7 ms·

My unsuccessful forays into foreign language learning have convinced me also that none are as simple and logical as our own beautiful language, English, innit?

opportune 8y ago
English grammar has a lot of exceptions. Personally I think Spanish is much simpler than English, and has a much more logical spelling system as well. The main complexity Spanish introduces over English is the subjunctive mood , which is less complex than the many fine details of the English language, IMO (such as learning how to use the word "do" as a helping verb). The English language actually does still have the subjunctive mood, but it is used in a more limiting set of circumstances (If I were you...)
- MereInterest 8y ago
  English has the subjunctive mood as well, though it is phasing out of use. If you were to express a hypothetical, you would use "were" as the subjunctive tense. For example, the song title "If I were a rich man" rather than "If I was a rich man", or the previous sentence in this post.
  - opportune 8y ago
    yes, I had just realized that and added it as an edit. I'm pretty sure you can ignore the subjunctive and still have it be correct, i.e. I don't think there is anything grammatically wrong with saying "If I was rich", at least in the sense that it wouldn't be picked up on in casual speech
    - MereInterest 8y ago
      For the most part, yes. Though, if you flip the word order, it immediately sounds off. "Were I a rich man, I wouldn't have to work hard." sounds reasonable. "Was I a rich man, I wouldn't have to work hard." sounds rather jarring.
      - zerb 8y ago
        It seems there's a general trend in the development of English to remove tenses and moods in favor of instead more-strictly prescribing word order. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_language
        dorchadas 8y ago
        Yep, and in a lot of other Indo-European languages as well. However, it's not a constant trend across languages as Finnish and Estonian both have more cases than their ancestor language did. It's likely that English will circle back around and start becoming less analytic as time goes on due to various things such as grammaticalization.
- blt 8y ago
  I agree, it is very hard to master the special cases of English. A paper might communicate ideas with perfect clarity and still be filled with subtle mistakes. After entering STEM academia, I have been exposed to more English writing by non-native speakers. It made me appreciate the difficulty of mastering English. It also made me sympathetic to some deeper criticisms of English beyond the inconsistent spelling rules. For example, the overuse of articles and the verb "to be".
  - physicsguy 8y ago
    Ha, I'm in a similar position - I'm a scientist and I work with two people who speak Slavic languages, and they miss out 'the' and 'a' everywhere, because they don't exist in that language family. I also work with a Chilean, and he's the opposite - he adds in 'the' and 'a' everywhere, even when it's not necessary! The Germans I've worked with have generally been the best I've found both at speaking and writing.
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  What is 'English grammar'? (Hopefully you don't mean spelling.) And what are examples of such exceptions? (English doesn't strike me as having any more exceptions in morphology or syntax than any other language, and has a simpler morphology than many languages.)
  - opportune 8y ago
    A lot of English's exceptions are things we hardly notice as native speakers. For example, we have a lot of irregular verbs. Of course other languages also have these, but oftentimes they fit into more neat patterns or small verb classes as in Spanish. Using verbs together is more complex than in other language (when do you add the word to?). We have a lot of nouns that you treat specially, like glasses/pants/deer. English also has a lot of complexity. Comparison adjectives can be difficult, e.g. when to use faster or more fast. Certain ambiguous sentences are only able to be deciphered through sheer exposure to the language + context, which is not necessarily easily transferable across languages ("I can't find my shoes" means that you so far haven't been able to find your shoes, whereas "I can't eat pork" means that you prefer not to eat pork for one reason or another, whereas "I can't see infrared" means that it is impossible for you to see in infrared). English also has a weird way of asking question compared to other languages, i.e. in many other languages (most?) you normally say something like "You want to buy a hotdog" or "What you want?" whereas in English we require a varying assortment of nouns and helper verbs. None of these properties, which may not even be most of them, are unique on their own, but in combination they add up to quite a lot. It's hard for me to even think of all the rules like this since I'm a native speaker, but when learning Spanish I noticed how much more uniform many of its rules are.
    - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
