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Problems with the English language


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I guess now I know why so few English speaking people learn French, they think the English language is hard.

 

If this post offends anyone, just pm me.

 

 

I've been meaning to learn French, along with German for a long time now. My spanish used to be pretty great, I need to get back into it.

 

 

And English is hard because it doesn't necessarily follow grammatical rules that it infers it follows.

 

My spanish teacher in high school had a story of how when she was in a class in Puerto Rico learning English, they were teaching the vowel sounds. The instructor actually made a mistake I guess, and stated a "ee" word made an "i" sound. So when she came to America I guess she pronounced everything like that. Then she saw a sale at Linens and Things, for bed sheets. So she went, and but she couldn't find any, so she went to the counter and asked where they kept the shits. She said I know you have red shits, yellow shits, and the shits with the high thread count..... Where are the shits?

 

 

She was asked to leave the store.

 

English might have a lot more exceptions than other languages, but it also has simpler rules in general. I've learnt(well, tried to learn :P) both english and french and I've found english to be MUCH easier. In french, I constantly had to think about which order I had to put the words in that context etc. - in English, you used the few basic rules that you know and it would be mostly correct. Everything incorrect you would learn through trial&error and by getting a feel for the language, which proved to be impossible for me in french.

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The language isn't harder - you're just less used to it. Think about it; How often do you use French in day to day conversation, as opposed to English?

Lol depends where you live. I used french mostly in my day to day conversations, but english is mostly just on the internet and Xbox Live. And no I don't live in Québec.

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The language isn't harder - you're just less used to it. Think about it; How often do you use French in day to day conversation, as opposed to English?

 

Well since English is the most prevalent language of the world, it is the most readily available to learn and pickup on. The fact that it is so common makes for more opportunities to learn the rules, but the rules themselves do seem to be counter-intuitive compared to other languages a lot of the time.

 

As far as arguing what is overall harder, I don't think anyone would get very far. It's still a great mystery how exactly we integrate our native language into our minds.

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I guess now I know why so few English speaking people learn French, they think the English language is hard.

 

If this post offends anyone, just pm me.

 

Firstly, I studied language.

 

I now, study language in further education as well as working... but it is also part of my employment; to be able to understand certain languages.

 

Are you joking? French is one of the easiest language to learn. Some of the structures of your sentences are actually appalling for a language so don't start. I found oriental languages to be the most difficult. English is moderate in difficulty. My first language was Welsh, so I can look at it from an outsiders view of how English was to learn.

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"We shouldn't wish for easier lives, we should wish to be stronger men"

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  • 4 weeks later...

English also changes vowel sounds randomly. For example, stood and stool. Respectively, uh and oo. This isn't a rule, such as the double consonant rule, or "a vowel sounds different if there is an 'e' at end." In Turkish and Swedish, two languages I'm trying to learn, all letters sound the same, which makes pronunciation a lot easier.

 

Additionally, colloquialisms. For example, "all of the sudden," "a whole 'nother," and "try and do it." The first two don't make any sense. The third is illogical because it means "try, and then after trying, do it," but we say "try and do it" to mean "try to do it." This said, I prefer it over French because French is too formal.

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Aluminum/Aluminium is more than a dropped letter. With color/colour you at least have a word that is pronounced exactly the same way. The extra "I" in the British Aluminium not only changes the pronunciation of the word, it adds an entire extra syllable (or rather, the north american dropping of the "I" removed an entire syllable). On a side note, I hate hearing it said as "al-oo-min-ee-um" (its al-oom-an-um here). I don't mind the British prnunciation of Glacier quite as much (they say glass-ee-er), though I think the Glay-see-er pronunciation sounds nicer (because I'm used to it).

 

Here is one for you guys to think about, because even in the context of this being English, this has never made sense to me.

 

Open and Closed. Why is it that we say "The store is open" and "The store has been opened", but when you reverse the state of being it becomes "The store is closed" and "The store has been closed.

 

Even better, both of the following are gramaticly sound:

The store is open

The store is opened

 

I know the second one sounds awkward, but that's because you don't normally hear it that way (I've seen a book store or two that actually have an "opened" sign).

 

However, only one of the following is gramatically sound:

The store is close

The store is closed

 

I've never been able to understand why 'open' can be substituted for 'opened' like that. It's so commonly used that way, that using opened instead actually sounds weird.

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I've never looked at this thread so forgive me if this has been mentioned already, but English phoenetics are nonsense. Yacht is just one example.


"Imagine yourself surrounded by the most horrible cripples and maniacs it is possible to conceive, and you may understand a little of my feelings with these grotesque caricatures of humanity about me."

- H.G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau

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  • 2 weeks later...

 

However, only one of the following is gramatically sound:

The store is close

The store is closed

 

 

Actually, those are both grammatically sound, which likely explains your earlier question as well :)

 

(i.e., words with multiple meanings develop restrictions on how each meaning can be used syntactically to increase clarity) (open and close both have multiple meanings, but close has more, and more pronounciations, and more syntactic restriction) (actually open has more meanings 88 to 75 in the dictionary I checked, but not in reference to stores, and in many cases open is opposed to closed, like in math you refer to open and closed sets, which distorts the comparison.)

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