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My mother tongue is English. I studied Japanese to degree level so I feel at least moderately qualified to comment on it. English is grammatically fairly simpl

My mother tongue is English. I studied Japanese to degree level so I feel at least moderately qualified to comment on it. English is grammatically fairly simple, having dispensed with much of the (redundant) complexity found in its European brethren (gender, case, almost all inflection). I would argue that that makes it fairly easy for beginners to develop a basic command of it. Its main problems are its unpredictable spelling (does any other language come close? French is a bit of a mess, but nowhere near as bad as English) and its love of a phrasal verb (what do get up/on/down/over have to do with each other?).

makaren 4y ago
My native language is french and learned english at a young age. Saying that french spelling is nowhere near as bad as English is insane to me.
- ickoonite 4y ago
  French is hard to encode but easy to decode. ai, aix, é, aient are all (more or less?) the same, so reading is fine, but working out which to write can be tough. French has bigger problems though. That keyboard for a start.
  - mytailorisrich 4y ago
    'ai' in Northern French is pronounced like è (and so tends to be considered the standard pronunciation). Southerners tend to pronounce everything like é. Aix is also the name of several towns, in which case the 'x' is not silent.
ezequiel-garzon 4y ago
what do get up/on/down/over have to do with each other? Thank you! It is heartening to hear this from a native speaker. Phrasal verbs are… a pain. “Burning up” pretty much is “burning down”? Oh, the list is long.
- Adverblessly 4y ago
  > “Burning up” pretty much is “burning down”? Except that if you are burning up, you have a fever, but if you are burning down, you might be planning on illegally collecting some insurance money :)
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    Houses that are burning up are also burning down, but people who are burning up are not also burning down.
    - MrOwnPut 4y ago
      A structure burns down (to the ground). Anything else (including people) burns up. "The house burnt up", is not proper, but people say it and everyone knows what you mean. Then there's the saying of what you're referencing, "burning up" as in you feel like you are "on fire", when you are sick. Phrasal verbs are probably the hardest part of being fluent in English. People will understand what you mean, but it won't sound right.
atsuzaki 4y ago
I learned both English and Japanese as third/fourth languages and English grammar does _not_ make sense compared to Asian languages that has comparatively very logical forms, usually with minimal modifiers that doesn't change the entire sentence structure. I frankly gave up with English grammar and just did whatever feels right.
- ickoonite 4y ago
  > I frankly gave up with English grammar and just did whatever feels right. This is the correct approach.
  - knodi123 4y ago
    That's how native-speaker kids learn grammar. First learn to speak the language. Then many years later, learn how to say _why_ what you're doing is the right way.
- arp242 4y ago
  > I frankly gave up with English grammar and just did whatever feels right. I think that's what most people do, including native speakers. Besides, there ain't no One True Correct™ English grammar in the first place. This is both what makes it a fun language but also vexing.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    The best feature of English is that you can be pretty trash at it and make yourself understood. I've had great friends with terrible English.
philsnow 4y ago
I've never heard the term "phrasal verb" but one similar case that doesn't use verbs pops up in my head all the time, "down {for,on,with}": - "I'm down for that", I am prepared and willing to do that - "I'm down on that", I don't like that practice - "I'm down with that", I do like that practice
- discreteevent 4y ago
  That's American. English would be: I'm up for that. I'm not ok with that. I'm ok with that.
  - MrOwnPut 4y ago
    As an American, the "down" slang sound weird. The most I've heard in the wild is a short "I'm down.", you wouldn't say "I'm up." (unless you're saying you woke up, or you're high, or your gambling is going well) Other than that, your versions are more common in the US as well, from my experience. edit: Thinking more on it... "I'm up for that" would be used if you were slightly hesitant. "I'm down for that" implies a lot more confidence.
    - losvedir 4y ago
      I dunno, American here and to me being up for something and being down for something are pretty equivalent. I don't hear any hesitancy in "I'm up for whatever".
agalunar 4y ago
The English verb system can be devilishly difficult, my favorite example being this "conjugation" of watch: She must have had been being watched. = It must be the case that someone watched her for some duration of time prior to the current moment in the story (which is either a hypothetical story or narrative of the past).
- stoppingin 4y ago
  That's a very fun example. However I'm a native English speaker, and I can't imagine actually writing a sentence like that. It's technically grammatically correct, but no one speaks like this. You would say "She must have been watched", alternatively "She had been watched".
  - agalunar 4y ago
    Mm, I think it could come up quite naturally as "she must have been being watched" in something like: Two detectives are watching security film. DETECTIVE 1 And then from 9:07 to 9:14 she started acting very cautiously, but – Detective 1 rewinds the tape by a few seconds and gestures at the screen. DETECTIVE 1 – from this angle you can tell that she's making an effort to not seem suspicious. I wonder why? DETECTIVE 2 She must've been being watched. I do agree that form "must have had been being —ed" (with "had" in there as well) is an especially rare form, but in context, native English speakers understand what it means! I wonder how many other constructions there are that native speakers don't really produce but that they still consider grammatical or as not even being unusual.
    - ickoonite 4y ago
      I have read the “must have had been being” over and over again and as a native English speaker, I still can’t understand what it means. I hesitate to call it ungrammatical, but instead throw down a challenge: can you actually use it?
      - agalunar 4y ago
g9yuayon 4y ago
My mother tongue is Chinese and I find that English is the easiest second language to learn. English has more or less the same grammatical structure as Chinese, so I didn't have to learn structures like object -> subject -> verb as in Spanish or reflexive verbs or structures like "Me pleases programming" (Me gusta programar) that means "I like programming", or the sentence structure of topic -> object -> verb with all kinds of particles in Japanese. Yes, English has a few conjugations, but boy that is so much simpler than those in Spanish. And English pronunciation is easy for a Chinese, but boy other European languages are hard, as Chinese does not have alveolar R or double R as in Spanish, and don't even get me started on the pronunciations in French and German.
- iopq 4y ago
  The Spanish sentence is exactly like the English sentence "Programming is pleasing to me", it's the same grammar and it exists
  - g9yuayon 4y ago
    The structure is different, right? "Me gusta algo" does mean something is pleasing to me, but it's not the way how one would think in Chinese or English.
    - iopq 4y ago
      But the grammar is the same as "something pleases me", no difference at all But there's other verbs, just like in English that you can use like this: Disfruto de pasar tiempo con mi familia. I enjoy spending time with my family
MrOwnPut 4y ago
English writing can have unpredictable spelling mostly due to imported foreign words (looking at you French!) or inclusion of Old English. imo that's better than having a whole other system like Katakana to import foreign words.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  I feel like you just said that English has complicated spelling both because of its borrowed words and its native words. I think this could be shortened to "English has complicated spelling because of the spelling of its words." Or even "English has complicated spelling."
  - MrOwnPut 4y ago
    GP said "unpredictable" spelling, not complex. And I said "Old English". I was saying it's unpredictable if you include Old English spelling and words (which you don't in Simplified English). The remaining unpredictable words are imported foreign words, usually French.
    - ickoonite 4y ago
      There is no one particular subset of English you can exclude to simplify its spelling. I don’t really know what you classify as Old English, but whatever Simplified English is, it is highly unlikely it excludes Old English as traditionally defined, as the majority of the most commonly used words - italicised here - have such heritage. The spelling of such words is probably not the most troubling part of English orthography anyway.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
kawera 4y ago
English phonological rules are generally pretty complex for non-natives.