      In terms of things that are difficult for non-native speakers, English doesn't have grammatical gender, which takes an immense amount of time to acquire. English's irregular verbs also fall into classes. There are only a couple of (very common) verbs like "be", "go" which are truly idiosyncratic. And English has the advantage of actually having very few verbal forms overall. Other than forms of "be", the present tense only has 2 forms (3rd person singular and everything else (e.g. "I go, you (sg.) go, he/she/it goes, we go, you (pl.) go, they go") and the past tense only one form (e.g. "I went, you (sg.) went, he/she/it went, we went, you (pl.) went, they went"). > Certain ambiguous sentences are only able to be deciphered through sheer exposure to the language + context, which is not necessarily easily transferable across languages ("I can't find my shoes" means that you so far haven't been able to find your shoes, whereas "I can't eat pork" means that you prefer not to eat pork for one reason or another, whereas "I can't see infrared" means that it is impossible for you to see in infrared). These all have to do with modality and work the same way in every language I know. > English also has a weird way of asking question compared to other languages, i.e. in many other languages (most?) you normally say something like "You want to buy a hotdog" or "What you want?" whereas in English we require a varying assortment of nouns and helper verbs. This is true, and is fairly unusual (though French has some weirdness of this sort).
- TravelAndFood 8y ago
  As a native English speaker who has passable Spanish, I think the main hurdle, which I guess wouldn't be called a "complexity", of learning Spanish to a high level is understanding native speakers in natural conversation given how fast they talk.
  - opportune 8y ago
    Me too. My Spanish reading is probably at around a 12th grade level and writing somewhere around 9th grade, but my listening comprehension of native speakers is atrocious. I think it's just a matter of practice/exposure though
- trophycase 8y ago
  Spanish may be simpler, but it also conveys less information per syllable iirc.
  - mbroncano 8y ago
    That really depends on the particular domain e.g. compare ‘Are you sure?’ to ‘¿Seguro?’. Also, at least spoken Spanish tends to reduce the amount of pronouns that otherwise are pretty much mandatory in English as in ‘I can drive a car’ vs. ‘Se conducir’
- Raidion 8y ago
  I think having to memorize a (fairly) arbitrary masculine/feminine prefix/postfix for nouns makes quite a few romance languages harder than they "need" to be. Would be nice to have some slightly more rigorous spelling and tenses in English, though almost all euro languages have some quite irregular verbs.
xeeeeeeeeeeenu 8y ago
English pronunciation is extremely hard. There are virtually no rules, you have to memorize pronunciation of each word individually. It is neither simple nor logical.
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  But you're really talking about orthography.
  - Analemma_ 8y ago
    No, English is pretty rough in both orthography and phonology: while it's nowhere near as bad as e.g. Chinese, English has a large number of vowel sounds compared to most languages, and several uncommon consonants that many people struggle with if not exposed from birth.Note how many non-native English speakers, no matter what their first language, struggle with dental fricatives ("th").
    - jcranmer 8y ago
      English is only roughly middling in terms of phonemic inventory (about 40). Romance languages tend to be on the phonemically sparse side of things, but Germanic languages have broader phonemic inventories. And while the thorn/eth are difficult to pronounce, I'll take those over Arabic's pharyngeals, thank you very much.
    - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
      Dental fricatives are somewhat 'poor' sounds generally - they don't have a lot energy, so they tend to be difficult to recover in noisy environments. And note that even in English dialects these dental fricatives have a tendency to shift to other sounds (e.g. to alveolar stops). While English pronunciation/inventory may be harder than say Spanish or Italian, I think it's pretty middle-of-the-road compared to other languages in terms of size of inventory/difficulty.
- jotm 8y ago
  That doesn't really matter, you get used to more than a dozen quite different pronunciations within a week for basic talk, within a few months you can understand each other perfectly. EDIT: Visit England you cunts (wrt downvotes).
jotm 8y ago
It is simpler than most European languages, in my experience, as well. Logical, not so much, heh
raverbashing 8y ago
You're missing an /s ;) > simple and logical That's why though/thought/through are pronounced the same way. And similarly for height/weight That's why the plural of feet are feets or the plural of child is childs, right? Oh wait... That's why a kid cat is a catty, a kid dog is a doggy and a kid swan is a swanny. Right? And why the past of get is begotten and the past of can is canned. And why you should call the police if you see a murder of crows.

opportune 8y ago

English grammar has a lot of exceptions. Personally I think Spanish is much simpler than English, and has a much more logical spelling system as well. The main complexity Spanish introduces over English is the subjunctive mood , which is less complex than the many fine details of the English language, IMO (such as learning how to use the word "do" as a helping verb). The English language actually does still have the subjunctive mood, but it is used in a more limiting set of circumstances (If I were you...)

