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On January 29 2011 06:40 Jerubaal wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On January 29 2011 06:20 Scrimpton wrote:
the thing is, humans are expert pattern recognitionists.
That's not even a fucking word, but chances are, if you speak english you understood what i meant.
which in itself proves itself to be true.
Thus, there's no reason for any standardised spelling, it doesn't work on national levels never mind international, and any reasonably intelligent person has the pattern spotting capabilities to decipher meaning even from horribly broken english. a couple of withdrawn u's isn't really a problem.
That being said, out of pride for the mother tongue i'd prefer more people to use British English.. I suppose it's just kind of embarrassing for the American culture to represent the English language around the world. I'd feel sad if peoples first exposure to English was from things like Twilight or a Mcdonalds menu as opposed to say.
I suppose a lot of that way of thinking comes from the fact that America doesn't really have much of a linguistic history in the way that british english does, Poets, play-writes authors.
None of this is meant to be a slight against America, much more a sign of respect to the origination and rich history of the language, i feel justified in saying there is richer ground to be tread within the realms of British english.. if not for its Heritage than just the simple beauty of its complexity and multi-cultural roots. (which i feel America bastardises for its own sake rather than for any worthwhile reason)
I must apologize (which isn't really an apology), but this sentence really jumped out at me. 'doesn't really have much of a linguistic history...Poet, play-writes authors': What the fuck? And if the cultures around the world aren't exposed to English through commercialism- Coke, McDonalds and Cher- then how pray tell are they going to be exposed to it? You're also making the archaeologist's mistake of thinking that the peak of the culture is representative of the whole culture. I assure you a gratuitous amount of shit has been written in British English. That no one bothered to save it doesn't mean that every chimney-sweep read Alexander Pope. To compare the collective legacy of British literature to today's lowest forms is misleading.
Sorry if that's how it reads.
However i feel your being a bit presumptuous in assuming that I believe "the peak of culture is representative of the whole culture"
I feel you have been put on the defensive by my statement, which i suppose was bound to happen to somebodfy at somepoint, but I'd liken it to admitting that.. compared to egypt, Britain doesn't have the same level of historical architecture. Sure we have some impressive buildings and structures, wonderful engineers, but i don't think big ben is compatible to the pyramids.
In the same vein I don't think you can compare 100-200 years of American authorship to 1000+ years of Germanic/Anglo Germanic, renaissance and modern English pennings.
Again this isn't to diminish what has been achieved culturally within the field of writing for America, but more to shed some light and respect onto the work such as Cædmon's Hymn, possibly 1500 years old, and one of the first if not THE FIRST historic recorded anglo-saxon poets, beowulf estimated at around 1000ad, And this is skipping earlier works from scotland Involving tales and writings of Pictish kings and battles.
Perhaps my Comparison of Orwell -> Meyer comes across unfair, I'd suggest that it is unfair to cast aside 1500 years of literature simple because your culture wasn't around for 1200 years of that time.
Again not a slight against american culture, more a sign of respect and awe at the germanic languages themself.
IF this comes off overly pompous and professorial.. then.. FUCK YEAR.
if it comes off as the drivvel of a knobend, then yeah i'll have to accept that
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On January 29 2011 07:39 Scrimpton wrote:Show nested quote +On January 29 2011 06:40 Jerubaal wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On January 29 2011 06:20 Scrimpton wrote:
the thing is, humans are expert pattern recognitionists.
That's not even a fucking word, but chances are, if you speak english you understood what i meant.
which in itself proves itself to be true.
Thus, there's no reason for any standardised spelling, it doesn't work on national levels never mind international, and any reasonably intelligent person has the pattern spotting capabilities to decipher meaning even from horribly broken english. a couple of withdrawn u's isn't really a problem.
That being said, out of pride for the mother tongue i'd prefer more people to use British English.. I suppose it's just kind of embarrassing for the American culture to represent the English language around the world. I'd feel sad if peoples first exposure to English was from things like Twilight or a Mcdonalds menu as opposed to say.
