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I've seen this quote attributed to G B Shaw: "English is one of the easiest languages to speak badly, but one of the most difficult to speak well"; however, I c

by FabHK 8y ago

I've seen this quote attributed to G B Shaw: "English is one of the easiest languages to speak badly, but one of the most difficult to speak well"; however, I can't find a reliable citation. At any rate, I think it captures something about English. As you say, languages like German and French take more effort to learn initially (conjugation and (in German) declension), but then there are only a few ways of expressing something correctly. English has so many synonyms with slightly different connotations and idiomatic nuances that it is hard to master.

tormeh 8y ago
But I think this is the way languages have to work if they're supposed to be spoken by non-native speakers or just spoken by a large number of geographically dispersed people. Even German is losing a lot of its initial complexity because of the last decades of immigration. This is mostly just in spoken German for now, but the written word will eventually follow. And all languages with wide geographic dispersion have a disconnect between the spoken word and the written spelling, the most extreme example being Chinese.
posterboy 8y ago
> English has so many synonyms with slightly different connotations and idiomatic nuances that it is hard to master. You imply the goal was to be precise. The crux is, what you call slightly different connotation is often enough ambiguity and the goal is to be as ambiguous as possible to be understood by as many people as possible without loosing precision, that is without mistakenly falling in the trap of a nuanced connotation. Point in case for you, my spelling correction does not know "connotated", so that may be a nuance of the English language I was not aware of. Point in case for me, connotated nuanced synonyms (or synonymous nuanced connotations) is a redundant bag of words with something for everyone, yet unspecific enough to leave me guessing, finding no difference between those my two expressions above. ...
lolc 8y ago
> English has so many synonyms with slightly different connotations and idiomatic nuances that it is hard to master. At some point I accepted that this is true for every language. First there's training basic grammar and initial vocabulary (a few months' study) and then there's mastering the long tail of idiomatic expressions (years of study). The first gives you the ability to talk about any topic. Only the second gives you effortless communication.

by FabHK 8y ago

tormeh 8y ago

But I think this is the way languages have to work if they're supposed to be spoken by non-native speakers or just spoken by a large number of geographically dispersed people. Even German is losing a lot of its initial complexity because of the last decades of immigration. This is mostly just in spoken German for now, but the written word will eventually follow. And all languages with wide geographic dispersion have a disconnect between the spoken word and the written spelling, the most extreme example being Chinese.

posterboy 8y ago

> English has so many synonyms with slightly different connotations and idiomatic nuances that it is hard to master. You imply the goal was to be precise. The crux is, what you call slightly different connotation is often enough ambiguity and the goal is to be as ambiguous as possible to be understood by as many people as possible without loosing precision, that is without mistakenly falling in the trap of a nuanced connotation. Point in case for you, my spelling correction does not know "connotated", so that may be a nuance of the English language I was not aware of. Point in case for me, connotated nuanced synonyms (or synonymous nuanced connotations) is a redundant bag of words with something for everyone, yet unspecific enough to leave me guessing, finding no difference between those my two expressions above. ...

lolc 8y ago

> English has so many synonyms with slightly different connotations and idiomatic nuances that it is hard to master. At some point I accepted that this is true for every language. First there's training basic grammar and initial vocabulary (a few months' study) and then there's mastering the long tail of idiomatic expressions (years of study). The first gives you the ability to talk about any topic. Only the second gives you effortless communication.