English is a tough language dump

Aug 12, 2021 3:42 PM

Srajo101

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64704

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2054

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34

Let me introduce you to the great vowel as shift

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

As a French and Russian that learned English as a third language and Spanish as fourth : Yes. Also I found it kind of "logical" in a way

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

I remember having the "shit/the shit" problem with a guy and he thought I said he had a shit brand of marimba

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

#6 "One is my name. The other... is not."

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Try to explain the difference between butt dialing and a booty call to any ESL student...

4 years ago | Likes 8 Dislikes 1

Forgive me father for I have sinned vs sorry daddy, I've been bad

4 years ago | Likes 7 Dislikes 0

English is easy AF. It basically has no grammar compared to other languages (quite similar to Mandarin actually).

4 years ago | Likes 7 Dislikes 0

As a downside of that, it's harder in English to communicate complex or nuanced concepts, as the grammatical structures for that are missing

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

#12 if you're crazy, you're batshit. If you're angry, you're apeshit. If you're full of it, you're bullshitting.

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

#5 doesn't work with a southern accent...(our sounds like hour)

4 years ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 0

From the PNW and it's pronounced like "hour" up there too.

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Yacht isn’t an English word tho, that’s the problem. We stole half our shit from other languages and just made the rest of it up w/o reason.

4 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

Yeah, that guy should be angry at the Dutch. Nigel Powers.gif

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

If ever had twin boys, I'd name them Dean and Sean

4 years ago | Likes 8 Dislikes 0

4 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

I find it hilarious all these people who thinks learning English is hard. I’m Danish and have a harder time with Swedish or Norwegian than E

4 years ago | Likes 5 Dislikes 1

#10 this is missing an apostrophe between the I and the D. We still have grammar rules, y'all.

4 years ago | Likes 46 Dislikes 0

It isn't missing, it's in the wrong place. There should be a space between the f and the I.

4 years ago | Likes 8 Dislikes 0

#6 correct probunciation is "day-tah"

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo

4 years ago | Likes 6 Dislikes 0

He’s correct but for those wondering, the long form is “Buffalo bison, that other Buffalo bison bully, also bully Buffalo bison”.

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

I came looking for this comment. Its literary genius.

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

This is such an Anglocentric take. English is a very easy language to learn. An many of those *quirks* are present in other languages too.

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 1

Wrrd

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

#8 "Queue" is just the letter Q with four letters waiting in line.

4 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 1

I love how English speakers only speak 1 language and somehow think that English is uniquely difficult. It’s not unique, and NOT difficult

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

I learned Spanish first, then English in school. It makes no sense. On the bright side though, it makes your spelling bees more exciting.

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Every E in Mercedes is pronounced differently

4 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 1

oh the french has something to say about this!

4 years ago | Likes 9 Dislikes 0

Aged can be pronounced two different ways depending on it being used as a verb or an adjective.

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

"An aged Priest walked into the restaurant and asked for a well aged red wine." for example uses both.

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Are and our are pronounced differently

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

#7 isn't yacht dutch?

4 years ago | Likes 6 Dislikes 1

Yaught? Yauht? Youg..? Yoght? Yought? Yot? ... types "words that rhyme with Not" into google. FUCKIN' CH? Shite I'm going to a restoront!

4 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

A lot of the weirdest words in English are loans from even weirder languages, usually French.

4 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

#9 The other 4 letters are just waiting their turn.

4 years ago | Likes 25 Dislikes 0

I almost hate how clever that was. Rrrrgh, plus one I guess.

4 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

No. Its they are quietly waiting in the queue for their turn to talk.

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

I didn't want to spoil the whole joke by saying queue again.

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

you did well +1

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Filipino: "Bababa ba?" ("Are they going to get out of the car?")

4 years ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 0

there's some chinese poem that is made up entirely of, i think, "se" with different tones

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Yes this is a tonal/accentuation/inflection thing also. Pronounced something like, "ba-ba BA ba ba?"

