I'm one of the few lucky/unlucky people who only need to know English in this world. Most people are not English and therefore had to learn it. Therefore I feel inferior when I meet international people and say "I only speak English"
Anyway what do second language English speakers think of English? I know no. Europeans will find the past tense, present tense, past participle etc confusing, but hey here's what I think: >PROS * Only need to know 26 letters * No accents * No genders * Easy tense adjustment (I go, she went, they had went) * Can be rearranged and still make sense (Yesterday, I went to the market means the same as I went to the market yesterday)
>CONS * No accents means it can be hard to pronounce some words (rough, tough, plough, through, though) * Retarded spelling of some words (sword, island, manoeuvre) * Not really that good for translating other languages (like Malay, Tagalog and creole all have no accents so we don't know what they *sound* like)
Why did they dress as italians if they dont know italian?
Jonathan Adams
>Easy tense adjustment English tenses are an absolute clusterfuck. I mean 16 tenses, are you serious? You only need three tenses for successful communication. Also, English sounds robotic and lifeless. No, it's not because I'm not a native speaker. All the other languages sound lovely and poetic (Czech, Chinese, Italian, German, Arabic) while English is just a soulless mean for an exchange of information.
Alexander Thomas
Too late Turk. Why don't you write using Arabic letters then?
Juan Russell
Am I the only one who get a bit lost when reading something describing a set of rules (like very technical stuff)?
Gavin Jenkins
I don't know French is very fuckey with the whole tense adjustment.
t. did french in high school
Gabriel Phillips
> 26 letters Plus uppercase, makes about 36 distinct forms
> no accents There is technically one: the dot on 'i'.
> no genders There is animate gender.
> English can be rearranged Within an arbitrary amount > be English arranged can doesn't make sense
> retarded spelling This is usually due to *pronunciation*, not spelling: 'sword' is the original Germanic word, our pronunciation of it has changed; 'island' is retarded, the original word is 'isle', with 'land' added; 'manoeuvre' is French, blame them, from the Latin 'manus opus', 'hand work'.
Cooper Brown
As an Icelander its really easy to see why English has retarded pronunciation/spelling rules. 99% of the time its because the English were trying to cram a word from a foreign language that doesn't obey English language rules.
Elijah Sanchez
>lovely and poetic >Czech, Chinese, Italian, German, Arabic lel chinese and german are the most plain and boring sounding languages ever. italian sounds too.. specific i don't know, and probably the most overrated language ever (along with fr*nch). arabic, hebrew and brazillian portuguese all sound very pleasant to me. but english especially the british version of course is still the best imho. maybe it's just because english is the only foreign language i understand though so i am being biased
Ryan Phillips
Ok I will agree. English is basically the rape baby of German and French with a little bit of Greek and Latin KEKED into it. But that's what makes it so easy. It just nit picks from other languages and discarded all that other european language autism like genders
John Johnson
>> no genders >There is animate gender. No
Andrew Brooks
There are only ever three tenses in every Indo-European language out there. You're confusing 'aspect' with 'tense'.
Thomas Carter
I see it as simplified German.
Austin Baker
> He is a man. > She is a girl. > It is a table. There, see.
Charles Powell
>English sounds robotic and lifeless. >says Russian
Jack Phillips
english isnt bad, but turkish is better.
Ian Lopez
Also would like to add that I think that English sounds very lazy, like you guys can't even be bothered to fully pronounce things and just slur.
Colton Ramirez
Englsh was a Germanic language and got KEKED by French afyer the Norman invasion. That's why we have words like table, message, beef, damage etc. Then the classical revivalists started to input Latin and Greek words like atom, democracy, etc and the result is a clusterfuck of French, German, Latin and Greek.
Angel Ward
I like it because its easy for the most time and i even like talking in english. For whatever reason my voice just comes out with a lower tone than when i speak in portuguese.
Hudson Thomas
The point is that we beat those foreign words into submission, and went on to successfully market our language anyway.
Nathaniel Brooks
A language shouldn't exist English unfairly took over Esperanto's rightful position and imperialists forced world to speak their language
Cameron Cruz
Pretty simple, yet the most useful language. What else can be said? Articles and tenses were a bit complicated at first, but it comes naturally with some practice.