MereInterest 8y ago
English has the subjunctive mood as well, though it is phasing out of use. If you were to express a hypothetical, you would use "were" as the subjunctive tense. For example, the song title "If I were a rich man" rather than "If I was a rich man", or the previous sentence in this post.
- opportune 8y ago
  yes, I had just realized that and added it as an edit. I'm pretty sure you can ignore the subjunctive and still have it be correct, i.e. I don't think there is anything grammatically wrong with saying "If I was rich", at least in the sense that it wouldn't be picked up on in casual speech
  - MereInterest 8y ago
    For the most part, yes. Though, if you flip the word order, it immediately sounds off. "Were I a rich man, I wouldn't have to work hard." sounds reasonable. "Was I a rich man, I wouldn't have to work hard." sounds rather jarring.
    - zerb 8y ago
      It seems there's a general trend in the development of English to remove tenses and moods in favor of instead more-strictly prescribing word order. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_language
      - dorchadas 8y ago
        Yep, and in a lot of other Indo-European languages as well. However, it's not a constant trend across languages as Finnish and Estonian both have more cases than their ancestor language did. It's likely that English will circle back around and start becoming less analytic as time goes on due to various things such as grammaticalization.
blt 8y ago
I agree, it is very hard to master the special cases of English. A paper might communicate ideas with perfect clarity and still be filled with subtle mistakes. After entering STEM academia, I have been exposed to more English writing by non-native speakers. It made me appreciate the difficulty of mastering English. It also made me sympathetic to some deeper criticisms of English beyond the inconsistent spelling rules. For example, the overuse of articles and the verb "to be".
- physicsguy 8y ago
  Ha, I'm in a similar position - I'm a scientist and I work with two people who speak Slavic languages, and they miss out 'the' and 'a' everywhere, because they don't exist in that language family. I also work with a Chilean, and he's the opposite - he adds in 'the' and 'a' everywhere, even when it's not necessary! The Germans I've worked with have generally been the best I've found both at speaking and writing.
_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
What is 'English grammar'? (Hopefully you don't mean spelling.) And what are examples of such exceptions? (English doesn't strike me as having any more exceptions in morphology or syntax than any other language, and has a simpler morphology than many languages.)
- opportune 8y ago
  A lot of English's exceptions are things we hardly notice as native speakers. For example, we have a lot of irregular verbs. Of course other languages also have these, but oftentimes they fit into more neat patterns or small verb classes as in Spanish. Using verbs together is more complex than in other language (when do you add the word to?). We have a lot of nouns that you treat specially, like glasses/pants/deer. English also has a lot of complexity. Comparison adjectives can be difficult, e.g. when to use faster or more fast. Certain ambiguous sentences are only able to be deciphered through sheer exposure to the language + context, which is not necessarily easily transferable across languages ("I can't find my shoes" means that you so far haven't been able to find your shoes, whereas "I can't eat pork" means that you prefer not to eat pork for one reason or another, whereas "I can't see infrared" means that it is impossible for you to see in infrared). English also has a weird way of asking question compared to other languages, i.e. in many other languages (most?) you normally say something like "You want to buy a hotdog" or "What you want?" whereas in English we require a varying assortment of nouns and helper verbs. None of these properties, which may not even be most of them, are unique on their own, but in combination they add up to quite a lot. It's hard for me to even think of all the rules like this since I'm a native speaker, but when learning Spanish I noticed how much more uniform many of its rules are.
  - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
    In terms of things that are difficult for non-native speakers, English doesn't have grammatical gender, which takes an immense amount of time to acquire. English's irregular verbs also fall into classes. There are only a couple of (very common) verbs like "be", "go" which are truly idiosyncratic. And English has the advantage of actually having very few verbal forms overall. Other than forms of "be", the present tense only has 2 forms (3rd person singular and everything else (e.g. "I go, you (sg.) go, he/she/it goes, we go, you (pl.) go, they go") and the past tense only one form (e.g. "I went, you (sg.) went, he/she/it went, we went, you (pl.) went, they went"). > Certain ambiguous sentences are only able to be deciphered through sheer exposure to the language + context, which is not necessarily easily transferable across languages ("I can't find my shoes" means that you so far haven't been able to find your shoes, whereas "I can't eat pork" means that you prefer not to eat pork for one reason or another, whereas "I can't see infrared" means that it is impossible for you to see in infrared). These all have to do with modality and work the same way in every language I know. > English also has a weird way of asking question compared to other languages, i.e. in many other languages (most?) you normally say something like "You want to buy a hotdog" or "What you want?" whereas in English we require a varying assortment of nouns and helper verbs. This is true, and is fairly unusual (though French has some weirdness of this sort).
TravelAndFood 8y ago
As a native English speaker who has passable Spanish, I think the main hurdle, which I guess wouldn't be called a "complexity", of learning Spanish to a high level is understanding native speakers in natural conversation given how fast they talk.
- opportune 8y ago
  Me too. My Spanish reading is probably at around a 12th grade level and writing somewhere around 9th grade, but my listening comprehension of native speakers is atrocious. I think it's just a matter of practice/exposure though
trophycase 8y ago
Spanish may be simpler, but it also conveys less information per syllable iirc.
- mbroncano 8y ago
  That really depends on the particular domain e.g. compare ‘Are you sure?’ to ‘¿Seguro?’. Also, at least spoken Spanish tends to reduce the amount of pronouns that otherwise are pretty much mandatory in English as in ‘I can drive a car’ vs. ‘Se conducir’
Raidion 8y ago
I think having to memorize a (fairly) arbitrary masculine/feminine prefix/postfix for nouns makes quite a few romance languages harder than they "need" to be. Would be nice to have some slightly more rigorous spelling and tenses in English, though almost all euro languages have some quite irregular verbs.

