NationStates

english is a rather tough language. you can learn it through tough thorough thought, though.

Hispida wrote:english is a rather tough language. you can learn it through tough thorough thought, though.

Wise words.

Hispida wrote:english is a rather tough language. you can learn it through tough thorough thought, though.

Come to Loughborough University to study it in the heart of Leicestershire.

K and S look co muck niser than that horrible C

Forsher wrote:And that I thought Saecar Kalad was a person is exactly why this is like ghoti and therefore nonsense.

"Caesar Salad"

It's a play on words.

Page wrote:

Nipponkyo wrote:Many Westerners don't appreciate how difficult of a language English really is to learn. It is very chaotic when compared to some other languages. If you grew up speaking English, or a language related to English, count yourself lucky, for the most useful language in the world has come easy to you.

I do. I can speak just enough German for every day life and German has way less nonsense, minus articles. And I know like 100 Spanish words. School really didn't stick.

German has less nonsense, but German is...well, Oscar Wilde put it best, really. German is such a stereotypically German language.

Hispida wrote:english is a rather tough language. you can learn it through tough thorough thought, though.

Even though I’ve spoken English my entire life, that still confused me.

Utquiagvik wrote:

Hispida wrote:english is a rather tough language. you can learn it through tough thorough thought, though.

Even though I’ve spoken English my entire life, that still confused me.

A friend of mine once referred to English as "a bastard child of German and French, with uncle Latin contributing here and there". It's nothing that can't be fixed through a comprehensive language reform, but at this point, English is spoken in so many different places that it probably won't stick outside of whatever locality does that reform. And, to my knowledge, English language authorities aren't prescriptive, they're descriptive—contrast with French, where the national academy determines what the language ought to be, as opposed to what it is—and suddenly having Oxford dictate what is proper English and what isn't might be clumsy at best.

Thing is if you reform a language to make it all consistent and logical and shit, you need a body like the Comédie Académie Française to keep it frozen that way to stop naughty people messing it up again. Languages should be allowed to run free like rewilded wolves.

Emotional Support Crocodile wrote:Thing is if you reform a language to make it all consistent and logical and shit, you need a body like the Comédie Académie Française to keep it frozen that way to stop naughty people messing it up again. Languages should be allowed to run free like rewilded wolves.

Wolves

That puts me in the French camp.

The Blaatschapen wrote:

Emotional Support Crocodile wrote:Thing is if you reform a language to make it all consistent and logical and shit, you need a body like the Comédie Académie Française to keep it frozen that way to stop naughty people messing it up again. Languages should be allowed to run free like rewilded wolves.

Wolves

That puts me in the French camp.

Weird how sheepdogs are your friend, yet their cousin the wolf your mortal enemy.

Ethel mermania wrote:

The Blaatschapen wrote:
Wolves

That puts me in the French camp.

Weird how sheepdogs are your friend, yet their cousin the wolf your mortal enemy.

Holy shit that’s a lot of posts.

English is a thousand year old language experiment mixing in anything and everything around into it, so of course it gets weird things like C and K.

Personally, I'm surprised Q wasn't mentioned, since that is demonstrably a Norman import, and it is yet another letter making the same sound.

Emotional Support Crocodile wrote:Thing is if you reform a language to make it all consistent and logical and shit, you need a body like the Comédie Académie Française to keep it frozen that way to stop naughty people messing it up again. Languages should be allowed to run free like rewilded wolves.

English has had serious attempts at language reform before, most notably in the 1600s. Each time it's always ended up making the situation more inconsistent, not less. I don't recommend it to try again.

Page wrote:

Nipponkyo wrote:Many Westerners don't appreciate how difficult of a language English really is to learn. It is very chaotic when compared to some other languages. If you grew up speaking English, or a language related to English, count yourself lucky, for the most useful language in the world has come easy to you.

