4 ms·

Russian stress is unpredictable, not even per word, but among different inflections of the word. That holds for both nouns and verbs. For the nouns there's an

by kmm 9y ago

Russian stress is unpredictable, not even per word, but among different inflections of the word. That holds for both nouns and verbs. For the nouns there's an attempt at classification that uses both numbers and letters[0] and even then, a lot of commonly used words fall out of it. English, on the other hand, only has half a dozen umlauted plurals (foot-feet, tooth-teeth, ..), a tendency to keep some plurals invariant (one fish, two fish), and just one suppletive plural (person-people) The verb has many forms, some of which like the past passive participle, are unpredictable especially with regard to stress. This compared to English, which has the simplest non-trivial conjugation you can imagine (just add an -s), and about hundred verb roots that are semi-irregular (semi- because there's a lot of patterns) 0: https://ru.wiktionary.org/wiki/Викисловарь:Использование_словаря_Зализняка https://ru.wiktionary.org/wiki/Викисловарь:Использование_сло... And that's not even mentioning things like genders, which in most languages follow no rules at all, which makes them all "irregular". English closest cousin, Dutch, has 3 genders which for are completely random for all but compound words and derivations. The claim that English would be the most irregular language in the world boggles my mind. What even is irregular about English? How can you even make such a claim without deep knowledge of many languages from many different language families.

jasode 9y ago
>What even is irregular about English? I'm guessing it comes both the inconsistent pronunciation and irregular verbs. People then assume non-English languages have more consistency and regularity. It's a non-rigorous intuition that English is messier than every other language. There are several poems that poke fun at it. It would be interesting to see equivalent "meta" poems about Russian, Spanish, etc. (1) irregular pronunciation: http://www.wordhord.com/humor/english-pronunciation-poems/ http://www.wordhord.com/humor/english-pronunciation-poems/ (2) irregular verb tenses: Tense Times With Verbs by Richard Lederer[1] The verbs in English are a fright. How can we learn to read and write? Today we speak, but first we spoke; Some faucets leak, but never loke. Today we write, but first we wrote; We bite our tongues, but never bote. Each day I teach, for years I taught, And preachers preach, but never praught. This tale I tell; this tale I told; I smell the flowers, but never smold. If knights still slay, as once they slew, Then do we play, as once we plew? If I still do as once I did, Then do cows moo, as they once mid? I love to win, and games I’ve won; I seldom sin, and never son. I hate to lose, and games I lost; I didn’t choose, and never chost. I love to sing, and songs I sang; I fling a ball, but never flang. I strike that ball, that ball I struck; This poem I like, but never luck. I take a break, a break I took; I bake a cake, but never book. I eat that cake, that cake I ate; I beat an egg, but never bate. I often swim, as I once swam; I skim some milk, but never skam. I fly a kite that I once flew; I tie a knot, but never tew. I see the truth, the truth I saw; I flee from falsehood, never flaw. I stand for truth, as I once stood; I land a fish, but never lood. About these verbs I sit and think. These verbs don’t fit. They seem to wink At me, who sat for years and thought Of verbs that never fat or wrought. [1] https://www.ncra.org/files/MCMS/2ED22AD5-E440-4ECB-B7B4-97011F0363AB.pdf https://www.ncra.org/files/MCMS/2ED22AD5-E440-4ECB-B7B4-9701...
- umanwizard 9y ago
  Calling the pronunciation irregular is putting the cart before the horse. The spoken language is the fundamental thing. It's the spelling that is irregular; the pronunciation just is what it is. Writing isn't the same thing as language. Language is an innate human activity; whereas writing is a piece of technology that some cultures use and others don't.
  - jasode 9y ago
    >Calling the pronunciation irregular is putting the cart before the horse. Spelling sometimes precedes the pronunciation. That's why Detroit is not pronounced "day-twah" like the French would say it. Because English borrows so much from German, French, Latin, Greek, with some Scandinavian and native Indian thrown in, Americans often look at the spelling and derive an Americanized English pronunciation. Put another way, a lot of English sounds the way it does because of the way it is written. The spellings originated from different parent languages but the pronunciation did not tag along with it. This adds to the inconsistency. As far which causal direction (pronunciation->spelling vs spelling->pronunciation) has the higher quantity in English, I don't know. I agree that in the large scheme of evolution from apes to humans, spoken language is more fundamental and will come before writing.
    - umanwizard 9y ago
      It's true that writing can influence language (as can lots of other things). I wasn't claiming otherwise. The magnitude of each direction does not matter and is not related to the point I was trying to make. The point I was trying to make is: an inconsistency between writing and language, which are two different things, is not evidence of an internal inconsistency in the language. It is like saying the Linux syscall API is "irregular", because it is incompatible with the Windows one. The fact that "bough" and "trough" are spelled the same is not a fact about the English language so it doesn't prove anything about whether English is irregular or not. It is a fact about the writing system commonly used to represent English. Edit: with your comment about apes to humans, you make it sound as if writing was invented in some earlier stage of evolution (but after language). Actually this is not true. Writing was invented by biologically and behaviorally modern humans indistinguishable from you and me. It is still an optional part of the human experience and not used by all cultures. The complete opposite is true of [spoken] language.