makaren 4y ago

My native language is french and learned english at a young age. Saying that french spelling is nowhere near as bad as English is insane to me.

ickoonite 4y ago
French is hard to encode but easy to decode. ai, aix, é, aient are all (more or less?) the same, so reading is fine, but working out which to write can be tough. French has bigger problems though. That keyboard for a start.
- mytailorisrich 4y ago
  'ai' in Northern French is pronounced like è (and so tends to be considered the standard pronunciation). Southerners tend to pronounce everything like é. Aix is also the name of several towns, in which case the 'x' is not silent.

ezequiel-garzon 4y ago

what do get up/on/down/over have to do with each other? Thank you! It is heartening to hear this from a native speaker. Phrasal verbs are… a pain. “Burning up” pretty much is “burning down”? Oh, the list is long.

Adverblessly 4y ago
> “Burning up” pretty much is “burning down”? Except that if you are burning up, you have a fever, but if you are burning down, you might be planning on illegally collecting some insurance money :)
- pessimizer 4y ago
  Houses that are burning up are also burning down, but people who are burning up are not also burning down.
  - MrOwnPut 4y ago
    A structure burns down (to the ground). Anything else (including people) burns up. "The house burnt up", is not proper, but people say it and everyone knows what you mean. Then there's the saying of what you're referencing, "burning up" as in you feel like you are "on fire", when you are sick. Phrasal verbs are probably the hardest part of being fluent in English. People will understand what you mean, but it won't sound right.

atsuzaki 4y ago

I learned both English and Japanese as third/fourth languages and English grammar does _not_ make sense compared to Asian languages that has comparatively very logical forms, usually with minimal modifiers that doesn't change the entire sentence structure. I frankly gave up with English grammar and just did whatever feels right.

ickoonite 4y ago
> I frankly gave up with English grammar and just did whatever feels right. This is the correct approach.
- knodi123 4y ago
  That's how native-speaker kids learn grammar. First learn to speak the language. Then many years later, learn how to say _why_ what you're doing is the right way.
arp242 4y ago
> I frankly gave up with English grammar and just did whatever feels right. I think that's what most people do, including native speakers. Besides, there ain't no One True Correct™ English grammar in the first place. This is both what makes it a fun language but also vexing.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  The best feature of English is that you can be pretty trash at it and make yourself understood. I've had great friends with terrible English.

