E1Ler

E1Ler

When are you going to stop dissing you own language? I wonder if you are white, Anglo Saxon English? It shouldn't matter of course, but it kind of makes it more weird if you are (and I reckon you are), that you feel absolutely no pride in your own language. Maybe you're not, maybe you are of Spanish origin, or Finnish, or Peruvian, or Nigerian, or some kind of interesting mix. But whatever, English is obviously your language, and you simply refuse to look at its complexities, its subtleties that go beyond genders, cases, irregular plurals etc. Can you not see that a language as a whole is far more than the sum of these basic grammatical rules. The sum of English is a very complex language, the way words can be used together represents a hugely complex pattern, that cannot be formulated as simply, as say the German cases or the French verbs. If you listen to spoken German (if you understand it) and spoken English, you will see that English follows a much more complicated pattern overall. Sentences in general will contain a much more varied pattern of words and their accompanying rules.

This comes from a non-white mixed race British person (although culturally totally English), who could actually totally diss the English language as much as you, but I don't because I see it for what it is, complex, and I have learnt German, and so can compare it to a supposedly difficult language. And I believe that English is ultimately more complex!

And I know you're going to say, oh yeah, but once you get beyond the genders, cases, adjective endings, all languages are complicated. But they're not. OK, I'm just judging from German, so maybe all the rest are horrendously hard, but I am judging from my experience of German, and I simply don't believe it is. I truely believe that if you analysed a hundred German and English sentences, the German sentences would be more logical and formulaic than the English. And if a non native speaker of either language learned all the rules of English and German, the hundred sentences in German they wrote would end up sounding more accurate to native speakers than the hundred sentences in English.

Normally, what I report are other posts I've read here at antimoon that state English is:

- pidgin-like in its simplicity
- a pidgin version of French
- a "toy" language (evidence: words like T-shirt, U-turn)
- a "piece of cake" to learn
- lacking in aesthetic value, because of it's mixed heritage
- a "mongrel" language, not worthy of being in the Germanic family

Also:

- E2Lers often/usually speak better English that native speakers (who are "lazy", etc.)
- Western Europeans can learn English in few weeks of diligent study (from W. Churchill)
- The morphological simplicity of English makes it hard to express complex/subtle concepts and ideas. German (and lately French) is much better in this regard, and allowed Einstein, Freud, Nietzsche, etc. to come up with their ideas.
- English is bad for literature, poetry, songs, etc.

The kinds of things I've claimed:

- It's far simpler (morphologically) than French, Spanish, German, Sanskrit, Navajo, (old) Ainu, and many/most other languages. As long as you don't sweat the small stuff, it's probably the easiest of the major natural (non-pidgin) languages to learn the basics of -- say to the point of being able to read and get the gist of web pages.

- It's non-trivial to gain native-level mastery of English, especially if you start from an unrelated language. As with any language, you'd have to spend years being immersed in a local culture somewhere to pass as a native. Accent is always tough to eliminate completely, of course.


Is this dissing English? I think being easy to learn is a good thing.

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<<I wonder if you are white, Anglo Saxon English?>>

I am:

- WASP male
- "United Statesian" (to be politically correct)
- politically moderate/conservative, ex military officer
- confined to the US (not a passport holder)
- wannabe redneck, hilbilly, country bumpkin, etc.
- in short, according to most people in the world, the scum of the earth, the cause of every problem the world currrently faces. :)

Oh well I actually thought you were a little Britisher (like me), not a UnitedStatian??? :O (as they say) lol

But come on, I want to discuss with you the complexities of our language. I really want to take it up with you! It's annoying you can't see it's not some rubbish language!

But actually you sound like a really interesting person...??? lol

Although I still don't forgive you for dissing our language, I maintain it's a great, expressive language. German, despite all its grammar, loses expressiveness because it lacks a progressive tense. It makes a huge difference differentiating between say 'I do' and 'I am doing', it doesn't sound like much, but English differentiates in every sentence, native speakers have to know which form to use for every verb, native German speakers are often at a loss ( at a loss, what an idiom maybe you Americans don't even use it...hehe). But it's a huge difficulty for them, don't underestimate it, their language makes no such distinction!