by kmm 9y ago

jasode 9y ago

>What even is irregular about English? I'm guessing it comes both the inconsistent pronunciation and irregular verbs. People then assume non-English languages have more consistency and regularity. It's a non-rigorous intuition that English is messier than every other language. There are several poems that poke fun at it. It would be interesting to see equivalent "meta" poems about Russian, Spanish, etc. (1) irregular pronunciation: http://www.wordhord.com/humor/english-pronunciation-poems/ http://www.wordhord.com/humor/english-pronunciation-poems/ (2) irregular verb tenses: Tense Times With Verbs by Richard Lederer[1] The verbs in English are a fright. How can we learn to read and write? Today we speak, but first we spoke; Some faucets leak, but never loke. Today we write, but first we wrote; We bite our tongues, but never bote. Each day I teach, for years I taught, And preachers preach, but never praught. This tale I tell; this tale I told; I smell the flowers, but never smold. If knights still slay, as once they slew, Then do we play, as once we plew? If I still do as once I did, Then do cows moo, as they once mid? I love to win, and games I’ve won; I seldom sin, and never son. I hate to lose, and games I lost; I didn’t choose, and never chost. I love to sing, and songs I sang; I fling a ball, but never flang. I strike that ball, that ball I struck; This poem I like, but never luck. I take a break, a break I took; I bake a cake, but never book. I eat that cake, that cake I ate; I beat an egg, but never bate. I often swim, as I once swam; I skim some milk, but never skam. I fly a kite that I once flew; I tie a knot, but never tew. I see the truth, the truth I saw; I flee from falsehood, never flaw. I stand for truth, as I once stood; I land a fish, but never lood. About these verbs I sit and think. These verbs don’t fit. They seem to wink At me, who sat for years and thought Of verbs that never fat or wrought. [1] https://www.ncra.org/files/MCMS/2ED22AD5-E440-4ECB-B7B4-97011F0363AB.pdf https://www.ncra.org/files/MCMS/2ED22AD5-E440-4ECB-B7B4-9701...

umanwizard 9y ago
Calling the pronunciation irregular is putting the cart before the horse. The spoken language is the fundamental thing. It's the spelling that is irregular; the pronunciation just is what it is. Writing isn't the same thing as language. Language is an innate human activity; whereas writing is a piece of technology that some cultures use and others don't.
- jasode 9y ago
  >Calling the pronunciation irregular is putting the cart before the horse. Spelling sometimes precedes the pronunciation. That's why Detroit is not pronounced "day-twah" like the French would say it. Because English borrows so much from German, French, Latin, Greek, with some Scandinavian and native Indian thrown in, Americans often look at the spelling and derive an Americanized English pronunciation. Put another way, a lot of English sounds the way it does because of the way it is written. The spellings originated from different parent languages but the pronunciation did not tag along with it. This adds to the inconsistency. As far which causal direction (pronunciation->spelling vs spelling->pronunciation) has the higher quantity in English, I don't know. I agree that in the large scheme of evolution from apes to humans, spoken language is more fundamental and will come before writing.
  - umanwizard 9y ago
    It's true that writing can influence language (as can lots of other things). I wasn't claiming otherwise. The magnitude of each direction does not matter and is not related to the point I was trying to make. The point I was trying to make is: an inconsistency between writing and language, which are two different things, is not evidence of an internal inconsistency in the language. It is like saying the Linux syscall API is "irregular", because it is incompatible with the Windows one. The fact that "bough" and "trough" are spelled the same is not a fact about the English language so it doesn't prove anything about whether English is irregular or not. It is a fact about the writing system commonly used to represent English. Edit: with your comment about apes to humans, you make it sound as if writing was invented in some earlier stage of evolution (but after language). Actually this is not true. Writing was invented by biologically and behaviorally modern humans indistinguishable from you and me. It is still an optional part of the human experience and not used by all cultures. The complete opposite is true of [spoken] language.