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English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018)

christopherwink.com

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Re: English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018)

#221

Post by kh1 »

robotmay wrote: post #191
kh1 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Japanese, I agree with you. When friends who are learning the language ask me questions, I sometimes can't even answer them. So I end up saying "that's just how we say/use it". And much respect from me. I wouldn't learn Japanese if my mother tongue is European language.

I've tried twice to learn Japanese and I consistently get stuck on kanji. The spoken language is actually really intuitive in a lot of ways, and hiragana/katakana fit easily into my brain, but kanji, with the multiple and inconsistent readings, is just mind-blowingly hard for me. And it's a shame that I keep getting stuck there as it really is a beautiful language.

I think you should start with easy ones. IIRC kids take small tests in class every semester at elementary school (like 50-150 kanjis per test). Those kanjis are the easy ones and then you can build up. So learning kanjis you find on a newspaper or a novel might be too hard. Understanding those words in real life context requires you to have higher language skills anyway (e.g. understand economy news or whatever in Japanese).

On a slight side note, kids can't even write their own names in kanji. You can imagine how happy we got when we were taught kanjis that were part of our name. So you shouldn't feel bad about it, taking small steps serve you well in the long term.

Re: English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018)

#222

Post by ghaff »

smitty1e wrote: post #141
tim333 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only get defenestrate in quite pretentious literary essays. I'm English and only came across it recently. I think the availability of Google has made that sort of stuff more common writers can use obscure words and rather than have 90% of their readers not understand, now they can google it. English has a vast stock of words like that that some writer probably made up a centuries ago - there's a lot of old litera…

English's jumbo vocabulary makes it great for doggerel, because so many ideas can be phrased with multiple rhymes and syllable counts.

And punny and other wordplay headlines. For example, I could absolutely see, if there were a politician named Fenwick who was fired, a headline writer doming up with: Fenwick defenestrated.

Re: English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018)

#223

Post by mkl »

ghaff wrote: post #220
wccrawford wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a few well known ones that everyone uses. And then there's ridiculous ones, like "a murder of crows", that many people know because they're ridiculous, but people still don't use them. And then there's a ton that almost nobody knows, and nobody uses. In the end, it's not a big deal. Unlikely Japanese, where they really do use counters for those kinds of object. Flat things like paper, cylindrical things like…

English uses those also to some degree: a case of beer, a carton of eggs. But, yeah, if you told me to pick up some eggs and a a carton/box of beer, I'd know what you probably wanted. (In the latter case, I might ask if you wanted a 6-pack, 12-pack, or 24.)

Carton and case aren't collective nouns though. They describe the packaging. You can buy a tray of eggs or a keg or six-pack of beer.

Re: English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018)

#224

Post by laurieg »

wccrawford wrote: post #168
andi999 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the English 'counter words' for animals are also tough aren't they? Ok, a flock of birds everybody knows as well as a murder of crows. But what about an exaltation of larks? And is it a school of dolphins or rather a pod?

There's a few well known ones that everyone uses. And then there's ridiculous ones, like "a murder of crows", that many people know because they're ridiculous, but people still don't use them. And then there's a ton that almost nobody knows, and nobody uses. In the end, it's not a big deal. Unlikely Japanese, where they really do use counters for those kinds of object. Flat things like paper, cylindrical things like…

English "counters" are in some way worse because they aren't consistent. Slice of bread, slice of cheese but not slice paper.

To be fair, Japanese has "everday use" counters and "trivia TV show" counters.

Re: English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018)

#225

Post by dopidopHN »

gerdesj wrote: post #150
tartoran wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also because English is currently the bridge language, also known as Lingua franca. I find that the main thesis of this post is in agreement with my experience, been using English for 20 years and haven’t explored all the galleries and tunnels inside the language.

"also known as Lingua franca." ... which is Latin for: language of the Franks - French!

Correct. Our time will come back. And this time we will make sure y’all barbarian get the metric system.

Re: English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018)

#226

Post by martinrue »

luisfmh wrote: post #38
Waterluvian wrote: post #37

This got me wondering about the concept of a custom designed language focused on functionality, unambiguity, ease to learn. My understanding is that all commonly used spoken languages are basically organically evolved and not designed?

That's the whole concept of esperanto afaik. Google it, it's a language designed to be easy to learn.

Lots of my friends are Esperanto speakers and we use only Esperanto to communicate. I learned it to fluency in around 2 years. It’s incredibly easy to learn, super fun to use, and unique in that it bridges so many other languages that one can really experience a lot of different culture through the language.

Re: English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018)

#227

Post by martinrue »

martinrue wrote: post #226
luisfmh wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the whole concept of esperanto afaik. Google it, it's a language designed to be easy to learn.

Lots of my friends are Esperanto speakers and we use only Esperanto to communicate. I learned it to fluency in around 2 years. It’s incredibly easy to learn, super fun to use, and unique in that it bridges so many other languages that one can really experience a lot of different culture through the language.

If anyone’s curious, I wrote more about it here: https://martinrue.com/zamenhofa-tago-18/

Re: English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018)

#228

Post by ekianjo »

bonoboTP wrote: post #31
soldehierro wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Angloexceptionalism" really gets on my nerves to no end, and the worst part of it is that it seems it's mainly anglophone monolinguals that are making these outrageous claims, like English being intrinsically superior to other languages or being exceptionally easy to learn. Sure, English is really damn useful, but the grand scheme of things it's no more fit to be the global lingua franca than say Mandarin or Hungari…

As a Hungarian speaker who also knows other languages, I think there is indeed a difference. To construct even quite basic sentences in Hungarian you have to learn much more rules than to do the same for English. At a basic level English feels like just putting words next to one another. I mean basics like "I go in the house. You eat dinner." To say these in Hungarian as a beginner you'd have to either rote learn stu…

Old english was a more complex language but evolved to more simple grammar over time. Languages are not static.

Re: English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018)

#230

Post by wenc »

jeroenhd wrote: post #137
KaiserPro wrote: post #122

Learning to read english is not simple. I've been learning dutch, and teaching my children to read (english, native language) The one thing that struck me is how impossible it is to "sound out" english. That is use the letters to make a stab at what the word will sound like. Unlike dutch, the written word is only a slight guide as to how its supposed to sound. I can't spell for shit in english, but I can spell quite…

As a native Dutchman, I won't pretend that our language doesn't have some of these problems as well (good luck pronouncing things like "glooiing" or "apostelen" right the first time), but English is just special. One of the simplest words, "read", has two correct interpretations that can sometimes even exist in the same sentence, with its pronunciation purely being based on context. There's an entire poem[1] about pr…

That poem is amazing. It really brings to light how inconsistent English pronunciation truly is.

Also I bet most native English speakers wouldn't be able to pronounce most of those words correctly. Many are obscure words that rarely come up in conversation (I only know them because I watched a lot of British TV as a kid). And for the longest time I thought awry was pronounced “Aw ry” until I heard someone say it as “a wry”. The word “hagiography” has two hard g’s instead of just one. And recently I learned that the word “mercantile” in Chicago Mercantile Exchange is pronounced mercanteel rather than mercan-tile (like floor tile).

English is full of shibboleths.

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