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Post by the bandit on Nov 18, 2009 22:14:30 GMT
I'm sure the French will forgive you if you at least know how to say "Hello, do you speak English?" in French. (Bonjour! Parlez vous anglais?) and have a dictionary ready in case the answer is "Non." Quoted for truth. Also, don't grimace if the answer is "Non." You're the one inconveniencing them. English is incredibly easy to learn. The spelling is not phonemic or consistent, the grammar is more exceptions than rules, and it's a highly adaptable and flexible language with more words than any other. I love the English language, but I feel sorry for anyone who has to learn it after childhood. Congruo: Lingua romanorum bona est. Loquiātur.
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Post by tyler on Nov 19, 2009 4:11:31 GMT
The spelling is not phonemic or consistent... On the other hand, everyone knows how to pronounce Sade. ;D Also, one word: Chinese.
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Post by basser on Nov 19, 2009 5:38:08 GMT
The spelling is not phonemic or consistent... On the other hand, everyone knows how to pronounce Sade. ;D Also, one word: Chinese. What I've learned of chinese seems to be consistent enough. Japanese as well. Oh, and their big crazy characters are all actually made up of smaller, more easily-remembered characters that combine their meanings into the larger word, so even though they look difficult they're not that bad. And well, you have to admit, English is pretty much the nuttiest language ever. We make 'ph' have an 'f' sound, for goodness' sake.
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Post by chiparoo on Nov 19, 2009 6:59:18 GMT
Oh god basser your avatar made me laugh
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Post by Mr Pitchfork on Nov 19, 2009 7:01:28 GMT
Not to mention 'o' has four different sounds, 'u' has three, 'e' has three, 'i' has three, and 'a' has three. I'm probably underquoting how many sounds there are for each of the vowels, though.
Then there's 'ough', any vowel-consonant-vowel construct... English is just a ridiculous, ridiculous language.
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Post by Yin on Nov 19, 2009 8:54:35 GMT
The problem I've always had with Chinese is that I can't connect the sounds to the characters. At least with English I can sound it out.
Doesn't explain my poor Malay, though (despite the fact that last page I produced a reasonable sentence's worth of it).
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Hezor
New Member
Posts: 15
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Post by Hezor on Nov 19, 2009 10:55:10 GMT
Something about being the largest economic power in the world (whether you love that fact or hate it) tends to make other people want to speak your language. Really? I don't think that many people outside of China learn Chineese. EDIT And of course I was proved wrong in the time I was reading topic and replying. Thank you Internet, thank you a lot.
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Post by tyler on Nov 19, 2009 13:13:16 GMT
Sorry, I guess one word never really manages to convey full meaning, I was saying Chinese is probably going to be even more useful than Spanish.
English is nutty, (Can we say ghoti=fish?) and may have the most oddities, but they all have them.
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Post by Casey on Nov 19, 2009 14:55:42 GMT
Aha! I've been trying to remember this for months! Thank you thank you thank you
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Post by fuzzyone on Nov 19, 2009 18:10:22 GMT
As someone who speaks only 2 languages, English and bad English, ghoti=fish makes absolutely no sense to me... Am I missing some sort of reference? as that is entirely possible, and quite likely.
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Post by Casey on Nov 19, 2009 18:27:52 GMT
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Post by warrl on Nov 19, 2009 20:05:59 GMT
English is the richest, most varied, most inconsistent major language. It's very hard to learn English. Any other major language is easier to learn as a second language.
It's also far and away the world's most popular second language. And among the top few first languages, well ahead of Spanish.
So why do Americans not learn other languages so much?
Lack of need.
English is the dominant language of international commerce and diplomacy.
And socially?
Americans live in this huge country where the expectation is that almost everyone speaks the same language.
Edinburgh to Rome is just under 1200 miles; you deal with (or fly over) a minimum of three languages (English, French, Italian) and can add several more (Welsh, Flemish, German...). Boston to Miami is about 1500 miles, and only one language.
Lisbon (Portugal) to Krakow (Poland) is about 1600 miles and you'll deal with Portuguese, Spanish, French, German, Polish, and possibly others. Seattle to Atlanta is about 2150 miles and only one language.
What it comes down to is that an American who travels 500 miles from home is *more* likely to speak the local language than a European who travels the same distance.
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Post by basser on Nov 20, 2009 23:49:44 GMT
Oh god basser your avatar made me laugh Haha! The Doctor plus kitten never fails! Oh goodness, and being sort-of kind-of on topic, if you combine British English with American English, you get like twice the slang words and an entire new spelling system. No wonder this language takes non-natives years to learn.. And also. From wiki's ghoti article: "o, pronounced /i/ as in women". Who pronounces women with an 'i'? You'd end up with 'wimmin'. I guess maybe it's just different accents, but I know that in my accent (Seattle/NW dialect), 'woman' and 'women' are pronounced the same, sounding like 'wumman'. So my ghoti sounds like 'fush'.
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Post by nikita on Nov 21, 2009 17:34:40 GMT
And also. From wiki's ghoti article: "o, pronounced /i/ as in women". Who pronounces women with an 'i'? You'd end up with 'wimmin'. That's why the real plural of "woman" is "girls". ;D ("Wimmin" is what we were told in school too.) By the way: I never realized what a big difference there is between american and british english in terms of pronounciation until I came across Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.
