Posts like this are so ignorant because they’re based on the false premise that English was made to be the global language, when it’s not. It was made as a result of the mixing of Germans, Scandinavians, Celts, and French people on a gloomy isolated island in the corner of Europe for thousands of years. It’s a language that was evolved by those people, and thus it contains a lot of their linguistic quirks coming together.
Every single language has quirks like this. For example, I also speak Arabic, and people are always shocked when I tell them that an Arabic speaker from Iraq and an Arab speaker from Morocco cannot understand each other because Arabic dialects are basically different languages. THey’re only unified by standard Arabic, which most Arabic speakers don’t use in their day to day lives. It’s basically a language that’s only used to communicate with other Arabs.
English only got to where it is because of a unique situation in history where the language was used by not one, but two global hegemons. Not only that but those hegemons happened to be the most of the powerful in history, and they ruled back to back. That’s what spread and cemented English into the global language it is today.
I still don’t understand though why Europe so many languages, a good chunk of it was in the Roman empire so you would have thought that they would all have a single unified language as a result of that but even in the Mediterranean there’s different languages.
You didn’t address a single thing from the original post.
It was highlighting how English is a very quirky language. You can explain it, obviously there are reasons why, but it doesn’t change the factual observation that English is a uniquely inconsistent language.
Most languages have some sort of academic body that dictates the correct usage of the language, and occasionally push for adjustments that resolve these inconsistencies. English does not, it’s a crowd sourced effort with the results being what we see today.
Many countries and languages share similar backgrounds to English - invasion by foreign peoples, large migrations, etc - yet they’ve settled most of their background into a consistent ruleset - there’s always exceptions and irregularities, but not to the level of English.
One of the largest sources of inconsistencies was the “Great Vowel Shift”, along with the invention of the printing press at roughly the same time, which standardized a spelling that didn’t reflect the massive ongoing changes in pronunciation.
This is a fascinating topic, but accusing others of ignorance for pointing out something that is a fact, is in itself ignorance.
This is complete nonsense. All languages are organic and evolve naturally. There’s no academic body that controls any langauge, that’s not how languages work. What exists is institutional bodies that try to break down and explain languages into rules and patterns, they don’t actually dictate the direction of the language. English also has such institutions by the way. This idea that English is uniquely inconsistent or uncontrolled is not true. Arabic, for example, is just as quirky, inconsistent, and uncontrolled. That’s just human speech.
I’ve always found it funny how single vowels are pronounced in English, e.g. when you say the alphabet.
Any other language:
A, E, I, O, U
English:
Ayy, I (as in “mirror”), Eye, Ouu, Yuu
Letters in English are pronounced differently from their phonetics, oddly enough
It’s not just English. Afrikaans: Ah, 'ere, ee, <the diphthong in “whip”>, <not present in any English words>
This is why I had a problem with “phonics” as a teaching philosophy.
You have “ph” sometimes teaming up to cosplay as a freaking “f”. And that’s one of the easier rules. It’s all broken from the get-go.
My favourite word is pterodactyl
It’s got a silent letter at the beginning, and then a silent o in the middle, and an invisible a, which you pronounce but don’t type, and then a silent c, before going back to some sort of sanity for the last three letters. Who decided that’s how it should be spelt?
We already had the word Terra so why did they have to go spell this version Ptero
All the good will that I had had had had no effect on my disdain for this language
English is a bastard offspring of a four way language orgy.
It’s phunny how fotographs phunction in filosofy.
There is nothing more useless than ph.
until youre being eaten alive by acid
This is also funny.
Phuck ophph
🤣😂
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past tense read and toxic lead vs reading and leading if somebody doesn’t underntand
Careful, though: reading (past tense of ‘to read’) doesn’t rhyme with Reading (place name)
And leading (being in front) doesn’t rhyme with leading (the metal on a roof).
I feel like I walked on a rake after a perfect catwalk reading you. Love it.
Lol I did get it immediately after, but my instant thought was wait, read and lead don’t rhyme?
My brain got fired while reading this. 🗿
English-language spelling reform now.
Speling Reeforma
What? Speak English.
Say ‘what’ again! I dare you!
But let’s only do it in some English speaking countries and not others! I am joking, but this is one of the reasons why American English has diverged from British English.
Relevant xkcd:
I genuinely read that as ba-se-lin-e
do u mean bejslajn or baseliin?
the 2nd one, but “base” has two syllables.
Great podcast.
It is in the end parts of old englsih, French, Latin, Dutch, German and Norse duct-taped together and forced into a trenchcoat.
Qu’est-ce que c’est ?
That’s the ubiquitous “what’s that” in French. All languages are evil to newcomers.
You’re welcome.
In German, “jemanden umfahren” means drive around someone,
while “jemanden umfahren” means run someone over.That’s an artificial sentence. We never drive around people
In Italian we also have a similar phrase: “Cos’è che è?”
Luckily, it’s only in spoken language because it’s considered a bit “wrong”.
But what the fuck is that, bro?
Como enemigo número uno del Inglés, this post feels validating to me.
Time de inimigos do inglês
Wait… how do you pronounce vaseline?
Va-seh-leen
You pronounce it like: “petroleum jelly rots the latex within 30 seconds”.
I pronounce vaseline vase-line just to be consistent with baseline.
/ˈvæ.sə.lin/
like the vase with a linen.
