English is the stupidest language ever, bar none

[Master O]

3 hours ago, Doomkid said:

I'm a native English speaker, but the arbitrary, nonsensical rules of English make my shit curl..

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_Chinese

[Biodegradable]

This thread reminds me of 2013-2015 during my writing diploma days and the interesting discussions/debates we'd all have regarding how English can be a bit weird and confusing sometimes. Thanks largely to the length of exceptions it has when certain words are placed in specific ways and how it has mutated over the years thanks to the trends that happen within the common vernacular for hundreds of years. I personally speculated that "Whom" would be a term that would become truly archaic to point it being removed completely because the downward trend has been abundantly clear for many years and the common vernacular prefers to just use "Who" regardless of if its talking about a subject or an object.

 

So even though Nine is technically correct when she says, "Since when is 'somebody else does it too' a good argument?" Doomkid isn't entirely wrong either because when enough people do get into the habit of using a word a certain way and the common vernacular shifts, so do the rules of the language itself for better or worse hehe. :^P

[Murdoch]

English is basically the biggest act of plagarism in history. It's no wonder people have trouble learning it.

[Dubbag]

I always hear German is very difficult as well. I've reasearched and studied it for years. So I wonder if any German speakers on this site would know if I'm right.

These are sentences I've made up that I have formulated that I wonder if I'm saying properly.

 

"The fish is an animal of the sea"

 

"Der fisch ist einen tier von das meer. "

 

or

"The woman ran to me"

 

"Die frau lauft zu mich"

 

 

Straight from my head, is this correct?

 

[xX_Lol6_Xx]

Also, another language (well, languages) that is rather hard

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayan_languages

 

Spoiler

I'm learning the yucatec one, and all I can say is that it's hard, very different from Spanish and English

 

[axdoomer]

I like how in English, sentences have a different meaning based on context.

 

If you say "I'm done" during an exam, it means you've completed your exam. 

 

If you say "I'm done" after failing, it means you're not going to try again, or at least not today. 

 

If you say "I'm done" after throwing your cigarettes in a trash can, it means you've quit smoking. 

 

If you say "I'm done" in the dead end of a poorly lit alley while criminal thugs are following you, it means you expect your death to be imminent. 

 

I think this communication based on context is what makes it the perfect language to get a message out quickly and understood without any difficulty (as long as the person on the receiving end is aware of the context).

 

However, I hate that "I broke my arm" is synonym with "My arm is broken". If you applied such weird formulations to other languages, it could mean that you took your own arm and deliberately broke it. 

[ReX]

The English language is a polyglot of Old Norse (the Danes almost conquered all of England and Wales), Saxon, Angle, Gallic, and a bunch of subsequent influences, such as French and Latin. In modern times, English has been influenced by diverse languages, mainly because of the far-flung British Colonial Empire. All of these have exerted their rules on the language, resulting is the mess that we currently deal with.

 

When I grew up learning the language I was always conscious of the "exception to the rule". The f*ckin' exception to the rule. Thankfully, I didn't have to deal with the gender-based grammatical shit that so many other languages have.

 

Basically, I've come to accept the idiosyncrasies of the language.

[PeterMoro]

A pair of pants.... a pair of sunglasses.... a pair of socks........a pair of gloves.......a bra (!)  .... WTF?!

[[McD] James]

I disagree, sir.

[Boaby Kenobi]

Come to Scotland and you'll encounter a peculiar version of the English language.

[MTrop]

Y'know, people always say that the English Language is the hardest language to learn, but to me, it's the easiest!

 

[ketmar]

i'm often ignoring some stupid rules even in my native language (i know 'em, but i plainly refuse to embrace that stupidity). and with English it is even easier, because i don't know the rules at all.

 

also, A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling.

 

p.s.: prolly the worst thing for me as non-English speaker is "a/the". wtf are those things? when i have (or haven't) to use them, and which one exactly? nope, none of the "easy to remember rules" helps. (currently i'm just using random number generator to guess.)

[Doomkid]

5 hours ago, Tony_Pepporoni said:

If you are all not joking, a part of me hopes your local government puts you into grade school and back and then gives you a distinct pinwheel hat that you are legally required to wear in session and when you're completely done.

Oh shit, Tony Pepperoni doesn’t approve of my hyperbolic diatribe? Well shit, I must be doing something wrong if I don’t have HIS overt blessing!

[Clippy]

What confuses me is French

 

gender specific words - masculine and femineine

 

But how the fuck do you know if your stove is male or female - I'm a man and I made chicken on it the other day

[E.M.]

There are many more nonsensical English rules than that. Here's a video James Rolfe made.