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Post by basser on Nov 23, 2009 17:55:38 GMT
And also. From wiki's ghoti article: "o, pronounced /i/ as in women". Who pronounces women with an 'i'? You'd end up with 'wimmin'. That's why the real plural of "woman" is "girls". ;D ("Wimmin" is what we were told in school too.) By the way: I never realized what a big difference there is between american and british english in terms of pronounciation until I came across Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. I never realized it either until I started watching a lot of british comedy, whereupon I'm sitting there going "ee-strogen? What the hell is eestrogen?" Oh man and "glacier"? That's a bad one. I never even knew you could pronounce it any way other than 'glay-shur' until a few weeks ago. xD
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Post by TBeholder on Nov 24, 2009 14:51:29 GMT
because the rest of the world learns English as a second language. In school. As a requirement. For the most part. Something about being the largest economic power in the world (whether you love that fact or hate it) tends to make other people want to speak your language. No, in itself this would force language only in financial applications. But that's what happens all the time: whatever language is used for some sphere spreads, both by learning and lexical borrowing. So, if some people influence or pioneer something, there's a trace. Geometry? Greek. Sail ships? Dutch and English. Scholasticism era science? Latin. And so on. The last "big deal" was high tech, it means USA and USSR; but USSR was quiet about it, so what we see is what was bound to happen. The same for the cultural contamination: once it was French - it left many exported terms, mostly for the literature or theater; some Italian in music; the last bubble is the pop culture, and it brings English. Plus a few little bits of Japanese in specific areas. What you learn is what you use. Example: i learned French in school, and by now can't remember a thing; but some English learned with dictionaries and real texts and used - for computers, then RPG, lyrics, books - and... i am here, see? English is the richest, most varied, most inconsistent major language. It's very hard to learn English. Any other major language is easier to learn as a second language. As someone crazy enough to try and map the full set of French tenses to a single diagram i disagree. ;D Other than that, it was just as much of dazzling salad full of cuts from Latin, German and whatever sticking out of unexpected places, only less polished and simplified after the mixing. So why do Americans not learn other languages so much? Lack of need. Exactly. English is the dominant language of international commerce and diplomacy. That would be enough for these two areas, which means only import/export and a handful on top.
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Post by warrl on Nov 25, 2009 8:44:09 GMT
The problem I've always had with Chinese is that I can't connect the sounds to the characters. That is, in fact, absolutely correct. There is no connection between sounds and characters. Quite a few Chinese symbols are highly stylized pictures. According to a Chinese lady I work with, the symbol for "tree" is a simplified picture of a tree, the symbol for "trees" is two such pictures, and the symbol for "forest" is three trees.
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Post by the bandit on Nov 25, 2009 15:34:05 GMT
The problem I've always had with Chinese is that I can't connect the sounds to the characters. That is, in fact, absolutely correct. There is no connection between sounds and characters. You overstate your case and become wrong. Chinese characters are ideograms, yes, and not a phonemic alphabet. But many of the radicals used to build the overall ideograms are connected to certain sounds. A well-educated Chinese speaker can often guess the pronunciation of a new ideograms either because he knows the spoken word and the ideogram gives clue to the meaning or because there is a phonemic radical. But that correction only comes because you overstated the case. There's a connection, but it's small and in the minority. For the majority of characters it's just wrote memorization. To use the example your Chinese friend gave you, the word for tree (actually, wood) is 木, pronounced mù. The word for woods is 林, pronounced lín. And the word for forest is 森, pronounced sēn. Even though all three characters have the same radicals, they have totally different pronunciation. (You can, however, guess the words' meaning if not the pronunciation.) But to return to my point, take the word 尌, shù, to stand something up. Now, if you add three dots on the side (which mean "water"), like so: 澍, the word means "moisture," but it's still pronounced shù. And if you add a mù to the side, 樹, it becomes the most-used word for tree...pronounced shù. The 尌 radical in these last two characters is actually phonemic.
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wlerin
Junior Member
Posts: 62
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Post by wlerin on Dec 2, 2009 10:59:27 GMT
The problem I've always had with Chinese is that I can't connect the sounds to the characters. That is, in fact, absolutely correct. There is no connection between sounds and characters. Quite a few Chinese symbols are highly stylized pictures. According to a Chinese lady I work with, the symbol for "tree" is a simplified picture of a tree, the symbol for "trees" is two such pictures, and the symbol for "forest" is three trees. Interestingly enough, this is exactly how English works, except the letter-sequences are symbolic of words, rather than of ideas. The phonetic component is secondary. This would be even more true if I quoted the response to thine post just above mine. This is why I think spelling reform is misguided. Words need to be spelled the same way, but it doesn't have to be phonetic. The phonetic side is only really useful when you are learning a language. Once you know how to read, you don't sound words out any longer, you recognize them in a glance based on the memorized shape of the word (or even the set of words, if it is a common enough phrase). edit: Sorry for the minor necro, it's a subject I have a great deal of interest in.
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Post by Mr Pitchfork on Dec 2, 2009 19:35:47 GMT
I honestly think people should be able to write however they want, so long as it can be understood by the intended audience. I mean, that's how English used to be written.
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broommaster2000
New Member
A stick, a bunch of twigs, a bit of rope, and presto!
Posts: 15
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Post by broommaster2000 on Dec 2, 2009 20:03:45 GMT
If his blood is blue, then he must be royal. I've seen my fair share of oils and lubricants and I've not seen to many blue ones. But I actually have some blue stuff here that you could use for that sort of thing. So technically it would be possible.
To much?
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Post by idonotlikepeas on Dec 4, 2009 13:12:09 GMT
I honestly think people should be able to write however they want, so long as it can be understood by the intended audience. I mean, that's how English used to be written. Well, we also only recently learned to refrigerate food. Going back to the old days isn't always the best plan. Having standardized spelling and grammatical rules (and abiding by them) is an act of politeness to the reader; it means less effort to decode the text, and less chance of misunderstanding.
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