Give examples of words that English is missing
Candy, I had not a vision when I started this topic to start a match between English and Swedish. I just wanted to show some weaknesses in English and I also wondered if someone had found some other empty gaps in the English language.
"You can communicate well with your English, but not perfectly well."
Perfect is something which don´t have any weaknesses, now I have showed that English has weaknesses.
Then the conclution must be: You can communicate well with your English, but not perfectly well.
I am not a "propagandaman" of Swedish or any other language, I can say the same with Swedish: You can communicate well with your Swedish, but not perfectly well. Why not admit something which is evident?
"As English supposedly has the largest vocabulary of any language in the world"
I can´t say that Engilsh don´t have a large vocabulary but I want to know how some can say that they have supposely the largest one in the world. I mean Hello, there is about 3000 languages on this planet!! Do you think there are someone who can all these languages and can sitt and compare them?
As for languages close to English, I would probably place, in order of closeness with it:
1. Scots (I don't mean Scots Gaelic, obviously, here)
2. the Frisian languages, most prominently West Frisian
3. Low Saxon
4. Dutch
5. German
That said, there is a *lot* of North Germanic influence in English, even though genetically English is West Germanic, to the point that many very basic roots in English are North Germanic in origin, such as "they", "are", "take", and so on.
As for what Sander said about English, Dutch, and German, the main thing is that, yes, often many turns of expression and general ways of saying things in German are closer to their English counterparts than the Dutch equivalents of such. For example, compare English "to love", German "lieben", and Dutch "liefhebben" or "houden van"; in this case, the German case is much closer to the English case than the Dutch case is. On the other hand, there are places where Dutch does things more like modern English than German does, such as the use of Dutch "jij" (cognate with mostly historical English "ye") for the second person singular nominative, which like English "you" is actually historically derived from a second person plural form, and in both Dutch and English the historical second person singular forms, corresponding to German and Low Saxon "du", have mostly died out.
Note, that Dutch 'gij' used to be more prominent than 'jij' in middle Dutch.
=>Obviously you can express yourself much better in Swedish than English<= What?Who said this? >
I did, obviously. It stands to reason that "the Swede' speaks better Swedish than English, if it's his native language!
Candy, I had not a vision when I started this topic to start a match between English and Swedish. I just wanted to show some weaknesses in English and I also wondered if someone had found some other empty gaps in the English language. >
OK, Swede, sorry if I over-reacted - I take your point. It just seems to me (I've been lurking on this forum for a couple of weeks!) that a few people here are pretty hostile to English, and a thread looking for weaknesses in English seemed a bit hostile at first, that's all. My bad! :) I teach English in Germany, and a lot of Germans want to 'prove' that German is "superior' to English - so I'm a bit sensitive!
OK, no language (or anything else in the world) is perfect. Fair comment!As for my remark that English has supposedly the biggest vocab. in the world - of course I can't prove it, but it's an often-cited fact (or 'fact').
Secondly, English might have the largest vocabulary this doesn't exactly means that people use the entire vocabulary! LOL >
That's very true, and an awful lot of people have a very limited vocabulary. But the words are there, and if people don't or can't use them, there's no point claiming that the language is limited!
BTW Sander, it's 'this doesn't mean' not 'this doesn't means'. Don't repeat the s!
(Yes, I'm feeling pedantic....sorry, it's just that I've corrected this mistake about 500 times at work today...!)
That was me above as 'Guest' - forgot to sign my name!
You are new to the forum arren't you?
You are new to the forum arren't you? >
Yup! Been lurking for a week or two, decided to de-lurk, as it were. Been enjoying your words of wisdom, Sander! :) No, really! I guess I'm not far away from you - living in Germany, pretty near the Dutch border.
Du bist Deutsch?! >
Nooooo!!
I'm British, but teaching English in Germany.
Now I really, really have to go - got an evening class, teaching English to those old Germans, spreading the knowledge, you know.....!
I don't care if you go, I want you to come back! :)
Hi Sander
Wow, that's really sweet, thank you!!!!
I'm back - but only for a few minutes cos I'm going to watch the Germany-Netherlands football game (I'll be cheering for Netherlands, hehehe!) I like living in Germany, but not their football team!
In the interests of furthering our online friendship, can I just say how much I like your country? I often pop over the border on day trips, and always have a great time. Any jobs teaching English over there, do you think?! Only it seems that most Dutch people have a pretty good level of English already :(
Talk to you tomorrow, if I have time (Thursday is my day from hell, five classes)
"Message to all Germans, if you win tonight, stay away!"
So you 're telling me you live in Germany but you don't speak even a bit of German?
yes, the Dutch are quite good at English.Most people know the basics (just enough to order food and ask and give directions) there are a few reasons for that, for instance , we don't dubb foreign movies. (so no Dutch-speaking cowboys here ;)
I'm glad you like the Netherlands,most people say we are friendly but also quite closed.
I actually don't live in the east of the Netherlands I live near the coast.
We have a large amount of English speakers here, there's not a big chance you'll get a job here unless you speak Dutch next to English ;)
Back again, temporarily. Bored with the football, nothing happening!
Sander, why do you think I don't speak even a bit of German? Where did you get that?! I'm fairly fluent, although I only speak English at work.
I watch the Dutch channel we get sometimes, cos they show films and shows in the original English with subtitles. Everything in German is dubbed, which is extremely irritating. I don't want to watch US or British films in German - the voices are all wrong!
I just have to put my two cents here, and just say that dubbing is just plain evil one way or another, and that subtitling is infinitely superior to it, no matter what way one looks at it.