You think English is easy??

[AquaEyes]

I think English is simple in the structure of the language (we use little words for most differences in case, person, mood, voice, number, etc. rather than having a different suffix to do the same...I took several years of Latin as my foreign language), but complex in its huge vocabulary. The differences in spelling and pronunciation owe a lot to the language having "borrowed" words from other languages, sometimes adopting the rules from the original and sometimes not. Also, there was no unified "English spelling" system until just a few hundred years ago (even Shakespeare didn't always write his name the same way every time). I remember something funny....based on spelling, shouldn't these words rhyme?

bough
though
rough
through
cough


The mentioning of Chinese reminds me of another element to language that doesn't really exist in western languages -- tone. In Chinese languages, not only is their pronunciation important, but also pitch. The same sound spoken high, med or low can have different meanings. Sure, for us, raising the pitch of the voice at the end of a sentence turns it into a question, but there's a whole other dimension of variation in spoken Chinese languages that we wouldn't get if the words were just written phoenetically using our alphabet.


Oh, and if you really want to hear a foreign language, look up the Khoisan languages. Any of you from my generation who remember "The Gods Must Be Crazy" know what I mean.

 

[Fierlin1182]

Yew! That's awesome!
I think I've actually seen parts of this before: especially the one moose, two meese part...

 

[Matthew3590]

Isn't the correct plural form of moose still moose? not meese which people use to be funny.

 

[michickenwrangler]

I have that and read that to my Spanish students at the beginning of Spanish 1 to explain why Spanish is actually an "easier" language than English.

Stupid multiple vowel sounds ...