Keep it simple
Keep it simple
Keep it simple
Japanese: wtf are you talking about?
Finnish: No, seriously, what are they talking about?
Chinese too
I'm still learning but what about wa (わ)? It's used to signify the subject of a sentence I think.
It's actually 「は」, and... kind of. It marks the topic, which is sort of the thing the conversation is generally about, which typically is the subject of each sentence, but not necessarily. It's kinda hard to explain it well since it doesn't really map cleanly onto any grammatical feature in english.
I thought that's the is/am/are (I forgot the term for these)
Alright, are you calling English sane?
There are parts of English that are simple and there are parts that are complex. Same as any language! The cool thing about linguistics is learning about the neat features of some languages. For example, Chinese doesn't use articles!
Are articels useful at all?
What's the advantage of having a female /male table?
Neither does Russian, Ukrainian, and I’m guessing, many other Slav languages.
Oh, trust me, we are 😭
Its the language equivalent to a brick...
I love it
If the teacup fits.
sure, how complex is: their, there, they’re. sure, they sound the same but there is no reason they’re difficult to use in their intended purpose.
English grammar is alright as far as languages are concerned. There is some bs but nothing exceptional.
Pronounciation in the English language on the other hand is absolute insanity. If there are any rules besides grouped up exceptions then let me know.
I guess you haven't seen polish then.
Oh I have, it's not sane either.
For anyone who claims "English is easier", I present you The Chaos Poem:
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The Chaos by Gerard Nolst Trenité Dearest creature in creation Studying English pronunciation, I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse. I will keep you, Susy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy; Tear in eye, your dress you'll tear; Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer. Pray, console your loving poet, Make my coat look new, dear, sew it! Just compare heart, hear and heard, Dies and diet, lord and word. Sword and sward, retain and Britain (Mind the latter how it's written). Made has not the sound of bade, Say-said, pay-paid, laid but plaid. Now I surely will not plague you With such words as vague and ague, But be careful how you speak, Say: gush, bush, steak, streak, break, bleak , Previous, precious, fuchsia, via Recipe, pipe, studding-sail, choir; Woven, oven, how and low, Script, receipt, shoe, poem, toe. Say, expecting fraud and trickery: Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore, Branch, ranch, measles, topsails, aisles, Missiles, similes, reviles. Wholly, holly, signal, signing, Same, examining, but mining, Scholar, vicar, and cigar, Solar, mica, war and far. From "desire": desirable-admirable from "admire", Lumber, plumber, bier, but brier, Topsham, brougham, renown, but known, Knowledge, done, lone, gone, none, tone, One, anemone, Balmoral, Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel. Gertrude, German, wind and wind, Beau, kind, kindred, queue, mankind, Tortoise, turquoise, chamois-leather, Reading, Reading, heathen, heather. This phonetic labyrinth Gives moss, gross, brook, brooch, ninth, plinth. Have you ever yet endeavoured To pronounce revered and severed, Demon, lemon, ghoul, foul, soul, Peter, petrol and patrol? Billet does not end like ballet; Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet. Blood and flood are not like food, Nor is mould like should and would. Banquet is not nearly parquet, Which exactly rhymes with khaki. Discount, viscount, load and broad, Toward, to forward, to reward, Ricocheted and crocheting, croquet? Right! Your pronunciation's OK. Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve, Friend and fiend, alive and live. Is your r correct in higher? Keats asserts it rhymes Thalia. Hugh, but hug, and hood, but hoot, Buoyant, minute, but minute. Say abscission with precision, Now: position and transition; Would it tally with my rhyme If I mentioned paradigm? Twopence, threepence, tease are easy, But cease, crease, grease and greasy? Cornice, nice, valise, revise, Rabies, but lullabies. Of such puzzling words as nauseous, Rhyming well with cautious, tortious, You'll envelop lists, I hope, In a linen envelope. Would you like some more? You'll have it! Affidavit, David, davit. To abjure, to perjure. Sheik Does not sound like Czech but ache. Liberty, library, heave and heaven, Rachel, loch, moustache, eleven. We say hallowed, but allowed, People, leopard, towed but vowed. Mark the difference, moreover, Between mover, plover, Dover. Leeches, breeches, wise, precise, Chalice, but police and lice, Camel, constable, unstable, Principle, disciple, label. Petal, penal, and canal, Wait, surmise, plait, promise, pal, Suit, suite, ruin. Circuit, conduit Rhyme with "shirk it" and "beyond it", But it is not hard to tell Why it's pall, mall, but Pall Mall. Muscle, muscular, gaol, iron, Timber, climber, bullion, lion, Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair, Senator, spectator, mayor, Ivy, privy, famous; clamour Has the a of drachm and hammer. Pussy, hussy and possess, Desert, but desert, address. Golf, wolf, countenance, lieutenants Hoist in lieu of flags left pennants. Courier, courtier, tomb, bomb, comb, Cow, but Cowper, some and home. "Solder, soldier! Blood