3 ms·

The hardest part about english as far as I know is vocabulary - which is vast - something like 1/3rd larger than other languages because of the dual parentage o

by Aloha 3y ago

The hardest part about english as far as I know is vocabulary - which is vast - something like 1/3rd larger than other languages because of the dual parentage of English and French - and thats before you get into words that have three or four definitions. The one nice thing about English is you can totally munge it, wrong tenses, slightly wrong words, wrong word order, and its still intelligible. Like, you can transliterate spanish or french (or any number of languages) into english, and it will be perfectly understandable in most cases to a native speaker.

HPsquared 3y ago
It's still intelligible* (Unless that's the joke)
- Aloha 3y ago
  I fixed it in an edit just as you posted your comment lol!
yurishimo 3y ago
Eh, the vocabulary thing I don't think is unique to English. If you look at this Wikipedia article, the first entry for English when sorting by headwords is around 140k. German by example is around 100k for it's lowest entry. At the high end it's approaching 400k for German and 470k for English. I'm omitting the Wikipedia dictionaries for all languages. I suppose that doesn't disqualify your point either. For me, the greatest strength of "English" currently is that it's widespread adoption means that native speakers are excellent at understanding accents when compared to other nations where non-standard accents are not as common. This goes to your point as well about transliteration. By contrast, I am learning Dutch and it's a bit of a meme that Dutch people will switch to English if they detect a hint of an accent (excluding regional dialects of course). My theory is that they do not have an ear for it _because_ most Dutch nationals tend to also speak English at a B2+ level. Contrast that to native English speakers, where the 3 major nations are home to a huge number of immigrants from all around the world, and it makes sense. If English speakers refused to talk with anyone that didn't have a perfect British/American/Australian accent, then nothing would ever get done. In countries where the local population is tolerant of individual accents, I think the native language tends to thrive (Germany, China, Brazil, etc). Edit: article link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dictionaries_by_number_of_words https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dictionaries_by_number...
- mkingston 3y ago
  > native speakers are excellent at understanding accents when compared to other nations where non-standard accents are not as common Interesting to read this; I had developed exactly the same hypothesis about French speakers: that they're less accustomed to a variety of accents (with the obvious caveat that it's even more risky to generalise from an anecdote than from data!).
- avgcorrection 3y ago
  > native speakers are excellent at understanding accents when compared to other nations where non-standard accents are not as common So you assert.
  - yurishimo 3y ago
    I apologize. As a native English speaker now living among one of these cultures, it seems to follow. From the few limited interactions I've had and seen elsewhere online in a similar scenario, it seems to track. Obviously it will differ per person as well, but as a whole, in my experience, this tends to be a trend amongst homogenous language countries. I suspect it could also be true for countries like Luxembourg and Belgium where it's normal for many people to speak 2-4 languages all within a very close proximity to each other. These people need to listen to competent speakers whose home language may differ from that used by their neighbors and business contacts on a daily basis. At the end of the day, my hypothesis is that proximity breeds tolerance. Based on other social experiments and observations, I don't think I'm too far off, but thank you for (validly) checking my bullish assertions.
- stevekemp 3y ago
  > Eh, the vocabulary thing I don't think is unique to English. I suspect it depends upon the type of language; consider the difference between "I fell" and "I fall". There's a different word there for doing something in the past. (Obvious examples are run/ran, pay/paid). In other languages you might use a suffix on the same root-word. So in English you need to learn more words. You can't have a simple rule to say "I read" vs "I read in the past". The word you use is .. different, and you have to know it if you want to be correct.
crazygringo 3y ago
> something like 1/3rd larger than other languages This is basically an urban legend. Comparing vocabulary sizes between languages is essentially impossible, as what counts as a word is measured differently. (Think those long compound words in German, for example.) And using things like "total dictionary size" is similarly unhelpful because most of the words are technical or archaic, and it mostly depends on how deep a dictionary wants to go into rare words. It's true that English has two main historical roots for vocabulary, but that doesn't mean native speakers use more words in terms of everyday normal speech. There are a handful of classic examples ("cow" and "beef", "pig" and "pork"), but they're very much exceptions rather than the rule. (There aren't dual words for "head" or "feet", or "apple" or "orange", or "chair" or "table", and so forth.) There's zero evidence that vocabulary size is a difficulty for learning English. (On the other hand, English does seem to overload words with multiple definitions more often than a lot of other languages -- so that definitely can be a minor difficulty for language comprehension, especially at the beginning.)
- Aloha 3y ago
  We do have lots of overloaded words, I sometimes catching myself using like definition 5 of a word - which with some of my friends I can do that - I need to code switch to something simpler when I'm speaking with people in my work environment.
- nicoburns 3y ago
  > There aren't dual words for "head" or "feet" There aren't two words for "feet", but the medical specialism that deals with "feet" (germanic root) is "podiatry" and if you want your feet beautified then you get a "pedicure" (both latin root). In some cases both roots are commonly used.
- klyrs 3y ago
  > There aren't dual words for "head" Unless you count "chef" and "director"

by Aloha 3y ago

HPsquared 3y ago

It's still intelligible* (Unless that's the joke)

