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

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

#291

Post by thaumasiotes »

bckr wrote: post #273
thaumasiotes wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Important" is dramatically overstating it. I've only ever seen anyone remark on adjective order in an ESL class. English is full of ordering constraints that matter. This isn't one of them; if you put your adjectives in a strange order, the worst thing that can happen is that people realize you're foreign. [1] And the odds are they knew that anyway, unless you managed to learn perfect pronunciation without absorbing…

This isn't even to take into account that we flub our speech (not to mention writing) all the time. It's easy to imagine someone saying "red... Metal... Big ball!" because that was the order that the features of the ball arrived in their mind. So there's a difference between planned speech and rushed speech, and there's piecing together what someone means through their mistakes. For another example, last night I was…

> This isn't even to take into account that we flub our speech (not to mention writing) all the time. It's easy to imagine someone saying "red... Metal... Big ball!" because that was the order that the features of the ball arrived in their mind.

Well, I meant to; this is what I had in mind when I said "native speakers will often violate the normal constraints if they have to string together several adjectives in a row".

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

#292

Post by the_gipsy »

ternaryoperator wrote: post #282
the_gipsy wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's either Mexico and Texas, or Méjico and Tejas. Someone might mix across languages, but that does not mean that there is actually a formal exception to the rule.

Not at all. In Mexico, it's written México and pronounced Méjico. So that is definitely an exception to the pronunciation of x as a ks sound. The spelling rule you imply is not correct either: the same Spanish speakers who write Texas for the state, write Tejano for the Latin music originating there--both of those spellings being the most widespread in both Texas and Mexico.

So I dug this up a bit, because I'm accustomed to the form "Méjico" in Spain.

You are right that México is written with an X but pronounced with a jota. However it has a special status of topónimo (place name), which sometimes don't have a translation (thank god).

E.g. "Washington" is not pronounced with a sharp S, it's just pronounced as in the original language. Or Wyoming is pronounced as "uaióming", not "bioming". Which is exactly what happens with México, in old spanish the X was pronounced as jota.

https://www.rae.es/dpd/M%C3%A9xico

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

#293

Post by tablespoon »

out_of_protocol wrote: post #92
tablespoon wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where the drudgery of English comes in is vocabulary. Anyone that tells you that the SATs are not biased towards native speakers is full of putrescible waste. How much of Russian's vocabulary is "native"? My understanding it that English's vocabulary is pretty messed up because it's a mongrel language: Germanic substrate with substantial portions replaced or augmented by medieval French, with lots of Greek/Latinate…

> How much of Russian's vocabulary is "native"? About the same %, i think. The only difference is russian language can absorb almost anything, applying usual rules - so newly imported words are feeling native almost immediately

> About the same %, i think. The only difference is russian language can absorb almost anything, applying usual rules - so newly imported words are feeling native almost immediately

That's probably it: it's not the origin of English's vocabulary that makes it difficult, but its bad habit of not adapting borrowed words to conform to the English system.

If English speakers would rework spellings and plurals to match English when borrowing a word, it would be a lot easier for everyone almost all the time (the only exception I can think of is the rare situation (of questionable utility) where an English speaker can recognize a borrowed word in its foreign context).

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

#294

Post by willyt »

jeswin wrote: post #17
cletus wrote: post #11

I find the transformation and evolution of languages in general and English in particular fascinating. Old English was a Germanic language primarily. After 1066, the court language of England became French and remained so for centuries. It was in this period that the Middle English transformation happened. The fascinating thing about this is that the language became much more regular in that period and, more importan…

The biggest problem that non-native speakers face with English is the pronunciation. There are no consistent rules which can be applied to letter combinations; and that alone makes it hard to master. English is not my native language, but I've been using it for decades. Still have to look up pronunciation. OTOH, my native language Malayalam (and other Indian languages) doesn't really have the pronunciation problem. T…

I’m a native British English speaker with two postgraduate degrees and I still come across words that I know the meaning of but when I think to use them in conversation I realise that don’t know how to pronounce them. Sometimes you just have to say ‘I’m not sure if I’m saying this right but...’ and have a crack at it.

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

#295

Post by aasasd »

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.

Perhaps ‘spaced repetition’ tools like Anki might come in handy in organising the memorization. You still need to come up with a system, but the app will then help with putting kanji into the brain. Spaced repetition is suited precisely for things that don't have a prominent internal structure which would lend itself to learning.

