English is by far simplest language I know. (I know 3 different)
English is by far simplest language I know. (I know 3 different)
Definately. Whenever I see someone suggesting that english actually isnt a pig of a language I am forced to assume it is the only one they have any experience in.
The massive number of exceptions, inconsistencies, odd spellings/pronounciations... It is awesome being a native speaker and not having to learn it later in life haha.
Only gripe i have with english is that it is not phonetic. You expect people to know the pronounciation of every words. You read the same letter in many different ways.
English is pretty dumb.
American on the other hand...
Originally Posted by High Overlord Saurfangi7-6700 @2.8GHz | Nvidia GTX 960M | 16GB DDR4-2400MHz | 1 TB Toshiba SSD| Dell XPS 15
Heh. I like my own mother tongue because it is so beautifully fucked up <3
Norwegian: Ascribing sexes to nouns, but still having sex-less nouns. Just to mess with immigrants :P
Thread seem like not good excuse for being not good at english language. Me think so at the little amount of all possible things.
Yeah... whatevs... At least we don't have to know if cars, apples, rocks and sheets of paper are masculine or feminine in order to discuss them properly...
I don't find English particularly difficult.
Pending "rules," you just have to memorize things.
Though if the internet has taught me anything, it's that "loose" and "lose" are apparently the two most difficult words in the English language to distinguish from one another.
Loose
moose
goose
caboose
It's not that hard to remember....
“Do not lose time on daily trivialities. Do not dwell on petty detail. For all of these things melt away and drift apart within the obscure traffic of time. Live well and live broadly. You are alive and living now. Now is the envy of all of the dead.” ~ Emily3, World of Tomorrow
Words to live by.
English is analytic language. That means a lot of semantics of sentences delegated to syntactic structures and a LOT of ambiguity due to different possible structures, think of famous "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo". With time and practice people learn to unconsciously weight possibilities and have no problems with understanding the right meaning, but it could be a disaster for new learners.
English is the easiest language to learn, IMO. I know 4 other languages not counting English.
“Do not lose time on daily trivialities. Do not dwell on petty detail. For all of these things melt away and drift apart within the obscure traffic of time. Live well and live broadly. You are alive and living now. Now is the envy of all of the dead.” ~ Emily3, World of Tomorrow
Words to live by.
Wrong way around. The word Sugar ultimately stems from the Sanskrit sarkara, then the Persian shekar, and then Arabic sukkar. Zucchero
is the Italian corruption of the Arabic sukkar.
English stems from two primary sources; Aenglisc, the Germanic language spoken by the Anglo-Saxons, and Norman French. The vast majority of words that ultimately stem from Latin are in fact French in origin.English is a language based upon Nordics, and Central European languages which are based upon Latin. Many of our words have their hearts in Latin but the descending and translating into Italian and German in particular really directed our language and why native English speakers can pronounce a wide range of sounds with ease (compared to some other countries). Nordic languages mixed into those middle European languages prior to them being taken in by the English language made the words themselves evolve and so realistically English is heavily mangled Latin but with a strong Nordic influence.
English' spread as a global language and its evolution as a language are not the same phenomenon. English as we know is the product of two changes; first, those brought by the Norman Invasion which established French as the language of the aristocracy, and then the "Great Vowel Shift" between the 14th and 18th centuries when French influences at the English court became more democratized amongst the local population.Such evolutions in language were brought about by invasions or occupations of countries, or by migration which got carried on by later invasions, occupation or migration. This is one reason that English is such a global language. It's not the most spoken language (Mandarin takes that spot, and that's got 4 different tones for every word), but it comes in a comfortable second place. It's is however, the official language for more countries than any other.
---------- Post added 2013-04-16 at 10:44 PM ----------
Having taught ESL students, English is actually one of the most difficult languages to learn given that it has little in the way of consistent grammatical rules, an abundance of homonyms and false-friends, and an aphonetic script.
Originally Posted by Marjane Satrapi