4 ms·

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 excepti

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).
- jcranmer 8y ago
  Verb irregularity is often overstated as a complexity in English. For example, my French-English gives 120-ish different classes of verb conjugation, but most people would say that it has ~4-ish classes, plus some simple modifications on top of that, plus random exceptions here and there. If you tried to group English verbs into similar conjugation classes, you'd arrive at probably a smaller number. It's just that, because English has so little conjugation left, it's easier to list out all of the exceptions as a single list. English's problems generally stem from the Great Vowel Shift destroying our spelling (and ruining the remnants of the Germanic ablaut system for conjugation), and, most importantly, our proclivity for borrowing foreign words with foreign spellings and foreign conjugations. Doubly so when we can't even conjugate the foreign words properly (it's supposed to be octopodes by that rule, not octopi; octopuses is perfectly functional reasonable).

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).
jcranmer 8y ago
Verb irregularity is often overstated as a complexity in English. For example, my French-English gives 120-ish different classes of verb conjugation, but most people would say that it has ~4-ish classes, plus some simple modifications on top of that, plus random exceptions here and there. If you tried to group English verbs into similar conjugation classes, you'd arrive at probably a smaller number. It's just that, because English has so little conjugation left, it's easier to list out all of the exceptions as a single list. English's problems generally stem from the Great Vowel Shift destroying our spelling (and ruining the remnants of the Germanic ablaut system for conjugation), and, most importantly, our proclivity for borrowing foreign words with foreign spellings and foreign conjugations. Doubly so when we can't even conjugate the foreign words properly (it's supposed to be octopodes by that rule, not octopi; octopuses is perfectly functional reasonable).