It would still be a mixup. Starting from Celtic, then western Germanic (Angels and Saxons), Latin, northern Germanic (Scandinavians) already form a wild brew. French is only the latest major addition.
Yes it's dutch, but the word Gouda in the English language could be coming from french, and the pronunciation in french these days is like the second column
Nope, the biggest problem is the vowel shift, but that is a complicated topic. Read "Why Q needs U" for details. Thanks to RobWords for that book recommendation!
English is a wreck of three other languages but at least we escaped gendered nouns and adjectives. That’s got to be the most pointless language feature of all time.
The change is due to the gender
Le manteau (masculine "le")
La veste (feminine "la"). Many languages have the same concordance between gender and adjectives.
I think it's more about how this doesn't follow the usual rule for adjective agreement. By that rule it would be le manteau blanc / la veste blance, but that sounds weird and un-French I suppose so "blanche" it is. (I don't know French very well so take this all with a grain of salt)
Italian: many body parts are male gendered in singular, like arm: "braccio" and use the relative article; so "the arm" is "il braccio". However, to make the plural, you use the female gendered SINGULAR version of the word and the female plural article. So "the arms" become "le braccia". But that only works for some body parts, as others work differently!
Eg: with foot and feet, we use the normal rule: foot (piede) is male so uses the male singular article (il piede). And feet (piedi) remains male and uses the male plural article (i piedi). However, hand (mano) is considered a female gendered word (although it ends with -o which generally means it's male gendered) and uses female articles.
Lo so, ma è "singolare" nel senso che la maggior parte dei sostantivi italiani finiti in -a o in -o sono singolari. Quando uno impara la lingua venendo da altre, risulta abbastanza confusionario perche una delle prime cose che si capiscono è che in base alla vocale con la cui finisce il sostantivo o l'aggettivo, si può evincere se questo è singolare, plurale, maschile o femminile ma con le parti del corpo questo non si applica.
Edit: i still understand being puzzled by this, but the thing is, learning a language partially forces you to learn how the native speakers think... i would even argue that is the final milestone on learning a language.
Spanish found a way to supress the subject from it's sentences
Germans speak as if they were assembling a puzzle
Japanese looks like a programming language... pretty neat
Russian has two different plurals and the quantity that makes a word fall in the first one or the second one is "arbitrary".
I know this looks like a gigantic mountain to climb, but i assure you that as you advance, things will progressively make more sense
::: spoiler spoiler
That does not apply to the numbers... it feels like a toddler forgot how to count and started making up shit. What really bothers me is not that but the amiguity.. 4 20 sounds exactly as 80
:::
Estonians found a way to communicate without sex, future, articles or prepositions. Oh, sounds like a super easy language to learn with fewer things in it, right? Fuck you, we have 14 cases so we could tell foreigners from native speakers by how they confuse genitive and partitive, two of the most basic cases. And then most cities, towns, villages you'd go to use illative ("into") to say "I'm going to X", but some will be allative ("onto") and there's no rule for it, so people from other parts of the country might not know it and it'll sound super weird.
And I still find English to be the weird language. Just look at the different words written as "lead". Why are they pronounced so differently?! Nothing is pronounced as written.
It is not an ambiguity, it is a remaining from a popular way to count. Just as you may count per hundreds and 4 100 sounds like 400, and means it. But you may also count things by dozen (most likely for eggs...).
Yet you may use “octante” (beligum) or “huitante” (swiss) instead of “quatre-vingt”.
In french you just add -e at the end (like brun/brune), in this case you have to add an h cause blance is ugly, so its blanche, and every word ending with a c is the same (sec/sèche for example). Pretty normal...
I think the point here is that the feminine form of blanc is blanche, ending in -che which is irregular. If it were regular it would be blance, but it's not because blance sounds stupid.
Languages have made-up rules by people trying to bring some order into the chaos that actual languages are. The only point of languages is to bring some point across. As long as the receiver understands what the sender was trying to say, it worked. No matter how "wrong" someone else might find it. All the crap about grammar and spelling is like >90% classism.