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

My best friend growing up was laotian.. Im pretty sure the language is tonal because my friend always made fun of me when i didn't get the>

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

words right because of my tennessee accent. Though i clearly understood when his mom said "bah lao bai bahn".. meaning tell him to gtfo

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Right, yeah I think the more monosyllabic languages (a lot of the SE Asian ones) will also be tonal due to the fewer syllables. "Gtfo" haha

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

#4 Seán is an Irish name The á gives it the aw sound. Without the fada over the a the word means old on Irish. The other variants are posers

4 years ago | Likes 42 Dislikes 1

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4 years ago (deleted Aug 15, 2021 7:57 AM) | Likes 0 Dislikes 0

English is Germanic and Irish is Goidelic. It has its own rules and alphabet. English might be a mashup of languages Irish isn't one of them

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Modern English is Germanic heavily influenced by Latin and French. Still nothing from the Irish family, true, but an important distinction.

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

I'm sure there's at least a handful of Gaelic loans.

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

And yacht (#7) is a Dutch word that English speakers pronounce wrong because English doesn't have the ch fricative.

4 years ago | Likes 8 Dislikes 0

Loch Ness and aw the rest would like a word with you on that one

4 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 1

Loch is Gaelic, not English. That particular uvular fricative doesn't exist in standard English, hence the struggle with yacht or Bach.

4 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

I can't believe your chutzpah.

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Exactly.

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

It's highly arbitrary and wildly inconsistent about everything, but IMO that's honestly part of its charm and creative flexibility. :)

4 years ago | Likes 168 Dislikes 1

“It”? What is “it”? The SPELLING? Language is not spelling. Orthography is a random bucket of garbage doing a job.

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 1

Oh, that's just English orthography, specifically. In SOME languages you can actually tell how to say any word just by how it's written.

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Good language for writing stories, bad language for simple written instructions.

4 years ago | Likes 5 Dislikes 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3r9bOkYW9s The history of english in 10 minutes

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Idk, I think it needs to be deconfuckulated.

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Yeah I love Anglish. It's a beautiful and interesting language.

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Where would Eminem be without it?!

4 years ago | Likes 9 Dislikes 0

Up the 8 Mile still

4 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

One thing I admire about English is it's ability to be EXTREMELY specific. We have SO many adjectives and words, & objects aren't gendered.

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

It can also be extremely vague, the various ways of saying things & double-meanings of words also makes it very flexible in lit, like poetry

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

As a native Finnish speaker, all I can do is a smugly superior smirk. :D English is really good about just yoinking what it needs, though!

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

I honestly think english is one of the easiest language to learn for Germans at least. There are rules and there are exceptions, which 1/

4 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

Are more or less frequently used and even if not, people still understand what you mean. French for example has rules but every 2nd word 2/

4 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

Is an exception. Spanish for example has some words that are hard to pronounce if you can't do a special thing with your tongue. 3/

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

So for me, if Germans don't speak english, they're either not connected to the internet, old or lazy. Thank you for listening to my Ted talk

4 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

I find life gets much more interesting when you learn to do that special thing with your tongue

4 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

Agreed - I lean into it. I’ve decided the past tense of “glide” is just “glid” you can’t stop me.

4 years ago | Likes 29 Dislikes 0

Past tense “screenshot” is “screenshat”

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

4 years ago | Likes 7 Dislikes 0

4 years ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 0

As someone who had to learn English AND French, holy SHIT English has nothing on French. French can go and fuck itself with all its bullshit

4 years ago | Likes 243 Dislikes 0

Geaux away

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 1

Or as the French say: “Tel Aviv “

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Yeah I came down here to mention French as well.

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

“Eau”, pronounced “o”.

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Counting alone in french. Fuck that

4 years ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 0

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

FUCK FRENCH!

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Why so? Or as the french say, oiseaux?

4 years ago | Likes 17 Dislikes 0

Think like this. English is to the metric system what French is to the imperial system.

4 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 1

Ver ver ver ver ver ver ver ver. Or however it's spelled

4 years ago | Likes 5 Dislikes 0

We get ver you're going.

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Hello fellow Québécois

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Not quite. French is actually my third language learned. Somali is my first language.