I suppose a lot of that way of thinking comes from the fact that America doesn't really have much of a linguistic history in the way that british english does, Poets, play-writes authors.
None of this is meant to be a slight against America, much more a sign of respect to the origination and rich history of the language, i feel justified in saying there is richer ground to be tread within the realms of British english.. if not for its Heritage than just the simple beauty of its complexity and multi-cultural roots. (which i feel America bastardises for its own sake rather than for any worthwhile reason)
I must apologize (which isn't really an apology), but this sentence really jumped out at me. 'doesn't really have much of a linguistic history...Poet, play-writes authors': What the fuck? And if the cultures around the world aren't exposed to English through commercialism- Coke, McDonalds and Cher- then how pray tell are they going to be exposed to it? You're also making the archaeologist's mistake of thinking that the peak of the culture is representative of the whole culture. I assure you a gratuitous amount of shit has been written in British English. That no one bothered to save it doesn't mean that every chimney-sweep read Alexander Pope. To compare the collective legacy of British literature to today's lowest forms is misleading. Sorry if that's how it reads. However i feel your being a bit presumptuous in assuming that I believe "the peak of culture is representative of the whole culture" I feel you have been put on the defensive by my statement, which i suppose was bound to happen to somebodfy at somepoint, but I'd liken it to admitting that.. compared to egypt, Britain doesn't have the same level of historical architecture. Sure we have some impressive buildings and structures, wonderful engineers, but i don't think big ben is compatible to the pyramids. In the same vein I don't think you can compare 100-200 years of American authorship to 1000+ years of Germanic/Anglo Germanic, renaissance and modern English pennings. Again this isn't to diminish what has been achieved culturally within the field of writing for America, but more to shed some light and respect onto the work such as Cædmon's Hymn, possibly 1500 years old, and one of the first if not THE FIRST historic recorded anglo-saxon poets, beowulf estimated at around 1000ad, And this is skipping earlier works from scotland Involving tales and writings of Pictish kings and battles. Perhaps my Comparison of Orwell -> Meyer comes across unfair, I'd suggest that it is unfair to cast aside 1500 years of literature simple because your culture wasn't around for 1200 years of that time. Again not a slight against american culture, more a sign of respect and awe at the germanic languages themself. IF this comes off overly pompous and professorial.. then.. FUCK YEAR. if it comes off as the drivvel of a knobend, then yeah i'll have to accept that
I think you're right in part, but I also think you're simplifying a bit.
I mean, I agree with you about, in the strictest sense, England's literary output being more important than America's. If someone, for instance, had all the English literature in the whole world (from "Caedmon's Hymn" to yesterday's bestseller) in one warehouse and they had all the American literature (from, say, Smith or Wintrhop or Bradstreet to old Ms. Meyer herself) in another warehouse AND they had to burn down one warehouse, you would almost have to choose burning down the American one. It's much smaller.
But where I think you're simplifying is in treated American literature as if it has no provenance before the colonies. The ancient literature of England is just as much the progenitor of modern American writing as it is the progenitor of modern English writing. And in that sense it's silly to set up American vs. English literature (or language) in the first place. It's like two twins arguing over who has the best claim on being their parents' child.
(And that's leaving aside all the other traditions that contribute to American literature, which, I would hazard a guess, are much more numerous than those that contribute to English literature. The number of countries from which America received immigrants and the scale on which they immigrated to America are both staggering. From 1870 to 1900, more people immigrated to the US than any other country in history. There were tens of thousands of immigrant novels written on American soil in their mother tongues. They didn't just evaporate. They changed over time and exerted influence and contributed. That's a fairly rich history.)
Anyway, I don't think it's fair to put the question in those terms, especially if you're talking about the "quality" of British and American English as they are spoken today. The Anglo-Saxons affected American English just as profoundly as they affected British English. American English didn't come up in some sort of vaccuum.
Also, NO ONE can step to Herman Melville or Walker Percy--NO ONE! You heard that straight from this American horse's mouth.
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Knit-picking. Who cares about alternate spellings of words that make up 1% of the language.
