• BigNote@lemm.ee
        1·
        1 year ago

        All languages are like that. If you don’t do something one way, you have to do it another. Basically if you sacrifice complexity in grammar, you have to make up for it in other ways through things like case, word-order, tone and register, etc. It’s a popular myth that languages can be more or less complex than one another.

      • doublepepperoni [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        I was being a bit facetious since what Finnish does have is cases, and tons and tons of them

        I would imagine trying to memorise the dozens of ways every noun can be modified would be a fucking nightmare for a non native speaker

    • BigNote@lemm.ee
      81·
      1 year ago

      Then you will like the fact that Old English grammar was as complicated as German grammar but it got stripped down for various historical reasons.

  • LedgeDrop@lemm.ee
    617·
    1 year ago

    For anyone who claims “English is easier”, I present you The Chaos Poem:

    The Chaos
by Gerard Nolst Trenité

Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation,
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.

I will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
Tear in eye, your dress you'll tear;
Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.

Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!
Just compare heart, hear and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word.

Sword and sward, retain and Britain
(Mind the latter how it's written).
Made has not the sound of bade,
Say-said, pay-paid, laid but plaid.

Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as vague and ague,
But be careful how you speak,
Say: gush, bush, steak, streak, break, bleak ,

Previous, precious, fuchsia, via
Recipe, pipe, studding-sail, choir;
Woven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, shoe, poem, toe.

Say, expecting fraud and trickery:
Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore,
Branch, ranch, measles, topsails, aisles,
Missiles, similes, reviles.

Wholly, holly, signal, signing,
Same, examining, but mining,
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far.

From "desire": desirable-admirable from "admire",
Lumber, plumber, bier, but brier,
Topsham, brougham, renown, but known,
Knowledge, done, lone, gone, none, tone,

One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel.
Gertrude, German, wind and wind,
Beau, kind, kindred, queue, mankind,

Tortoise, turquoise, chamois-leather,
Reading, Reading, heathen, heather.
This phonetic labyrinth
Gives moss, gross, brook, brooch, ninth, plinth.

Have you ever yet endeavoured
To pronounce revered and severed,
Demon, lemon, ghoul, foul, soul,
Peter, petrol and patrol?

Billet does not end like ballet;
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.

Banquet is not nearly parquet,
Which exactly rhymes with khaki.
Discount, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward,

Ricocheted and crocheting, croquet?
Right! Your pronunciation's OK.
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Is your r correct in higher?
Keats asserts it rhymes Thalia.
Hugh, but hug, and hood, but hoot,
Buoyant, minute, but minute.

Say abscission with precision,
Now: position and transition;
Would it tally with my rhyme
If I mentioned paradigm?

Twopence, threepence, tease are easy,
But cease, crease, grease and greasy?
Cornice, nice, valise, revise,
Rabies, but lullabies.

Of such puzzling words as nauseous,
Rhyming well with cautious, tortious,
You'll envelop lists, I hope,
In a linen envelope.

Would you like some more? You'll have it!
Affidavit, David, davit.
To abjure, to perjure. Sheik
Does not sound like Czech but ache.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, loch, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed but vowed.

Mark the difference, moreover,
Between mover, plover, Dover.
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice,

Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, penal, and canal,
Wait, surmise, plait, promise, pal,

Suit, suite, ruin. Circuit, conduit
Rhyme with "shirk it" and "beyond it",
But it is not hard to tell
Why it's pall, mall, but Pall Mall.

Muscle, muscular, gaol, iron,
Timber, climber, bullion, lion,
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor,

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
Has the a of drachm and hammer.
Pussy, hussy and possess,
Desert, but desert, address.

Golf, wolf, countenance, lieutenants
Hoist in lieu of flags left pennants.
Courier, courtier, tomb, bomb, comb,
Cow, but Cowper, some and home.

"Solder, soldier! Blood is thicker",
Quoth he, "than liqueur or liquor",
Making, it is sad but true,
In bravado, much ado.

Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Pilot, pivot, gaunt, but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand and grant.

Arsenic, specific, scenic,
Relic, rhetoric, hygienic.
Gooseberry, goose, and close, but close,
Paradise, rise, rose, and dose.

Say inveigh, neigh, but inveigle,
Make the latter rhyme with eagle.
Mind! Meandering but mean,
Valentine and magazine.

And I bet you, dear, a penny,
You say mani-(fold) like many,
Which is wrong. Say rapier, pier,
Tier (one who ties), but tier.