Afaik Anki is popular for learning Japanese, iirc even the author did exactly that, so there's probably plenty of readymade material. Though it may be mostly for vocabulary.

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

#296

Post by yesenadam »

williamdclt wrote: post #201
yesenadam wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> these words are of french origin It seems they are derived from Latin, not French. https://www.etymonline.com/word/exacerbate is from Latin or from: https://www.etymonline.com/word/exacerbation https://www.etymonline.com/word/defenestration

Almost all of latin-based words in English have been imported from French (which itself is almost entirely latin-based), including these 2. There's not much historical reason for English to pull vocabulary directly from Latin I think

Do you have evidence for that? (that these words came from French)

Your other claim doesn't seem right either, about most (let alone "almost all") words from Latin in English coming from French. Stats[0] seem to give about equal numbers of words in English from Latin and from French, 29% each. As for

> There's not much historical reason for English to pull vocabulary directly from Latin

"English has also borrowed many words directly from Latin, the ancestor of the Romance languages, during all stages of its development. Many of these words had earlier been borrowed into Latin from Greek. Latin or Greek are still highly productive sources of stems used to form vocabulary of subjects learned in higher education such as the sciences, philosophy, and mathematics."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language#Vocabulary

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

#297

Post by ternaryoperator »

the_gipsy wrote: post #292
ternaryoperator wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. In Mexico, it's written México and pronounced Méjico. So that is definitely an exception to the pronunciation of x as a ks sound. The spelling rule you imply is not correct either: the same Spanish speakers who write Texas for the state, write Tejano for the Latin music originating there--both of those spellings being the most widespread in both Texas and Mexico.

So I dug this up a bit, because I'm accustomed to the form "Méjico" in Spain. You are right that México is written with an X but pronounced with a jota. However it has a special status of topónimo (place name), which sometimes don't have a translation (thank god). E.g. "Washington" is not pronounced with a sharp S, it's just pronounced as in the original language. Or Wyoming is pronounced as "uaióming", not "bioming"…

Yup, it's historical--like almost everything in languages ;-)

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

#298

Post by gerdesj »

JPLeRouzic wrote: post #196
gerdesj wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Wikipedia says [0] "However, the terms "Franks" and "Frankish" were actually applied to all Western Europeans during the late Byzantine Period." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Lingua_Franca#Hi...

You might as well call me English too (I live in Wessex after all)!

What WP seems to have forgotten to mention is who actually used those terms. I'm prepared to be shot down but I doubt there was a properly defined concept of "Western European" between say 300 to 1500 in the right hand side bit of what we now call Europe.

What you are on about is the left and right Roman Empires (my terms) and how they talked about each other.

The left lot is now nominally modern Germany and France and much besides, what was called the Holy Roman Empire. The right lot is the Byzantine Empire.

Now, your Franks were part of the left lot. The Franks were a tribal identity, cf Saxon, Angle, etc. The Franks is where la belle France gets its name (cf Frankreich, and Französisch - German names for France and French.)

I am English (by assertion and routine) but my family name says I am descended from Germans on the male line (Brits being patrilineal.) As it turns out 300 odd years ago from a Hanoverian merchant seaman and (very) loosely on my matrilineal line 500 odd years ago I have a ancestor from Padstow in Cornwall. I also have inroads from all of the home nations (England, Ireland (both), Scotland and Wales). There are also quite a few other inputs to my blood line from much further abroad.

One of my uncles is quite fastidious in his research and has many thousands of people in the DB.

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

#299

Post by gerdesj »

dopidopHN wrote: post #225
gerdesj wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

We use kg most of the time for weight unless lbs and oz work better.

The m is very handy and we spell it correctly hereabouts - metre (unlike your mates in the US) but when subdivided, the cm is 2.54 too small (1 inch is 2.54 cm)

Need I go on ... 8)

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

#300

Post by brigandish »

tim333 wrote: post #112
lordnacho wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In English why do you need to say “exacerbate” when you can say “make worse”? Or “defenestrate” when you mean “toss out the window”? This is the thing about English. Everyone can learn intermediate English, but there's a long tail of vocabulary that comes from other languages. Often you find there's an English word, a French work, and a Latin word for something. You'll then discover that there's some subtlety of me…

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…

It's not an uncommon word, even in speech. I did a quick check and the Times, Telegraph and Guardian all have plenty of examples of its use, too, across different sections of the paper. Even the Daily Mirror had 4 entries.

The Sun, however, came up blank.

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