For all you English Majors out there

Started by Transgirlenstein, September 10, 2008, 03:42:32 AM

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Inkidu

Quote from: Storiwyr on September 14, 2008, 01:37:06 PM
I agree Sherona. I'm a native speaker, and have always had a natural flair for spelling. But it certainly is not an easy thing in English. In so many other languages it's just "This letter makes this sound, without exception." In English it's "This letter can make about 10 different sounds, depending on our mood!"

That said, I'm rather fond of it the way it is.
I took French you don't know silent till you take French. So yeah at least English has a fair amount of phonetics. It's not perfect but (And this as a native speaker.) Isn't the hardest language to learn.
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

Trieste

English is one of the most difficult latin-derived languages to learn. For non-English-speaking Westerners, the only languages that are harder on average are languages that are not at all latin-derived such as Mandarin.

All of the romance languages are ridiculously easy to pick up, on the other hand.

Oniya

Any language is easy if you start learning it early enough.  I'm leaning towards that as the explanation for why I was decent at learning German, but managed to make a fool of myself learning French.  (When I was in preschool, we learned a little bit of German.)  From what I understand, if you learn one Romance (Latin-based) language, it's fairly easy to learn another one, and they do seem a bit more logical than non-Latin-based languages, at least in my limited experience.

I'm just still scarred from having my attempt to say "I like languages" mistranslate into "I like tongues" - as in the body part. 
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

Heika Kinzoku

#28
Over time, languages change.

If you've ever taken a Linguistics class, that's pretty much day one. Through Day 365. The problem is, naturally, that when changes occur, it's because the language is growing more complex and complicated, not simpler. Things start simple: pidgin languages are simple nouns, with a small spattering of verbs. No adjectives, no grammar, no adverbs, prepositions, etc. Then, as a pidgin becomes a creole, the language grows more complicated. Now we're talking about fully-developed verbs. A sense of syntax. Adjectives make an appearance. Then, after a generation or two, the creole is a full language. Grammar, adverbs, syntax: all are fully developed.

That being said ... "Text Speak" is not phonetic. "ur" is not pronounced like "your." It's pronounced like you've just received head trauma, and you are unable to think properly. How come no one else notices this?! Argh, it frustrates me.

Previous to, oh, the seventeenth century, spelling was not rigidly defined. If you read Chaucer, for example, you'll see the same word spelled in many different ways, often in the same sentence. At the time, it was a mark of literacy (believe it or not) to be capable of spelling the same word in multiple ways.

I'm actually a bit surprised no one has drawn this comparison: Newspeak! This is freakin' 1984. They're just trying to dumb things down. It starts with the minor concessions. Then, unneeded words are dropped out: how many words do we need to explain "red"? Then, the opposites are left off: why do we need "bad" when we can just say "not good"? But then, we lose the need for "not" since we have a perfectly good prefix: isn't "ungood" just as valid?

The complexity of the English language is what allows for self-expression. Explaining the different between vermilion, crimson, and scarlet is one of the great wonders that English provides us. If anything, I would maintain that English needs more words, more complexity, and more subtle connotations. It's what makes the language beautiful.

... I'll get off my morally indignant high horse now. Or my moralie indignent hi hors naow.
"He can be ordinary in the best ways, and still dance like a poet through every word he says." ~ Sara Bareilles

My O/Os

Inkidu

If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

Trieste

I know someone who once wrote a paper on Shakespeare and did not spell it the same way twice in the paper... and each spelling was historically correct. ;)

An alternate definition for 'tongue' is a language (as in the connotation of "English is my mother tongue" or "Speaking in tongues") so "I like tongues" is a perfectly good way to express "I like languages"... you got the right meaning, but the wrong specific word. If you've ever listened to a non-native speaker of English, they do the same thing. "I have many to learn" or "I am exceeding good" ... and such. It's nothing to be ashamed of. It's just fine-tuning.

Oniya

Quote from: Trieste on September 17, 2008, 08:06:52 PM
An alternate definition for 'tongue' is a language (as in the connotation of "English is my mother tongue" or "Speaking in tongues") so "I like tongues" is a perfectly good way to express "I like languages"... you got the right meaning, but the wrong specific word. If you've ever listened to a non-native speaker of English, they do the same thing. "I have many to learn" or "I am exceeding good" ... and such. It's nothing to be ashamed of. It's just fine-tuning.

On an intellectual level, I realize this, and I've taken to doing 'reverse translation' before finalizing a sentence in another language (looking the important words up in the X->English section), but French will always have that memory tied to it.
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

Sherona

Quote from: Trieste on September 17, 2008, 08:06:52 PM
I know someone who once wrote a paper on Shakespeare and did not spell it the same way twice in the paper... and each spelling was historically correct. ;)

An alternate definition for 'tongue' is a language (as in the connotation of "English is my mother tongue" or "Speaking in tongues") so "I like tongues" is a perfectly good way to express "I like languages"... you got the right meaning, but the wrong specific word. If you've ever listened to a non-native speaker of English, they do the same thing. "I have many to learn" or "I am exceeding good" ... and such. It's nothing to be ashamed of. It's just fine-tuning.

Hehehe I have so many typo's and mispellings possibly because I spend majority of my time re-reading my posts looking for word missusage rather then simple errors. My main issue is KNOWING a word is wrong, but not being able to convey the best word for it..so I tend to round about describe what I want...often asking people I know won't think me crazy..usually Bliss or Veks, sometimes Trieste has been the brunt of this. :P

I tell you what gets me more often then not is words that look similar or sound similar