Arch, archangel; pray, does erring
Rhyme with herring or with stirring?
Prison, bison, treasure trove,
Treason, hover, cover, cove,

Perseverance, severance. Ribald
Rhymes (but piebald doesn't) with nibbled.
Phaeton, paean, gnat, ghat, gnaw,
Lien, psychic, shone, bone, pshaw.

Don't be down, my own, but rough it,
And distinguish buffet, buffet;
Brood, stood, roof, rook, school, wool, boon,
Worcester, Boleyn, to impugn.

Say in sounds correct and sterling
Hearse, hear, hearken, year and yearling.
Evil, devil, mezzotint,
Mind the z! (A gentle hint.)

Now you need not pay attention
To such sounds as I don't mention,
Sounds like pores, pause, pours and paws,
Rhyming with the pronoun yours;

Nor are proper names included,
Though I often heard, as you did,
Funny rhymes to unicorn,
Yes, you know them, Vaughan and Strachan.

No, my maiden, coy and comely,
I don't want to speak of Cholmondeley.
No. Yet Froude compared with proud
Is no better than McLeod.

But mind trivial and vial,
Tripod, menial, denial,
Troll and trolley, realm and ream,
Schedule, mischief, schism, and scheme.

Argil, gill, Argyll, gill. Surely
May be made to rhyme with Raleigh,
But you're not supposed to say
Piquet rhymes with sobriquet.

Had this invalid invalid
Worthless documents? How pallid,
How uncouth he, couchant, looked,
When for Portsmouth I had booked!

Zeus, Thebes, Thales, Aphrodite,
Paramour, enamoured, flighty,
Episodes, antipodes,
Acquiesce, and obsequies.

Please don't monkey with the geyser,
Don't peel 'taters with my razor,
Rather say in accents pure:
Nature, stature and mature.

Pious, impious, limb, climb, glumly,
Worsted, worsted, crumbly, dumbly,
Conquer, conquest, vase, phase, fan,
Wan, sedan and artisan.

The th will surely trouble you
More than r, ch or w.
Say then these phonetic gems:
Thomas, thyme, Theresa, Thames.

Thompson, Chatham, Waltham, Streatham,
There are more but I forget 'em-
Wait! I've got it: Anthony,
Lighten your anxiety.

The archaic word albeit
Does not rhyme with eight-you see it;
With and forthwith, one has voice,
One has not, you make your choice.

Shoes, goes, does *. Now first say: finger;
Then say: singer, ginger, linger.
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, age,

Hero, heron, query, very,
Parry, tarry fury, bury,
Dost, lost, post, and doth, cloth, loth,
Job, Job, blossom, bosom, oath.

Faugh, oppugnant, keen oppugners,
Bowing, bowing, banjo-tuners
Holm you know, but noes, canoes,
Puisne, truism, use, to use?

Though the difference seems little,
We say actual, but victual,
Seat, sweat, chaste, caste, Leigh, eight, height,
Put, nut, granite, and unite.

Reefer does not rhyme with deafer,
Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Dull, bull, Geoffrey, George, ate, late,
Hint, pint, senate, but sedate.

Gaelic, Arabic, pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific;
Tour, but our, dour, succour, four,
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.

Say manoeuvre, yacht and vomit,
Next omit, which differs from it
Bona fide, alibi
Gyrate, dowry and awry.

Sea, idea, guinea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean,
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion with battalion,
Rally with ally; yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, key, quay!

Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, receiver.
Never guess-it is not safe,
We say calves, valves, half, but Ralf.

Starry, granary, canary,
Crevice, but device, and eyrie,
Face, but preface, then grimace,
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.

Bass, large, target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, oust, joust, and scour, but scourging;
Ear, but earn; and ere and tear
Do not rhyme with here but heir.

Mind the o of off and often
Which may be pronounced as orphan,
With the sound of saw and sauce;
Also soft, lost, cloth and cross.

Pudding, puddle, putting. Putting?
Yes: at golf it rhymes with shutting.
Respite, spite, consent, resent.
Liable, but Parliament.

Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew, Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, clerk and jerk,
Asp, grasp, wasp, demesne, cork, work.

A of valour, vapid vapour,
S of news (compare newspaper),
G of gibbet, gibbon, gist,
I of antichrist and grist,

Differ like diverse and divers,
Rivers, strivers, shivers, fivers.
Once, but nonce, toll, doll, but roll,
Polish, Polish, poll and poll.

