English Is Weird

[AB Editor]

Bumped into this online, and I thought you might enjoy it!

[FredPuli43]

But English hasn't got nonsensical faults which other languages have; the nouns aren't in two or three genders, for example. Which 'livre' is la and which is le? Is a young German woman neuter? She is. Is a Renault masculine? Mr Renault was, but we assume it's a car so we guess feminine. English lacks the great variety of verb endings which indicate the tense or whether the verb is in the subjunctive , and so on. It lacks the complexities of construction which give us four words in French where English uses 'please'

[Peter Pedant]

or con-chair-to Freddie

as a professional wordsmith you will be aware that there are 42 sounds in English that have to be shoe horned into 26 letters

The billion-speaker list is English, Mandarin, Spanith, and Arabic
and English being uninflected and not tonal is the easiest to learn quig

[Peter Pedant]

Ja Freddich,

madchen - young lady or maiden in German is neuter because it is a diminutive. Compare het meisje in Dutch...
thing is - for English to get to his / her - that is agreeing with the possessor and not the gender - thenEnglish has to pass through a stage when there is no gender at all - but this has not been identified in Anglo Saxon. ( Anglos too busy swinging in the trees and not writing )

[whiskeryron]

Ab Editor I couldn't agree more, I have been saying it for years. Why oh why don't we simplify it & teach phonetic English ( Chalmondely pronounced Chumley, Beauchamps pronounced Beacham, Belvoir pronounced Beaver, for eg, how stupid is that ? I well remember the tale of a foreigner who was very proud of his success with the English language he had learnt until one day he was in London's theatre district & he read a notice that stated '' Oklahoma Pronounced Success''. Despairingly he shot himself.

WR.

[FredPuli43]

Proof of the superiority of English over French? We haven't got an Academie Francaise [sorry, I don't do accents on here!]. We cheerfully accept foreign words from everywhere, if they meet a need, because English is adaptable. Not for us rules that foreign words and phrases in adverts have to have translations in small print at the bottom of the ad. If we had such a body, bungalow would be 'single storey house' and not one word. Nor do we have clumsy rendering of foreign words into our language.But the Academie is swimming against the tide. Years ago I went to buy a video recorder in France. The official word was magnetoscope. I asked for one. The bemused assistant replied " Ah, video"! (And if you have time, look up 'anti-clockwise' in a French dictionary. The 'proper' French phrase amounts to 'in the opposite direction to the clock')

[FredPuli43]

Anticlockwise : "dans le sens inverse des aiguilles d'une montre" ["in the opposite direction to the hands of a watch"] !

[jno]

the fact that the French haven't simply appropriated anticlockwise suggests they don't have much need for the concept (unlike the invaluable le smoking, le sandwich etc).

What our grandchildren will think of it when clocks are all dead, I don't know.

[FredPuli43]

And 'le stress' jno! Not the Academie approves of such an intrusion.

[vetuste_ennemi]

Fred,

My name's Ball, sir.
No, but I once trod in some.

[FredPuli43]

Thanks, vetuste. Educational being on here, isn't it!

[Quizmonster]

My French favourite, Fred, is, "What is it that it is that that?" At least, that's my translation of "Qu'est-ce que c'est, que ça?" (That's not quite the c-cedilla I was looking for, but what the hey!)

[Marijn]

You can "raze" something to the ground. . which means the opposite of "raise". I love the English language. It's the best!

[megfitz]

How about the Aussie tourist who asked the way to Lugabarouga...(Loughborough )

[keenonhist]

Thanks AB editor,but can we have a bit larger.Some parts are imposible to read.Shame really because it`s very interesting.
keenonhist.

[joko]

i've always thought the whole masculine and feminine thing with languages to be pretty pointless and just an extra confusion that adds nothing to it.

unless i am missing something? is there any point to it?

[Marijn]

If you watch the above clip from 40 secs onwards, there does not seem to be any point to the masculine and feminine thing.