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English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

antirez.com

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

#181

Post by pandler »

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.

"Polish Remover"

A bottle of solvent or leader of the Nazi party?

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

#182

Post by skuhn »

ajmurmann wrote: post #175

One interesting thing to me I the comments to the original article was the mentioning of the weird "have got" instead of just "have" you learn in European schools. I hadn't thought about it since I started learning English I school in Germany many, many years ago. I think even the teachers dropped that in later classes. But I remember always having to say stuff like "I have got an apple" instead of just "I have an ap…

No one would ever say "have got", it's the sort of redundancy that naturally gets distilled down to the minimum required in everyday language.

I imagine this sort of focus on technically correct but functionally useless things is pretty common when studying languages. I took a few years of German in school, and literally 25% of our time was spent memorizing the various forms of der and matching nouns to them. I haven't been to Germany, but my understanding is that you won't get laughed out of too many rooms if you use die when you should have used den.

I didn't keep up with the language, and I can barely understand even basic German at this point. I do still remember my der/ein charts though. I'm not really convinced that was the best use of my time.

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

#183

Post by wvh »

Vomzor wrote: post #64
xixixao wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, what you noticed is correct, but the reason is completely wrong. edit: see the map on wiki[0] The reason it might be true that people from smaller countries speak better English is emphasis - in a small country, people are fully aware that knowing foreign language (English, German, French in Europe) is super important. People in big countries (Spain, Italy, France) don't think it's that necessary, because they…

I think you're wrong. Dubbing or subtitles make a big difference. In Flanders (Dutch-speaking part of Belgium) we have 8 years of French in school and only 5 years of English. Even though France is our neighbor and 40 % of Belgium's speaks French, most young people their English is still much better than their French. It's because we grew up surrounded by English; English songs, English tv shows and movies with subti…

English is a lot closer to Dutch though. We learn Dutch, French, English, German and even Latin in school, so we are culturally habituated to the importance of languages. I coincidentally also speak Finnish and Swedish (which feels almost like a Dutch-Limburg dialect), and like the other poster said, it's not a surprise to me the Swedish speaking population in Finland thinks English is easier to learn.

As to Antirez: if only my C would be as good as yours...

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

#184

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

ziotom78 wrote: post #167
stevekemp wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Another example: * I read this book whenever I feel lonely. * I read this book many years ago A friend of mine coming from Scotland once told me that he phoned Twinings (the English tea maker) in order to understand how to pronounce it ("twain..." or "twin...").

So, don't make us go to sleep without knowing how to actually pronounce Twinings! I have no idea and now want to know.

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

#185

Post by vacri »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #59
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…

> English spelling is another thing though. Im still struggling with that. You're in good company since many native speakers can't spell either. English's greatest virtue is a high degree of fault tolerance.

I was travelling through Vietnam and thought it funny just how many diacritic marks Vietnamese text makes, and thought that English was better because it doesn't need them. Then I realised that - holy shit! - English needs them big time. Look at wind (air movement) and wind (wrap around), or wound (injury) and wound (past tense wrap). Or even read (view text present tense) and read (view text past tense).

Admittedly I'm only a monoglot, but Engish seems pretty brutal in expecting you to figure out the correct sounds from the context. A few diacritics sprinkled in could likely really help newcomers with appropriate sounds.

On a tangent, one of the things I like about written Spanish is that you know at the beginning of a sentence whether it's a question or an exclamation. It's always a bit weird when reading a long sentence in a novel, to get to the end of it and think "oh, that was actually a question..."

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

#187

Post by vacri »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #184
ziotom78 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another example: * I read this book whenever I feel lonely. * I read this book many years ago A friend of mine coming from Scotland once told me that he phoned Twinings (the English tea maker) in order to understand how to pronounce it ("twain..." or "twin...").

So, don't make us go to sleep without knowing how to actually pronounce Twinings! I have no idea and now want to know.

Twine-ings. As in twine/string. Rhymes with wine. The 'ings' is pretty standard, like in 'things'.

Twinings is a name, though - and all bets are off when it comes to name pronunciation.

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

#188

Post by gotchange »

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…

Actually English has a defective phonemic orthography system [0] that makes mastering the language an unpleasant and daunting experience esp. for beginners. In a nutshell, English language is high-maintenance.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonemic_orthography

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

#189

Post by vacri »

bshimmin wrote: post #69
selimthegrim wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

contumely means an insult, it almost exclusively comes up in Shakespeare. 99% of people on the street would not know that word

I'm guessing 99% of people wouldn't know what "beatify" meant either, and a significant number would think it was a typo for "beautify". Those two words also rather nicely express the vagaries of English pronunciation (the latter is pronounced to rhyme with "pew", the former "bee-A...", which almost feels like it deserves a diaeresis, except we don't do those in English). I leave the gentle reader with the English pl…

There's a lot of Catholics out there. They might not know how to spell it, but most of them would know what beatify is about. To be fair, beatify is more 'Catholic jargon' and less 'standard English' - I wouldn't expect anyone unfamiliar with Catholicism to know it.

As for names, my favourite wtf is Featherstonehaugh, pronounced fan-shaw. Then there's Chalmondley (chum-lee)...

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

#190

Post by Rondom »

sampo wrote: post #163
jacobolus wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

kyoo-tih-kul, pee-uhn, esh-uh-lon, eh-may-she-ay-ted, hey-nuhs, cuhm-ly, dis-reh-pyoo-tah-bul, hahrth, derth, kuhn-too-muh-ly, bee-at-if-iy, sub-seh-kuent

Haha, that is helpful only if you already know how to pronounce English.

While intuitive for English speakers, this notation (don't know what it is called like) is actually discouraged because it is not even able to unambiguously describe English pronunciation...

(The alternative is the International Phonetic Alphabet, which after getting used to it is not that hard to master)

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