English is the most adaptable language in the world. England got colonised something like seven different times up until the mediaeval age. The language that came out of the end of that process is precision designed to accommodate unfamiliar words and grammar. There's no better language to put a loanword into. And it's really easy to invent new grammar for English, which is why English has the most neopronouns.
English has sacrificed its logic and structure to grow fluidity.
Nobody's stopping you using "whelmed". You can just start using it whenever the opportunity arises.
I use it occasionally, though normally not seriously, along with words where you have an "un" or "dis', but no positive equivalent, e.g. "gusting" as a positive "disgusting"
The way I learned it, is that people have a tendency to emphasize, so when became overwhelmed. You see the same thing with 'good', 'great', and 'epic'meaning the same thing within certain contexts.
If you want to get technical, I believe "whelm" originally came from waves hitting the hull of a ship, overwhelmed was when the waves crashed over the side and onto the deck.
'Jam' can mean a fruit preserve, to play music, a stuck door, traffic, to cram something into something else, a tense situation, or to block a radio signal. All spelled and pronounced the same.
As an Asian, "Midwest" always feels off. Only now I realized this is the same shit as "Middle East" (which I forgot to give second thoughts as an adult). Now both terms really sucks to me!
It's a pretty quick read and it explains exactly how the English language became such a mess. For each thing that doesn't make sense, it provides a reason that explains it. Short version: the timing of the Great Vowel Shift relative to the invention of the printing press really screwed it over. There's quite a bit more (Norman invasion in particular), but that was what codified all the badness.
Learning the "why" of so many previously preposterous language and spelling rules was gratifying and enlightening. They're still preposterous but slightly less maddening now.
There's also an excellent podcast interview with the author on 99% Invisible. Check it out. It made me buy the book and I definitely recommend it every time a post like this comes up.
IMO, the more important reason is that English is crusty af. Lots of languages had massive changes since the printing press was invented, but that didn't stop them from changing their orthography. Germany even had an official spelling reform in the 1990s.
Note: Changed my mind but preserved initial reaction:
No. Read the book. Other languages had their massive shifts before or after the printing press. English evolved at roughly the same time. That caused chaos. While other languages solidified in advance, and others solidified after, the english language was evolving at the same time that rules were written. It's a perfect disaster (those who know, know. great song. great album).
Not direct support for my argument, just context:
The standardization of English spelling began in the 15th and 16th centuries; the Great Vowel Shift is the major reason English spellings now often deviate considerably from how they represent pronunciations.
Back to commenter (so it doesn't look like I'm joining different quotes):
Germany even had an official spelling reform in the 1990s.
I've never heard of this, so maybe I'm wrong / uninformed. I'll look into it because I truly believe that language shapes thought and this is interesting to me.
The German orthography reform of 1996 (Reform der deutschen Rechtschreibung von 1996) was a change to German spelling and punctuation that was intended to simplify German orthography, thereby making it easier to learn,[1] without substantially changing the rules familiar to users of the language.
Wow. That's so incredible and impossible where I live (USA) that I'm dumbstruck at the pragmatism of it. I was wrong. Fuck England and the USA (as always!).
What's worse is that even in languages with common ancestry, the gendered pronouns are not necessarily the same - the same thing can be male or female across a border.
::: spoiler well, i knew what a pike was
worst part was i played DnD, i knew exactly what he was asking. i just saw a low hanging fruit and an opportunity to be a smartass and you really can't set me up like that.
:::
As someone who speaks 3 languages, I can confirm english is a weak ass language.
It's strong point is that daily and normal speech and formal writing or speech are almost the same.
Thats not the case with most languages, specially the older and more complex ones.
I kind of like how it’s ever changing and evolving, I know that sours some people’s pickles but I think it’s neat. I like how it incorporates and is built on so many other languages. I enjoyed reading a short story posted here a while ago that progressively walked backwards in time as a language and it was really neat to me. I’m an idiot though so most other languages probably do this also.
American English has never be bashful about filing the serial numbers off a word and then claiming it as our own. It can lead, (lead/lead/led?) to confusion even among us native speakers. At least until we sort it out.
Personally I blame the French, (for no reason other than I can), for all the ills in the English language.