Academic trolling.
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On January 29 2011 06:18 Dagobert wrote:Show nested quote +On January 29 2011 00:39 Shockk wrote:Languages should develop naturally, and they're certainly not something that could be regulated. Let alone internationally. May I refer you to the fact that grammar and spelling mistakes come naturally, while correct grammar and spelling is the result of adherence to regulations? English is a language with so-called opaque (also called 'deep') pronunciation. Since the English writing system uses both morphological as well as phonological cues to form words, it's referred to as a morphophonological transcription. What this means is that half the time you can derive the meaning of a word from the way it's written, even if this gives you no clue whatsoever about how to pronounce it. This is true both for general stress patterns ('centrifugal', 'spherical' or just simply 'guitar', which is pronounced with a iambic, not the trochaic stress pattern which is more common) as well as syllabic pronunciation. Just compare [to], [too] and [two], [there], [their] and [they're]. Probably two of the most frequently violated sets of words sounding alike. Maybe a result of phonemic poverty of the English language, who knows. To reiterate, language requires regulation in order to be intelligible. (Indian English for instance is barely intelligible to foreigners since Indians make frequent use of 'unnatural' abbreviations of words as a result of 'popularisation' of certain terms.)
Correct grammar and spelling = the grammar and spelling that your audience accepts
Linguistic mistakes come naturally... if those mistakes are accepted by wider and wider portions of society, then they are no longer mistakes (first they are accepted alternate versions, then they are the official version)
"Official"/Proper English is regulated by the audience. If your job application has grammar and spelling that the hiring agency considers improper (either because it is too new OR too old OR from a different region) then you will be less likely to get the job.
As long as all of these people keep communicating with each other, and telling each other... "that doesn't sound right to me."... then the language is regulated, not by any official body, but by the entire population of English speakers.
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On January 29 2011 06:38 Scrimpton wrote:Show nested quote +On January 29 2011 06:34 HansMoleman wrote:
No, we must fight for individualism. A Global ANYTHING is a bad thing. communication is key to advancement of anything. the speed of our technological advancements is largely thanks to the easing and speed of global communication. Now imagine this, but with everyone speaking the same language and nothing being misinterpreted by translations that dont have direct equivalents etc. You can stay "individual" by wearing your skinny jeans and dying your hear, but in this topic, a global language would only serve to open borders and opportunities. Feel free to argue against that point, I'd be interested to see if there is another side to this.
A global language is best if it is developed and regulated by individuals, which is what English is.
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On January 29 2011 03:41 pfods wrote:Show nested quote +On January 29 2011 03:36 ggrrg wrote:I don't see any particular reason why British English should be adopted all over the world. You haven't given one either. On the other hand, a worldwide readjustment to BE would cause complications in all countries involved. On January 29 2011 00:35 HardCorey wrote:
I think that Grammar is considerably more important than spelling. English grammar is very complicated and most people don't even understand the basics and just assume that they are grammatically correct because it, "just sounds right." The words of a man that hasn't studied any other languages. English grammar is kind of easy in comparison to Romance languages, a piece of cake in comparison to Slavic and Scandinavian languages, and not even comparable to something like Finnish. Mark Twain: "My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years." I'm sorry but english grammar is pretty much the #1 reason why so much of the world has trouble learning english
This is not supposed to sound rude, but I'm absolutely certain that you have never learned any foreign language.
Grammar rules in English are not only very few but also very simple.
First of all there is basically no conjugations in English with "be" being the only exception I can think of of the top of my head and of course the added "s" in 3rd person simple present:
simple past:
I/you/he/she/it/we/you/they went/played/sang/etc.
simple future I:
I/you/he/she/it/we/you/they will go/play/sing/etc.
And it's the same in all other tenses. In languages like French or German (and many more as a matter of fact) you conjugate differently for every person and for all tenses. There are of course some rules but there are also many irregular verbs, which increases the difficulty by a lot.
In English it's also pretty clear cut when to use every tense (past and future progressive tenses are somewhat tricky but neither are they a necessity to speak fluently nor are they that difficult). In French for example it's a total pain in the ass to figure out, how to utilize tenses properly (especially past tenses and subjonctif).