Carter Rogers
I don't know if I should be glad or insulted....
Lucas Price
Before about 1750
> thou > thee > thee > ye > ye > you > you
Jace Reyes
That's the problem. Growing I didn't care about the tenses I just kept asking myself "does what I'm saying sound retarded?" If I were to analyse that I'm thinking in the present tense worrying if what I say will sound retarded (ie past tense). It's actually quite complicated how the time affects our sentences
Nicholas Murphy
Esperanto was never going to take off. Wasn't ever the official language of any country, how did they expect people to ever want to learn that shit.
Mason Moore
by using it
Cameron Rivera
Did you just assume that table's gender? APOLOGIZE shitlord
Zachary Murphy
Make esperanto great again Watch the movie. It's pretty great. This is somewhat true although the British are the worst at this because they want to sound French. They tease American accents but at least when they say "car" there's an R sound in it
Gabriel Baker
I think the old anglo saxon language was quite close to icelandic
Joseph Reyes
>English Monkey level. Ok for buy-sell and it over
Julian Wood
I was in Papua New Guinea 2 weeks ago. Heard gunshots and police pulled us over and asked for K20 to buy some kai. Good times
Connor Parker
working there?
I was in Moresby myself for a year. Absolute fucking meme of a country
Josiah Johnson
fucking language in which spelling doesn't regularly work with pronunciation. whoever started this shit? my limit is almost coming.
Eli Mitchell
>whoever started this shit the fr*nch
Jacob Russell
The gateway to vidya, movies, tv shows and pretty much any form of entertainment 10/10 would "learn" again
Jaxson Jones
Holiday. It's pretty meme tier but I grew up there so it was pretty dumb to go out at night knowing there will be police rooadblocks and ask whitey for handouts. Where I was staying was very close to Sir John Guise Stadium and some Australian Christian band was playing but they cancelled because it got too rowdy. That's when I heard the gunshots
Liam Edwards
so you're white but from PNG? How does that work, did you have Australian parents that lived there when it was our territory?
Jason Thompson
I'd rather deal with autistic spelling than memorising 2100 kanji, needing to know when to use hirigana or katakana and the different sounds for the kanji
The only reason my parents are there and why I was born there was because of $$$. Like you worked there for a year they've been there since 1989. You can imagine how hard it is to convince people to live there but they do so they make $$$$$. I came back to NZ to complete my education since there are no good schools there. Even though I hate the country, It's where all my childhood memories are and it sounds weird but I wouldn't mind to live there again if I got a job there
Xavier Evans
That's just fucking weird hearing modern English words mixed in with the rest
Nice sounding language though
Carter Long
I think it's a great language. I like almost every aspect of it although pronunciation can be specially difficult for a Spanish speaker.
Anthony Powell
>What do non English speaking people think about English? Strange question because they can't answer you.
Cameron Campbell
I think it's the most distorted European language because it takes from every language. Ketchup is Chinese, Taboo is Fijian, Shampoo, Jungle, Nirvana is Hindi and not to mention the bulk of formal words in english like Government, Thesis, Bureaucracy, Jurisdiction, Autonomy, Mathematics etc are all foreign loan words from Latin, French and Greek. All the "ugly" words are Germanic like bed, cow, stool, house, shelf, sky etc
Seriously? Don't mean to sound hateful, but Japanese language speakers don't have any moral right to say anything about other's pronunciation:
今 can be read as "ima, kon, kin" 日 can be read as "hi, bi, ka, nichi, jitsu" So how do you read 今日 then? Wrong, it's "kyō". And that is not a single nitpicked exception by far. Even without considering such exceptions - how the fuck is one supposed to know what reading to use in what particular word?
>needing to know when to use hiragana or katakana Actually easy >different sounds for the kanji Actually hellishly difficult and borderline useless. You'd be better off just memorizing the spelling and pronunciation of each word imho
Kevin Collins
nice and simple unlike finnish like i still don't know more than the basics of finnish grammar despite being a native speaker
Ayden James
There are too many instances that the pronunciation of a word don't make sense.
Dutch is much better in this regard
Owen Roberts
Grammar is something you use as a native speaker, rather than know.