Its counter intuitive but a certain amount of irregularity helps languages. By far the easiest rated languages are isolating and lightly inflecting langauges, and from my experience this is even true if your native language is agglutinative. What a lot of these "easy" languages have in common is that theyre not inherently regular, they have irregular word endings and totally arbritary ways of constructing sentences in a way to convey meaning. On the other hand you have of course the languages that are just so irregular that theres no vibe you can go off of like in romance languages(theyre extremely easy to learn if you move to place where theyre spoken) like navajo. Many words go from "i mean that "s" or "a" fits there" to "why is the word form changing completely in this one specific case", on other words you loose all grounding. But i believe the reason a lot of people struggle with highly synthetic languages is the exact opposite, you have to specify everything in the right way or your sentence wont make sense. In highly irregular languages any piece of a sentence could be very important to the meaning, in a highly regular language every piece of the sentence is important to the meaning and right in the middle are languages that mostly follow rules but not always. Also in very regular languages its often not possible to make the reductions which humans love to do. You might have to specify a piece of information over and over in different ways without it leading to the sentence being more understandable. Idk these are my two cents as a definitely native speaker of hungarian and kinda sorta native english speaker.
You guys have it easy. In my native tongue every verb changes depending on noun's gender, tense, while nouns change depending on - I shit you not - how much cute it is.
Ok so, on the one hand I hate that. On the other hand it might prevent people from using words like 'owo' and 'sqweee' which seems like a win for any language.
We actually have this in English too. For example, the masculine form is "the white coat" where the feminine is "the eggshell jacket". It's similar with most colors, with multiple irregular feminine forms for each color.
72 Comments
Lumidaub@feddit.org · 50 pts · 2d
I know you're not speaking English while complaining about irregular grammar in other languages, I just know.
PlaidBaron@lemmy.world · 54 pts · 2d
My illogical language is better because I speak it.
rockSlayer@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 18 pts · 2d
la sola klera lingvo estas Esperanto
BluePea@piefed.social · 26 pts · 2d
Cut cut cut... WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING ENGLISH !?
MrMobius@sh.itjust.works · 19 pts · 2d
I concur
Fleppensteijn@sh.itjust.works · 7 pts · 2d
The /u:/ ones are nearly all French words and to put gouda there is just wrong
MrMobius@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 1d
Well the Anglo-Saxons should gave fought better at Hastings, then there wouldn't be French words here. But I'm not sure it would be simpler.
Treczoks@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 19h
It would still be a mixup. Starting from Celtic, then western Germanic (Angels and Saxons), Latin, northern Germanic (Scandinavians) already form a wild brew. French is only the latest major addition.
Treczoks@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
Gouda belongs in the left column. Or, if you want to get close to the original Dutch, in the right one. But definitely not in the second one.
ajikeshi@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 20h
kinda, yeah.. the ou in gouda is more like an au diphtong, almost as in out (in simplified english)
Orygin@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 20h
If it's coming from french it's definitely in the second column. I didn't know anglophones pronounced it like that
Treczoks@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 19h
The French have more than enough cheeses on their own.
Gouda is Dutch. Definitely. I've been there. I've bought the cheese there.
Orygin@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 15h
Yes it's dutch, but the word Gouda in the English language could be coming from french, and the pronunciation in french these days is like the second column
samus12345@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 20h
ow-ooh-uh-oh
Treczoks@lemmy.world · 26 pts · 1d
Big complaints from someone with a language where the connection between the written text and its pronunciation can only be described as rather weak.
Impound4017@sh.itjust.works · 11 pts · 1d
Well yeah, but one of the big reasons for that is actually the French. See: The Norman Conquest.
Treczoks@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1d
Nope, the biggest problem is the vowel shift, but that is a complicated topic. Read "Why Q needs U" for details. Thanks to RobWords for that book recommendation!
some_random_nick@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
They deserve each other.
PlaidBaron@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1d
I don't no watt your talking about.
stickyprimer@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 13h
English is a wreck of three other languages but at least we escaped gendered nouns and adjectives. That’s got to be the most pointless language feature of all time.
Treczoks@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 12h
Even in English, nouns have gender, even though the articles don't show it.
stickyprimer@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 11h
Your point, she is not making sense.
flango@lemmy.eco.br · 25 pts · 2d
The change is due to the gender Le manteau (masculine "le") La veste (feminine "la"). Many languages have the same concordance between gender and adjectives.
balsoft@lemmy.ml · 8 pts · 2d
I think it's more about how this doesn't follow the usual rule for adjective agreement. By that rule it would be le manteau blanc / la veste blance, but that sounds weird and un-French I suppose so "blanche" it is. (I don't know French very well so take this all with a grain of salt)
unknownuserunknownlocation@kbin.earth · 6 pts · 2d
That's essentially it. It's a general rule that adjectives ending in -c turn into either -che or -cque.