Another thing that makes English significantly easier than any language in Europe that I'm aware of is the lack of genders. In other languages you have to learn the gender for every single word you know (In French/Spanish/Italian only 2 genders, German/Bulgarian/Russian amongst others even 3 genders).
In the end, the main reason (at least in my eyes, but I'm certain that many people will agree with me) that makes English grammar look like a joke in comparison to a multitude of other languages is the lack of declensions. That's tables upon tables of grammatic rules that you have to learn for all cases in a given language. For example, in German you have 4 cases, in Latin - 5, in Russian - 6, in Finnish - 15. For somebody who's never had to deal with declensions, I guess, it's not even possible to imagine how hard it is to learn all the rules and irregularities related to them. A little anecdote that I believe could help you at least get a glimpse on this problem: I know dozens of people who come from different European countries and have intensely studied German for years in high school. Those people have come to Germany and have been living here for years (many of them study in the same university I do) and not a single one can speak without making any mistakes with declensions because of the insane difficulty they bear.
In my opinion, the main difficulty in the English language is the spelling and the pronunciation, because both lack rules (or at least have too many exceptions). Unlike German or Bulgarian, in English you rarely spell a word the way you pronounce it. The lack of rules for pronunciation also complicates things (e.g. "ea": cleave vs meadow).
Another difficulty in English is the extensive use of prepositions after verbs (e.g. come in, come out, come off, come on, come about, come along, come by, etc). This is one of the most difficult things in the English language, and rarely seen in any other language. However, you really don't need to know all of those different forms to speak correctly and fluently.
I am not a native English speaker. In fact, it's only my third language. My mother tongue is Bulgarian. I learned to speak German and English fluently and have studied French, Spanish and Latin. From my experience, I can assure you that the English grammar is by far the easiest one. French and Spanish grammar rules are probably the next ones that follow in difficulty, but still significantly more complicated than English. As far as German and Bulgarian grammar is concerned, I deem it impossible for most people to learn to use it correctly unless they have moved and lived there at age 10-11 or younger.
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Anyone that can't figure out that center and centre mean the same thing should change, not the language. It's pretty much dialects, just in spelling form. Other than small spelling changes that don't matter between regions, there are completely used and unused words the differ from place to place. Which would be more of a focus to change or whatever... but that won't happen either, it's just dialect. If we did that then wouldn't be reasonable to have the entire world on one language? Oh wait, that will never happen
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Clearly we should just all speak Akkadian.
The only good language is a dead language.
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english... a germanic language. very simplyfied from german, like simple really simple. so few vocabulary, cases, declination, articles... that every single word from another language is getting into dictionary. very welcoming, open to the world and simple to learn.
that said, it is unimportant as shit.
why?
important: thoughts. how do you transfere thoughts in your normal life to another beeing? voice. sound. how is your friend aware of you? your words, your sound. now he is thinking, transforming his thoughts then into sound back to you. funny thing, you both are different and may, no not even may, but surely(?)(  ) will not have the same emotional expirience of the word you use. even with your friend. the same language.
now.different language.
transformation: your thoughts to your voice to his understanding to his thoughts back to his voice back thought.
this is impossible without incredible good will of unstanding.
this is how communication works. you have to want it. there is no way ever to force by rules.
now, IMAGINE! text comes into play, a dimension i ignored until now!!
it is transformation of sound into optics. how can you even nit pick? this is totally made up by modern day regulation! and not helping since the way we sound is different everywhere, even in one country in one language!
we are one mankind, our main need is to communicate, its or it is or it's totally unimportant what we write as long it comes thru waht we watn. we undsatnd the word even if we mispslel completely as long first and last is right.
spelling is unimportant for the matter of unsderstanding. even wrong latter doesn matter. you know watameen. thats all it is about. consistent spelling and even cutting the ending and start ofawo rd is rela tive ly new. cons ider ed his tory. see understand.