Andrew Ward
It sounds like the tongue is being nailed to the lower jaw.
I like English for its simplicity but hate for the lack of one-to-one correspondence between spelling and pronounciation. Kinda dislike articles. I just dont understand why you need them and use them almost randomly.
Ayden Peterson
Only sub-humans don't speak atleast proficient english.
Evan Hall
Sounds like shit and unintelligible
>Dot on the i is an accent >English has inanimate gender >Spelling doesn't match pronunciation therefore the pronunciation is wrong
British linguists everyone
Isaac Wood
Yeah, the a's and the's is something we don't have in Russian language in any way, shape or form. Nothing even remotely close. Might be a good rule of thumb: you use "a" when you want to say "any", and "the" when you want to say "that" or "that (particular) one". Like they're almost shortened substitutes for those words.
Jose Diaz
English is the most efficient language in the world, verbally and written.
If you can't understand English just kys tbqh.
Liam Allen
I like how the slave worships the language of his lords.
Jack Johnson
Foreigners struggle with English because their own language is literal barbarian caveman dribble. "Rock take you I head smash" vs "I will smash your skull in with this boulder" English stole and evolved from a dozen other languages within the last 1000 years. It should be taught as the official global langauge of the world.
Christopher Gutierrez
Is this what hearing English is like for 3rd worlders? it's so smooth.
Cameron White
Maybe, but how would you know it?
Hunter Sanchez
>English sounds robotic and lifeless Huh. Weird take. I don't think you can say something like that about language itself but I'm sure Americans and the English are generally more expressive in their speech than Russians. It's not like it's always a good think. Having to listen to two Americans talk near you through whole bus ride can be draining as fuck.
Liam Cruz
>* No accents means it can be hard to pronounce some words (rough, tough, plough, through, though)
> Dot on the i is an accent The dot on the 'i' is what he would call an 'accent', though it's proper name is a 'diacritical mark'. The Australian would be confused by that though.
> English has inanimate gender Learn to read; I never said that. I said it has *animate* gender.
> Spelling doesn't match pronunciation therefore the pronunciation is wrong I never said that either. The pronunciation is merely *different* from what has been encapsulated in the spelling. Again, learn to read.
The words 'a' and 'an' come from the original word for 'one', so they literally mean 'one thing', and are used when you wish to specify one indefinite instance of a particular thing ('one of them, I don't care which'), e.g.
> Give me an apple > Give me one apple (I don't care which apple)
> I shall go on a journey > I shall go on a single journey (it does not matter which one)
The word 'the' did, indeed, originally come from an Old English word for 'that', and it can be used interchangeably with it. 'The' is used when you wish to specify something which has been (previously in the conversation, or in some other way) pointed out before, and which all persons in the conversation know.
> Give me the apple > Give me that apple or > Give me the apple we were just talking about, or the apple we all know we're talking about
> I shall go on the journey > I shall go on that journey or > I shall go on the journey which we all know about
The articles are pretty neat, and a very subtle way to narrow or broaden the conversation. I can't imagine not having them: languages without them sound babyish.
> Give me apple > I shall go on journey
Also English, unlike French, never uses 'the' for abstract nouns or countries.
> I love reading (the act of reading) > J'aime la lecture.
> I love France. > J'aime la France.
Camden Wood
English has weird rules that has a lot exceptions to those weird rules with weird rules between the burger and queen versions.
Kayden Gutierrez
English must sound good to many people given how popular both our country's music is around the world. I mean yeah talking and singing is different, but just look at Dutch and how awful that still sounds when singing lmao.
Kayden Watson
English spelling is absolutely fucked beyond recovery. The orthography is defective, a clusterfuck of phonetic, historic, and arbitrary conventions, and among the deepest Latin-based orthographies in the world.
The spoken language varies widely, it ranges from okay to pretty good in my book.
Grammar is easy to understand, even though tons of people still manage to fuck it up.
The amount of loanwords actually has English cover a middle ground between Germanic and Romance languages in terms of vocabulary, and is thus a good international means of communication for Western Europe and the Americas.
One major downside is that many native English speakers don't bother learning any foreign language and are thus frighteningly uneducated about foreign languages and cultures.