That's the indication of a healthy and alive language.
English has the most speakers and is the scientific and professional language of the world currently. So it is the most up to date and alive one currently.
While german is hard and weird, but it's not far harder than english.
I used to know german but never used it and lost the muscle.
I speak Persian(Farsi), Arabic and English.
I tried to learn Japanese and Chinese (mandarin) for a while but I just gave up.
I'm glad we're not speaking Mandarin as our common language. It's one of the least interesting languages and objectively the hardest languages I've seen. At least Japanese has it's beauties, but I couldn't find them in Mandarin.
I don't think anything comes as close to showcasing the extend of this pronunciation ridiculousness as the poem "The Chaos" by Gerard Nolst Trenité which is said to contain about 800 examples.
It's got a silent letter at the beginning, and then a silent o in the middle, and an invisible a, which you pronounce but don't type, and then a silent c, before going back to some sort of sanity for the last three letters. Who decided that's how it should be spelt?
We already had the word Terra so why did they have to go spell this version Ptero
so the fun thing about the history of the english language is -
writing got standardised just around the same time the printing press was invented, since everyone now had access to the same resources more people learnt to read and write in a similar way. and all was well :)
...
and then something that linguists call "the great vowel shift" happened. where vowels of the oral english language just kinda, did a flip. but because of the printing press thing, you couldn't just update the ortography... and now because of that (and many other things too, but this is a significant one) english is the way it is :)
Whoah, I went down the rabbit hole after googling this "great vowel shift" and damn if it isn't insanely interesting! English should have naturally split into descendant languages but the arrival of the printing press in the middle of the transition messed things up royally and now the entire world has to bear the idiosyncrasies. Nothing short of amazing, thanks a lot for your reply!
German and French aren't scripts, they are languages that use the same script as English - Latin. And LOL if you think they are any better than English.
By more sensible scripts I mean Hebrew or Arabic, which are a lot more efficient and clear in packing words than Latin or Cyrillic.
No ironically it has far more to do with being colonized than colonizing, although when you go that far back the distinction between terms like English, Norman, or Anglo-Saxon get a little fuzzy.
Posts like this are so ignorant because they're based on the false premise that English was made to be the global language, when it's not. It was made as a result of the mixing of Germans, Scandinavians, Celts, and French people on a gloomy isolated island in the corner of Europe for thousands of years. It's a language that was evolved by those people, and thus it contains a lot of their linguistic quirks coming together.
Every single language has quirks like this. For example, I also speak Arabic, and people are always shocked when I tell them that an Arabic speaker from Iraq and an Arab speaker from Morocco cannot understand each other because Arabic dialects are basically different languages. THey're only unified by standard Arabic, which most Arabic speakers don't use in their day to day lives. It's basically a language that's only used to communicate with other Arabs.
English only got to where it is because of a unique situation in history where the language was used by not one, but two global hegemons. Not only that but those hegemons happened to be the most of the powerful in history, and they ruled back to back. That's what spread and cemented English into the global language it is today.
You didn't address a single thing from the original post.
It was highlighting how English is a very quirky language. You can explain it, obviously there are reasons why, but it doesn't change the factual observation that English is a uniquely inconsistent language.
Most languages have some sort of academic body that dictates the correct usage of the language, and occasionally push for adjustments that resolve these inconsistencies. English does not, it's a crowd sourced effort with the results being what we see today.
Many countries and languages share similar backgrounds to English - invasion by foreign peoples, large migrations, etc - yet they've settled most of their background into a consistent ruleset - there's always exceptions and irregularities, but not to the level of English.
One of the largest sources of inconsistencies was the "Great Vowel Shift", along with the invention of the printing press at roughly the same time, which standardized a spelling that didn't reflect the massive ongoing changes in pronunciation.
This is a fascinating topic, but accusing others of ignorance for pointing out something that is a fact, is in itself ignorance.
This is complete nonsense. All languages are organic and evolve naturally. There's no academic body that controls any langauge, that's not how languages work. What exists is institutional bodies that try to break down and explain languages into rules and patterns, they don't actually dictate the direction of the language. English also has such institutions by the way. This idea that English is uniquely inconsistent or uncontrolled is not true. Arabic, for example, is just as quirky, inconsistent, and uncontrolled. That's just human speech.