i would be ready to just come back to the 18th century and just spell like we would like to and still be able to tell what we want to say to be free. we should be way way less afraid of change concerning the way we express.
hey it is just important the exchange of thought works, overcome all the barriers of transformation happening in between.
ps.(expirience should spell like that and some more, i am a native phonectic translator like my english sound should into visual spelling, for example)
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On January 29 2011 08:27 ggrrg wrote:Show nested quote +On January 29 2011 03:41 pfods wrote:On January 29 2011 03:36 ggrrg wrote:I don't see any particular reason why British English should be adopted all over the world. You haven't given one either. On the other hand, a worldwide readjustment to BE would cause complications in all countries involved. On January 29 2011 00:35 HardCorey wrote:
I think that Grammar is considerably more important than spelling. English grammar is very complicated and most people don't even understand the basics and just assume that they are grammatically correct because it, "just sounds right." The words of a man that hasn't studied any other languages. English grammar is kind of easy in comparison to Romance languages, a piece of cake in comparison to Slavic and Scandinavian languages, and not even comparable to something like Finnish. Mark Twain: "My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years." I'm sorry but english grammar is pretty much the #1 reason why so much of the world has trouble learning english This is not supposed to sound rude, but I'm absolutely certain that you have never learned any foreign language. Grammar rules in English are not only very few but also very simple. First of all there is basically no conjugations in English with "be" being the only exception I can think of of the top of my head and of course the added "s" in 3rd person simple present: simple past: I/you/he/she/it/we/you/they went/played/sang/etc. simple future I: I/you/he/she/it/we/you/they will go/play/sing/etc. And it's the same in all other tenses. In languages like French or German (and many more as a matter of fact) you conjugate differently for every person and for all tenses. There are of course some rules but there are also many irregular verbs, which increases the difficulty by a lot. In English it's also pretty clear cut when to use every tense (past and future progressive tenses are somewhat tricky but neither are they a necessity to speak fluently nor are they that difficult). In French for example it's a total pain in the ass to figure out, how to utilize tenses properly (especially past tenses and subjonctif). Another thing that makes English significantly easier than any language in Europe that I'm aware of is the lack of genders. In other languages you have to learn the gender for every single word you know (In French/Spanish/Italian only 2 genders, German/Bulgarian/Russian amongst others even 3 genders). In the end, the main reason (at least in my eyes, but I'm certain that many people will agree with me) that makes English grammar look like a joke in comparison to a multitude of other languages is the lack of declensions. That's tables upon tables of grammatic rules that you have to learn for all cases in a given language. For example, in German you have 4 cases, in Latin - 5, in Russian - 6, in Finnish - 15. For somebody who's never had to deal with declensions, I guess, it's not even possible to imagine how hard it is to learn all the rules and irregularities related to them. A little anecdote that I believe could help you at least get a glimpse on this problem: I know dozens of people who come from different European countries and have intensely studied German for years in high school. Those people have come to Germany and have been living here for years (many of them study in the same university I do) and not a single one can speak without making any mistakes with declensions because of the insane difficulty they bear. In my opinion, the main difficulty in the English language is the spelling and the pronunciation, because both lack rules (or at least have too many exceptions). Unlike German or Bulgarian, in English you rarely spell a word the way you pronounce it. The lack of rules for pronunciation also complicates things (e.g. "ea": cleave vs meadow). Another difficulty in English is the extensive use of prepositions after verbs (e.g. come in, come out, come off, come on, come about, come along, come by, etc). This is one of the most difficult things in the English language, and rarely seen in any other language. However, you really don't need to know all of those different forms to speak correctly and fluently. I am not a native English speaker. In fact, it's only my third language. My mother tongue is Bulgarian. I learned to speak German and English fluently and have studied French, Spanish and Latin. From my experience, I can assure you that the English grammar is by far the easiest one. French and Spanish grammar rules are probably the next ones that follow in difficulty, but still significantly more complicated than English. As far as German and Bulgarian grammar is concerned, I deem it impossible for most people to learn to use it correctly unless they have moved and lived there at age 10-11 or younger.
