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Unfortunately English is an objectively terrible language. It's very non-deterministic, and there's a lot of nuisance that you won't pick up for years or decade
by valdiorn 5y ago
Unfortunately English is an objectively terrible language. It's very non-deterministic, and there's a lot of nuisance that you won't pick up for years or decades as a non-native speaker. There's also zero consensus on how to pronounce and even spell things, it's a very fragmented language.
Even native english speakers from the US can't pronounce most English placenames. Heck, not even English people can pronounce their placenames. (and yes I know, those placenames have french/nordic/germanic/roman origins, but placenames do become part of the language over time).
Other words change pronunciation without changing meaning (this one really annoys me). think of "to perspire" and "anti-perspirant". Why is the "perspire" pronounced so differently in those two words, despite referring to the same thing? Same with "vital" and "vitamins" (in UK english). The english pronounce it vit-a-minns, despite the origin of the word being "vital amines". Americans mostly do it the right way ("white-a-minns").
C or K or S? V or W or U? They're the same, but also different letters, except sometimes you pronounce them different? Forget it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti
You can also basically pronounce vowels however you want. My favourite example (although a bit exaggerated) is that south african speakers only have one wovel sounds, which is "iiih". "I'm Sid Ifrikin" is how they pronounce "I'm South African" :) Difference in vowel pronounciation is the primary differentiator of different accents, but since we need to understand all these different accents and they all convey the same information, that means vowels carry essentially no information in them. "Do you like dags?" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQSnua3M2lo&t=56s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQSnua3M2lo&t=56s
My point is; the written word does not convey how to pronounce the word.
- bluGill 5y agoI fully agree, English is a terrible language for the reasons you name (and a far longer list that you didn't). It is what we have though, nothing else currently dominates world commerce at this time.
- pirate787 5y agoI'd observe that the fracturing of spoken English across the global empire isn't really the language's fault, but more of a function of time and space. Also modern communications are reducing regional differences in spoken English.
- yosito 5y ago> You can also basically pronounce vowels however you want. I've been learning Hungarian, which has 14 vowels, all pronounced differently. To my American ears, the differences are very subtle and I often mix them up. To my surprise, even though I think the mix up is subtle, people often have a hard time understanding which words I meant to say. It's interesting to me that this works in some languages and not others. You've given some examples in English. And in Spanish, there's a game called "hablando con los i's" (speaking with i's), where you replace every vowel with an i, and things are still very much understandable. For example: "Yi istiy hiblindi cin lis i's".
- Symbiote 5y ago> there's a lot of nuisance Nuance! :o) You might appreciate this poem. There are a few variations online, but this one has audio: https://www.learnenglish.de/pronunciation/pronunciationpoem.html https://www.learnenglish.de/pronunciation/pronunciationpoem.... (There are a couple of words I don't know the meaning of.)
- CRConrad 5y ago> My favourite example (although a bit exaggerated) is that south african speakers only have one wovel sounds, which is "iiih". No no, you've got it all wrong. That's the Niw Zilindirs.