You're just elaborating and expanding on a part of what I said, while being an abrasive jerk, and ignoring everything else that didn't suit your argument.
To the point in question, I never said academies invent the future of a language, only that they gatekeep the rules, which can include pushback against popular usage (the french academy is notorious for being very against english neologisms).
There have been cases where the changes are very substantial, like the Portuguese and French changes that happened (coincidentally) in 1990, for example, that push the languages in certain directions.
Take a cup of tea and relax a bit, and try not to argue the voices in your head.
Edit: I missed this point, let me address it:
All languages are organic and evolve naturally.
Have you heard of Esperanto, for example, or the concept of auxiliary languages?
What about artistic or fictional languages, like Tolkien's Elvish or Star Trek's Klingon or Dothraki or High Valerian from Game of Thrones?
None of them are "organic", and as for evolving, it really depends but a language like Esperanto, assuming it is regularly used by a community, is very unlikely to differ from it's textbook definition because it was specifically crafted to avoid the inconsistencies that we're discussing and that arise from evolution.
I still don't understand though why Europe so many languages, a good chunk of it was in the Roman empire so you would have thought that they would all have a single unified language as a result of that but even in the Mediterranean there's different languages.
I mean all the romance languages descend from Latin. The reason why that language splintered into a bunch of other languages is isolation. When Christianity came to Europe, the empire splintered into a bunch of smaller empires and kingdoms and stayed that way for centuries. That led to a lot local variations that eventually turned into full blown languages.
149 Comments
unitedwithme@lemmy.today · 127 pts · 77d
English can certainly be difficult! It can understood through tough thorough thought though throughout the learning process.
Thteven@lemmy.world · 47 pts · 77d
If y'all ain't get the gist of it y'ain't thunk it thru enuff.
Curiousfur@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 77d
This was the easiest sentence to parse out for me...
Whimsical418@aussie.zone · 22 pts · 77d
I'm a fan of the phrase "before was was was, was was is""
ddplf@szmer.info · 4 pts · 76d
I'd guess this sentence would be just as flashy in any language really, not just in english
Proprietary_Blend@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 77d
No. It's shit
cattywampas@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 77d
He said in English.
ApertureUA@lemmy.today · 21 pts · 77d
Do you speak other languages tho?
cattywampas@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 77d
Yeah lol
Grail@multiverse.soulism.net · 6 pts · 77d
English is the most adaptable language in the world. England got colonised something like seven different times up until the mediaeval age. The language that came out of the end of that process is precision designed to accommodate unfamiliar words and grammar. There's no better language to put a loanword into. And it's really easy to invent new grammar for English, which is why English has the most neopronouns.
English has sacrificed its logic and structure to grow fluidity.
farmgineer@nord.pub · 4 pts · 77d
Reading that gave me a tough hiccough.
BossDj@piefed.social · 2 pts · 76d
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
A real English sentence.
unitedwithme@lemmy.today · 5 pts · 76d
Yeah I never understood that one myself
MutilationWave@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 76d
Unless I'm missing something it's supposed to be Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
Bison from the city of Buffalo bully other bison from the city of Buffalo.
BossDj@piefed.social · 4 pts · 76d
Buffalonian bison [who] Buffalonian bison bully [also] bully Buffalonian bison. Eight is correct!
MutilationWave@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 76d
Ah got it, thanks!
unitedwithme@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 75d
Dang!
basxto@discuss.tchncs.de · 58 pts · 77d
past tense read and toxic lead vs reading and leading if somebody doesn’t underntand
joby@programming.dev · 9 pts · 77d
Careful, though: reading (past tense of 'to read') doesn't rhyme with Reading (place name)
dave@feddit.uk · 4 pts · 77d
And leading (being in front) doesn’t rhyme with leading (the metal on a roof).
ChexMax@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 76d
Lol I did get it immediately after, but my instant thought was wait, read and lead don't rhyme?
Shellbeach@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 77d
I feel like I walked on a rake after a perfect catwalk reading you. Love it.