I've studied arabic and spanish, and a little german and japanese.
Prepositions are grammar, by the way.
And I really don't believe you've studied english extensively. Being a native speaker, and having had to study my own grammar, I can assure you it is very complicated, and rife with rules and exceptions. Verb conjugation in english is varied in almost every word and there are far more examples than just to be as how conjugation changes.
But there is more to grammar than conjugation, and not a lot of it has to do necessarily with how 'complicated' it is, but sometimes just how different it is. Plus. you have the added bonus of being a gamer, which GREATLY increases your learning of basic english.
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Lol good one.
Next you'll be asking the US to adopt the metric system too.....
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On January 29 2011 08:38 Jerubaal wrote:
Clearly we should just all speak Akkadian.
The only good language is a dead language.
shouldnt we all just learn zerg? you never see them having any verbal disagreements
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On January 29 2011 01:14 Perscienter wrote:Show nested quote +On January 29 2011 01:02 Jemmani wrote:
Spain spanish and mexican spanish are very different also. Does that mean anyone speaking one or the other should change? Yes, that is very annoying. Especially when poorer countries deviate, because they often don't have infrastructure to develop and supply their own official sub class of the language. They just mess things up and confuse the people.
This is racist in so many ways. So, let's do away with whole Central America and the vast majority of South America because according to you "it's annoying" that those countries deviate the oh so almighty "Madre Patria"'s glorious spanish... Fucking poor countries mate, they fucked everything up... If only they had remained a colony of Spain there would only be a RAE in every country dictating them how to speak the language. 'Cause yeah, they are too poor to have stuff like "El instituto Caro y Cuervo" (Colombia), "Instituto Chileno de la Lengua Española" (Chile), "Instituto de la lengua Española" (Argentina), etc One reigning linguistic body PER country that guess what? Works with the RAE and every other linguistic institute throughout the American continent to yearly update both the spanish grammar and the vocabulary. So yeah, before spouting your ignorance, inform yourself.
Plus, do you seriously think Language is a static structure? You certainly are not familiar with linguistics... My guess you are just a kid who finds it hard to adapt to the fact that language is determined culturally and therefore will change depending on the place you find yourself at. Finding it too hard to learn some slang?
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On January 29 2011 13:51 pfods wrote:Show nested quote +On January 29 2011 08:27 ggrrg wrote:On January 29 2011 03:41 pfods wrote:On January 29 2011 03:36 ggrrg wrote:I don't see any particular reason why British English should be adopted all over the world. You haven't given one either. On the other hand, a worldwide readjustment to BE would cause complications in all countries involved. On January 29 2011 00:35 HardCorey wrote:
I think that Grammar is considerably more important than spelling. English grammar is very complicated and most people don't even understand the basics and just assume that they are grammatically correct because it, "just sounds right." The words of a man that hasn't studied any other languages. English grammar is kind of easy in comparison to Romance languages, a piece of cake in comparison to Slavic and Scandinavian languages, and not even comparable to something like Finnish. Mark Twain: "My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years." I'm sorry but english grammar is pretty much the #1 reason why so much of the world has trouble learning english This is not supposed to sound rude, but I'm absolutely certain that you have never learned any foreign language. Grammar rules in English are not only very few but also very simple. First of all there is basically no conjugations in English with "be" being the only exception I can think of of the top of my head and of course the added "s" in 3rd person simple present: simple past: I/you/he/she/it/we/you/they went/played/sang/etc. simple future I: I/you/he/she/it/we/you/they will go/play/sing/etc. And it's the same in all other tenses. In languages like French or German (and many more as a matter of fact) you conjugate differently for every person and for all tenses. There are of course some rules but there are also many irregular verbs, which increases the difficulty by a lot. In English it's also pretty clear cut when to use every tense (past and future progressive tenses are somewhat tricky but neither are they a necessity to speak fluently nor are they that difficult). In French for example it's a total pain in the ass to figure out, how to utilize tenses properly (especially past tenses and subjonctif). Another thing that makes English significantly easier than any language in Europe that I'm aware of is the lack of genders. In other languages you