 

 

[Chow Yun Thin]

 

I never liked using transition as a verb. I realize that verbing nouns and the inverse is a natural and oftentimes efficient thing, but for transition I'd rather append "make the" in front of it. I blame one of the Call of Duty games where said verbing is yelled out loud as a voiceline for reloading.

 

Over time, I've noticed people who consistently type in title case (First Letter In Each Word Is Capitalized) and I ask myself why? While it's not outright obnoxious like all caps, it's in the same vein. It's certainly bothersome having to shift each time for each word. Only reason I could come up with is that someone's typing on a smartphone and its keyboard is automatically doing it.

 

Whenever people refer to themselves as we or they, I always think of multiple personalities or a collective hivemind or cult members as depicted in pop culture. However, with the advent of more inclusive pronouns and the adoption of the singular they, I can accept that. Especially because "it" is wholly unacceptable.

[roadworx]

1 hour ago, ketmar said:

p.s.: prolly the worst thing for me as non-English speaker is "a/the". wtf are those things? when i have (or haven't) to use them, and which one exactly? nope, none of the "easy to remember rules" helps. (currently i'm just using random number generator to guess.)

i'm assuming you're russian then lol

 

"the" is used when you're talking about a specific thing or things without using proper nouns. for example, "i'm taking the dog for a walk", which refers a very specific dog and assumes the person on the receiving end knows what dog they're referring to through either it being made clear what dog it is earlier in the conversation or just by it being a very specific dog in general (e.g. your dog). it can also be used for geographical landmarks; for example "the alps", or "the sahara". but only geographical ones - if you're referring to stonehenge then it's just "Stonehenge"

 

"the" is also used with dates, so for example, "we're going down to the lake on the 10th of july." if there's no month mentioned (we're going down to the lake on the 10th) then they're likely talking about the current month, unless they previously specified which month they're going. please note, however, that this only applies to the specific format of "day of month"; you don't use an article before "month day" (i.e. october 2nd or something like that)

 

"a" is used when you're referring to a singular, countable, generic noun, or using a verb as a noun. here's an example for the first one: "i live in a house". it's not specifying what exact house, so you put "a" before it. if the noun has a vowel (apple, octopus, etc) then it's "an". an example for the second one would be "i'm taking a piss"; piss is a verb, so you put "a" before it.

 

it can also be used when describing something with a noun. so, for example "you're a fuckass" is describing you as a fuckass, which is a singular noun, so "a" goes in front of it. a less vulgar example would be "he's a very good doctor".

 

1 hour ago, Chow Yun Thin said:

Whenever people refer to themselves as we or they, I always think of multiple personalities or a collective hivemind or cult members as depicted in pop culture. However, with the advent of more inclusive pronouns and the adoption of the singular they, I can accept that. Especially because "it" is wholly unacceptable.

typically when someone is referring to themselves (and aren't a public official) as "we", they're probably a DID system. at least, that's my experience with it

Edited May 31, 2021 by roadworx

[Bauul]

9 hours ago, Doomkid said:

Why in the name of fuck can't "it's" be used as a possessive? 

 

Isn't it the case that all words like that (possessive adjectives, if my brief Googling is correct) don't use an apostrophe?

 

My

Your

His

Her

Our

Their

Its

 

Not arguing that English is a sensible language (it's not, it's a mess), but there does seem to be some consistent logic with "its".

[ketmar]

32 minutes ago, roadworx said:

i'm assuming you're russian then lol

UA, actually, but it's not a big difference for our case. ;-)

 

more offtopic follows. ;-)

Spoiler

yeah, thank you. i (mostly) know those rules, it just never "clicks" in my brain. ukrainian/russian are synthetic languages, so it's somewhat hard for us to grasp an analytic language like English. while analytic languages are usually easier than synthetic ones, the set of obligatory rules is vastly different, and it's rather hard to "switch" one's brain to a different set. i usually don't have problems with vocabulary or reading, but writing is a completely different story...

 

p.s.: that's also why almost each my post is edited several times. ;-)

 

[Doomkid]

23 minutes ago, Bauul said:

 

Isn't it the case that all words like that (possessive adjectives, if my brief Googling is correct) don't use an apostrophe?

 

My

Yours

His

Hers

Our

Theirs

Its

 

Not arguing that English is a sensible language (it's not, it's a mess), but there does seem to be some consistent logic with "its".

Yep, I've seen the light due to a few posts on the first page. I didn't really think about the fact that "it" is a pronoun until NIH started adding apostrophes to other pronouns, and my position pretty much fell apart.

