Reasons why English is so Hard to Understand (REHU)

[Beetlejooce]

The advantages with English is that there are SO MANY foreigners in England, if you speak the language really badly it's accepted as normal, and in fact many people who speak correct English are shunned and considered posh.

French is ridiculous though. Some of the words are basically identical, but if you mispronounce a hundredth of a syllable the French have no idea what your talking about. In English you can mispronounce something and due to the wide range of accents it makes sense. In France if you mispronounce something they'll all 'WTF' you until you feel bad

The only french i know is retard which means late. guess why i learnt that?

because your late a lot?

 

[Incompl te]

The advantages with English is that there are SO MANY foreigners in England, if you speak the language really badly it's accepted as normal, and in fact many people who speak correct English are shunned and considered posh.

French is ridiculous though. Some of the words are basically identical, but if you mispronounce a hundredth of a syllable the French have no idea what your talking about. In English you can mispronounce something and due to the wide range of accents it makes sense. In France if you mispronounce something they'll all 'WTF' you until you feel bad

The only french i know is retard which means late. guess why i learnt that?

because your late a lot?

touche.

wait. more french

 

[PatientGrasshopper]

We take words from all over, English is a bastard language. It is not a phonetic language at all,but look at french they have words where you don't even pronounce what would be the last syllable.

All languages have this, at least the germanic and romantic languages do. I don't know anything about eastern languages.

Yes. Spanish in particular has a few I could name.

Qué and que are pronounced almost with infinitessimal difference, but the first one is "what" and the second one is "that" in the case of not being an "this or that" issue (e.g.remember when we went to that play?" Using "this" in that sentence would not work, so you would use "que")

Also, caro and carro. expensive and car, in order.

Pero and Perro and Porque and Por Que.

In English:
I found a tear in my shirt and shed a tear.

 

[wilsonscrazybed]

English is hard because of homophones? My students don't really have much trouble with those, to be honest. The greatest single diffculty seems to be the great deal of idioms you need to know just to understand basic speech.

 

[Incompl te]

English is hard because of homophones? My students don't really have much trouble with those, to be honest. The greatest single diffculty seems to be the great deal of idioms you need to know just to understand basic speech.

Well said Wilson. I believe that may be the root to the English languages problems. /endsuckup

 

[Headwuend]

There are a bunch of reason that English is hard to understand.

Mainly, English spelling makes no sense at all.

Seriously, have you ever thought for a while about the concept of silent letters? Letters are supposed to represent sounds, but some of them represent nothing. If that's the case, why have them at all?

Or could you ever imagine having to teach how to read 'ough' to somebody and making sense of it? Dough, rough, through, cough, bough... none of them sound anything a like.

That would be one reason I love German. Every word is spelled exactly how it sounds.

I beg to differ. Of course it might seem that way because you are the most familiar with your native language, but just read some common words aloud and look at how they are written.
Basically most single letters can be articulated in more than one way. 'R' for example can be pronounced in three different ways. Take for example Brot and Erde, read them aloud and pay close attention on how your tongue is moving.
If you really pronounced everything in the way it is written, it'd be a real pain in the ass to listen to you. :>

Man, linguistics really were the only interesting thing when I was studying German...
Good thing I quit before being bored to death by literatury studies.

But unlike English we at least haven't a preposterous amount of homonyms.

 

[JaguarWong]

I have no idea how they would measure such a thing but apparently proffessors of linguistics believe the English language to be 600 times more versatile than any other.

Probably because it's the bastardisation of about 599 other languages.

 

[Incompl te]

or maybe because we have a word that is spelt "Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoniosis".

Sad thing is that i can spell and pronounce it perfectly

 

[fix-the-spade]

I have no idea how they would measure such a thing but apparently proffessors of linguistics believe the English language to be 600 times more versatile than any other.

Probably because it's the bastardisation of about 599 other languages.

Well, English people love to engineer things, so it follows that we would come up with a reverse engineered modular language with muliple uses for single words. It's an Engineer's way of thinking, nothing is simple if it doesn't need to be!

 

[GloatingSwine]

I have no idea how they would measure such a thing but apparently proffessors of linguistics believe the English language to be 600 times more versatile than any other.

Probably because it's the bastardisation of about 599 other languages.

English is the kind of language that sneaks up behind other languages in dark alleys, bashes them on the head and rifles their pockets for spare vocabulary

 

[varulfic]

Those sentences aren't hard to understand. And even if they were, they certainly aren't TOO hard, which would imply that those sentences justifies not bothering to learn the language.

 

[latenightapplepie]

Chad, where Shad had had "had", had had "had had".

I think this sentence might be grammatically incorrect because both the subordinate and main verb are in the pluperfect. Normally a plupefect is used to indicate that one action in the past occurred before another, also in the past (which is normally put in the perfect).

In any case, it is a good example of how confusing English can be. If I hadn't studied another language I know I'd be lost. I believe grammar should be taught at schools more. In Australia at least. I don't know about other countries.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

I think Leicester is the king of odd place names though (Lesta to others)

Loughborough pronounced Lufbra
Rothley pronounced Rowthlee
Groby pronounced Grewby
And my favourite Belvoir pronounced Beaver

 

[Incompl te]

I think Leicester is the king of odd place names though (Lesta to others)

Loughborough pronounced Lufbra
Rothley pronounced Rowthlee
Groby pronounced Grewby
And my favourite Belvoir pronounced Beaver

What is the world coming to?

EDIT: soon we'll have places spelt "Rugary" but pronounced "lollerskates".

 

[Beetlejooce]

The advantages with English is that there are SO MANY foreigners in England, if you speak the language really badly it's accepted as normal, and in fact many people who speak correct English are shunned and considered posh.

French is ridiculous though. Some of the words are basically identical, but if you mispronounce a hundredth of a syllable the French have no idea what your talking about. In English you can mispronounce something and due to the wide range of accents it makes sense. In France if you mispronounce something they'll all 'WTF' you until you feel bad

The only french i know is retard which means late. guess why i learnt that?

because your late a lot?

touche.

wait. more french

Your practically bilingual.

 

[fedpayne]

I think Leicester is the king of odd place names though (Lesta to others)

Loughborough pronounced Lufbra
Rothley pronounced Rowthlee
Groby pronounced Grewby
And my favourite Belvoir pronounced Beaver

How do you think you'd pronounce Wymondham, Americans?

 

[Unknower]

You want a hard language to understand? Try Finnish.

Nah, Finnish is actually pretty simple. Little kids learn it faster than other European languages. Finnish is just so different to other languages that it seems hard to other people.

 

[Incompl te]

The advantages with English is that there are SO MANY foreigners in England, if you speak the language really badly it's accepted as normal, and in fact many people who speak correct English are shunned and considered posh.

French is ridiculous though. Some of the words are basically identical, but if you mispronounce a hundredth of a syllable the French have no idea what your talking about. In English you can mispronounce something and due to the wide range of accents it makes sense. In France if you mispronounce something they'll all 'WTF' you until you feel bad

The only french i know is retard which means late. guess why i learnt that?

because your late a lot?

touche.

wait. more french

Your practically bilingual.

trilingual actually (I speak fluent Polish)

Czesc! Jak sie Masz?

 

[Incompl te]

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

Best sentence ever.

Buffalo Bill perhaps?

It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again....