Pronunciation-think of Psyche!-
Is a paling, stout and spiky.
Won't it make you lose your wits
Writing groats and saying "grits"?

It's a dark abyss or tunnel
Strewn with stones like rowlock, gunwale,
Islington, and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Don't you think so, reader, rather,
Saying lather, bather, father?
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, bough, cough, hough, sough, tough??

Hiccough has the sound of sup...
My advice is: Give It Up!
      • Pili@lemmygrad.ml
        35·
        1 year ago

        So the spelling is irregular, so what. You’ll be bad at spelling for a while.

        People mostly learn languages by reading.

        having to memorize arbitrary gender for every noun in the language, learn complex verb conjugations, polite and impolite forms and make every verb and adjective agree with the nouns in gender and number

        If you mess those up, people will still understand you. Saying “un chaise” instead of “une chaise” doesn’t change the meaning and everyone knows what you’re saying.

        However, if you learn english words through text and then try to use them vocally, nobody will understand you. (looking at you “beard”, who isn’t pronounced at all like “bear” for some reason)

        There is absolutely no correlation between spoken and written english, so in practice it’s the same as having to learn two languages at once. Even adult native speakers still aren’t sure how to pronounce simple 1 syllable words such as “route” or “vase”, that’s pretty telling how confusing that language is.

      • BigNote@lemm.ee
        194·
        1 year ago

        This is bullshit. Anyone who knows anything about linguistics can tell you that languages aren’t objectively easier or more difficult to learn. What makes a language easy is its similarity to a learner’s native language, or other languages they’ve already learned. Furthermore, there’s a myth that certain things or ideas can be said or expressed in some languages but not in others, and this too is objectively untrue. All languages do the same thing, they just do it differently. If one language doesn’t have a word for something, that doesn’t mean it can’t express the concept, just that it has to do so through other means, typically in a sentence or phrase.

        • uberrice@feddit.de
          6·
          1 year ago

          The thing about ‘not being able to be expressed in another language’ is that one language might have a shortcut word for something another doesn’t. That shortcut word might also be culturally charged, not that easily explained. Yes, you can explain anything in any language - for some languages you can just take shortcuts

          • pingveno@lemmy.mlEnglish
            3·
            1 year ago

            Yes, you can explain anything in any language - for some languages you can just take shortcuts

            Along these lines, some languages have a preference for longer or shorter words. There’s an oft repeated factoid that the Inuit language has something like 50 words for snow. That’s not entirely untrue, but it ignores that the language tends to have unique words that encompass more concepts. So whereas English would combine other words in a phrase to produce concepts like “soft deep snow”, the Inuit language has an entire word. It’s not like Inuit has special descriptive powers. It just takes up vocabulary space for concepts that could be mix-and-match instead.

          • BigNote@lemm.ee
            1·
            1 year ago

            Agreed. That said, what you’re ultimately talking about is culture, of which language is only one among many aspects that impart meaning.

          • uberrice@feddit.de
            31·
            1 year ago

            Were you though, or did you just think you were?

            It’s also ‘easy’ to communicate in English. ‘I want eat’ ‘where go this place’ and so on. People understand, and probably will answer you. It’s easier for something like that in Chinese to be grammatically correct - but did you master pitch accents and never mixed them up after ‘a few weeks’? We’re you able to read hanzi?

            The thing is that with European languages, it’s easy to fall into the trap of trying to express ideas that are too complex for your language ability if you are native in an European language. I don’t remember French for shit anymore, but say I were to ask some French guy that doesn’t speak English for a good restaurant to eat in, I’d probably go something like ‘je veux mange, tu sais un bon Restaurant ici?’ I doubt that’s grammatically correct whatsoever, and sounds weird as fuck, but you’d probably get my point. It’s probable you sound similar when speaking Chinese only for a few weeks.

        • Farman [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          I agree with your second point. But it would seem that normaly the languages that are spoken primarily by people that learnned them as second languages would become more simplified.

          For example english speakers say ate instead of eated wich would be the logical choice. If enough peaole learn it as a second language so that it becomes eated then the language becomes simpler.

          And then tend to become complicated again as the speakers develop ideosincracies. But if there is a mechanism preventing this, for example its spoken over a wide area so the ideosyncracies never stick. Or the speakers are constantly interacting with forengers or both. Then the languaged gramar would remainsimple.

          Persian gramar is much easier to learn than russian or spanish. And i asume chinise is likewise easier.

