81–90 of 275 posts
If you are interested to know more, take a look at the way native speakers of other languages utter "a" and "o" and their variations. Fascinating, to say the least.
I learned about another vowel shift yesterday: the (US) "Northern Cities Vowel Shift" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inland_Northern_American_Engli...
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English is a great lingua franca IMO because of its inherent decentralization and willingness to accept new words. There is no academy regulating its use, as is the case with French and Spanish.
In the case of Spanish, I can't speak for French, having an academy (the RAE in this case) regulating the language sounds like a problem on paper, but really isn't a problem in practice. The RAE accepts Americanisms and treats American Spanish just as it would European Spanish (referring to the continent(s), not the country) and encourages lingusitic diversity. Anglicisms are only discouraged when an acceptable Spani…
If anyone finds this subject interesting, I recommend The History of English Podcast: https://historyofenglishpodcast.com .
Here's what it'd look like (taken from Reddit): "The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English…
I've half-jokingly, proposed a similar change to Spanish, basically: z, c (as in "ce", "ci"): use "s" (non european spanish speakers do not distinguish these sounds anyway) v: always use "b" c (as in "ca", "co", "cu"), q(u) (as in "que", "quiso"): replaced with "k" w: why do we have this letter?! use "u" y (as vowel): use "i" (basically only used as "and" in Spanish) y (as consonant): stays like it is now (important…
As far as I know, when properly pronounced, the V in Villa doesn't sound the same as the B in Billete.
Sure, sometimes they blend into each other, but not always.
Here's what it'd look like (taken from Reddit): "The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English…
(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26809658.)
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I've half-jokingly, proposed a similar change to Spanish, basically: z, c (as in "ce", "ci"): use "s" (non european spanish speakers do not distinguish these sounds anyway) v: always use "b" c (as in "ca", "co", "cu"), q(u) (as in "que", "quiso"): replaced with "k" w: why do we have this letter?! use "u" y (as vowel): use "i" (basically only used as "and" in Spanish) y (as consonant): stays like it is now (important…
I would prefer B and V to keep being disctint letters. As far as I know, when properly pronounced, the V in Villa doesn't sound the same as the B in Billete. Sure, sometimes they blend into each other, but not always.
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I've half-jokingly, proposed a similar change to Spanish, basically: z, c (as in "ce", "ci"): use "s" (non european spanish speakers do not distinguish these sounds anyway) v: always use "b" c (as in "ca", "co", "cu"), q(u) (as in "que", "quiso"): replaced with "k" w: why do we have this letter?! use "u" y (as vowel): use "i" (basically only used as "and" in Spanish) y (as consonant): stays like it is now (important…
I would prefer B and V to keep being disctint letters. As far as I know, when properly pronounced, the V in Villa doesn't sound the same as the B in Billete. Sure, sometimes they blend into each other, but not always.
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> especially its very large vocabulary Vocabulary isn't a problem IMHO. The fact that I have to learn each word twice (how to write it and how to say it) - is. I was learning German for 3 years at school. After the first month I had no problems with pronunciation. Now after almost 2 decades of not using it I can still pronounce any German word I see. I've been learning English since I was 10 or so. I'm 36 now. I stil…
> I still have many English words I know (and use correctly in writing) that I'm not sure how to pronounce. Do you mind sharing some examples? As a native English speaker, I'm so curious! Do you think that if you heard them without seeing the word you'd realize what the written form was? Or might there be words where you know the written form and the spoken form and don't realize it's the same word?
There are quite a few others that tripped me up over the years like "cleanliness".
In general, "Chaos" aka "Dearest creature in creation" shows this problem (I would still struggle to read it even if I know every word there): https://pages.hep.wisc.edu/~jnb/charivarius.html
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I don't know John McWhorter, but is this the "second languages are hard" argument? I tend to get annoyed when people compare the relative difficulty of learning a language they spoke 16 365 18 hours vs ... 18 hours.
McWhorter is a linguist (as well as a political commentator). His argument isn't that English is easier because people already speak it natively. Instead, English lost a lot of its complexity (especially around suffixes) during the Viking invasions when it was taken up by adult speakers. This doesn't mean that learning the language is easy--no language really is. And English has some things that make it harder to mas…
Having spoken English for almost 30 years by now, I am still not sure if "X has died" or "X died" is correct, or in which context.
But the other direction would be worse. Languages like Czech, with its 20+ classes of declension, must be a true nightmare for any English native speaker to learn.