 

I guess I didn't realize it was a pronoun because it's more commonly used than the other pronouns and is a bit more versatile - every object or possession, or even things like animals can be an "it", and since animals can own things, I thought "every dog has it's day" should be valid since "it" is being used as a stand-in for "the dog". It's also true that "he" is a stand-in for a person, but you wouldn't say "that's he's car", so in the end the logic is actually sound from this perspective (which seems to be the exception rather than the rule with English). I was pretty much using non-pronoun logic and trying to apply it to one specific pronoun - and that opens up more trouble than it causes, in the end..!

 

(You could beg the issue and say, hell, just allow all pronouns to have apostrophe + S added to show possession in order to make them fall more in line with the rules nouns abide by.. but "He's" just sounds a lot dumber than "His", and using apostrophe + S as a possessive or a contraction on pronouns would probably just make written English harder to read at a glance - He's inside could mean either "He is inside" or "His inside" which would just muddy the waters even further..)

[Zenki]

6 hours ago, Capellan said:

 

We have our own (often unspoken) rules about how to use such descriptors are ordered (we'd not say "black big dogs" for instance, always "big black dogs"), but we don't have to worry about "is this a before word or an after word"

 

 

It's the same in french

[Teo Slayer]

And there's me who is a Greek speaker

[smeghammer]

4 hours ago, axdoomer said:

If you say "I'm done" during an exam, it means you've completed your exam. 

 

If you say "I'm done" after failing, it means you're not going to try again, or at least not today. 

You might like this...

https://www.vagalume.com.br/monty-python/the-usage-of-the-word-fuck.html

 

Ahh yes. The rules... my son is starting to read and is learning about 'tricky' words where the 'normal' letter sound is different. Of course many of these exceptions are actually the norm.

 

Other grammatical 'rules' taught about prefixes, suffixes or what have you that are more guidelines than actual rules (one of my favourites is the negation prefix 'in' and 'inflammable'...)

 

Yes English is a mess but as has been said above this is due to the organic evolution of the language. I imagine it makes it harder to master (it is my native language so can't be objective about that) but it also gives a very rich repertoire (French, see?) for subtleties of expression and meaning.

[Gez]

10 hours ago, Doomkid said:

Whatever dumbfuck decided that rule is a real asshole, you know that?? I'm going to continue to use "it's" as a possessive even though I know it's "wrong". Because it shouldn't be wrong. "Every dog has it's day" SHOULD be valid, goddamnit, and there is no argument that will convince me otherwise, because applying different rules to "it" than basically every other word in the dictionary is just inherently nonsensical. It's gibberish.

It hurts my eyes when I see "it's" used as a possessive.

 

9 hours ago, Doomkid said:

Isn't "hes" (as opposed to his) only silly sounding because we're not used to it? Or is there a different rationale you're using? 

Well, let's continue the trend.

Hes instead of his

Shes instead of her

Its remains unchanged

 

Also:

Hem instead of him

Shem instead of her

Itm instead of it

 

7 hours ago, Capellan said:

One of my pet bugbears in French is word order.  For instance, "green eyes" is "yeux verts" but "beautiful eyes" is "beaux yeux". 

https://www.lawlessfrench.com/grammar/adjective-position/

I'll also mention that sometimes a same adjective will change its meaning if you change its position. For example: "un grand homme" -> "a great man", but "un homme grand" -> "a tall man".

 

2 hours ago, Clippy said:

What confuses me is French

 

gender specific words - masculine and femineine

 

But how the fuck do you know if your stove is male or female - I'm a man and I made chicken on it the other day 

You just learn them by rote. For native speakers it's easy because they grow up hearing these words said by others and learning the proper gender without even working on it. For foreign language speakers, of course, it's harder. I know a Swiss guy, whose native language is German (well, the Bernese dialect, which he insists isn't German but a much better and more beautiful language than this stupid Hochdeutsch) and he often gets the wrong gender for things because, well, in German Bernese things also have genders but they're not the same as in French.

 

But just for fun, did you know that French also has words that change their gender when pluralized? Amour, délice, et orgue are masculine in singular and feminine in plural.

Edited May 31, 2021 by Gez

[smeghammer]

10 hours ago, Doomkid said:

I'm a native English speaker, but the arbitrary, nonsensical rules of English make my shit curl..

 

Why in the name of fuck can't "it's" be used as a possessive? Throughout all of English, adding an apostrophe and an S either shows possession, or is a contraction of "<word> is (or has)".

 

For some reason, when it comes to the word "it", that's thrown out the window and now it's magically only valid as a contraction. "It's" means "it is" exclusively, so the sentence "every dog has it's day" is not valid, even though "every dog's day" is valid.