is thicker", Quoth he, "than liqueur or liquor", Making, it is sad but true, In bravado, much ado. Stranger does not rhyme with anger, Neither does devour with clangour. Pilot, pivot, gaunt, but aunt, Font, front, wont, want, grand and grant. Arsenic, specific, scenic, Relic, rhetoric, hygienic. Gooseberry, goose, and close, but close, Paradise, rise, rose, and dose. Say inveigh, neigh, but inveigle, Make the latter rhyme with eagle. Mind! Meandering but mean, Valentine and magazine. And I bet you, dear, a penny, You say mani-(fold) like many, Which is wrong. Say rapier, pier, Tier (one who ties), but tier. Arch, archangel; pray, does erring Rhyme with herring or with stirring? Prison, bison, treasure trove, Treason, hover, cover, cove, Perseverance, severance. Ribald Rhymes (but piebald doesn't) with nibbled. Phaeton, paean, gnat, ghat, gnaw, Lien, psychic, shone, bone, pshaw. Don't be down, my own, but rough it, And distinguish buffet, buffet; Brood, stood, roof, rook, school, wool, boon, Worcester, Boleyn, to impugn. Say in sounds correct and sterling Hearse, hear, hearken, year and yearling. Evil, devil, mezzotint, Mind the z! (A gentle hint.) Now you need not pay attention To such sounds as I don't mention, Sounds like pores, pause, pours and paws, Rhyming with the pronoun yours; Nor are proper names included, Though I often heard, as you did, Funny rhymes to unicorn, Yes, you know them, Vaughan and Strachan. No, my maiden, coy and comely, I don't want to speak of Cholmondeley. No. Yet Froude compared with proud Is no better than McLeod. But mind trivial and vial, Tripod, menial, denial, Troll and trolley, realm and ream, Schedule, mischief, schism, and scheme. Argil, gill, Argyll, gill. Surely May be made to rhyme with Raleigh, But you're not supposed to say Piquet rhymes with sobriquet. Had this invalid invalid Worthless documents? How pallid, How uncouth he, couchant, looked, When for Portsmouth I had booked! Zeus, Thebes, Thales, Aphrodite, Paramour, enamoured, flighty, Episodes, antipodes, Acquiesce, and obsequies. Please don't monkey with the geyser, Don't peel 'taters with my razor, Rather say in accents pure: Nature, stature and mature. Pious, impious, limb, climb, glumly, Worsted, worsted, crumbly, dumbly, Conquer, conquest, vase, phase, fan, Wan, sedan and artisan. The th will surely trouble you More than r, ch or w. Say then these phonetic gems: Thomas, thyme, Theresa, Thames. Thompson, Chatham, Waltham, Streatham, There are more but I forget 'em- Wait! I've got it: Anthony, Lighten your anxiety. The archaic word albeit Does not rhyme with eight-you see it; With and forthwith, one has voice, One has not, you make your choice. Shoes, goes, does *. Now first say: finger; Then say: singer, ginger, linger. Real, zeal, mauve, gauze and gauge, Marriage, foliage, mirage, age, Hero, heron, query, very, Parry, tarry fury, bury, Dost, lost, post, and doth, cloth, loth, Job, Job, blossom, bosom, oath. Faugh, oppugnant, keen oppugners, Bowing, bowing, banjo-tuners Holm you know, but noes, canoes, Puisne, truism, use, to use? Though the difference seems little, We say actual, but victual, Seat, sweat, chaste, caste, Leigh, eight, height, Put, nut, granite, and unite. Reefer does not rhyme with deafer, Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer. Dull, bull, Geoffrey, George, ate, late, Hint, pint, senate, but sedate. Gaelic, Arabic, pacific, Science, conscience, scientific; Tour, but our, dour, succour, four, Gas, alas, and Arkansas. Say manoeuvre, yacht and vomit, Next omit, which differs from it Bona fide, alibi Gyrate, dowry and awry. Sea, idea, guinea, area, Psalm, Maria, but malaria. Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean, Doctrine, turpentine, marine. Compare alien with Italian, Dandelion with battalion, Rally with ally; yea, ye, Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, key, quay! Say aver, but ever, fever, Neither, leisure, skein, receiver. Never guess-it is not safe, We say calves, valves, half, but Ralf. Starry, granary, canary, Crevice, but device, and eyrie, Face, but preface, then grimace, Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass. Bass, large, target, gin, give, verging, Ought, oust, joust, and scour, but scourging; Ear, but earn; and ere and tear Do not rhyme with here but heir. Mind the o of off and often Which may be pronounced as orphan, With the sound of saw and sauce; Also soft, lost, cloth and cross. Pudding, puddle, putting. Putting? Yes: at golf it rhymes with shutting. Respite, spite, consent, resent. Liable, but Parliament. Seven is right, but so is even, Hyphen, roughen, nephew, Stephen, Monkey, donkey, clerk and jerk, Asp, grasp, wasp, demesne, cork, work. A of valour, vapid vapour, S of news (compare newspaper), G of gibbet, gibbon, gist, I of antichrist and grist, Differ like diverse and divers, Rivers, strivers, shivers, fivers. Once, but nonce, toll, doll, but roll, Polish, Polish, poll and poll. Pronunciation-think of Psyche!- Is a paling, stout and spiky. Won't it make you lose your wits Writing groats and saying "grits"? It's a dark abyss or tunnel Strewn with stones like rowlock, gunwale, Islington, and Isle of Wight, Housewife, verdict and indict. Don't you think so, reader, rather, Saying lather, bather, father? Finally, which rhymes with enough, Though, through, bough, cough, hough, sough, tough?? Hiccough has the sound of sup... My advice is: Give It Up!