But actually forget the language obsession, of course you're not some ignorent 'redneck', but are you ex military? I find this fascinating that you should be so into the language thing. I'm intrigued....

Actually you are totally responsible yourself, you, no one else, for all the problems in the world...I see this now, it is you!!! hehe lol

<<It's annoying you can't see it's not some rubbish language! >>

I don't recall ever saying that any language is "rubbish".

Why would having pidgin-like simple morphology be bad? Why are simple straightforward expressions like "T-shirt", "pick-up truck", "U-turn" "wye", "one-way street", "ago", etc. bad. Is being really formal the sign of a "better" language? When listening to Spanish on radio or TV (lots of that around here, BTW), even though they're spitting out syllables at mile-a-minute speed, some of the common multi-syllable phrases seem to drag out so long as to make me impatient.

<<German, despite all its grammar, loses expressiveness because it lacks a progressive tense. >>

The PC view is that all languages are equally expressive. I assume there is great literature in all major languages. These authors apparently overcame whatever limitations were imposed on them by their languages.

<<but are you ex military>>

I was in a SAC Minuteman missile wing, back in the days of the cold war. The whole M.A.D. thing was just my cup of tea. The more nukes we had, the more accurate they were, the more reliable they were, the more money we spent, etc., the less likely we were to have to use them. Those were the days. :) If I were young today, with no draft, I'd probably never think twice about joining up, but I have no regrets having served.

E1ler

You're not answering the question. I respect you for your military service if that's what you have done. I don't agree with the war in Iraq, but I still respect anyone who has given themselves to the army, because well, to put it bluntly, you agree to potentially die for other people and that takes guts.

But...you're still down on English for some reason and I don't respect that when it comes to languages. I can't accept you think you would be able to express yourself any better if you spoke another language. What do you think you would be able to say better? You could speak a language that was massively grammatically complicated and you still wouldn't be able to express yourself as well as you could in English because the grammar would get in the way. How do you think you are limited by English? It gives you every way to express yourself quite clearly. What do you want to express that you can't in English? I have told you that I have learnt German, and I really can't see that all those genders, cases and adjective endings aid communication in any way whatsoever. They bring nothing more to communication overall. I can't see it adds anything apart from a bit of floweriness. So be thankful you speak a nice concise language, a language that has loads of words if you want to resort to them, a language that flows with tenses (or aspects) so you don't sound stunted in every other sentence. Appreciate our language please, don't run it down, because it allows you the every expression you want! Oh well maybe you wanted to say that anyway, it's simple but still great, yes I suppose you might have done!

<<You're not answering the question.>>

It's not clear how I'm down on English. Are you referring to my post where I mentioned that the "genderless, mind-dumbing, pidgin-like" nature of English caused me to dislike Probabaility and Statistcs class (especially Combinatorial Analysis)? I'm not sure you should take any post on that thread too seriously.

Simplicity is a good thing. Why is having "pidgin-like" morphology a bad thing? Are you dissing pidgins?

Besides, it appears that English doesn't have the world's simplest morphology. IIRC, the morpheme-to-word ratio was about 1.68 for English and only 1.06 for Vietnamese. It's hard to believe, but at least one Indo-European language appears to be moprphologically simpler than English -- Modern Persian at 1.52

Well, I am glad to hear that at least Persian is morphologically easier than English. I bet they hate the fact they don't speak modern Arabic then? How embarassing to speak such a simple language among the Arabic nations.

But really, is the complexity of a language all about its morphology? What about syntax? The syntax of English is really hard to formulate. You only have to see the efforts of non-native speakers to see why. These mistakes are really hard to point out until you hear them, but once you do, you think, oh yes, English has its eccentricities to say the least. I will try to remember them next time I hear them and reproduce them here.

<<You only have to see the efforts of non-native speakers to see why. These mistakes are really hard to point out until you hear them>>

Isn't this the case for learners of all languages, or at least all languages not really close to one you know (example: Galego/Gallego -> Spanish).