 

Whatever dumbfuck decided that rule is a real asshole, you know that?? I'm going to continue to use "it's" as a possessive even though I know it's "wrong". Because it shouldn't be wrong. "Every dog has it's day" SHOULD be valid, goddamnit, and there is no argument that will convince me otherwise, because applying different rules to "it" than basically every other word in the dictionary is just inherently nonsensical. It's gibberish.

 

The rules are so inconsistent. This frankenlanguage makes no goddamn sense whatsoever.

 

Any other examples of English being a messy pot of shit you can think of off the top of your head?

Specifically for the possessive S - there's the whole "grocer's apostrophe" thing. Now, I know that is based on the pluralisation effect of the S suffix but i suspect that what might be happening is possibly a disambiguation between a pluralisation and a possessive. I know it isn't logical but English is in many respects not logical.

 

A quick search found this Stack Exchange thread which makes some good points.

 

 

 

[Chezza]

@Doomkid Those are fighting words.

 

Someone should challenge you in Doom deathmatch to take them back. I nominate decino.

[Dark Pulse]

9 hours ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

In America, nobody speaks English anyway.

 

Example:

My grandfather thinks "Massachusetts" is pronounced "mass of toosis".

 

I went to college to become a writer so it drives me nuts. Learning any language just requires memorization and understanding rules that might seem arbitrary. The more you do it, the better you'll understand.

Well, it's pretty simple.

 

One way is pronounced "Mass-a-chew-sets."

 

Your grandfather's way is pronounced "I'm wrong."

 

Also, relevant to your particular problem...

 

 

9 hours ago, Zenki said:

Difficult langage ? Learn french guys, it's a pain in the ass if you're non native speacker. I am, and still a lot of french people make mistakes EVERY F**KING DAYS 

 

Exemple : 

 

Mon verre vert est rempli de vers

 

It means " my green glass is full of worms " and every word is pronunce the exact same. good luck to get it vocally if you're non native speaker

English: "The time is eight forty-five."

 

French: "Il est neuf heures moins quinze."

 

English: "Eighty."

 

French: "quatre-vingt."

 

You have no idea how much that drove me fucking nuts. Sacre bleu!

 

^{(Yes I know you can do huit heures quarante-cinq, and that you can say it's a quarter to nine in English. Shaddap unless you're gonna try to explain that "four twenties" shit.)}

 

3 hours ago, Clippy said:

But how the fuck do you know if your stove is male or female - I'm a man and I made chicken on it the other day

The answer to your question is the stove is "yes."

Edited May 31, 2021 by Dark Pulse

[Bauul]

7 hours ago, Capellan said:

We have our own (often unspoken) rules about how to use such descriptors are ordered (we'd not say "black big dogs" for instance, always "big black dogs")

 

This weird ordering of adjectives has been supposedly codified.  The ordering goes:

1. opinion
2. size
3. physical quality
4. shape
5. age
6. colour
7. origin
8. material
9. type
10. purpose

Overall subjective adjectives come before objective ones.  The exception to the above rule is when one of specific adjectives is the focus point of the sentence, in which case it always comes first.

 

The Cambridge Dictionary has a little entry on it here.

 

[Zenki]

35 minutes ago, Dark Pulse said:

English: "The time is eight forty-five."

 

French: "Il est neuf heures moins quinze."

 

English: "Eighty."

 

French: "quatre-vingt."

 

You have no idea how much that drove me fucking nuts. Sacre bleu!

 

^{(Yes I know you can do huit heures quarante-cinq, and that you can say it's a quarter to nine in English. Shaddap unless you're gonna try to explain that "four twenties" shit.)}

 

 

 

It's worse than that ! No one says "neuf heures moins quinze" (yeah really, no one) but "Neuf heures moins le quart" (Nine hours minus a quarter literraly, wtf)

 

Well for 80, it's because of the roman numeric system some shit like that. Even worse: 90/ninety is "quatre ving dix" (4-20-10) *facepalm*

 

Edit :Belgian pronunciuation is better and much more accurate: 60/ sixty : soixante 70/seventy : SEPTANTE 80/eighty : same shit as in france but we/they could have say : OCTANTE (much more accurate and still "linguistical" correct) and 90/nintey : NONANTE

[Dark Pulse]

6 minutes ago, Zenki said:

Well for 80, it's because of the roman numeric system some shit like that. Even worse: 90/ninety is "quatre ving dix" (4-20-10) *facepalm*

Yes, yes, I quite remember 99 - quatre-vingt-dix-neuf. Literal translation: "Four-twenty ten nine." English: Three syllables, French: Five.

 

As for the Romans... how?

 

I = 1

V = 5

X = 10

L = 50

C = 100

D = 500

M = 1000

Line over any letter = Multiply by 1000

 

How the fuck, with that numbering system, did you get "four-twenty"?