TheBrideWoreCrimson@sopuli.xyz · 55 pts · 77d
Adultery is not the opposite of infantry; whimsy is not an adjective; you can live together in an apartment; and the Midwest is in the Eastern US.
glitch1985@lemmy.world · 36 pts · 77d
"flammable" and "inflammable" mean the same thing
lillardfair@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 77d
What a country!
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 76d
Crazyslinkz@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 76d
"Inflammable means flammable, what a country! "
Dr. Nick
Edit added end of quote
Randelung@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 76d
Bye, everybody! *dies*
NikkiDimes@lemmy.world · 27 pts · 77d
Why can I be overwhelmed or underwhelmed, but not perfectly adequately whelmed?
fakeman_pretendname@feddit.uk · 17 pts · 77d
Nobody's stopping you using "whelmed". You can just start using it whenever the opportunity arises.
I use it occasionally, though normally not seriously, along with words where you have an "un" or "dis', but no positive equivalent, e.g. "gusting" as a positive "disgusting"
Scrollone@feddit.it · 9 pts · 76d
English lacks a "gusting" word, but romance languages don't.
e.g. in Italian "gustoso" is the opposite of "disgustoso"
fakeman_pretendname@feddit.uk · 7 pts · 76d
That's a brilliant fact, and perfect example if anyone disagrees with me, thank you :)
NikkiDimes@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 76d
lol I love "gusting." Next time I eat someone else's cooking, I'm throwing that out there.
Crewman@sopuli.xyz · 3 pts · 77d
Whelm and overwhelm are synonyms.
The way I learned it, is that people have a tendency to emphasize, so when became overwhelmed. You see the same thing with 'good', 'great', and 'epic'meaning the same thing within certain contexts.
NikkiDimes@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 76d
If you want to get technical, I believe "whelm" originally came from waves hitting the hull of a ship, overwhelmed was when the waves crashed over the side and onto the deck.
CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml · 16 pts · 77d
'Jam' can mean a fruit preserve, to play music, a stuck door, traffic, to cram something into something else, a tense situation, or to block a radio signal. All spelled and pronounced the same.
tamal3@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 76d
Also door jambs
zerofk@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 76d
Jim should shim the jamb.
imadethis@fedinsfw.app · 1 pts · 76d
Just wait until you learn about 'set.'
IronKrill@lemmy.ca · 6 pts · 76d
This explains some of my US geography confusion over the years...
BigDiction@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 76d
Midwest is not a place, it is a People.
olenkoVD@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 76d
That actually makes sense because it's from the point of view of Europe.
clabru@feddit.it · 7 pts · 76d
Just as middle east and western Asia are the same region
xx3rawr@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 76d
As an Asian, "Midwest" always feels off. Only now I realized this is the same shit as "Middle East" (which I forgot to give second thoughts as an adult). Now both terms really sucks to me!
basxto@discuss.tchncs.de · 6 pts · 76d
It is from the POV of the original colonies.
Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 19 pts · 77d
Qu'est-ce que c'est ?
That's the ubiquitous "what's that" in French. All languages are evil to newcomers.
You're welcome.
mech@feddit.org · 12 pts · 77d
In German, "jemanden umfahren" means drive around someone,
while "jemanden umfahren" means run someone over.
basxto@discuss.tchncs.de · 3 pts · 76d
That’s an artificial sentence. We never drive around people
Scrollone@feddit.it · 3 pts · 76d
In Italian we also have a similar phrase: "Cos'è che è?"
Luckily, it's only in spoken language because it's considered a bit "wrong".
basxto@discuss.tchncs.de · 2 pts · 76d
But what the fuck is that, bro?
some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org · 16 pts · 77d
I would like to recommend Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language.
It's a pretty quick read and it explains exactly how the English language became such a mess. For each thing that doesn't make sense, it provides a reason that explains it. Short version: the timing of the Great Vowel Shift relative to the invention of the printing press really screwed it over. There's quite a bit more (Norman invasion in particular), but that was what codified all the badness.
Learning the "why" of so many previously preposterous language and spelling rules was gratifying and enlightening. They're still preposterous but slightly less maddening now.
