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Weird English

nationalreview.com

71–80 of 110 posts

Re: Weird English

#71

I'm amazed at how many different words UK and USA English have for the same thing. Even though I started watching UK tv shows on PBS in the 80s, I started watching Taskmaster on youtube and I hear unfamiliar words for things all the time. The one from last night was "pedal bin." Before they showed what it was I was imagining some kind of bicycle with a trash can on it but it was a trash can whose lid opens when you s…

Apparently it's usually "step trash can". I have to credit the Brits once again for their wordsmithery, as pedal bin is substantially more mellifluous imo. "Bin it" is also a lot more efficient than "throw it out" and less harsh than "trash it." (Although we do also use "toss it", that seems less common.)

Re: Weird English

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sympathise with the view (non-native English speaker from Europe). While it's true English has a ton of inconsistencies, complications etc. they tend to happen at a slightly higher level I think. There is a reasonably big subset of English that is quite easy. French and German, not to mention Polish, are much harder to learn IMO, since the difficulties are up-front. Some examples: - French conjugation of verbs is a…

> double numbers, in addition to singular and plural (one hen, two hens, ten hens will be "[one] kura", "[two] kury", "[ten] kur") Actually Polish does not have dual number, just singular and plural. What you are refering to is just different noun case - use plural genitive when numeral ends in 5,6,7,8,9 or multiple of 10.

>...different noun case - use plural genitive when numeral ends in 5,6,7,8,9 or multiple of 10.

Exactly. gettext PO-file translation comes to mind, the plural form rules (e.g. https://php-gettext.github.io/Languages/ )

Re: Weird English

#73
post #12

English is a beautiful slow motion car crash of multiple languages & influences and the result is a great language but I do pity anyone trying to learn it. When I was having difficulty learning the rules & oddities of another language, it really helped me to look back at English and remember that there are so many oddities, inconsistencies and variances, that most other European languages are easy to master in compar…

I sympathise with the view (non-native English speaker from Europe). While it's true English has a ton of inconsistencies, complications etc. they tend to happen at a slightly higher level I think. There is a reasonably big subset of English that is quite easy. French and German, not to mention Polish, are much harder to learn IMO, since the difficulties are up-front. Some examples: - French conjugation of verbs is a…

> - French conjugation of verbs is a whole world of its own

> - Nouns are non-gendered in English, and gendered in most European languages. Yes, a ship is a she, and referring to people or animals you use he/she etc. but in Polish and French, every word has a hidden, often undeducible gender you just have to know. Can't remember if German has rules for noun gender.

French conjugation isn't as bad as its reputation suggests. Gender's what dissuaded me from trying to keep up with it, after getting pretty damn good in four fairly-rigorous semesters of French study in college. I never got a feel for guessing gender, because there are lots of rules and way too many exceptions to them. For that and other reasons it ends up being hard to drill French nouns out of context—and actually, drilling adjectives out of context isn't all that useful either, for similar reasons. You kinda have to study the whole thing at once to really internalize all the transformations words undergo due to gender, so using them correctly becomes quick & natural. So much for simple Anki decks and reclaiming otherwise-lost time to work on vocab.

Spanish is so much easier. I barely paid attention for a couple semesters of very half-assed Spanish instruction in high school, but I bet I could correctly guess noun gender in Spanish at a much higher rate than I could French nouns, which language I studied both more recently and probably got ~100x as good at as I ever was with Spanish.

Re: Weird English

#74
My biggest English language peeve of the moment is the rise in prevalence of "have a nice rest of your day", which appears to be a mashup of "have a nice day" and "enjoy the rest of your day". No matter how much I hear it, it sounds disfluent due to the mismatched particle ("a rest of"). What seems like it started as an honest flub has taken root and is now used intentionally and extensively, especially by grocery checkers.

(I argue this rant is on-topic because it's a "weird", i.e. grammatically inconsistent, turn of phrase.

Re: Weird English

#76
post #6

I highly recommend McWhorter's Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue .

Also highly recommended, John McWhorter's podcast, Lexicon Valley. Not only English, but also dives into other languages and why they are so. Edit: add older episode archives at Slate,

https://www.booksmartstudios.org/s/lexicon-valley (current)

https://slate.com/podcasts/lexicon-valley (archive)

Re: Weird English

#77
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do those future forms really matter? You could just use will or going to in all cases and nobody would know you aren't a native speaker: * The sun will rise at 6.30 tomorrow * We will buy a new car next month * I will meet my mother at the airport tomorrow * The train will depart in 10 minutes All perfectly fine.

What really matters is that there isn't a single simple "Cartesian" future tense with only {simple, perfect, continuous} forms. Here's an example where "will" cannot be substituted with "going to". "If you sit down then the movie will start." "If you sit down then the movie is going to start." In the earlier list, that's "will" because it's a prediction or statement of fact.

True, but also seems like a pretty minor mistake? I feel that I've heard worse offenses from native English speakers. Maybe I feel exceptionally tolerant having lived a year in eastern Kentucky.

Also, "The movie will start when you sit down" is probably better form all 'round.

Re: Weird English

#78
Would like to “fix” the issue with the first few numbers after 10. They make it much harder to teach a young child the concept of base ten counting. Would be much easier if we would replace “ten” by “teny” then “eleven” -> “teny-one” etc.

Re: Weird English

#79
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every person I’ve talked to who’s learned English as a second language told me it was pretty easy. There’s lots of weird shit to learn to truly master it, but to learn enough to speak conversationally is easy, I’ve been told. When I was in Costa Rica learning Spanish, the folks there pitied me since they thought learning Spanish would be difficult. Funnily enough, in contrast I thought it wasn’t so hard: having clear…

Oddly enough, I actually learned more about the mechanics of English through learning Spanish than I did through high school English class. The English curriculum was geared towards reading literature and summarizing the morals and themes rather than learning the rules of English language. Having to understand the concept of grammatical tense through conjugating verbs in Spanish made me actually think about things li…

I've always thought that "English" class was a misnomer.

There are really two different pedagogical goals:

- Learn to read and write accurately and clearly in the English language (what would, in Spain, Germany or China also be "English Class")

- Practice a REPL regarding things that other people have written (in the context of a larger corpus of things that people have written), by happenstance in English because that's what the students are most familiar with[0]. This could better be called "Language Arts" because presumably they do similar things in Germany, Spain and China but they (also presumably) don't call it "English Class".

[0] I had an angry moment in high school (among many) when I found out that my English class would be spending an entire year reading translated works.

Re: Weird English

#80
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every person I’ve talked to who’s learned English as a second language told me it was pretty easy. There’s lots of weird shit to learn to truly master it, but to learn enough to speak conversationally is easy, I’ve been told. When I was in Costa Rica learning Spanish, the folks there pitied me since they thought learning Spanish would be difficult. Funnily enough, in contrast I thought it wasn’t so hard: having clear…

Oddly enough, I actually learned more about the mechanics of English through learning Spanish than I did through high school English class. The English curriculum was geared towards reading literature and summarizing the morals and themes rather than learning the rules of English language. Having to understand the concept of grammatical tense through conjugating verbs in Spanish made me actually think about things li…

> The English curriculum was geared towards reading literature and summarizing the morals and themes rather than learning the rules of English language.

English class is usually a bunch of things. There's a reason they've moved away from just calling it "English", now. Comprehension is a huge part of literacy, yet most adults are pretty bad at it despite all the time schools spend trying to teach it to them.

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