Top 8 most common misspoilings in the English language

[thetonestarr]

RolStoppable said:

thetonestarr said:

Have you ever even studied foreign languages, outside of simple Spanish, German, or French? Most languages from outsde the European circle of languages English developed from are so drastically different, it's unreal.

Statistically, English is absolutely the hardest language to learn, because (1) we have so many nonstandard spellings, (2) we claim to go by phonics but an incredibly vast amount of the language goes against phonetic rules, (3) how the heck does "was", "were", and "am" develop from "is"?, (4) we're a hodgepodge of quite literally a dozen different languages (though most of our vocabulary originates in five languages, but that's still ridiculous!), (5) we have an incredible number of colloquial wordings, phrases, and sayings, and (6) sentence order is so relaxed. You'd think that would make it easier, but most of the world's languages have strict rules for how they work, so to switch to something that isn't as strict really confuses non-native speakers.

 

Source: I'm a professional linguist.

No, I've never attempted to learn anything outside of the most popular European languages. Your main argument comes down to English is hard to learn for people whose native language uses a vastly different alphabet, therefore English is the hardest language to learn. That is a weak argument, because every language that uses a different alphabet than the one you are used to is hard to learn. English uses only 26 letters while something like Japanese is completely overwhelming.

As a professional linguist you should know that the base of "was", "were" and "am" is "be", not "is".

First, I have already specifically said I am NOT arguing that English is "the hardest". I'm arguing that it's a DIFFICULT language, and far from being "the easiest".

 

Moving on, it has absolutely nothing to do with alphabet whatsoever. 

For one, your statement about "different alphabet = hard to learn". The Korean alphabet is incredibly simple.

ㄱ = k/g sound

ㄴ = n

ㄷ = d

ㄹ = l/r

ㅁ = m

ㅂ = b

ㅅ = s

ㅈ = j/ch

ㅊ =  ch

ㅌ =  t

ㅍ = p

ㅋ = k

ㅎ = h

ㅏ = short a

ㅓ = short o

ㅜ = long u

ㅗ = long o

ㅣ = long e

ㅡ = the hardest letter in the Korean alphabet, makes a funny short u sound from the back of the throat

ㅛ = "yo" (long o)

ㅕ = "yo" (short "o", kinda sounds like "yaw")

ㅠ = "yu" (as in yu-gi-oh)

ㅑ = ya (short a)

ㅐ = long a

ㅔ = long a

ㅒ = yay

ㅖ = yay

 

And that's basically it. You don't have letters that can make multiple sounds, you don't get dipthongs, it's pretty cut-and-dry. There are a couple more rules, but nothing that can't be taught within an hour. The biggest part to learning the Korean alphabet is memorizing the new symbols and what they mean, and most new students to it learn it within a week max. It's extremely simple. In fact, Koreans take incredible pride in the simplicity of their alphabet and how easy it is to learn, claiming that "anybody with any language background can learn it in a morning". Of course, learning it and remembering it are two entirely different things, but still. It's proven to be incredibly simple for nearly anybody to learn.

(2) When it comes to learning the Roman alphabet, most Koreans and Japanese already know the alphabet by adulthood and can easily read text using it, because it has so deeply pervaded their culture.

So, it has nothing to do with alphabet whatsoever. Rather, it has everything to do with the fact that different cultures have entirely different ways of thinking. Again, to use Korean as an example, (1) verbs don't conjugate based on the subject (first, second,  or third person, singular, or plural, that is).  They can be conjugated the same way regardless of who or what you're referring to. (2) Verbs ALWAYS come at the end of the sentence. (3) They use markers in a sentence to denote what each noun's role is in a sentence - subject, object, topic, destination, location, etc. (3) Korean, as does every other Confucian culture, has different vocabulary for usage based on a person's cultural position in relation to the speaker. People who are older than you or in positions of authority over you are supposed to be spoken to with the honorific register. Meanwhile, friends and subordinates, you can speak to them with the "familiar" or "rude" register. Equals and people you don't know, you use the "polite" register to speak with them. Additionally, there are formal and informal conjugations for everything as well, on top of all of that.

Korean isn't the only language out there that's incredibly complicated like that. You can transliterate other languages into their local text to make it so you don't even have to worry about the different alphabet at all, and it won't help whatsoever. Outside of the European languages - which ALL have very close cultural ties - you run into vastly different cultural development, which drastically changes the way the language developed. When you're dealing with cultures that are different at their very basis, you're going to find a very different situation when it comes to learning the languages.

And every single person arguing this situation except for Troll Whisperer has absolutely zero input from outside European language and culture, so it's pretty stinking obvious they're all going to think it's easy. I've said it multiple times before and I'll say it again - English is formed out of nearly every other European language. It borrows rules from all of them, mixing them together. Since it's developed from them, it CAN NOT be that difficult to learn for people that know those languages or similar ones (like Tagalog, which was developed from Spanish and the Phillipine aboriginal languages). Take languages that have a DIFFERENT background, and the people speaking them will have trouble with ANY of them. And most of those people will say English is the most difficult of the European languages, which makes sense since it's so much more complicated than the rest.