111–120 of 248 posts
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Nice! Fascinating how many letters you need to represent all the vowels.
Western American English has 14 vowels and some parts of Eastern have 15 (the caught/cot distinction).
In teaching my young son to read I have become starkly aware at just how inconsistent English is. I never consciously realized how many ways there are to pronounce "ough". And not a single one makes sense. That said, I am amazed at how quickly he's figuring it all out.
As a non-English speaker, I find the English spoken by non-native speakers far easier to understand and deal with than the English spoken by Americans/British. I work with Germans, Italians, Spaniards, French, Dutch and I understand them 99% of the time. We use "normal" words (we are not fancy regarding vocabulary) and pronounce them in a non-native way (the way all Europeans that speak English understand)... But the…
I moved to Scotland for a year, and London for a few years later. I’d regularly here phrasing I’d never heard before and would need the speaker to clarify or would look up later. In the vast majority of those cases it was most often an old word that appears to have fallen out of fashionable usage. “Ken” being a synonym for “know” in Scotland being the one I remember most given how frequently it was used.
So it’s not just non-native speakers that struggle at times!
As a non-English speaker, I find the English spoken by non-native speakers far easier to understand and deal with than the English spoken by Americans/British. I work with Germans, Italians, Spaniards, French, Dutch and I understand them 99% of the time. We use "normal" words (we are not fancy regarding vocabulary) and pronounce them in a non-native way (the way all Europeans that speak English understand)... But the…
> Besides, since we all make the same mistakes when speaking English, we understand each other without asking "sorry, what do you mean?" That’s likely because the languages you speak all share recent ancestry (if they’re not all Romance languages, they’re at least all descended from Proto-Indo-European.) Meanwhile, I’ve seen e.g. Mexican and Chinese ESL speakers have very bad mutual intelligibility, because they make…
As a non-English speaker, I find the English spoken by non-native speakers far easier to understand and deal with than the English spoken by Americans/British. I work with Germans, Italians, Spaniards, French, Dutch and I understand them 99% of the time. We use "normal" words (we are not fancy regarding vocabulary) and pronounce them in a non-native way (the way all Europeans that speak English understand)... But the…
I never thought of it this way. I'm American and I can understand fluent English speaking Europeans way better than I can understand British, unless that British person is from London. 70%? That's optimistic. I don't even think I am understanding words, only the most likely context in the flow of a conversation and the most likely way to react. Fluent Northern European English (Belgium, Netherlands, Scandinavia, Nort…
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> and get rid of the `ß/ss` mess. Swiss Standard German got rid of ß :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Standard_German
yeah, but they didn't get rid of the mess, they kind of made it harder for German-learners to pronounce a written word (in comparison to the post-reform federal german spelling). i.e. "Fuß" vs swiss "Fuss" Swiss spelling makes it appear as if "Fuss" (with a long u) could be pronounced like "Nuss" (with a short u), whereas standard German "Fuß" is clear on that. Prior to the German spelling reform, Nuss was also writt…
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> Besides, since we all make the same mistakes when speaking English, we understand each other without asking "sorry, what do you mean?" That’s likely because the languages you speak all share recent ancestry (if they’re not all Romance languages, they’re at least all descended from Proto-Indo-European.) Meanwhile, I’ve seen e.g. Mexican and Chinese ESL speakers have very bad mutual intelligibility, because they make…
Funny story, had this happen to me in a hostel in Germany. I had to “translate“ from English with a heavy Italian accent to/from English with a heavy Vietnamese accent between roommates. Basically I just repeated what each said into my California English accent with a few touch ups. Everyone finally understood. :D
Concerning the spelling reform, is there any language that recently underwent a successful spelling reform? And by recent, I mean in the last 10 years. The thing is that with the widespread usage of the internet it seems harder to successfully reform the orthography of a language. Every language is, nowadays, in one way or another decentralized and uncontrolled by language authorities.
Not 10 years, but yeah, German was completely reformed some 24 years ago. It is still pretty major as several countries (Germany, Austria, Switzerland and others with german-speaking minorities) had to coordinate and consent. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_orthography_reform_of_1... I as a child started learning the old orthography in school, was taught the "new" one later on and had to use it and even the…
As far as I remember, the update to the update was only about allowing some old forms as valid alternates. Which I like very much. I'm mostly on board with the new style (partly based on upbringing, partly because it makes much more sense), but you'll never see me write "Portmonee".
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Most interesting problem of English language is that it is not direct. Good example is small talks. In many cultures direct question assume direct answer. If somebody asks you "how are you" you kinda obligated to give response with your real feelings and events happened to you last time. In USA mostly every stranger can start this conversation and expect only unsalted response. This tradition is much deeper than you…
May I ask what language you are a native speaker of? I have a couple ideas based on the patterns of your errors but I’m not sure. (My strongest guess is Russian due to your omission of articles.)
AFAIK this pattern is not limited to native Russians, it's shared by most (all?) Slavic languages.