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PixelDimension
Posted on 09-23-16 02:58 AM Link | #77818
if this would fit better in Relaxland, please move it there. thanks

I've recently become interested in languages, and I've started to notice quite a few oddities. Here are a few of them:

Let's start with words for the same thing.

English: worm
German: wurm
French: ver
Icelandic: ormur

Swedish: mask

And another one:

English: volume
Portuguese: volume
Spanish: volumen
French: volume
Swedish: volym
Norwegian: volum
Italian: volume

Finnish: äänenvoimakkuus

And another:


English: table
German: tabelle
French: table
Italian: tavolo

Spanish: mesa

And that's just words. Now let's go on to grammar:

We'll start with English, a classic example of weird grammar. Let's use the verb "walk" as an example for this.

Past tense:
I walked
We walked
You walked
They walked
He/she/it walked

Future tense:
I will walk
We will walk
You will walk
They will walk
He/she/it will walk

So far so good...

Present tense:
I walk
We walk
You walk
They walk

He/she/it..........walks.

Why? WHY? WHYYYYY?????

And there are other crazy grammars, too.

Icelandic verbs conjugate for tense, mood, person, number, and voice. In addition, the language also has 4 noun cases.

But at least it's not Hungarian, which has 18 (18!!!) noun cases.

Or Finnish, where it is perfectly normal to have an entire sentence be made up of one complicated word: for example, "juoksentelisinkohan", which translates to "I wonder if I should run around aimlessly?"

And there are so many more crazy things, too. I'll add to this post as I think of more.







shibboleet
Posted on 09-23-16 02:59 AM Link | #77819
english is dumb

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a

PixelDimension
Posted on 09-23-16 03:08 AM Link | #77820
Posted by MrRean
english is dumb


That is something we can all agree on.

cough
rough
though
through

WHY ARE THESE NOT RHYMES?

MusiMasta
Posted on 09-23-16 04:14 AM Link | #77821
How about Chinese? There's like a billion words you need to memorize.

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NintendoFan
Posted on 09-23-16 07:32 AM Link | #77824
Yes, the English language and many others are unnecessarily complicated but that's just the way it has to be.

Besides, I don't see you trying to invent a new, simple language. If you do, good luck trying to convince the world to use that one instead.

____________________
A nobody.

MarioFanatic64
Posted on 09-23-16 12:19 PM Link | #77828
If you want to talk about things that don't rhyme that should, say 'Sean Bean'.

Yami
Posted on 09-23-16 01:01 PM (rev. 2 of 09-23-16 01:05 PM) Link | #77831
Posted by MusiMasta
How about Chinese? There's like a billion words you need to memorize.

Oh?
And I thought they said Chinese actually had way fewer vocabulary!
Looks like the learners of Chinese were wrong...

MusiMasta
Posted on 09-23-16 02:48 PM Link | #77835
Honestly, Chinese is probably the hardest and most complicated language. The grammar might be easier, with the same preceding words etc, but the hard part is memorizing all the characters. There's no alphabet to help you, you have to know exactly what each character means and sounds like to able to communicate with them, although yes, early learners have bopomovo which are basically a set of mini characters along the word that help you sound out the word, but after middle school and stuff like that, I think they remove those mini helpers.

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Isaac
Posted on 09-23-16 02:49 PM Link | #77836
about like 1000 years later languages will evolve and everyone can not even understand our if they were looking back at 2016 Americans. Languages are always changing.
e

MusiMasta
Posted on 09-23-16 03:13 PM Link | #77839
Yeah, but they'll always be able to look back and decipher it, as we've done with many ancient languages, for example, Egyptian hieroglyphics.

English is also most likely the last lingua franca. This means that Americans can get to be the lazy ones and not learn other languages while people of other countries must to get a better future. I wonder when smart technology of insta translation in the form of earbuds or whatnot will come out. That would be an actual smart technology.

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MercuryPenny
Posted on 09-23-16 04:03 PM Link | #77843
english is a messy amalgam of languages. certain words follow different rules from the rest because their language of origin is different, and for some reason they don't get changed to match the more common rules of english. it's crazy.

Isaac
Posted on 09-23-16 04:07 PM Link | #77844
Like bat and bat.
One is an animal the other is a tool
e

MusiMasta
Posted on 09-23-16 07:22 PM Link | #77852
Well, same can be said for Chinese, different sounds can mean completely different things. For example "yi" can mean from the number one to economics.

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LeftyGreenMario
Posted on 09-23-16 08:07 PM Link | #77855
Posted by MarioFanatic64
If you want to talk about things that don't rhyme that should, say 'Sean Bean'.

I usually pronounce "sean" as "seen". :P It used to be for craps and giggles, but I just do it without thought now.

PixelDimension
Posted on 09-24-16 12:11 AM Link | #77877
Another word inconsistency I forgot in the first post:

English: night
Italian: notte
Spanish: noche
Swedish: natt
French: nuit
German: nacht

Finnish: yö

Arisotura
Posted on 09-24-16 12:15 AM Link | #77879
some well-known English ones:

pineapple -- ananas or some derivate in other languages

W -- all languages say 'double V' except English which says 'double U'

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PixelDimension
Posted on 09-24-16 12:18 AM (rev. 2 of 09-24-16 12:18 AM) Link | #77881
Posted by StapleButter
some well-known English ones:

pineapple -- ananas or some derivate in other languages

W -- all languages say 'double V' except English which says 'double U'


It's called a "double u" because it actually is a double u. In Latin, u and v were the same letter, always written as v (but pronounced differently). So both names for the letter are technically correct.

Arisotura
Posted on 09-24-16 12:21 AM Link | #77882
except nowadays U and V aren't the same, they've been differentiated for a reason.

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Yami
Posted on 09-24-16 12:21 AM Link | #77883
Posted by MusiMasta
Honestly, Chinese is probably the hardest and most complicated language.

Source, please...

Posted by MusiMasta
The grammar might be easier, with the same preceding words etc, but the hard part is memorizing all the characters.

You think so?
I managed to successfully learn ~1300 Kanji in just a year, and while Kanji is more a Japanese thing, it still proves it's not as hard as you claim it to be, especially since Chinese Hanzi have way fewer possible readings.
The real hard part would be the tones.

Posted by MusiMasta
There's no alphabet to help you, you have to know exactly what each character means and sounds like to able to communicate with them

They do have Pinyin for as a back-up, but very rarely used among adults.
Besides, character meanings aren't always useful, since lots of them are being used as compound words.

LeftyGreenMario
Posted on 09-24-16 03:14 AM Link | #77898
Why are "finite" and "infinite" pronounced differently?

Why does "archive" have an ugly "k" and long "i" sound?
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