Reasons Why English is Hard to Learn
- Thread starter Akela
- Start date
Six was sick of everyone thinking he was afraid of seven, so he punched seven right in the face, making that poor number number.
14. The children bow towards the bow of the violinist by a set of bow and arrows.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
Actually it’s not a difficulty that English presents to its learners, but rather a curiosity.
Those who have learned Russian as a foreign language (if any) can have a try at ‘Косил косой косой косой’. They say this sentence is completely unintelligible for non-natives.
Actually it’s not a difficulty that English presents to its learners, but rather a curiosity.
Those who have learned Russian as a foreign language (if any) can have a try at ‘Косил косой косой косой’. They say this sentence is completely unintelligible for non-natives.
Wow.
Funny. I am a native Russian speaker and it took me a minute. I keep expecting one of them to mean a braid.
None.I keep expecting one of them to mean a braid.
It’s about a scythe.
I had to read it four times before it clicked into place...
Strabo quidam herbam falce obstipa demetebat
Strabo quidam herbam falce obstipa demetebat
There is this one in Mandarin (it is called Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den):
《施氏食狮史》
石室诗士施氏，嗜狮，誓食十狮。
氏时时适市视狮。
十时，适十狮适市。
是时，适施氏适市。
氏视是十狮，恃矢势，使是十狮逝世。
氏拾是十狮尸，适石室。
石室湿，氏使侍拭石室。
石室拭，氏始试食是十狮。
食时，始识是十狮尸，实十石狮尸。
试释是事。
Notice how every syllable has the sound shi (but in different tones).
《施氏食狮史》
石室诗士施氏，嗜狮，誓食十狮。
氏时时适市视狮。
十时，适十狮适市。
是时，适施氏适市。
氏视是十狮，恃矢势，使是十狮逝世。
氏拾是十狮尸，适石室。
石室湿，氏使侍拭石室。
石室拭，氏始试食是十狮。
食时，始识是十狮尸，实十石狮尸。
试释是事。
Notice how every syllable has the sound shi (but in different tones).
I can't "notice" anything about that at all, save the fact that it is Chinese, and it looks like it says something about ten and a little about right... based on Japanese.
You mean that every syllable in that whole passage is "shi"? Or that the sound is part of each syllable?
Every character is pronounced shi; the only variation is in the tones, each shi being either first, second, third, or fourth tone. I'll do a translation later if I've got time, unless Johannes would like to supply one himself.
Interesting. Unfortunately it loses this property in Cantonese...
Translation
Story about Mr Shi eating lions
A poet called Mr Shi living in a stone house liked to eat lions, swore he would eat ten lions. He often went to market and saw lions. On the 10th (of the month, or maybe at the 10th hour?), it happened that ten lions went to market, and at the same time Mr Shi went to the market. He saw these ten lions and, relying on arrow power, made these ten lions leave the world (i.e. killed them). He lifted up these ten lions' bodies and went (back) to the stone house. The stone house was wet. He made a servant wipe the stone house. Once it was wiped he began to taste these ten lions. While he was tasting them he realised these ten lions' bodies were in fact the bodies of ten stone lions. Attempt an explanation of this matter.
Holy crud! That's alot of consecutive shi's! That poet has some serious skills to pull that off! I took a couple semesters of basic Mandarin a few years ago, but sadly, I haven't had much practice at it since then.
In my own experience, studying foreign languages has made me turn a critical eye to my native English. I now find phrasal verbs clunky and often absurdly illogical. I often do my best to avoid them, at least in writing. In fact, Latin makes the entire language look clunky, in a way. None of that marvelous compactness and concision afforded by case endings. Oh, no! We're stuck with rigid word order and extra prepositions.
But of course, none of those quirks even approach the absurdity of our stubbornly archaic orthography. I was aware before I ever touched Spanish that English spelling wasn't exactly the most consistent, but after earning my B.A. in Spanish, I can't help but feel a bit spoiled for phonemic spelling. I'm actually a little embarrassed for the entire Anglophone world at just how hopelessly absurd our spelling is. I've even experimented with not one but two self-designed alternative spelling systems and composed a satirical poem intended to match the tune of "Loser Like Me" from TV's Glee.
You say, "Don't fix what's not broken."
But hey, face the facts now in detail.
The "broken" ship has surely sailed.
In fact, it's been at sea for agesǃ
Indeed, ever since the printing press,
Spelling has been such a messǃ
Our speech has evolved along on its way
Since those medieval days.
So why must old Chaucer keep on holding sway
Over what's on the page?
Blue, shoe, two, flew, do, and through too.
What the bleepǃ
Just how do you say "ooh"?
Though, cough, bough. I've had enough, it's the truth.
I'm thoroughly confused.
Should, shout, own, town, wood, food, womb.
Oh, bloody heckǃ
It's quite a plight,
So let's spel thingz rytǃ
Meet our good friend Mr. Spellingǃ
Oh, waitǃ He's too stoned, and not on weed
But on etymology.
At least that explains his schizophrenia,
And how he can often be so cruel
To foreigners and natives, too.
There's no 'e' in "heart."
Take it out. It plays no part.
Why do we "break bread"?
Such words always tease my head.
Why then must we "bake a big cake"
Only to "gain lots of weight"?
There's no 'i' in "friend."
Why can't spelling just make more sense?