There's also an excellent podcast interview with the author on 99% Invisible. Check it out. It made me buy the book and I definitely recommend it every time a post like this comes up.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org · 3 pts · 77d
IMO, the more important reason is that English is crusty af. Lots of languages had massive changes since the printing press was invented, but that didn't stop them from changing their orthography. Germany even had an official spelling reform in the 1990s.
some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org · 2 pts · 69d
Note: Changed my mind but preserved initial reaction:
No. Read the book. Other languages had their massive shifts before or after the printing press. English evolved at roughly the same time. That caused chaos. While other languages solidified in advance, and others solidified after, the english language was evolving at the same time that rules were written. It's a perfect disaster (those who know, know. great song. great album).
Not direct support for my argument, just context:
Back to commenter (so it doesn't look like I'm joining different quotes):
I've never heard of this, so maybe I'm wrong / uninformed.
I'll look into it because I truly believe that language shapes thought and this is interesting to me.Wow. That's so incredible and impossible where I live (USA) that I'm dumbstruck at the pragmatism of it. I was wrong. Fuck England and the USA (as always!).
"German orthography reform of 1996"[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_orthography_reform_of_1996
basxto@discuss.tchncs.de · 1 pts · 76d
Those three are even all from the old vocabulary, they all have German cognates: zäh, durch, Teig
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 77d
At least English doesn’t have a “she” table, a “he” refrigerator, and a “neutral” lamp gender for everything.
Zwiebel@feddit.org · 3 pts · 76d
First of all tables are male, and secondly at least we spell things close to how they are pronounced in german
Scrollone@feddit.it · 4 pts · 76d
In Italian tables are gender fluid. You can have "la tavola" e "il tavolo".
Surfing? It's a female: la tavola da surf.
Eating? Male: il tavolo.
Table as a metonymy for eating: la tavola (WTF?!)
ByteJunk@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 75d
What's worse is that even in languages with common ancestry, the gendered pronouns are not necessarily the same - the same thing can be male or female across a border.
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 77d
Hes policemanning
RickyRigatoni@piefed.zip · 2 pts · 77d
I was going to say it's different because police officers are people, but they're not.
kamen@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 76d
Maybe start with the fact that not all words in use in English are English words.
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca · 7 pts · 76d
Or that people in different parts of the world say/spell words differently and we inconsistently applied it:
Kernel and Colonel were the same rank but we took the pronunciation of the first and the spelling of the latter.
banazir@lemmy.ml · 14 pts · 76d
English-language spelling reform now.
IMALlama@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 76d
But let's only do it in some English speaking countries and not others! I am joking, but this is one of the reasons why American English has diverged from British English.
Relevant xkcd:
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 76d
Speling Reeforma
banazir@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 76d
What? Speak English.
elephantium@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 70d
Say 'what' again! I dare you!
mechoman444@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 77d
It's phunny how fotographs phunction in filosofy.
There is nothing more useless than ph.
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 77d
until youre being eaten alive by acid
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 76d
mechoman444@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 76d
This is also funny.
Sir_Premiumhengst@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 77d
Phuck ophph
mechoman444@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 76d
🤣😂
NONE_dc@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 77d
Como enemigo número uno del Inglés, this post feels validating to me.
MeowerMisfit817@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 77d
Time de inimigos do inglês
daannii@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 77d
Base and bass (sound the same) and bass (sounds different)
Foundation
Instrument /deep sound
A Fish
How anyone learns English is beyond me
Agent641@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 77d
"You said you were a great bass player!"
Me struggling to hold onto a huge wet slippery fish "Grimmie a second, geez!"
banazir@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 76d
That's actually spelled 'ghoti'.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 76d
i still remember the best joke i told my entire time in college. a professor was talking about turnpikes and asked if anyone knew what a pike was, with a specific answer in mind..
::: spoiler well, i knew what a pike was
worst part was i played DnD, i knew exactly what he was asking. i just saw a low hanging fruit and an opportunity to be a smartass and you really can't set me up like that. :::
Randelung@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 76d
read deed redemption, the farm flipper spinoff.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 76d
reed deed redemption: a game about the ownership of a plant
dismay3915@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 76d
As someone who speaks 3 languages, I can confirm english is a weak ass language.
It's strong point is that daily and normal speech and formal writing or speech are almost the same. Thats not the case with most languages, specially the older and more complex ones.