Alexander Carter
not a language that counts if someone asks how many languages do you speak. just necessary to know and it's treated like there's nothing special about having it as a second language.
Dylan Stewart
>The articles are pretty neat, and a very subtle way to narrow or broaden the conversation.
No, they're completely useless. You said yourself you can use one and that to replace them. Simple languages like japanese are the best ones.
Parker Rivera
>coming from a literal barbarian whose language has just 1 (one!) inflected grammatical case
Aiden Turner
>native English speakers don't bother learning any foreign language I think they learn some second language at school. Am i wrong?
William Martin
Yeah. I get why burgers don't learn any other languages. I know it's cool and all and there might be a bunch of great books to reads and movies to watch but that's peanuts compared to english. I used to want to learn japanese back when I was going through a bit of a weeb phase in high school but since I've pretty much stopped watching anime I don't see the point.
Hunter Lopez
> even Icelandic has separate letters for ð and þ
Gavin Barnes
> The orthography is defective, a clusterfuck of phonetic, historic, and arbitrary conventions
This is due firstly to Britain's (and later a good portion of the world) almost unique density of accents and dialects: there are so many, and they vary so wildly, that any attempt to have a one-to-one correspondence between orthography and pronunciation would mean that 99% of the population would still be in the position of not pronouncing the words as they are spelt. For example, my regional way of saying 'I' is 'a', 'our' is 'we', 'to' is 't'', and 'house' is 'hoos'.
> I went to our house > a went t'we hoos
Any attempt to rationalise spelling to South-Eastern England, would still mean that the spellings would have zero relevance to *my* way of speaking.
Secondly, spellings were set in stone, so to speak, by the industrialisation of printing, something which happened before the Great Vowel Shift, and so spellings now lag behind actual pronunciation.
English spelling is now almost logographic: the spelling of the word is merely a representation of the object or idea, and not a way of actually saying the word. And so any new learner would be best served trying to remember this, and not bring with them any notion of one-to-one correspondence.
Dylan Lopez
We learn Spanish ( some states also require french), ignore the German shitposter.
Owen Parker
You learnt English for shitposting.
Chase Morgan
> You said yourself you can use one and that to replace them. One *can* replace them, but that doesn't mean that 'a' and 'one', and 'the' and 'that' have the exact same meaning.
'One' is a number of things, whereas 'a', as I said, is marker of something indefinite, not just a number of things.
Similarly, 'the' is a marker of something definite, whereas 'that' is a demonstrative (pointing of where something is in space or time).
English is superior in this regard to languages without articles as this subtle difference in meanings can be used, and is used regularly.
All British children should learn French, Spanish, or German at school, although not for very long (5-7 years for French, at most 3 for Spanish or German). Some lucky children can also learn Latin and Ancient Greek.
(I'm a teacher, though not of languages.)
The most difficult thing for the children to understand is *why* learn languages: it's easier for foreign children as there is the understanding that one *must* learn English in order to do well in life. But for British children, there is no such motivation.
> Why learn French/German/Spanish? > So you can have a holiday in France/Germany/Spain > wow, it's fucking nothing.
Charles Brooks
There are several possible solutions to this problem. In Germany, a superregional written language developed as a compromise of several High German dialects. Then the urban populations of the north learned it, and the Hanoverian variant of reading-pronunciation received the highest prestige, so it was set as a standard. The French standard language is based on the Paris dialect and heavily regulated by a central language institute. The situation is similar for many other national languages. You can also come up with a script that depicts phonemes of all major dialects. If a word is pronounced differently, you just write it differently. If a person understands the spoken word, they will also understand the spelling. A middle way would be the phonemic approach, which attempts to group phonemes (meaning-changing sound units) across several dialects. You find something like this in many English dictionaries. I think it's needless to say that the concept of an alphabet script changing into a logographic system is incredibly flawed and inefficient. Yeah but how seriously do you take it`
Benjamin Parker
PS. Asking a British child to learn a foreign language is just like asking any one of you to learn Sanskrit.
The question would simply be > why? it's useless it simply has zero benefit for their lives
Jaxson Carter
Unless you live in the beaner belt learning Spanish is pointless.
Same with french, if you're not bordering Eastern Canada literally why learn it.