have to learn the gender for every single word you know (In French/Spanish/Italian only 2 genders, German/Bulgarian/Russian amongst others even 3 genders). In the end, the main reason (at least in my eyes, but I'm certain that many people will agree with me) that makes English grammar look like a joke in comparison to a multitude of other languages is the lack of declensions. That's tables upon tables of grammatic rules that you have to learn for all cases in a given language. For example, in German you have 4 cases, in Latin - 5, in Russian - 6, in Finnish - 15. For somebody who's never had to deal with declensions, I guess, it's not even possible to imagine how hard it is to learn all the rules and irregularities related to them. A little anecdote that I believe could help you at least get a glimpse on this problem: I know dozens of people who come from different European countries and have intensely studied German for years in high school. Those people have come to Germany and have been living here for years (many of them study in the same university I do) and not a single one can speak without making any mistakes with declensions because of the insane difficulty they bear. In my opinion, the main difficulty in the English language is the spelling and the pronunciation, because both lack rules (or at least have too many exceptions). Unlike German or Bulgarian, in English you rarely spell a word the way you pronounce it. The lack of rules for pronunciation also complicates things (e.g. "ea": cleave vs meadow). Another difficulty in English is the extensive use of prepositions after verbs (e.g. come in, come out, come off, come on, come about, come along, come by, etc). This is one of the most difficult things in the English language, and rarely seen in any other language. However, you really don't need to know all of those different forms to speak correctly and fluently. I am not a native English speaker. In fact, it's only my third language. My mother tongue is Bulgarian. I learned to speak German and English fluently and have studied French, Spanish and Latin. From my experience, I can assure you that the English grammar is by far the easiest one. French and Spanish grammar rules are probably the next ones that follow in difficulty, but still significantly more complicated than English. As far as German and Bulgarian grammar is concerned, I deem it impossible for most people to learn to use it correctly unless they have moved and lived there at age 10-11 or younger. I've studied arabic and spanish, and a little german and japanese. Prepositions are grammar, by the way. And I really don't believe you've studied english extensively. Being a native speaker, and having had to study my own grammar, I can assure you it is very complicated, and rife with rules and exceptions. Verb conjugation in english is varied in almost every word and there are far more examples than just to be as how conjugation changes. But there is more to grammar than conjugation, and not a lot of it has to do necessarily with how 'complicated' it is, but sometimes just how different it is. Plus. you have the added bonus of being a gamer, which GREATLY increases your learning of basic english.
First of all, I believe I did not express myself clearly about what I meant with the use of "prepositions after verbs". I wasn't talking about the general rules of how to use prepositions, which in fact are grammatical rules (those are rather simple). I had phrasal verbs in mind, which obey no grammatical rules whatsoever (I just realized that some of the examples I gave in my previous post are not phrasal verbs...). Phrasal verbs have to be learned like vocabulary.
As far as my English knowledge is concerned, I believe that it goes vastly beyong being simply "basic English" and I can guarantee you that games do not deserve any credit for that. In my 13 years of taking English classes, I have gone through numerous schoolbooks, which covered English grammar pretty extensively and I'd say I have a pretty good idea about the simplicity of it.
If you really have studied German, there is no way you could possibly claim that its grammar is simpler than the English one. I have absolutely no knowledge about Arabic or Japanese so I cannot comment on them, but in Europe there is no language that has a simpler grammar than English and I have yet to meet a person in my surroundings that has a different opinion.
edit: I just have to edit this in... verb conjugations!? really?. This is the main reason why so many people perceive English as extremely easy. There are basically no conjugations (bar "be" and 3rd person "s"). In every tense for every verb, there is only one conjugation for all numbers and persons. I dare you to prove me wrong.
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eh, if you adopt a certain language as the accepted language across the world, then i think some superiority issues might arise, language is part of peoples identities and cultures just as much as food and celebrations are. i don't think its a good idea, and i also think that any form of movement for this would be based on opinion, and not concrete fact. :\ which is a stupid reason to purpose a movement as big as this. bigons be bigons!
