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For those who know foreign languages, what are some weird things about English?

Posted on 7/1/20 at 2:12 pm
Posted by HailHailtoMichigan!
Mission Viejo, CA
Member since Mar 2012
69318 posts
Posted on 7/1/20 at 2:12 pm
That a native English speaker doesn’t realize?

Does English have any attributes (grammar, sentence structure, vocabulary, etc) that are just plain odd compared to other languages?
Posted by Mingo Was His NameO
Brooklyn
Member since Mar 2016
25455 posts
Posted on 7/1/20 at 2:13 pm to
Homophones
Posted by whitetiger1234
They/Them
Member since Oct 2016
4892 posts
Posted on 7/1/20 at 2:13 pm to
Tacocat spelled backwards is also Tacocat

This post was edited on 7/1/20 at 2:16 pm
Posted by PrivatePublic
Member since Nov 2012
17848 posts
Posted on 7/1/20 at 2:14 pm to
Why do we drive on parkways but park on driveways?
Posted by The Nino
Member since Jan 2010
21521 posts
Posted on 7/1/20 at 2:14 pm to
quote:

Homophones
Posted by TDsngumbo
Alpha Silverfox
Member since Oct 2011
41654 posts
Posted on 7/1/20 at 2:15 pm to
you/your/you're
their/there/they're
to/too


Most English speakers don't realize the difference between those vocabulary words.
Posted by OleWar
Troy H. Middleton Library
Member since Mar 2008
5828 posts
Posted on 7/1/20 at 2:16 pm to
With the exception of pronouns, not having cases.
Posted by tigerinthebueche
Member since Oct 2010
36791 posts
Posted on 7/1/20 at 2:18 pm to
quote:

Does English have any attributes (grammar, sentence structure, vocabulary, etc) that are just plain odd compared to other languages?


I find the fact that most people can't speak it or compose it properly to be very odd.
This post was edited on 7/1/20 at 2:19 pm
Posted by Seeker
Member since Jul 2011
1846 posts
Posted on 7/1/20 at 2:22 pm to
One of the biggest issues with the English language, as far as reading acquisition and spelling, is we have an incomplete alphabet. We have 26 letters representing 44 sounds. There should be a 1-1 letter to sound correspondence. Increasing the alphabet will be a little more of a learning curve early, but it will make much easier to read and write with phonetic accuracy.
Posted by LSURussian
Member since Feb 2005
126962 posts
Posted on 7/1/20 at 2:24 pm to
quote:

what are some weird things about English?
It was pointed out to me by a few Russians that English has many words which are pronounced the same way but have totally different meanings, i.e., might (maybe & strong) & mite, "desert" (a dry barren land) and "desert" to abandon someone.

And sometimes English words are spelled the same but are pronounced differently depending on how they are used in a sentence, such as "read" (present tense) and "read" (past tense), "bat" as in baseball and "bat" as in the flying mammal. Other examples, "fair," "lie," "lead," "minute," "refuse," "project" and "fine."

They told me how difficult it is for them to learn English when words are so hard to use correctly.

And don't even get me started about how the word "ball" can have different meanings...
Posted by Kafka
I am the moral conscience of TD
Member since Jul 2007
142157 posts
Posted on 7/1/20 at 2:26 pm to
quote:

Homophones
Posted by Kafka
I am the moral conscience of TD
Member since Jul 2007
142157 posts
Posted on 7/1/20 at 2:29 pm to
One of the curious thing about English is turning nouns into verbs

This verbing is impacting as well as probleming
Posted by TigerDude80
METRY
Member since Nov 2007
1737 posts
Posted on 7/1/20 at 2:29 pm to
58008 spells out BOOBS on a calculator when you turn it upside down.
Posted by Harry Morgan
Member since Sep 2019
9193 posts
Posted on 7/1/20 at 2:30 pm to
It’s racist.
Posted by OceanMan
Member since Mar 2010
20029 posts
Posted on 7/1/20 at 2:31 pm to
No other language incorporates aspects of others like English does, so there is a crazy amount of differences in inflection based on country of origin, and spellings of words can mean very different things.

Also since the entertainment industry is essentially English-based, there is a large amount of slang, sayings, etc that needs to be learned to be truly “fluent”.
Posted by whoa
New Orleans
Member since Sep 2017
4601 posts
Posted on 7/1/20 at 2:39 pm to
Teaching my daughter to read and the book we’re using kinda touches on this.

She’s learned sh, ch, th sounds before she’s learned b, j, y, and some other sounds. The way the book is written, the 2 letters are connected to make it look like it’s a single letter.
Posted by BigDropper
Member since Jul 2009
7644 posts
Posted on 7/1/20 at 2:45 pm to
The word shite... this comedian breaks it down...
YouTube
Posted by Fat Batman
Gotham City, NJ
Member since Oct 2019
1382 posts
Posted on 7/1/20 at 2:48 pm to
The concept of "have" as a main verb trips up a lot of non-native English speakers. For instance, a French chick might say, "You are having a boner" instead of "You have a boner".
Posted by ChenierauTigre
Dreamland
Member since Dec 2007
34528 posts
Posted on 7/1/20 at 2:51 pm to
One of the weird things about English is how many people in the U.S. cannot speak or write it properly.
Posted by RoyalAir
Detroit
Member since Dec 2012
5893 posts
Posted on 7/1/20 at 3:07 pm to
quote:

We have 26 letters representing 44 sounds


Studying Russian, the Cyrillic alphabet makes infinitely more sense than what we use. It's far more precise. There's realistically only one way to write something, and it makes learning pronunciation much more straightforward.
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