Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Unsuitability of English (2015)

chronicle.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 319 posts

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#231

Post by mattlutze »

wirrbel wrote: post #215
crazygringo wrote: post #136

Yes, English has irregular spelling. And phrasal verbs, the whole "to/-ing" thing[1], and "th" is hard for some people to pronounce. On the other hand, it doesn't have nouns that need to be remembered as masculine or feminine. Or a hundred+ unique regular verb conjugation endings. There are no subjunctive tenses (with one tiny exception). There are no tones. I could go on... Every language has its annoyances. And hon…

At school, kids would generally like English classes, and not like French classes not so much (both foreign languages). I learned both and I think I can draw from experience in what is easy and what is difficult with the both of them (french nowadays with lesser success, but both languages of diplomacy and striving to be world languages). To us (germans) learning english was easier in the beginning. Not necessarily b…

Dictionary size is perhaps a poor metric for comparison. An interesting breakdown [1] discusses many different dimensions of language complexities.

A few interesting points:

- 33 unique English words make up 50% of written texts, an d3,000 unique English words make up 95% of English texts. If the notion that 600 French words make up 90% of French texts, does that make French easier or harder than English in this regard (having to know more words, or having to interpret more definitions from context)?

- If you come from a language with gendered nouns, is learning a geographically close language with gendered nouns easier than learning one without gender-specific articles? How does the reverse hold?

- How does regional dialect factor in the language learning? Idioms change in American English from region to region but most words and grammars stay the same. Can the same be said of French, or German? I can drive 100km in Germany and have to say a simple sentence like "I would like apple wine" three very different ways (with, from sight different words) to sound fluent.

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#232

Post by logicrook »

Juliate wrote: post #229
wirrbel wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At school, kids would generally like English classes, and not like French classes not so much (both foreign languages). I learned both and I think I can draw from experience in what is easy and what is difficult with the both of them (french nowadays with lesser success, but both languages of diplomacy and striving to be world languages). To us (germans) learning english was easier in the beginning. Not necessarily b…

> At the same level, learning French, one can perfect one's pronunciation (to the one, official pronunciation) There's no "one, official pronunciation" in French. Far from it. There are several ones, within France, and across French-speaking countries.

What? Do you have any example? I'm not sure I could come up with ten words that are pronounced differently by different kind of French.

'Vingt' and 'moins' are such examples, because their orthographies are so nonsensical that some consider letters to be pronounced and not some others (a bit like 'often' in English).

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#233

Post by danieltillett »

_delirium wrote: post #210
danieltillett wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Often it is the native speakers that are the worst problem in cases like this. We tend to fall into “higher” English and use uncommon words or idioms. I have been in many situations where the non-native speakers talk to each other with no problem, but they get lost with my contribution.

There's also the flipside of that: rather than "higher" English, native speakers are also more likely to use fairly "sloppy" English, especially with pronunciation. When not thinking about it and speaking quickly, native English speakers, or at least American English speakers, tend to elide or merge syllables, which second-language speakers often find challenging to understand. I've more than once found that the reas…

Yes this is true - I guess I am just expressing my personal experience where I forget I am speaking to non-native speakers and use language they are unfamiliar with.

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#234

Post by data_hope »

mattlutze wrote: post #231
wirrbel wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At school, kids would generally like English classes, and not like French classes not so much (both foreign languages). I learned both and I think I can draw from experience in what is easy and what is difficult with the both of them (french nowadays with lesser success, but both languages of diplomacy and striving to be world languages). To us (germans) learning english was easier in the beginning. Not necessarily b…

Dictionary size is perhaps a poor metric for comparison. An interesting breakdown [1] discusses many different dimensions of language complexities. A few interesting points: - 33 unique English words make up 50% of written texts, an d3,000 unique English words make up 95% of English texts. If the notion that 600 French words make up 90% of French texts, does that make French easier or harder than English in this rega…

from my experience, gramatical gender is always more difficult than no gener, even when you have a native tongue that employs a grammatical gender. In romance langauges, the moon is feminine ("la lune"), in german it is masculine ("der mond"), so for both french and german speakers learning english ("a moon") should be easier, because it does not require learning an additional bit or two of information.