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What most people fail to realise is that American English is much more English than British English. Americans are conservatives, and their language is no exception the American English is closer to the English of old than the British English will ever be.
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On January 29 2011 08:04 mikado wrote:
Knit-picking. Who cares about alternate spellings of words that make up 1% of the language.
Academic trolling.
Nit-picking (sorry, found this ironic in a thread about spelling!)
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English has no business being a lingua franka. The only reason it is, is because people agree to use it. I think spelling reform is ridiculous, in 50 years the way "standard" English is spoken is going to be totally different than it is today, and any spelling reform made will be irrelevant again.
English is one of the least reverent languages to "properness" in the entire world, it quickly and shamelessly adapts whatever the speakers deem useful. It always has, it is one of the most mutated European languages comparing old English to contemporary English in contrast to the other languages of that day. The vast majority of English speakers have no reverence for the history of the language or the "highness" of the language, and rightly so. However, because English is so 'disgusting' (as many language reform advocates would say) in it's practices of adopting and borrowing foreign words, and even grammatical structures in some case, it has grown to be an extremely evolved language capable of expressing extremely artistic and extremely specific idea's and concepts. The expense of this is that it is one of the more difficult proto-indoeuropean daughter languages to learn.
Sure, spelling reform would make that process a little easier for a while, but soon enough the language will mutate again and the spelling reform will be just as broken as the current spelling conventions. At least the current spelling conventions more often than not reflect word root in terms of what language a specific word was borrowed from and how it fits into the language as a whole. Spelling reform, to me, is massive amounts of work for very short term forward progress, at the expense of the historical record stored in our current spelling system. It's a frivolous endeavor.
I take pride in my mastery of my complex and abstract, nearly to the point of brokenness, language.
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Perscienter Germany. January 29 2011 01:28
It's not only a function of power. English was elected to be the lingua franca because of its clear alphabet for example. It's really to most people less difficult to learn than Spanish and especially German and French.
Plain wrong. Who did the electing? Clear alphabet? All Latin-based languages (Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, etc.) have more or less the same set of alphabets. Phonology? An English sentence contains more diphthongs than all the Spanish words. Morphology? Latin-based languages conjunction is more or less even, And even the irregulars follow a certain logic. How do you explain ox > oxen, mouse > mice, run > ran > run, cut > cut > cut? The "less difficult" you are talking about is still a function of power.
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On January 29 2011 00:25 Perscienter wrote:
English is the most important lingua franca in the world and it still lacks a coherent spelling and pronunciation. Especially the former needs to be reformed Easy for you to say. Germany loves it's Neue Rechtshreibung
. Since English has been introduced as a second language in so many countries, it often deteriorates in this regions. Then again not even the U.S.-Americans speak Oxford British English. They had to invent their own style for whatever reasons in the first place. ... Is it really so difficult to write harbour with a 'u'? Hey don't blame us the English added a u there to try to be more French. Srsly.
My suggestion is this: adopt the British spelling. how 'bout no? If you subscribe to descriptive instead of prescriptive linguistics, majority rules.
And the whole spelling thing frequently pisses me off. That of course is no basis for arguing which is better, but stuff like check vs cheque? lol. Theater vs theatre? lol again. I mean english spelling is a disaster, but from those two pairs I have a clear pick for which is more obvious.
Then the aluminum vs aluminium thing. I hear it should end with "ium" to match all those other elements, like gallium and germanium. But they don't spell it platinium or molybdenium do they? Aluminum was not the only element that ends with "um" but they go ahead and change it (and only it) and tell us we are doing it wrong.
Then there's pronounciation instead of pronunciation. "Because you pronounce things" I'm told. Of course they don't change enunciation or denunciation (and the root word was just u instead of ou). But again, we get told we are doing it wrong, when they changed one of those words to not match the others.
Our spellings are for the vast majority of words the same (or close enough) that it really doesn't matter, but where there are differences the UK variant is to me almost always more laughable from the perspective of spelling vs pronunciation.
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EPT