Sordid_Seraphim@lemmy.zip · 17 pts · 2d
On an unrelated topic the letter "C" exists as a testament to the depravity of man
HerbalGamer@sh.itjust.works · 7 pts · 2d
You can't just leave us with that.
Sordid_Seraphim@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 1d
I am right now!
HerbalGamer@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 1d
Well gosh darn it
tamal3@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
But what about... Now??
Sordid_Seraphim@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 1d
I rekkon not.
AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@piefed.social · 15 pts · 2d
Italian: many body parts are male gendered in singular, like arm: "braccio" and use the relative article; so "the arm" is "il braccio". However, to make the plural, you use the female gendered SINGULAR version of the word and the female plural article. So "the arms" become "le braccia". But that only works for some body parts, as others work differently!
Eg: with foot and feet, we use the normal rule: foot (piede) is male so uses the male singular article (il piede). And feet (piedi) remains male and uses the male plural article (i piedi). However, hand (mano) is considered a female gendered word (although it ends with -o which generally means it's male gendered) and uses female articles.
Also: we don't talk about accents.
Sonotsugipaa@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 1d
The hell we don't, I was visiting a friend in Firenze and they were constantly bullying me over my "perchè"
tired_n_bored@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
Ma braccia non è singolare femminile di braccio. È solo il plurale che diventa femminile come "le carceri"
AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@piefed.social · 3 pts · 1d
Lo so, ma è "singolare" nel senso che la maggior parte dei sostantivi italiani finiti in -a o in -o sono singolari. Quando uno impara la lingua venendo da altre, risulta abbastanza confusionario perche una delle prime cose che si capiscono è che in base alla vocale con la cui finisce il sostantivo o l'aggettivo, si può evincere se questo è singolare, plurale, maschile o femminile ma con le parti del corpo questo non si applica.
tired_n_bored@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
Ah ok capito
SchwertImStein@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 14 pts · 21h
Sir the title is in English the most irregular language known to mankind
pseudo@jlai.lu · 14 pts · 1d
That regular. This lesson is just written by someone who barely knows french.
The regular feminin form for adjectif ended in -c in the masculin form is to end either in -che [ʃ] or [k] .
Blan-c / blan-che Se-c / se-che Fran-c / fran-che
Battle_Masker@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 13 pts · 2d
Some punk knocks down the Tower of Babel and now we gotta deal with shit like this
Siegfried@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 1d
Ehm... this is super common
PlaidBaron@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 1d
Ok but hear me out. What if colours just had one word instead of two?
Siegfried@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 1d
It is the same word
Edit: i still understand being puzzled by this, but the thing is, learning a language partially forces you to learn how the native speakers think... i would even argue that is the final milestone on learning a language.
Spanish found a way to supress the subject from it's sentences
Germans speak as if they were assembling a puzzle
Japanese looks like a programming language... pretty neat
Russian has two different plurals and the quantity that makes a word fall in the first one or the second one is "arbitrary".
I know this looks like a gigantic mountain to climb, but i assure you that as you advance, things will progressively make more sense
::: spoiler spoiler That does not apply to the numbers... it feels like a toddler forgot how to count and started making up shit. What really bothers me is not that but the amiguity.. 4 20 sounds exactly as 80 :::
boonhet@sopuli.xyz · 6 pts · 1d
Estonians found a way to communicate without sex, future, articles or prepositions. Oh, sounds like a super easy language to learn with fewer things in it, right? Fuck you, we have 14 cases so we could tell foreigners from native speakers by how they confuse genitive and partitive, two of the most basic cases. And then most cities, towns, villages you'd go to use illative ("into") to say "I'm going to X", but some will be allative ("onto") and there's no rule for it, so people from other parts of the country might not know it and it'll sound super weird.
And I still find English to be the weird language. Just look at the different words written as "lead". Why are they pronounced so differently?! Nothing is pronounced as written.
PlaidBaron@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 14h
Oh I dont actually find it hard. I just like shitposting.
peacepath@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
It is not an ambiguity, it is a remaining from a popular way to count. Just as you may count per hundreds and 4 100 sounds like 400, and means it. But you may also count things by dozen (most likely for eggs...).
Yet you may use “octante” (beligum) or “huitante” (swiss) instead of “quatre-vingt”.
Siegfried@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 22h
You are right... i never paid attention to it cause spanish does not have this until 1000
4 (cuatro), 100 (cien), 400 (cuatrocientos)
4, 1000 (mil), 4000 (cuatromil)
Thanks, this helps me
Lauchmelder@feddit.org · 9 pts · 1d
Literally no natural language is perfectly regular
Hlodwig@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 1d
Bruh its like spanish with -a or -o suffixes...