If reading is too hard, how about listening Lindybeige recite it to you.
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I remember reading something about the size of Kanji in comparison to the alphabet, and someone brought up that while (eg) Japanese has something like a little over 100 syllables you have to learn to pronounce, English has over two thousand
Some of these depend on dialect - where my family is from, gaunt and aunt rhyme, for example.
Of course, that makes it worse, not better :P
Where this really sucks is in programming when you write things like “The {{objectType}}” in your translations file.
Your program will replace objectType with the actual thing, so “The Ball”. All good, right? But then every other language has the weird conjugation, so “El Bola” doesn’t make sense anymore…
Oh god, I've never thought about that.
Some languages also consider different numbers in different way. I have one ball, two balls, and zero balls. Zero might not be plural like in English. Also, some language have a dual distinction that changes thing when there are two of something (not just singular and plural, but singular, dual, and plural).
El Bola sounds like a very racist super villain too! Probably not what most customers are looking for in a translation...
although a bit clunky, writing "the {{objectType}} object" would get around this particular issue.
If by "every other language" you mean "a handful of Indo-European languages, then sure.
i mean technically we have the and thə
Excuse me friend, but one of your e's appears to be drunk.
ə: I'm not as think as you drunk I am, ossifer!
i'm pretty sure about 12-15% of the English language is.. smashed to the tits..
Russian doesn't have articles at all, but it sure isn't simple.
The grammar can be complicated, but with Russian I find the pronunciation can be particularly difficult. There's a lot of vowel I, e, and y sounds that are subtly different. И, й, э, ы, е all sound kinda similar, with ы not having a direct equivalent in English (it's like an "eeyeh" pronounced with the frontal palette which is weird because English doesn't have a lot of frontal letters).
The consonant clusters are also tough because there's so many of them and connecting vowels are absent. A classic example of this is Здравствуйте (Zdrasvuitse) with the Zdr pronounced with a rolling r as well.
I'm sure if I'm trying to say things I've got a heavy gringo accent.
But it’s also simpler in many ways. For example, it doesn’t use the verb “to be”. So, for example, instead of saying “I’m a boy”, you would say “I boy”.
Yes, that one aspect of the language is simpler, but the six grammatical cases, three genders, two aspects, and unpredictable stress make up for it.
"The" but sometimes it's pronounced "thee" just for fun ir vowels or whatever.
Russian:
Yeah, but what comes after gets messy
All languages are like that. If you don't do something one way, you have to do it another. Basically if you sacrifice complexity in grammar, you have to make up for it in other ways through things like case, word-order, tone and register, etc. It's a popular myth that languages can be more or less complex than one another.
Finnish has no articles
Neither do any of Slavic languages except Bulgarian they are special
I was being a bit facetious since what Finnish does have is cases, and tons and tons of them
I would imagine trying to memorise the dozens of ways every noun can be modified would be a fucking nightmare for a non native speaker
Nor Estonian or Icelandic ha
The ol mnemonic my German professor taught me about remembering the German articles:
Rese
Nese
Merman
Sister Sister
I took several years of German in highschool and in college and this doesn't make any sense to me. Explain please?
It’s a way to remember the case endings.
Last letter of definite article endings deR diE daS diE etc.
Not op but I have a hunch,
The mnemonic is to remember the differences,
DeR - Rese
deN - Nese
DeM deM - MerMan
deS deS - Sister Sister.
French had a golden oportunity for changing this during french revolution. A unecessary complex language is not reasonable
Just remember they decided to count by multiplying 20
Oiseau, quoique, aujourd'hui: try guessing the correct pronunciation of these words
Portuguese: append "s". O, os; a, as;
god I hate german grammar so much
Then you will like the fact that Old English grammar was as complicated as German grammar but it got stripped down for various historical reasons.
Squirrel
Thought
Though
Cough
Latin: Quæ?
These pretzels are making me thirsty.
the pretzels are making the thirsty.
All languages are hard if you don't practice them
Hindi has no articles ! 😅
Does Russian? I feel like it does the same thing through genetive cases tho
Slavic languages: whats an article?
Are we forgetting he, she they, they're, their.... ?
These are only definite articles, not pronouns.
this, that