xeeeeeeeeeeenu 8y ago

English pronunciation is extremely hard. There are virtually no rules, you have to memorize pronunciation of each word individually. It is neither simple nor logical.

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
But you're really talking about orthography.
- Analemma_ 8y ago
  No, English is pretty rough in both orthography and phonology: while it's nowhere near as bad as e.g. Chinese, English has a large number of vowel sounds compared to most languages, and several uncommon consonants that many people struggle with if not exposed from birth.Note how many non-native English speakers, no matter what their first language, struggle with dental fricatives ("th").
  - jcranmer 8y ago
    English is only roughly middling in terms of phonemic inventory (about 40). Romance languages tend to be on the phonemically sparse side of things, but Germanic languages have broader phonemic inventories. And while the thorn/eth are difficult to pronounce, I'll take those over Arabic's pharyngeals, thank you very much.
  - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
    Dental fricatives are somewhat 'poor' sounds generally - they don't have a lot energy, so they tend to be difficult to recover in noisy environments. And note that even in English dialects these dental fricatives have a tendency to shift to other sounds (e.g. to alveolar stops). While English pronunciation/inventory may be harder than say Spanish or Italian, I think it's pretty middle-of-the-road compared to other languages in terms of size of inventory/difficulty.
jotm 8y ago
That doesn't really matter, you get used to more than a dozen quite different pronunciations within a week for basic talk, within a few months you can understand each other perfectly. EDIT: Visit England you cunts (wrt downvotes).

jotm 8y ago

It is simpler than most European languages, in my experience, as well. Logical, not so much, heh

raverbashing 8y ago

You're missing an /s ;) > simple and logical That's why though/thought/through are pronounced the same way. And similarly for height/weight That's why the plural of feet are feets or the plural of child is childs, right? Oh wait... That's why a kid cat is a catty, a kid dog is a doggy and a kid swan is a swanny. Right? And why the past of get is begotten and the past of can is canned. And why you should call the police if you see a murder of crows.