Waraugh@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 76d
I kind of like how it’s ever changing and evolving, I know that sours some people’s pickles but I think it’s neat. I like how it incorporates and is built on so many other languages. I enjoyed reading a short story posted here a while ago that progressively walked backwards in time as a language and it was really neat to me. I’m an idiot though so most other languages probably do this also.
Bluewing@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 75d
American English has never be bashful about filing the serial numbers off a word and then claiming it as our own. It can lead, (lead/lead/led?) to confusion even among us native speakers. At least until we sort it out.
Personally I blame the French, (for no reason other than I can), for all the ills in the English language.
quarkquasar@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 75d
dismay3915@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 75d
That's the indication of a healthy and alive language.
English has the most speakers and is the scientific and professional language of the world currently. So it is the most up to date and alive one currently.
6244901@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 76d
Do u happen to speak german? I’m studying it rn and it’s making me very grateful we live in an English speaking world :/
dismay3915@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 75d
While german is hard and weird, but it's not far harder than english.
I used to know german but never used it and lost the muscle.
I speak Persian(Farsi), Arabic and English. I tried to learn Japanese and Chinese (mandarin) for a while but I just gave up.
I'm glad we're not speaking Mandarin as our common language. It's one of the least interesting languages and objectively the hardest languages I've seen. At least Japanese has it's beauties, but I couldn't find them in Mandarin.
thagoat@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 7 pts · 77d
My daughter is filled with laughter
And you can't spell manslaughter without laughter
AnalogRegression@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 76d
Ichiro_kun@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 76d
My brain got fired while reading this. 🗿
FrostyTheDoo@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 77d
In a way I think these things are what make English a beautiful and poetic language
quips@slrpnk.net · 6 pts · 77d
To call any language shit immediately discredits any opinion on it you might have
khanh@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 76d
I genuinely read that as ba-se-lin-e
thethunderwolf@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 76d
do u mean
bejslajnorbaseliin?khanh@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 76d
the 2nd one, but "base" has two syllables.
thethunderwolf@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 76d
thats what i mean, thats not a "but"
not like the word "base" which is pronounced
bejsFlower@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 77d
It is in the end parts of old englsih, French, Latin, Dutch, German and Norse duct-taped together and forced into a trenchcoat.
Unpigged@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 5 pts · 77d
English is a bastard offspring of a four way language orgy.
pheelicks@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 77d
I don't think anything comes as close to showcasing the extend of this pronunciation ridiculousness as the poem "The Chaos" by Gerard Nolst Trenité which is said to contain about 800 examples.
6244901@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 76d
So? Eminem makes all the words in the English language rhyme so balance is restored in the world
stoicmaverick@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 77d
PONY AND FUCKING BOLOGNA!!
Prunebutt@slrpnk.net · 4 pts · 77d
Wait... how do you pronounce vaseline?
zikzak025@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 77d
/ˈvæ.sə.lin/
Aremel@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 77d
Va-seh-leen
Hossenfeffer@feddit.uk · 2 pts · 77d
You pronounce it like: “petroleum jelly rots the latex within 30 seconds”.
lauha@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 77d
I pronounce vaseline vase-line just to be consistent with baseline.
DmMacniel@feddit.org · 2 pts · 77d
like the vase with a linen.
dalekcaan@feddit.nl · 4 pts · 77d
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
_stranger_@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 76d
comb bomb tomb tome come
only two of these rhyme.
gnufuu@infosec.pub · 3 pts · 75d
I've always found it funny how single vowels are pronounced in English, e.g. when you say the alphabet.
Any other language:
English:
MyVeryRealName@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 75d
Letters in English are pronounced differently from their phonetics, oddly enough
glibg10b@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 75d
It's not just English. Afrikaans: Ah, 'ere, ee, <the diphthong in "whip">, <not present in any English words>
dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 75d
This is why I had a problem with "phonics" as a teaching philosophy.
You have "ph" sometimes teaming up to cosplay as a freaking "f". And that's one of the easier rules. It's all broken from the get-go.
echodot@feddit.uk · 2 pts · 75d
My favourite word is pterodactyl
It's got a silent letter at the beginning, and then a silent o in the middle, and an invisible a, which you pronounce but don't type, and then a silent c, before going back to some sort of sanity for the last three letters. Who decided that's how it should be spelt?