I do. I can speak just enough German for every day life and German has way less nonsense, minus articles. And I know like 100 Spanish words. School really didn't stick.

Though there's the issue of all words having a gender, whereas English only has 'the'.

insert reference to Nutella

Nipponkyo wrote:Many Westerners don't appreciate how difficult of a language English really is to learn. It is very chaotic when compared to some other languages. If you grew up speaking English, or a language related to English, count yourself lucky, for the most useful language in the world has come easy to you.

Hard no. English is complicated and crazy. No doubt. But there are other languages that make English look easy!

Mountains and Volcanoes wrote:

Nipponkyo wrote:Many Westerners don't appreciate how difficult of a language English really is to learn. It is very chaotic when compared to some other languages. If you grew up speaking English, or a language related to English, count yourself lucky, for the most useful language in the world has come easy to you.

Hard no. English is complicated and crazy. No doubt. But there are other languages that make English look easy!

Particularly when you're used to a certain way of grammar, morphology, and writing. The only thing that made Hebrew (Modern, not Biblical) relatively easy for me to learn was its (relative) simple grammar. Otherwise, an abjad makes things more challenging when approaching it from a Western perspective.

And then there's Japanese and Chinese. I shudder to think the agonies I would go through trying to learn symbols/hieroglyphs for words.

Mountains and Volcanoes wrote:

Nipponkyo wrote:Many Westerners don't appreciate how difficult of a language English really is to learn. It is very chaotic when compared to some other languages. If you grew up speaking English, or a language related to English, count yourself lucky, for the most useful language in the world has come easy to you.

Hard no. English is complicated and crazy. No doubt. But there are other languages that make English look easy!

That may be easy for you to say.

Nipponkyo wrote:

Mountains and Volcanoes wrote:Hard no. English is complicated and crazy. No doubt. But there are other languages that make English look easy!

That may be easy for you to say.

IIRC Mandarin has been consistently ranked as the most difficult language to learn.

Sordhau wrote:

Nipponkyo wrote:
That may be easy for you to say.

IIRC Mandarin has been consistently ranked as the most difficult language to learn.

By whom?

Nipponkyo wrote:

Sordhau wrote:
IIRC Mandarin has been consistently ranked as the most difficult language to learn.

By whom?

Everyone.

Sordhau wrote:

Nipponkyo wrote:
By whom?

Everyone.

Everyone where? Have a source?

Nipponkyo wrote:

Sordhau wrote:
Everyone.

Everyone where? Have a source?

Google "what is the hardest language to learn" and you will quite literally have pages upon pages upon pages of linguists, language programs, teachers of the language, speakers of the language, pollsters, etc. saying it's one of the hardest languages to learn alongside Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, and Finnish.

Sordhau wrote:

Nipponkyo wrote:
Everyone where? Have a source?

Google "what is the hardest language to learn" and you will quite literally have pages upon pages upon pages of linguists, language programs, teachers of the language, speakers of the language, pollsters, etc. saying it's one of the hardest languages to learn alongside Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, and Finnish.

finnish isn't hard at all lol, it's just "perkele" with different pronunciations

Sordhau wrote:

Nipponkyo wrote:
Everyone where? Have a source?

Google "what is the hardest language to learn" and you will quite literally have pages upon pages upon pages of linguists, language programs, teachers of the language, speakers of the language, pollsters, etc. saying it's one of the hardest languages to learn alongside Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, and Finnish.

And what is the native language of these survey samples? What are the credentials of these people writing these things?

Hispida wrote:

Sordhau wrote:
Google "what is the hardest language to learn" and you will quite literally have pages upon pages upon pages of linguists, language programs, teachers of the language, speakers of the language, pollsters, etc. saying it's one of the hardest languages to learn alongside Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, and Finnish.

finnish isn't hard at all lol, it's just "perkele" with different pronunciations

You joke, but as a native Turkish speaker, the syntax and grammar of Hungarian and Finnish seem fairly straightforward to me.