English has been my pain for 15 years (2013) • Hacker News Board

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#131

Post by Zancarius » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 6:28 PM UTC

colanderman wrote: post #45

tyho wrote: post #43

I can relate to this despite being a native English speaker from the UK. I misspent my childhood in IRC and messing around with dozens of UNIX machines. I can communicate well with people over the internet, but only recently have I met people in the flesh with similar interests to me. This means that I mispronounce jargon. Cache, deprecated, whenever I use words like these in conversation, people have no idea what I…

That's very common. No-one knew what the heck I was talking about the day I first spoke out loud about Ess Queue Ell.

I think the jury's still out on that one. I've always spelled it out (and I always will, dammit!), I've had professors either spell it out or pronounce it, and it very much seems to be a mix of regional preference and past experience. Of course, there's two arguments here: One is that SEQUEL was changed to SQL to avoid possible trademark issues (thus implicating that this also necessitated a change in the pronunciation), the other is that the original intent was to call it SEQUEL (thus this is the Only Way). Which is more correct? No one knows!

There's an interesting write-up on the differences[1] which I find interesting. There's even a fellow who asked one of the original developers[2] how to best pronounce it (spoiler: no resolution).

Come to think of it, I spell out most acronyms under 4-5 characters much to the chagrin of my peers (unless the intent was clearly to make it a word). I think it ought to boil down to preference.

[1] http://www.vertabelo.com/blog/notes-from-the-lab/sql-or-sequ...

[2] http://patorjk.com/blog/2012/01/26/pronouncing-sql-s-q-l-or-...

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#132

Post by djur » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 6:29 PM UTC

lovboat wrote: post #127

cheshire137 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Native English speaker here with some corrections, if you like! :) police are 50-year-old lives of those people are sharp sounds long-term

Thanks. police are (ok they are more than one). 50-year-old (why not 50-years-old ?). It seems that nouns are created with "-" (merriam-webster agree with you). a long-term solution is like a never-ending story. Now, my question why neverending story (film) and not never-ending?

I think the book "The Neverending Story" is named that because it's originally German, where "neverending" is "unendliche". The English-language movies are actually "The NeverEnding Story", which is an odd choice. "never-ending" would be more standard English.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#133

Post by elros » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 6:34 PM UTC

aquadrop wrote: post #37

xanderstrike wrote: post #21

As a native English speaker, I can understand pretty much every other native English speaker (though I may struggle a bit with Cockney or Nigerian english, the point gets across). I'm also pretty good at Spanish, and living in Southern California I mostly hear the Mexican accent. When I hear Argentinian or Cuban Spanish, I have no fucking clue what's going on. Does that mean Spanish is phonetically broken? It, like I…

I think Spanish, English and Portuguese are broken languages (French less, because France dominates it) because they were spread during era of colonial empires and now there a big countries which use it as main language, they have evolved since.

I speak French and Portuguese, both as native languages. I wouldn't characterize any language as broken, but what most people seem to be describing here is the divergence between the spelling and the pronunciation, as well as the amount of redundant spelling. In this regard, French is unquestionably worse than Portuguese.

Basically, French and English follow the same orthography "school", which is the etymological one. The idea that spelling reforms should be few and far in between and that the way specific words are spelt has to do with how they were either spelt or pronounced in other, older languages.

This makes it so that they're both to a great extent languages whose writing system feels ad hoc.

Languages such as Spanish, Finnish, Turkish, are such that if one gets taught the sound of each letter one can start accurately sounding out words immediately.

Portuguese does not follow the etymological school, instead adopting a more phonological spelling. It has, however, a far from 1:1 phoneme to grapheme ratio, and more complex rules governing how to pronounce words. Perfectly regular complex rules, though.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#134

Post by stevekemp » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 6:45 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #117

xanderstrike wrote: post #21

As a native English speaker, I can understand pretty much every other native English speaker (though I may struggle a bit with Cockney or Nigerian english, the point gets across). I'm also pretty good at Spanish, and living in Southern California I mostly hear the Mexican accent. When I hear Argentinian or Cuban Spanish, I have no fucking clue what's going on. Does that mean Spanish is phonetically broken? It, like I…

> I'd argue the "phonetically broken" nature of English has more to do with his learning it as a second language than anything intrinsically wrong with English. ough: Bough (ow), Though (oh), through (oo), thorough (uh), rough (uff), cough (off), hiccough (up) That's broken.

And don't forget words that are pronounced differently with identical spelling, for added hilarity:

* Polish people live in Poland.