philsnow 4y ago

I've never heard the term "phrasal verb" but one similar case that doesn't use verbs pops up in my head all the time, "down {for,on,with}": - "I'm down for that", I am prepared and willing to do that - "I'm down on that", I don't like that practice - "I'm down with that", I do like that practice

discreteevent 4y ago
That's American. English would be: I'm up for that. I'm not ok with that. I'm ok with that.
- MrOwnPut 4y ago
  As an American, the "down" slang sound weird. The most I've heard in the wild is a short "I'm down.", you wouldn't say "I'm up." (unless you're saying you woke up, or you're high, or your gambling is going well) Other than that, your versions are more common in the US as well, from my experience. edit: Thinking more on it... "I'm up for that" would be used if you were slightly hesitant. "I'm down for that" implies a lot more confidence.
  - losvedir 4y ago
    I dunno, American here and to me being up for something and being down for something are pretty equivalent. I don't hear any hesitancy in "I'm up for whatever".

agalunar 4y ago

The English verb system can be devilishly difficult, my favorite example being this "conjugation" of watch: She must have had been being watched. = It must be the case that someone watched her for some duration of time prior to the current moment in the story (which is either a hypothetical story or narrative of the past).

stoppingin 4y ago
That's a very fun example. However I'm a native English speaker, and I can't imagine actually writing a sentence like that. It's technically grammatically correct, but no one speaks like this. You would say "She must have been watched", alternatively "She had been watched".
- agalunar 4y ago
  Mm, I think it could come up quite naturally as "she must have been being watched" in something like: Two detectives are watching security film. DETECTIVE 1 And then from 9:07 to 9:14 she started acting very cautiously, but – Detective 1 rewinds the tape by a few seconds and gestures at the screen. DETECTIVE 1 – from this angle you can tell that she's making an effort to not seem suspicious. I wonder why? DETECTIVE 2 She must've been being watched. I do agree that form "must have had been being —ed" (with "had" in there as well) is an especially rare form, but in context, native English speakers understand what it means! I wonder how many other constructions there are that native speakers don't really produce but that they still consider grammatical or as not even being unusual.
  - ickoonite 4y ago
    I have read the “must have had been being” over and over again and as a native English speaker, I still can’t understand what it means. I hesitate to call it ungrammatical, but instead throw down a challenge: can you actually use it?
    - agalunar 4y ago

g9yuayon 4y ago

My mother tongue is Chinese and I find that English is the easiest second language to learn. English has more or less the same grammatical structure as Chinese, so I didn't have to learn structures like object -> subject -> verb as in Spanish or reflexive verbs or structures like "Me pleases programming" (Me gusta programar) that means "I like programming", or the sentence structure of topic -> object -> verb with all kinds of particles in Japanese. Yes, English has a few conjugations, but boy that is so much simpler than those in Spanish. And English pronunciation is easy for a Chinese, but boy other European languages are hard, as Chinese does not have alveolar R or double R as in Spanish, and don't even get me started on the pronunciations in French and German.

iopq 4y ago
The Spanish sentence is exactly like the English sentence "Programming is pleasing to me", it's the same grammar and it exists
- g9yuayon 4y ago
  The structure is different, right? "Me gusta algo" does mean something is pleasing to me, but it's not the way how one would think in Chinese or English.
  - iopq 4y ago
    But the grammar is the same as "something pleases me", no difference at all But there's other verbs, just like in English that you can use like this: Disfruto de pasar tiempo con mi familia. I enjoy spending time with my family

MrOwnPut 4y ago

English writing can have unpredictable spelling mostly due to imported foreign words (looking at you French!) or inclusion of Old English. imo that's better than having a whole other system like Katakana to import foreign words.

pessimizer 4y ago
I feel like you just said that English has complicated spelling both because of its borrowed words and its native words. I think this could be shortened to "English has complicated spelling because of the spelling of its words." Or even "English has complicated spelling."
- MrOwnPut 4y ago
  GP said "unpredictable" spelling, not complex. And I said "Old English". I was saying it's unpredictable if you include Old English spelling and words (which you don't in Simplified English). The remaining unpredictable words are imported foreign words, usually French.
  - ickoonite 4y ago
    There is no one particular subset of English you can exclude to simplify its spelling. I don’t really know what you classify as Old English, but whatever Simplified English is, it is highly unlikely it excludes Old English as traditionally defined, as the majority of the most commonly used words - italicised here - have such heritage. The spelling of such words is probably not the most troubling part of English orthography anyway.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]

kawera 4y ago

English phonological rules are generally pretty complex for non-natives.