it stuck to its Anglo-Saxon roots, and didn't Latinize as much as it did.
French and Italo-Latin are probably the grossest, most uncomfortable languages on the planet, and I'm not fond of them mixing with German-rooted languages.

Holy linguistic prejudice Batman! Also, Germanic=/=German-rooted. Germanic means it descends from the same language German, English, Dutch, Norwegian, Icelandic, etc. hold as a nearest common ancestor (Proto-Germanic).

Mostly just because it makes a lot of unnecessary grammar rules. Rules for nouns and verbs of Germanic roots aren't the same as ones with Latinized roots. So you have this huge disconnect of how to capitalize, order, pronounce, and use wording from all very different backgrounds. Strange inconsistencies have always bothered me.
Why is it "Geese" for "Goose", but not "Meese" for "Moose"?
That's because Goose is Germanic, and Moose is native-american.

This is... fair, but in the long run it's not a huge deal. Analogy will probably fix it at some point. (Although word order and capitalization are more or less the same for Latinate, Germanic, and other roots.)

That gives another question. Why wasn't a new word applied instead of just copying it from another spoken word? Wouldn't it be easier to name and identify a creature rather than adopting a foreign culture's word?

...no? I don't see why it would, at all. There's this creature which you've never seen before and you have nothing like it in Europe. What's the first thing you do? You ask the nearest person who's familiar with the area what it is, most likely, since it's way easier than trying to figure it out on your own.

Why is Sheep both singular and plural? In German, Schaf becomes Schafe. The English equivalent should be "Sheeps", but "Sheeps" isn't a word, apparently.
Why is Deer both singular and plural? In German, Hirsch becomes Hirsche. Again, why is "Deers" wrong?
Again, another inconsistency. If Anglo-Saxon originates from Germanic languages, why hasn't it evolved alongside it? Why does German have plurals for these things, but not English? The English language is so terrible at following its roots, it follows its Germanic roots incorrectly.

English isn't following its Germanic roots incorrectly. Let's go to English's closest cousin, Frisian (where I have "/" it indicates a variation between Frisian dialects, here West Frisian vs North Frisian):
SHEEP:
Singular: skiep/schäip
Plural: skiep/schäip

I can find the singular of deer for Frisian but not the plural form anywhere, so I guess that'll stay a mystery. Let's try the Scandinavian Languages next. They have no cognate for English "sheep," so I guess deer will do (the cognate meaning just animal, but whatever). The languages listed are Bokmal, Danish, Icelandic, Nynorsk, and Swedish, separated by slashes:

Deer, singular: dyr/dyr/dýr/dyr/djur
Deer, plural: dyr/dyr/dýr/dyr/djur

And even if English were unique in having identical singular and plural forms for these words, it wouldn't matter, because there's a historical reason for it which calls into serious question the idea that English follows its Germanic roots "wrongly."

Hold up, If the English Language is Germanic, why do we even call Germans "Germans"? That's a Latin root! It derives from the Latin "Germanus", and then a FRENCH alternative!...Why? Why would Germans identify themselves with a Latin/French word instead of "Deutsch"? Nothing makes any sense at all, and my head hurts.

Because we use "dutch" for people from the Netherlands and "theedish" (Deutsch's cognate in English) is so archaic it's almost funny.

I think the English language should've either stuck to its original roots, or have been reformed sometime shortly after the Medieval ages. Having a mish-mash of different cultures ends up bastardizing a language completely. Slang becomes common place, and soon enough - You have "Romans" speaking Sicilian.
Italian sounds nothing like original Latin. When a language gets splintered and splintered and splintered, words come from all sorts of backgrounds and sound completely different. It is a confusing mess, not just for speaking, but especially for spelling, writing, and using correct grammar.

What do you mean by "bastardizing" a language? Also, that is not what slang means. I don't get your weird vendetta against language changing. The fact that Latin has split off into Romance languages isn't a good thing or a bad thing, per se. It's just a thing. So what if language changes?

Also, language change doesn't work by a committee deciding that "hey, we should change this part of the language!" It changes by groups of people slightly changing the way they speak, and while spelling reform can certainly happen by declaration, basically no other reform of a language can.

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Honestly the UN should just create a Universal pictographic writing system using symbols that look like everyday items and then a few things for the other words that. Then teach it all around the world. That way everyone could write to each other even if they did not speak the same language

You're forgetting how to put it together. Grammar differs wildly between different languages, too, so even if they used the same pictographs, that doesn't mean they could read each other's writing. If I wrote "DOG TEETH MAN" for "the dog bites the man", someone whose native language is SOV might interpret that as "the dog personifies the teeth" or something. So you'd have to decide on a standard grammar. And then you're right back in the pitfalls of "universal" languages.

[Proctopeo]

Wait... it's not "meese"?

Nope. One moose. Thirty moose. Anyone who says meese is kidding you, or remembering Mr. Jinks and Pixie and Dixie. "I hate those meeses to pieces!"

I'll put the meese into my boxen.

[Corpus Magnus]

Wait... it's not "meese"?

Nope. One moose. Thirty moose. Anyone who says meese is kidding you, or remembering Mr. Jinks and Pixie and Dixie. "I hate those meeses to pieces!"

It's called sarcasm...

[Farnhamia]

Nope. One moose. Thirty moose. Anyone who says meese is kidding you, or remembering Mr. Jinks and Pixie and Dixie. "I hate those meeses to pieces!"

It's called sarcasm...

And posting in a thread that hasn't had a new post in more than four weeks is called grave-digging. Please don't do it.