In french you just add -e at the end (like brun/brune), in this case you have to add an h cause blance is ugly, so its blanche, and every word ending with a c is the same (sec/sèche for example). Pretty normal...
Dequei@piefed.social · 8 pts · 2d
Blanc i Blanca
French is not that special.
zaphod@sopuli.xyz · 4 pts · 1d
I think the point here is that the feminine form of blanc is blanche, ending in -che which is irregular. If it were regular it would be blance, but it's not because blance sounds stupid.
red_bull_of_juarez@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 2d
Languages have made-up rules by people trying to bring some order into the chaos that actual languages are. The only point of languages is to bring some point across. As long as the receiver understands what the sender was trying to say, it worked. No matter how "wrong" someone else might find it. All the crap about grammar and spelling is like >90% classism.
daggermoon@piefed.world · 5 pts · 2d
French is shitty Latin.
rockSlayer@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 9 pts · 2d
The Gauls were so spiteful of Caesar that they intentionally made it shitty to spite Rome
AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 2d
Its counter intuitive but a certain amount of irregularity helps languages. By far the easiest rated languages are isolating and lightly inflecting langauges, and from my experience this is even true if your native language is agglutinative. What a lot of these "easy" languages have in common is that theyre not inherently regular, they have irregular word endings and totally arbritary ways of constructing sentences in a way to convey meaning. On the other hand you have of course the languages that are just so irregular that theres no vibe you can go off of like in romance languages(theyre extremely easy to learn if you move to place where theyre spoken) like navajo. Many words go from "i mean that "s" or "a" fits there" to "why is the word form changing completely in this one specific case", on other words you loose all grounding. But i believe the reason a lot of people struggle with highly synthetic languages is the exact opposite, you have to specify everything in the right way or your sentence wont make sense. In highly irregular languages any piece of a sentence could be very important to the meaning, in a highly regular language every piece of the sentence is important to the meaning and right in the middle are languages that mostly follow rules but not always. Also in very regular languages its often not possible to make the reductions which humans love to do. You might have to specify a piece of information over and over in different ways without it leading to the sentence being more understandable. Idk these are my two cents as a definitely native speaker of hungarian and kinda sorta native english speaker.
olafurp@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2d
Next topic: When and when not to pronounce a consonant as schwa /ə/.
Spoiler: It depends
Treczoks@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 19h
Oh yes. The good old vowel shift, and the many faces of e.
ThirdConsul@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 13h
You guys have it easy. In my native tongue every verb changes depending on noun's gender, tense, while nouns change depending on - I shit you not - how much cute it is.
aspirate2959@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 11h
I'm fascinated. Can I ask which language?
ThirdConsul@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 2h
Sure, it's Polish.
Example, verbs:
"I was" in Polish - byłem (male) byłam (female) byłom (neither, not really in use, but technically correct).
Example, nouns:
"A cat" - kot (male), kotka (female).
"Kitty" - kotek (male), koteczka (female).
Then depending on cuteness informal obligatory rule gradient is:
koteczek (male) koteczka (female),
kitek (too cute for gender),
kituś (much too cute for gender),
kituniek (cuteness, love and sugar overload, gender does not exists in the universe, you have seen the face of god and they are bliss).
Works for every verb, but there are grammar rules and shitton of exceptions in the gradient.
PlaidBaron@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 57m
Ok so, on the one hand I hate that. On the other hand it might prevent people from using words like 'owo' and 'sqweee' which seems like a win for any language.
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 2d
We actually have this in English too. For example, the masculine form is "the white coat" where the feminine is "the eggshell jacket". It's similar with most colors, with multiple irregular feminine forms for each color.
HerbalGamer@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 2d
No.
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works · 9 pts · 2d
I'm sorry I made a joke on the shitpost page. It will happen again.
ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net · 4 pts · 1d
Polish enters the room...
bhamlin@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
Znowu się zaczyna...
HappyFrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 2d
This is why Lojban is the best language.
Chivera@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
Don't think! Memorize!
PlaidBaron@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
'I am mechanic who plays a soccer'.
Yes, very cool France. Thank you.
Noodle07@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 18h
The rules on colors in french are impossible to memorize I swear
SaltyIceteaMaker@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 1d
thats why i hate languages. they have like 500 rules, and then break them half of the time and you just have to know when that is the case
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 8h
sigezayaq@startrek.website · 1 pts · 2d
dismay3915@lemmy.world · -1 pts · 1d
French is ass