* Polish your boots.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#135

Post by Mikeb85 » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 6:45 PM UTC

> There is just one problem, it has nothing to do with the real English spoken in UK, US, Canada, and other countries where English is a native language.

"Real" English is a bit of a misnomer. There's really no such thing. English has developed, over time, from a mix of various other languages (French, German, Anglo-Saxon, Norse), and also split several times throughout its history, developing dialects that have different points of divergence from 'UK' English.

For instance, I speak Canadian English, which is very much 'textbook' English that would probably be equivalent to a 1930's or 1940's style of British English plus a few Americanisms, and one or two native quirks.

My wife speaks Caribbean creole (as well as more 'proper' English now), but also learned an earlier version of British English, which leads to some hilarious misunderstandings (she knows lots of archaic words, doesn't understand some of the more modern, technical words, and of course Caribbean creole adds all sorts of words, grammar, and pronunciations).

I also speak French, which in many ways is easier - more consistent spellings/pronunciation, grammar, but can be difficult at times because there are so many French words in English, but we change the meaning of many of them. There's also English words that have no direct equivalent in French, and vice versa. You need to 'think' differently to speak each. Plus, as French modernizes, it adds more and more Anglicisms, French people cheat on grammar all the time, and of course slang evolves rather quickly.

Anyhow, while English is a pain due to its history, I think as the world becomes more and more cosmopolitan, these 'quirks' just get absorbed into the language, and aren't really a problem. After all, there was a point when the language of nobility in England was French, that changed, likewise the notion that 'proper' English is the only real English will change over time too.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#136

Post by reycharles » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 6:45 PM UTC

leaveyou wrote: post #50

xanderstrike wrote: post #21

As a native English speaker, I can understand pretty much every other native English speaker (though I may struggle a bit with Cockney or Nigerian english, the point gets across). I'm also pretty good at Spanish, and living in Southern California I mostly hear the Mexican accent. When I hear Argentinian or Cuban Spanish, I have no fucking clue what's going on. Does that mean Spanish is phonetically broken? It, like I…

by "phonetically broken" I think he means that there is not enough consistency regarding what you write and what you pronounce. I give you some examples: door and tool. The same two letters 'oo' are pronounced differently. 'en' in 'broken' and 'en' in 'enough'. I suspect Italian, Romanian and Spanish inherited some consistency from Latin where AFAIK 'a' is pronounced the same everywhere and even in combination with o…

I find that french is fairly consistent with how to pronounce written words. It's the other way, how to write pronounced words, that is broken. English is just broken either way, IMO.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#137

Post by microcolonel » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 6:48 PM UTC

Well, we need a common language. If it's not your native language, you'll be at a relative disadvantage if it is somebody else's.

Would Esperanto be preferable? Some people would have the jump on you for that as well.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#138

Post by mariusc23 » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 6:48 PM UTC

petke wrote: post #16

Ever noticed how people from small countries in Europe often tend to speak English well, while people from big European countries dont? Think Sweden vs Italy. Its mostly just a happy accident. You see, in small countries they usually dont dub movies or tv shows, simply because the market isn't big enough. They simply put subtitles on. Subtitles fly past way too quick for young kids to read though. So young kids dont…

That's exactly how I learned English when I was young, although most of my classmates didn't. Maybe those suckers actually spent time studying instead of watching cartoons!

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#139

Post by lottin » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 6:48 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #117

xanderstrike wrote: post #21

As a native English speaker, I can understand pretty much every other native English speaker (though I may struggle a bit with Cockney or Nigerian english, the point gets across). I'm also pretty good at Spanish, and living in Southern California I mostly hear the Mexican accent. When I hear Argentinian or Cuban Spanish, I have no fucking clue what's going on. Does that mean Spanish is phonetically broken? It, like I…

> I'd argue the "phonetically broken" nature of English has more to do with his learning it as a second language than anything intrinsically wrong with English. ough: Bough (ow), Though (oh), through (oo), thorough (uh), rough (uff), cough (off), hiccough (up) That's broken.

That's just etymological spelling reflecting an old pronunciation. Whether such spelling is "broken" is purely a matter of opinion.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#140

Post by tricolon » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 6:53 PM UTC

stevekemp wrote: post #134

DanBC wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd argue the "phonetically broken" nature of English has more to do with his learning it as a second language than anything intrinsically wrong with English. ough: Bough (ow), Though (oh), through (oo), thorough (uh), rough (uff), cough (off), hiccough (up) That's broken.

And don't forget words that are pronounced differently with identical spelling, for added hilarity: * Polish people live in Poland. * Polish your boots.

Obligatory link to Nolst Trenité's "The Chaos": http://ncf.idallen.com/english.html