        • margaritox@lemmy.world
          12·
          1 year ago

          Haha, that’s exactly what I just posted. 100% agree

          I also feel like there often is a temptation for people to believe that one’s native language is hard.

      • Gork@lemm.ee
        92·
        1 year ago

        English verbiage can also a source of frustration for English learners.

        For instance, you can chop a tree down. Once you’re done, you can chop a tree up.

        Imagine the confusion this causes lol.

        I do agree though that the general lack of gender for most uses are really useful. It makes learning other languages more difficult though (basically all other languages).

        • yata@sh.itjust.works
          91·
          1 year ago

          For instance, you can chop a tree down. Once you’re done, you can chop a tree up.

          Imagine the confusion this causes lol.

          This is an absolutely minor thing, and it is also a phenomenon which occurs in basically all other languages.

          • Gork@lemm.ee
            210·
            1 year ago

            Minor, yes, but there are quite a few of them.

            • Break a leg

            • It’s raining cats and dogs

            • Bite the bullet

            • Piece of cake

            • Hold your horses

            • Spill the beans

            • Hit the nail on the head

            • Let the cat out of the bag

            • It costs an arm and a leg

            • Can’t have your cake and eat it too

            • uberrice@feddit.de
              5·
              1 year ago

              Idioms. Present in all languages.

              Example from Japanese, transliterated:

              Rain falls, the ground hardens.

              So, is the meaning instantly obvious to you?

            • ByteJunk@lemmy.pt
              14·
              1 year ago

              These are just idioms, all languages have their own.

              Learning English has it’s snags, but it’s not a hard language. That’s a good thing btw.

              • margaritox@lemmy.world
                12·
                1 year ago

                There are no objectively “hard” or “easy” languages. What makes certain languages “hard” is their difference from one’s native language.

                • ByteJunk@lemmy.pt
                  3·
                  1 year ago

                  Ah, we disagree my friend. I think languages can be easier or harder based on other criteria too, and not only familiarity.

                  Suppose an alien, the kind from outer space, crashes on earth and now needs to learn a language to communicate with humans.

                  It’s not a stretch to consider that all human languages are so far removed from his own as to be considered equally hard to learn if looking only at familiarity. In this scenario, surely there are features of individual languages that make them harder to learn - stuff like gendered articles as mentioned before, as there’s no logic to them and have to memorized.

        • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          10·
          1 year ago

          It’s just you.
          In Germany we need to think about the position of the peer and if professional or casual.

          • BigNote@lemm.ee
            5·
            1 year ago

            Virtually all known languages do this, only some do it through the use of grammar.

            This thread is full of bad linguistics.

          • Gork@lemm.ee
            5·
            1 year ago

            Yeah, the word “you” is a good example as well.

            The only issue with “you” is that it lacks a plural version so we have to use the Southern “y’all” instead. Some people go even further with a mass plural “all y’all”.

          • uberrice@feddit.de
            21·
            1 year ago

            This also happens in English, by selection of the words you use. Using Du und Sie is fairly simple in comparison. Strangers, last name basis, or professional? Sie. Kids, friends, talking to people out drinking on a friendly basis? Du.

            The whole ‘position of peer’ thing has a lot more nuances in Japanese, and even that’s not too hard once you get the hang of it.

      • geissi@feddit.deEnglish
        72·
        1 year ago

        It’s just not comparable to having to memorize arbitrary gender for every noun in the language

        Yes, instead of having to memorize one of up to three possible genders for every noun, you only have to memorize an infinity of arbitrary pronunciations for every word.
        Much easier.

        • ElderWendigo@sh.itjust.works
          3·
          1 year ago

          Those pronunciations are not arbitrary. Consistent spelling was not always important to English writers, so some of that may be arbitrary. The words though have diverse etymologies reflecting multiculturalism born from brutal imperialism spanning centuries. It is often a system of language evolved from violent colonial expansion. Every weird word and spelling that breaks the rule has a story. It may not be a perfectly ordered system because it lives and breathes while some parts grow and others whither and die, but nothing about it arbitrary. Maybe I’ve been listening to too much of The Allusionist podcast.

          • geissi@feddit.deEnglish
            12·
            1 year ago

            Yes, but we’re not talking about the linguistic history of how words developed.
            We’re talking about learning a language and the lack of consistent rules can make that quite difficult.