I would argue that dictionary size does not matter for basic language skills, but becomes more important the closer you get to native proficiency.

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#235

Post by wirrbel »

majewsky wrote: post #223
wirrbel wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At school, kids would generally like English classes, and not like French classes not so much (both foreign languages). I learned both and I think I can draw from experience in what is easy and what is difficult with the both of them (french nowadays with lesser success, but both languages of diplomacy and striving to be world languages). To us (germans) learning english was easier in the beginning. Not necessarily b…

> whereas after ~3 years you had completed the whole french language I'm also German and had French in upper school for five years, and that was certainly not true for me. In fact, I've yet to encounter a language that you can "complete" within three years of a normal school curriculum. (I'm not talking about living abroad or specialized language learning curriculums, where you can get proficient in well less than th…

Yeah that point might have been a bit exuberant. Nevertheless, after 3-4 years I think you have covered most grammar topics, maybe excluding passe simple and subjonctive. In English you'll continue to learn new concepts such as "contact clauses" etc

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#237

Post by wirrbel »

Juliate wrote: post #229
wirrbel wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At school, kids would generally like English classes, and not like French classes not so much (both foreign languages). I learned both and I think I can draw from experience in what is easy and what is difficult with the both of them (french nowadays with lesser success, but both languages of diplomacy and striving to be world languages). To us (germans) learning english was easier in the beginning. Not necessarily b…

> At the same level, learning French, one can perfect one's pronunciation (to the one, official pronunciation) There's no "one, official pronunciation" in French. Far from it. There are several ones, within France, and across French-speaking countries.

The parisian dialect is to my knowledge the reference dialect that you can focus on, and it is the prestigious dialect. The situation is different in English where the situation is not clear at all. That however was not the point I was trying to make, rather, I wanted to point out that the volume of the language is more compact, so you reach the point earlier where you "polish" your skills.

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#238

Post by majewsky »

ktRolster wrote: post #202
jeena wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it super difficult to find the tools to do that. There are no courses for it no books, and people don't tell you that you're pronouncing something wrong because they think it would be unpolite. I'd love to hear some tips on how to work on improving my accent. I moved to Sweden 10 years ago and Swedish is my 4th language.

The first tip is to learn to listen to yourself. If someone ever corrects you, that is gold. 1) Focus on the vowels. They will help you get the resonance right (the resonance is how you hold the muscles in your mouth, so the sound seems to come from the back of your throat like in Russian or the front of your mouth like in Korean) 2) Focus on the rhythm of the language. I'm sure you know what I mean here. 3) Focus on…

One thing that helped me avoid a German accent while speaking English, was to imitate a heavy German accent and observe what was really the essence of it, then just avoiding these "mistakes".

For example, here are the things that make up most of the German accent of English:

- pronouncing "th" as "s" (Germans apparently don't know how to put one's tongue tip on the upper teeth)

- pronouncing "w" as "v" (like the German "w") instead of as "u"

- sharper pronounciation of initial vowels (i.e. when a word starts with a vowel) and "h"

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#239

Post by logicrook »

wirrbel wrote: post #237
Juliate wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the same level, learning French, one can perfect one's pronunciation (to the one, official pronunciation) There's no "one, official pronunciation" in French. Far from it. There are several ones, within France, and across French-speaking countries.

The parisian dialect is to my knowledge the reference dialect that you can focus on, and it is the prestigious dialect. The situation is different in English where the situation is not clear at all. That however was not the point I was trying to make, rather, I wanted to point out that the volume of the language is more compact, so you reach the point earlier where you "polish" your skills.

How and where do you learn this dialect? How does it differ from 'generic French'?

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#240

Post by wirrbel »

logicrook wrote: post #239
wirrbel wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parisian dialect is to my knowledge the reference dialect that you can focus on, and it is the prestigious dialect. The situation is different in English where the situation is not clear at all. That however was not the point I was trying to make, rather, I wanted to point out that the volume of the language is more compact, so you reach the point earlier where you "polish" your skills.

How and where do you learn this dialect? How does it differ from 'generic French'?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_phonology
Post reply on HN