Aloha 3y ago
I fixed it in an edit just as you posted your comment lol!

yurishimo 3y ago

Eh, the vocabulary thing I don't think is unique to English. If you look at this Wikipedia article, the first entry for English when sorting by headwords is around 140k. German by example is around 100k for it's lowest entry. At the high end it's approaching 400k for German and 470k for English. I'm omitting the Wikipedia dictionaries for all languages. I suppose that doesn't disqualify your point either. For me, the greatest strength of "English" currently is that it's widespread adoption means that native speakers are excellent at understanding accents when compared to other nations where non-standard accents are not as common. This goes to your point as well about transliteration. By contrast, I am learning Dutch and it's a bit of a meme that Dutch people will switch to English if they detect a hint of an accent (excluding regional dialects of course). My theory is that they do not have an ear for it _because_ most Dutch nationals tend to also speak English at a B2+ level. Contrast that to native English speakers, where the 3 major nations are home to a huge number of immigrants from all around the world, and it makes sense. If English speakers refused to talk with anyone that didn't have a perfect British/American/Australian accent, then nothing would ever get done. In countries where the local population is tolerant of individual accents, I think the native language tends to thrive (Germany, China, Brazil, etc). Edit: article link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dictionaries_by_number_of_words https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dictionaries_by_number...

mkingston 3y ago
> native speakers are excellent at understanding accents when compared to other nations where non-standard accents are not as common Interesting to read this; I had developed exactly the same hypothesis about French speakers: that they're less accustomed to a variety of accents (with the obvious caveat that it's even more risky to generalise from an anecdote than from data!).
avgcorrection 3y ago
> native speakers are excellent at understanding accents when compared to other nations where non-standard accents are not as common So you assert.
- yurishimo 3y ago
  I apologize. As a native English speaker now living among one of these cultures, it seems to follow. From the few limited interactions I've had and seen elsewhere online in a similar scenario, it seems to track. Obviously it will differ per person as well, but as a whole, in my experience, this tends to be a trend amongst homogenous language countries. I suspect it could also be true for countries like Luxembourg and Belgium where it's normal for many people to speak 2-4 languages all within a very close proximity to each other. These people need to listen to competent speakers whose home language may differ from that used by their neighbors and business contacts on a daily basis. At the end of the day, my hypothesis is that proximity breeds tolerance. Based on other social experiments and observations, I don't think I'm too far off, but thank you for (validly) checking my bullish assertions.
stevekemp 3y ago
> Eh, the vocabulary thing I don't think is unique to English. I suspect it depends upon the type of language; consider the difference between "I fell" and "I fall". There's a different word there for doing something in the past. (Obvious examples are run/ran, pay/paid). In other languages you might use a suffix on the same root-word. So in English you need to learn more words. You can't have a simple rule to say "I read" vs "I read in the past". The word you use is .. different, and you have to know it if you want to be correct.

crazygringo 3y ago

> something like 1/3rd larger than other languages This is basically an urban legend. Comparing vocabulary sizes between languages is essentially impossible, as what counts as a word is measured differently. (Think those long compound words in German, for example.) And using things like "total dictionary size" is similarly unhelpful because most of the words are technical or archaic, and it mostly depends on how deep a dictionary wants to go into rare words. It's true that English has two main historical roots for vocabulary, but that doesn't mean native speakers use more words in terms of everyday normal speech. There are a handful of classic examples ("cow" and "beef", "pig" and "pork"), but they're very much exceptions rather than the rule. (There aren't dual words for "head" or "feet", or "apple" or "orange", or "chair" or "table", and so forth.) There's zero evidence that vocabulary size is a difficulty for learning English. (On the other hand, English does seem to overload words with multiple definitions more often than a lot of other languages -- so that definitely can be a minor difficulty for language comprehension, especially at the beginning.)

Aloha 3y ago
We do have lots of overloaded words, I sometimes catching myself using like definition 5 of a word - which with some of my friends I can do that - I need to code switch to something simpler when I'm speaking with people in my work environment.
nicoburns 3y ago
> There aren't dual words for "head" or "feet" There aren't two words for "feet", but the medical specialism that deals with "feet" (germanic root) is "podiatry" and if you want your feet beautified then you get a "pedicure" (both latin root). In some cases both roots are commonly used.
klyrs 3y ago
> There aren't dual words for "head" Unless you count "chef" and "director"