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Jeez you’re a polyglot, nice :)

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Yeah all this "English is so hard" stuff comes from mostly native English speakers who don't speak other languages. It's not especially hard

4 years ago | Likes 32 Dislikes 0

English doesn't stick to strict rules, which makes it seem super random at times. Like how auxiliary verbs are not always used.

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

The rules are strict. They strictly allow for options, like most languages do.

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 1

I read/write/speak 4 languages and English is by far the easiest one to learn.

4 years ago | Likes 19 Dislikes 0

Which languages? I'm a native English speaker but learning Spanish has felt like the easiest one to learn.

4 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

My understanding is that English is really easy to get understandable (given it plays fast n’ loose with word order), but hard to get fluent

4 years ago | Likes 7 Dislikes 0

WHY keep the original spellings, if you are gonna say them differently!? English is a mess, but at least it had the decency to change 1/2

4 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

the spellings to match the changing pronunciations!2/2

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 1

French uses accents to tell you how it sounds, like é = 'ay'. But then also sometimes uses a dozen other spellings like ez, ai, ais. And...

4 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

...sometimes those spellings don't sound like that. Because French wants you and everyone you love to suffer.

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

You mean the French? Because nothing in english writing tell you how to pronounce a word, really, you have 2/3 to be wrong.

4 years ago | Likes 5 Dislikes 0

French counters that with literally every word being masculine or feminine and you just have to know which one, and every single verb...

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

...having a different spelling for every different tense and conjugation.

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

As an armchair linguist, French is really difficult to learn, but for the most part the language doesn’t lie to you the way English does.

4 years ago | Likes 69 Dislikes 2

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Both languages have a fuckload of exceptions, but French sets about 5 times as many rules as English, and then breaks every single one.

4 years ago | Likes 6 Dislikes 0

Like, all proper verbs that end in IR follow the same rules. Except avoir and faire, two extremely common verbs. Because fuck you that's why

4 years ago | Likes 7 Dislikes 0

Its not a coincidence that the most used verbs are irregular. It's like that in just about any language

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Oh, those are, ah, irregular? Yeah, yeah that’s what we call em.

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

English is Chaotic Neutral and French is Chaotic Evil. English has no rules, but French sets rules just to break them and make you suffer.

4 years ago | Likes 48 Dislikes 0

Exactly was I said when I was in school

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

French is lawful evil. Got damn those people love them some rules. Maddening, opaque, contradictory rules.

4 years ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 0

I was just thinking of that tiktok with the dude explaining that fucken ae bullshit the French pulled while I was on a plane today.

4 years ago | Likes 13 Dislikes 0

Oeuf et all

4 years ago | Likes 5 Dislikes 0

Love it

4 years ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 0

The irony, of course, is that a lot of spelling-related BS in English is there specifically because of French.

4 years ago | Likes 8 Dislikes 0

True. Also many other languages too that English picked up tips and tricks from while it was young and impressionable. Like, “Ghost” AYFKM?

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

No, that one's relatively logical and 100% Germanic. It's related to "aghast," and only seems weird because of phonetic drift in the "gh."

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

I’m gonna call an audible on that. Im no expert, but IIR the “gh” comes from imported Flemish typesets and just sorta stuck. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Also, that’s my point - it’s wack.

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Like counting is obviously stupid in French, but it follows rules you can learn. Spelling in English? Just regular enough to have rules, but

4 years ago | Likes 10 Dislikes 0

If you don’t know the etymology of a word you are blind guessing at best.

4 years ago | Likes 5 Dislikes 0

That's why they can do spell contest in english but barely in french, we can pronounce even words we never heard of! And correctly! Imagine!

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

I still can't get over how 80 is 'four twenties' and 90 is 'four twenties, ten'. I've never gotten past that one lmfao

4 years ago | Likes 5 Dislikes 0

It does sound stupid it's just our words for 80 and 90, we count the same way as you guys, not in fucking twenties

4 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Apparently they don't have spelling bees in other languages. idk if true but ha ha

4 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

Different values. Not being an analphabet is a sideeffect of most education systems over here, not their goal. Nothing to be proud of, so /

4 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0