We already had the word Terra so why did they have to go spell this version Ptero
Draegur@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 75d
vaseline sounds like it should have been spelled vasilene but the i and the e got switched as a funny prank and it stuck.
OozingPositron@feddit.cl · 2 pts · 77d
I hate this language so much.
Typotyper@sh.itjust.works · 0 pts · 77d
England has been invaded and conquered 4 times (?). The language is a mess of leftover words and crammer.
Celts Romans Angle Saxons (Jutes) Vikings Normans
https://martinpollins.com/2024/04/03/the-waves-of-invaders-who-shaped-britain/
shneancy@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 77d
the main problem with english is that they invented printing first, and then had massive changes in vowel pronunciations lmao
cattywampas@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 77d
The printing press was invented in Germany
shneancy@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 76d
ah you're correct yes. i meant when they got to use the press, not invented it
hakase@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 77d
This entire thread is /c/badlinguistics.
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 77d
Eh, not as bad as it usually gets.
quips@slrpnk.net · 2 pts · 77d
All languages are beautiful
Thebeardedsinglemalt@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 77d
Would good food nude be lewd?
BCsven@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 76d
Great podcast.
https://waywordradio.org/
balian@lemmy.libertarianfellowship.org · 1 pts · 77d
It is weird how this kind of writing won out in Europe when it literally had exposure from all sides to far better more sensible scripts.
shneancy@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 77d
so the fun thing about the history of the english language is -
writing got standardised just around the same time the printing press was invented, since everyone now had access to the same resources more people learnt to read and write in a similar way. and all was well :)
...
and then something that linguists call "the great vowel shift" happened. where vowels of the oral english language just kinda, did a flip. but because of the printing press thing, you couldn't just update the ortography... and now because of that (and many other things too, but this is a significant one) english is the way it is :)
balian@lemmy.libertarianfellowship.org · 4 pts · 77d
Whoah, I went down the rabbit hole after googling this "great vowel shift" and damn if it isn't insanely interesting! English should have naturally split into descendant languages but the arrival of the printing press in the middle of the transition messed things up royally and now the entire world has to bear the idiosyncrasies. Nothing short of amazing, thanks a lot for your reply!
Zwiebel@feddit.org · 2 pts · 76d
More sensible scripts like german or french? English is the only language that can't spell coherently, nothing to do with the script.
You could easily always use the same letters for the same sounds. Maybe it'd be vuhselihn then
balian@lemmy.libertarianfellowship.org · 0 pts · 76d
German and French aren't scripts, they are languages that use the same script as English - Latin. And LOL if you think they are any better than English.
By more sensible scripts I mean Hebrew or Arabic, which are a lot more efficient and clear in packing words than Latin or Cyrillic.
BluJay320@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 77d
Past tense lead (as in a horse to water) is led, though
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 77d
Dunno if oblivious but it's
Lead (metal) and to lead (a horse)
BluJay320@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 77d
I had just woken from a nap before commenting, brain dumb
LSNLDN@slrpnk.net · 1 pts · 77d
Hey dw I’m dumb long before and after a nap
Batmancer@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 77d
I’ve seen this before, this time I chose to make the statements false by rhyming and not rhyming where appropriately or inappropriately acceptable.
I don’t know why I did this, maybe just for fun being silly.
Treczoks@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 77d
Stanard Reply to this: https://ncf.idallen.com/english.html
DarkCloud@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 77d
...it's because of all the colonising and stealing of words.
cattywampas@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 77d
No ironically it has far more to do with being colonized than colonizing, although when you go that far back the distinction between terms like English, Norman, or Anglo-Saxon get a little fuzzy.
Kolanaki@pawb.social · 1 pts · 77d
Why didn't they steal something to replace read and lead?
HugeNerd@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 76d
Well, one is a compound noun and the other is a trademark that became a common word.
MithranArkanere@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 75d
Use the International Phonetic Alphabet.
/rɛːd/, /riːd/
/ˈlɛd/, /ˈlɛd/
Or make everyone switch to a language that is orthographically transparent, like Finnish, Serbo-Croatian, and Spanish.
echodot@feddit.uk · 1 pts · 75d
English has no rules, we should all revel in the chaos rather than having our language be stringently defined.
