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How is that harder then keeping track of the billion didn't vowel sounds and 4 ways to represent it? Or the lack of any sort of rule, as every single one of the
by dubcanada 12y ago
How is that harder then keeping track of the billion didn't vowel sounds and 4 ways to represent it? Or the lack of any sort of rule, as every single one of them has exceptions. Or the fact that depending on where you live depends on how you spell and say words which mean the exact same thing. Or the whole Your vs You're or its vs it's. Or the way it spells words which make absolutely no sense. Or the fact that half our words are German and the other half are French.
I know 3 languages, German and French are both easier then English. And English is my mother tongue.
- reitanqild 12y agoTrolling or serious? How can you be a native speaker and not understand Your vs You're or its vs it's? > Or the fact that half our words are German and the other half are French. Quite a few of the basic ones come from old Nordic I think. : ) How did you really learn all the German (and French I guess) genders? I guess you either grew up in a multilingual home and as such doesn't represent the majority of us or you are incredibly gifted or just trolling.
- dubcanada 12y agoI don't mean that I don't understand it, of course I do. I'm basing this on the difficulty of the language. Not what I know/don't know. Learning genders is easy. It's just a memory game. And most people now and days don't really care if you mess it up. English is mostly old Germanic.
- aaron-lebo 12y agoI didn't figure out its vs it's until this past year, and I'm 27. It just didn't seem particularly important to bother with... Out of the 50 most used English words, all but one are from Anglo-Saxon. Out of the top 200, all but 13 are from Anglo-Saxon. On the other hand, out of the entirety of the English vocabulary, only a small portion of them are Anglo-Saxon. English has a Germanic core but has borrowed happily from other Indo-European languages. I hope I'm representing these numbers right. Been listening to the History of English podcast [1] which, if you like this stuff, is absolutely fascinating. The first episode is worth listening to just to hear Old and Middle English spoken. 1. http://historyofenglishpodcast.com/ http://historyofenglishpodcast.com/
- pavel_lishin 12y ago> It just didn't seem particularly important to bother with... That's on you.
- aaron-lebo 12y agoNever said otherwise. You this hard on everyone or just fellow UTD alumni? ;)
- pavel_lishin 12y agoHad I known you were a woosher, I'd have been harder :)
- KhalilK 12y agoGerman and French are both easier then English. I don't know about German but French? easier than English? Come on!
- goldfeld 12y agoEverybody says German is so hard. My mother tongue is neither German nor English, but I've been mistaken for a native speaker of the latter at times. I don't think the GP realizes how much effort goes into perfecting English pronunciation, everything is so arbitrary what with words coming from Celtic, German and French/Latin origins. A written vowel means practically nothing in English, and if it's not the stress you might as well have written a schwa. Memorizing genders in German is very easy with a mnemomic method. Learning it has frankly been a walk in the park, everything is orderly and put together in discernible components.
- mjevans 12y agoI've often heard the phrase 'English borrowed' in relation to words obtained from other languages. English needs to /steal/ and should have stolen in all such cases. Sure, take how the thing is said and even the meaning, but strictly adhere to a single simple set of rules without exceptions for encoding that verbal language to written form and for decoding it back to speech.