5 ms·
That's its primary strength as well, as it means that English can adopt a word from any other language and expand without causing any linguistic issues. Most la
by russellbeattie 9y ago
That's its primary strength as well, as it means that English can adopt a word from any other language and expand without causing any linguistic issues. Most languages are stunted by their formality and rules, but English is already a mongrel. We're happy to import tortilla, hors d’oeuvre, origami, sheikh, schadenfreude and hundreds of other words without a thought, as well as make up new ones on a yearly basis (vape, selfie, etc.). Not many other languages are so flexible, as frustrating as it may be.
Fun fact: There are no such things as "spelling bees" in Spanish speaking countries.
- s17n 9y agoLoan words are a universal phenomenon.
- IshKebab 9y agoYeah but he's saying they break pronunciation rules in other languages. They don't in English because the pronunciation is already all over the place. Also, they aren't universal - France tries really really hard to avoid them. They'll make up new French words for concepts that English would just import.
- Doxin 9y agoHow is being able to guess how to pronounce a word most of the time worse than never being able to guess?
- kmm 9y agoLoanwords often don't break pronunciation rules in English either. Vladimir, prosciutto, croissant are all pronounced as if they were English words by everyone but the most pedantic, and they sound very different in their origin language. Even surnames arent pronounced "right", cfr. Buscemi
- strictnein 9y ago> ... croissant are all pronounced as if they were English words People may not pronounce croissant like the French do, but they certainly do not pronounce it as written, which would be something like Croy-sant. People say cri-sont.
- beojan 9y ago> People may not pronounce croissant like the French do It's pretty close, well within the range of regional variation in English pronunciation.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- FeteCommuniste 9y agoProsciutto and Buscemi are normally pronounced basically right, from what I've heard, setting aside the usual English reduction of unstressed vowels. Italian words typically suffer less deformation than French ones. "Bruschetta" being an exception.
- russellbeattie 9y agoI already gave two examples (and there are many more): Tortilla and hor d’oeuvres. Neither are pronounced phonetically.
- shanghaiaway 9y agoThere's no reason why other Romance languages can't incorporate loan words in the same way. In fact, they all do. English is nothing special.
- cryptonector 9y agoSure there is: they tend to have authoritative academies that resist foreign, and particularly English, intrusions in their languages. The French government publishes ridiculous phrase books for avoidance of convenient English loanwords. Quebec goes further, using the power of the law. The Spanish Royal Academy is the keeper of the Spanish language. English has no authorities. Therefore English is able to adapt and evolve, and it is able to more easily borrow from other languages. That's part of the success story for English, no doubt, though obviously the dominance of American soft (and hard) power has a great deal to do with it too.
- FeteCommuniste 9y agoNobody (or near enough) follows the recommendations of those governmental bodies anyway. People in France say "DJ," not "platiniste," and "hashtag," not "mot-dièse."
- flukus 9y ago> Fun fact: There are no such things as "spelling bees" in Spanish speaking countries. Not so surprising, this is a uniquely american thing~, there is no such thins as spelling bees^ in the rest of the anglosphere either. ~ It's probably bleeding out to the rest of the world now. ^ "spelling bee" itself has an interesting etymology: http://spellingbee.com/origin-term-spelling-bee http://spellingbee.com/origin-term-spelling-bee edit - how the hell do you escape an asterix on HN?
- majewsky 9y agoYou don't. Most people use bracketed numbers for footnotes, or obscure characters like †. Also, it's called "asterisk". Asterix only needs to escape from the Romans. ;)
- Freak_NL 9y ago> […] or obscure characters like †. The 'dagger' also called 'obelisk'¹. There's a double dagger (‡) if you need another footnote, but yeah, they're not as versatile as just using numbers. 1: Not to be confused with Obelix: Asterix' chubby friend the Romans are usually (vainly) trying to escape from.
- yorwba 9y agoYou can escape an asterisk by separating it with spaces like this: * . Then it won't appear as cursive, even if you use * several * of them. The HN formatting rules are really minimal: https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc
- darklajid 9y agoI'm not sure how that applies. Granted, I have a _very_ limited knowledge of languages. I speak German. And persist/keep trying to reach some level of competency in English. German has French (and English .. and more..) loan words as well. I'd still argue that it's _a lot_ easier and more consistent to pronounce than English. (I might just be entirely blind to German issues that are basically the same, because .. I constantly stumble about English's warts and grew up with the German ones. There's a lot of bias involved, I think)
- jxub 9y agoAnother one: in Castellano Spanish (not in Latin America though) foreign words are always spoken with their Spanish pronounciation, even the English ones. A funny cultural shock indeed.