Wyatt King
Some of these cunts think they're smart learning English when it's literally everywhere around them making it stupidly easy. Most of them their English capacity is probably on par with that of a 12 year old yet they think they're some kind of English scholars because of it.
Luke Stewart
They are nice suggestions, but far too prescriptive. The beauty of English is its elasticity and ability to invent new words or to absorb foreign ones.
Having a 'Standard English' with an 'English Academy' would be a conservative force to prevent this inventiveness. And where would this 'Academy' be? London? New York? Delhi? Why should one type of 'English' rule the others?
Adding new graphemes to the alphabet would now be almost impossible: too much technology is built on the ASCII codepoints.
And I can't see Mr Pajeet Singh in Delhi wanting to spend the time deciphering my dialect written in strange graphemes; and nor do I want to decipher other dialects' words. Having a conventionally accepted spelling (well, two International and American) of English means is does not matter how I or Mr Pajeet pronouns words: there is just one way to write them, and that's sufficient.
Jordan Turner
Almost Japanese can get good life without using English. That the reason that Japanese cannot speak English well.
Hudson Reed
Isn't Oxford the unofficial seat of the English language?
Elijah Gonzalez
I know they're different, but the difference is completely pointless. I can't think of a single situation where you could confuse if someone means an apple or one apple even if they'd be the same word. It's like saying Finnish is superior to another language because we have a verb form for when you do something in an unorganised way.
Evan Torres
I have no idea. It's where the Oxford Dictionary is made, I suppose.
But it has zero *official* force. It can't *tell* people how words are pronounced, just suggest how *some* people pronounce them.
Lincoln Ross
>their English capacity is probably on par with that of a 12 year old yet they think they're some kind of English scholars because of it
This desu. Can't blame them either, their native languages have the vocabulary size a parrot could memorize.
Henry Brooks
>their native languages have the vocabulary size a parrot could memorize.
How do you say the day after tomorrow, a good smell or to manage even though its cold?
Jeremiah Wood
what you mean? you can easily see a pattern there
Elijah Martinez
> Give me one pen > Give me only one pen, and not two or three.
> Give me a pen > Give me one pen, I don't care which pen you give me
> I went to one shop > I went to a single shop, not many shops
> I went to a shop > I went to a single shop, and it does not matter which shop it was
> Give me that pen > Give me the pen that is not near me, but may be near you, or, indeed, not near either of us
> Give me the pen > Give me that pen which we were both just talking about, or in some other way we both know
The fact that you can't grasp this distinction does not mean that these English words are 'the same', but only that you, as a learner, do not understand that distinction.
Jaxon Evans
The hardest thing was at very beginning. >So kids, this is an alphabet >And here are so words >But miss teacher, why pronunciation is so different between those two? Also th, to this day if I have to say three, I just choose at random tree or free.
Hudson Sanchez
>After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he'd prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud
Liam Nguyen
i think english is pretty nice desu but swedish is better
Elijah Harris
>Also th, to this day if I have to say three, I just choose at random tree or free.
So do the Irish and Jamaicans.
Aiden Gomez
And now you know how English speakers feel about inanimate gender.
Anthony Rogers
Ye the spelling is fucked, but dental fricatives are only a matter of practice. You should be able to pronounce them considering the overabundance of sibilants in your language.
Owen Martinez
Americans seem to hold Webster's in higher regard than the OED.
Jaxson Fisher
Well they would, wouldn't they.
Parker Cooper
> Give me one pen > Give me a pen
Finnish >Anna minulle yksi kynä (yksi=one) >Anna minulle kynä
Here you go, all without articles.
Anthony Hall
In coming days, aroma or fragrance.
Last one is simply redundant, just say managing.
Jack Clark
I'm guessing the second Finnish example is 'give me pen'? See, in English, this sounds barbaric or baby-like.
Now, with one word, include the nuance that it has to be *the* pen everyone knows about.
But the discussion was about whether they distinction is relevant in English. It is.
Julian Anderson
You're cherry-picking examples. There are plenty of English words which are untranslatable into foreign languages. Try to use one word to describe
> cheesy (in the sense of embarrassing) > camp (homosexual behaviour) > banter > peck (a type of kiss) > nice (a type of 'good')