And as if this post wasn't eccentric enough, here's a quick taste of what I think English might look like today if we'd actually bothered to update our orthographies like a well-behaved European language. It's my favorite quote from a certain British "Doctor."
Xis iz mai taimi-waimi ditektur. It gouz "diñ" wen xer'z staf. Awlso, it kæn boil an eg æt xhurti pesœz,...whexxur yu wont it tu or not ækcœlli, so ai'v lurn'd tu ste ahwe from henz. It's not pritti wen xe blo ap.
In my own experience, studying foreign languages has made me turn a critical eye to my native English. I now find phrasal verbs clunky and often absurdly illogical. I often do my best to avoid them, at least in writing. In fact, Latin makes the entire language look clunky, in a way. None of that marvelous compactness and concision afforded by case endings. Oh, no! We're stuck with rigid word order and extra prepositions.
But of course, none of those quirks even approach the absurdity of our stubbornly archaic orthography. I was aware before I ever touched Spanish that English spelling wasn't exactly the most consistent, but after earning my B.A. in Spanish, I can't help but feel a bit spoiled for phonemic spelling. I'm actually a little embarrassed for the entire Anglophone world at just how hopelessly absurd our spelling is. I've even experimented with not one but two self-designed alternative spelling systems and composed a satirical poem intended to match the tune of "Loser Like Me" from TV's Glee.
You say, "Don't fix what's not broken."
But hey, face the facts now in detail.
The "broken" ship has surely sailed.
In fact, it's been at sea for agesǃ
Indeed, ever since the printing press,
Spelling has been such a messǃ
Our speech has evolved along on its way
Since those medieval days.
So why must old Chaucer keep on holding sway
Over what's on the page?
Blue, shoe, two, flew, do, and through too.
What the bleepǃ
Just how do you say "ooh"?
Though, cough, bough. I've had enough, it's the truth.
I'm thoroughly confused.
Should, shout, own, town, wood, food, womb.
Oh, bloody heckǃ
It's quite a plight,
So let's spel thingz rytǃ
Meet our good friend Mr. Spellingǃ
Oh, waitǃ He's too stoned, and not on weed
But on etymology.
At least that explains his schizophrenia,
And how he can often be so cruel
To foreigners and natives, too.
There's no 'e' in "heart."
Take it out. It plays no part.
Why do we "break bread"?
Such words always tease my head.
Why then must we "bake a big cake"
Only to "gain lots of weight"?
There's no 'i' in "friend."
Why can't spelling just make more sense?
And as if this post wasn't eccentric enough, here's a quick taste of what I think English might look like today if we'd actually bothered to update our orthographies like a well-behaved European language. It's my favorite quote from a certain British "Doctor."
Xis iz mai taimi-waimi ditektur. It gouz "diñ" wen xer'z staf. Awlso, it kæn boil an eg æt xhurti pesœz,...whexxur yu wont it tu or not ækcœlli, so ai'v lurn'd tu ste ahwe from henz. It's not pritti wen xe blo ap.
But if we change the spelling now, we are just re-fossilising it to reflect 21st century pronunciation. In fact which pronunciation should we use? Are we to spell water as wutr, following the Californian usage? That is not how we pronounce it here.
What about all the printed material which will then become in accessible to those who are brought up with the new system?
Why fossilise it at all? Let 22st century Anglophones reform it according to their needs. Minor spelling reforms are evel less dramatic then the evolution of the language itself.
Perhaps a phonematic rather then phonetic spelling would be appropriate. I suppose all the major varieties of English share (nearly) the same set of phonemes, don’t they?
One one hand, it’s a real problem. However, similar problems have been faced by a lot of nations (think e. g. of Turks who abolished the Arabic script in favour of the Latin one), and in principle it isn’t fatal. Here’s an analogy: there is a great body of Latin literature on Google Books. It isn’t directly available for those who don’t know Latin, yet no one regrets that he can’t read that books.
They just are not interesting. On the other hand, the one who is crazy about old books, surely can learn another spelling or even another language. At the same time all the others drastically spare efforts when learning to read and to write.The way I see it, spelling reform would be at least loosely periodic. It'd be sort of like updating your virus protection. Once every century or so, a hypothetical International English Language Academy would update the spelling in order to keep history from repeating itself. After the initial reform, subsequent reforms will be much easier and much gentler because the amount of accumulated orthographic garbage will be far less.
Whose English to use as a model? My answer is: no-one's. That is, a reformed orthography should be based on a hypothetical transatlantic accent that no native is likely to actually speak but from which no major dialect would deviate enough to impede comprehension. This would be the common standard taught to non-natives, who would then have the option of adjusting their accents to more local variants once they became sufficiently advanced. I envision something combining the vowel inventory of British Received Pronunciation with the rhoticity of General American. This creates an accent with the greatest number of distinct phonemes among prominent dialects, yielding a very precise orthography. Why is a little extra precision important? If, for some reason, a neutral text needed to be tweaked in order to reflect a more local pronunciation, it would be much easier to simply change all instances of "caught" to "cot" than to start with a passage that already merges them and have to decide case-by-case whether or not "cot" should be changed to "caught."
Regarding the accessibility of past literature, preservation for posterity would be challenging but not impossible, especially with the help of computer technology. I've even fantasized about a transitional iPhone app that can serve as a handy transcription dictionary.