            • ElderWendigo@sh.itjust.works
              2·
              1 year ago

              You brought up history, not me, by ignoring it through your claim about arbitrary pronunciations. Such a claim ignores history to make a weak argument for language learning difficulty. Pronunciations are not arbitrary.

              • geissi@feddit.deEnglish
                11·
                1 year ago

                I’m saying that there are no consistent rules so language learners have to learn each word individually.
                If you learn languages by memorizing every singe vowel shift since proto-indo-european then be my guest but for someone who just wants to speak the language and has to learn the difference between plough, through, though etc, it seems pretty damn arbitrary.

    • AbelianGrape@beehaw.orgEnglish
      11·
      1 year ago

      Some of these depend on dialect - where my family is from, gaunt and aunt rhyme, for example.

      Of course, that makes it worse, not better :P

    • ennemi [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      31·
      1 year ago

      I remember reading something about the size of Kanji in comparison to the alphabet, and someone brought up that while (eg) Japanese has something like a little over 100 syllables you have to learn to pronounce, English has over two thousand

    • ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca
      20·
      1 year ago

      There are parts of English that are simple and there are parts that are complex. Same as any language! The cool thing about linguistics is learning about the neat features of some languages. For example, Chinese doesn’t use articles!

        • bricklove@midwest.socialEnglish
          15·
          1 year ago

          Gendered articles probably not but having “a” vs “the” removes the need for additional cases (eg. I/me/my). Latin and Russian don’t have articles but they have more cases which have different suffixes that have to be applied to all nouns. Usually simplifying one part of language makes another part more complex. English has a very simple case structure but the word order is much more strict

          • piekay@feddit.de
            3·
            1 year ago

            I remember a study that gendered articles slightly increase understandibility among native speakers.

          • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
            5·
            1 year ago

            Gendered articles, like all things relating to grammatical gender, can be useful to reduce ambiguity and therefore increase information density/redundancy. They’re basically the Roman languages’ way of retaining the usefulness of Latin cases without actual grammatical cases.

            “Ami” and “amie” are homophones in French (with some accents you might see /ami/ vs /ami:/, but in casual speech you’d likely miss it anyway). However “un ami” is different from “une amie”.

            So in French you’d say “hier je suis sorti avec une amie” which, to convey the same level of detail in English, requires a translation like “yesterday I went out with a female friend”.

              • piekay@feddit.de
                1·
                1 year ago

                Because sometimes the same word can mean different things.

                German has „Der See“ and „die See“ (the lake and the sea) Or even more extreme: „Band“ can describe a music group, a book or a tape.

                You just reduce the need for context

                • Display Name@lemmy.ml
                  1·
                  1 year ago

                  “Die See” is only an exception. It’s origins are in the Platt languages bordering belgium and the netherlands iirc.

                  Don’t we talk about the usefulness of gender articles? There are some outliers. Adding gender articles increases the vocabularies by a factor of two but at what cost and what’s the real advantage? You can simply invent a new word for one of the “Bands” to reduce ambiguity in order to decrease the complexity of the language. I think you can compare it to irregular verbs. Those are just there for historic reasons, they don’t really serve a real purpose. Du/Sie is another example. It may be useful in some cases to maintain distance. Moreover we should get rid of the corner case “royal we” asap! Etc. The sooner we start the better.

      • olsonexi@lemmy.blueEnglish
        15·
        1 year ago

        It’s actually 「は」, and… kind of. It marks the topic, which is sort of the thing the conversation is generally about, which typically is the subject of each sentence, but not necessarily. It’s kinda hard to explain it well since it doesn’t really map cleanly onto any grammatical feature in english.

        • Johanno@lemmy.fmhy.net
          5·
          1 year ago

          Well the “ha” (は) pronounced “wa” is basically like a pointer to the word before it. Like smb. comments “THIS” after it.

          The “wa” (わ) character on the other hand is used as a letter in a word. It won’t usually stand alone in a sentence (which is a bit weird since the japanese usually don’t use spaces so you just have to guess/know)

          The は is also used in words so have fun knowing when it is a particle and when not.

          I am just a beginner on japanese.

          • uberrice@feddit.de
            1·
            1 year ago

            Yeah, don’t confuse people if you don’t know anything about a language.

            That’s like saying ‘I was so confused what an atre is, until I realized it’s not the atre but theatre!’

            は and が are something you can call ‘subject markers’, just like を is an object marker. They come after words to describe their position in a sentence. The same way you have Kasus/Fälle in German.