LSNLDN@slrpnk.net · 1 pts · 77d
All the good will that I had had had had no effect on my disdain for this language
KSPAtlas@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 77d
It's mostly the orthography being horrifically out of date and not being designed well
Bāslyn Vaselín
Gorilladrums@lemmy.world · -1 pts · 75d
Posts like this are so ignorant because they're based on the false premise that English was made to be the global language, when it's not. It was made as a result of the mixing of Germans, Scandinavians, Celts, and French people on a gloomy isolated island in the corner of Europe for thousands of years. It's a language that was evolved by those people, and thus it contains a lot of their linguistic quirks coming together.
Every single language has quirks like this. For example, I also speak Arabic, and people are always shocked when I tell them that an Arabic speaker from Iraq and an Arab speaker from Morocco cannot understand each other because Arabic dialects are basically different languages. THey're only unified by standard Arabic, which most Arabic speakers don't use in their day to day lives. It's basically a language that's only used to communicate with other Arabs.
English only got to where it is because of a unique situation in history where the language was used by not one, but two global hegemons. Not only that but those hegemons happened to be the most of the powerful in history, and they ruled back to back. That's what spread and cemented English into the global language it is today.
ByteJunk@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 75d
You didn't address a single thing from the original post.
It was highlighting how English is a very quirky language. You can explain it, obviously there are reasons why, but it doesn't change the factual observation that English is a uniquely inconsistent language.
Most languages have some sort of academic body that dictates the correct usage of the language, and occasionally push for adjustments that resolve these inconsistencies. English does not, it's a crowd sourced effort with the results being what we see today.
Many countries and languages share similar backgrounds to English - invasion by foreign peoples, large migrations, etc - yet they've settled most of their background into a consistent ruleset - there's always exceptions and irregularities, but not to the level of English.
One of the largest sources of inconsistencies was the "Great Vowel Shift", along with the invention of the printing press at roughly the same time, which standardized a spelling that didn't reflect the massive ongoing changes in pronunciation.
This is a fascinating topic, but accusing others of ignorance for pointing out something that is a fact, is in itself ignorance.
Gorilladrums@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 75d
This is complete nonsense. All languages are organic and evolve naturally. There's no academic body that controls any langauge, that's not how languages work. What exists is institutional bodies that try to break down and explain languages into rules and patterns, they don't actually dictate the direction of the language. English also has such institutions by the way. This idea that English is uniquely inconsistent or uncontrolled is not true. Arabic, for example, is just as quirky, inconsistent, and uncontrolled. That's just human speech.
ByteJunk@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 75d
You're just elaborating and expanding on a part of what I said, while being an abrasive jerk, and ignoring everything else that didn't suit your argument.
To the point in question, I never said academies invent the future of a language, only that they gatekeep the rules, which can include pushback against popular usage (the french academy is notorious for being very against english neologisms).
There have been cases where the changes are very substantial, like the Portuguese and French changes that happened (coincidentally) in 1990, for example, that push the languages in certain directions.
Take a cup of tea and relax a bit, and try not to argue the voices in your head.
Edit: I missed this point, let me address it:
Have you heard of Esperanto, for example, or the concept of auxiliary languages?
What about artistic or fictional languages, like Tolkien's Elvish or Star Trek's Klingon or Dothraki or High Valerian from Game of Thrones?
None of them are "organic", and as for evolving, it really depends but a language like Esperanto, assuming it is regularly used by a community, is very unlikely to differ from it's textbook definition because it was specifically crafted to avoid the inconsistencies that we're discussing and that arise from evolution.
echodot@feddit.uk · 1 pts · 75d
I still don't understand though why Europe so many languages, a good chunk of it was in the Roman empire so you would have thought that they would all have a single unified language as a result of that but even in the Mediterranean there's different languages.
Gorilladrums@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 75d
I mean all the romance languages descend from Latin. The reason why that language splintered into a bunch of other languages is isolation. When Christianity came to Europe, the empire splintered into a bunch of smaller empires and kingdoms and stayed that way for centuries. That led to a lot local variations that eventually turned into full blown languages.