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How did English spelling end up so... | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Elwing Tetraglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5509 days ago 43 posts - 51 votes  Speaks: Swedish, Finnish*, English, French Studies: Norwegian | Message 17 of 24 27 October 2009 at 10:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yeah, that's what it was! :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5568 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 18 of 24 28 October 2009 at 8:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
If any non-native speakers of English stumbled while reading that poem The Chaos, don't worry because I did too!
Also, in most languages that have gender, there are some clues in the form of the word to help you. For example, in French, the feminine noun "langue" ends with an "e", so if you remember that most words that end with "e" are feminine this word is not a problem. Some languages are more straightforward than others. Russian almost always gives away the gender of a noun with the last letter of that noun, but with French things can be a bit trickier and more often you have to resort to other methods. Edited by Levi on 28 October 2009 at 8:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 meramarina Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5968 days ago 1341 posts - 2303 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, French Personal Language Map | Message 19 of 24 28 October 2009 at 9:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I looked up that poem "The Chaos" and it's a LOT longer that this excerpt! Really fun, but it's absolutely exhausting in its entirety! I tried saying it out loud and stumbled over quite a few words. The odd thing is, as someone native to English, I don't even notice many of these irregularities until they are specifically pointed out to me; they are simply words that have always been the way they are. I have found, strangely enough, that I've had some difficulty with regular, phonetically accurate, predictably spelled languages. In German, it took a while to comprehend that the vowel sounds -ie and -ei are not interchangeable, as they sometimes are in English. Studying other languages certainly enhances the understanding of one's own mother tongue!
I tried to write one of these "odd English" things once. It didn't work too well. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6273 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 20 of 24 14 November 2009 at 1:13am | IP Logged | |||||
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I would say that as a general rule, the longer ago a language's spelling system was fixed, the less phonetic it is. Because languages change, but the writing system fails to reflect it. In contrast, Turkish is very phonetic, and its current writing system only goes back to the 1920s.
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| Vinlander Groupie Canada Joined 5822 days ago 62 posts - 69 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 21 of 24 14 February 2010 at 3:33am | IP Logged | |||||
Dude your out to lunch. Of course the spelling don't matter if you grew up in sweden, swedes speak more English per capita than Canadians. I'm learning German because of it's simple spelling. It's grammar may be harder than say frenchs but I can study grammar. I've met like two Germans since I've started to learn German, and 4 German speakers. If i had to rely on hearing a word to understand the spelling it would take me forever to learn anything 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5848 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 22 of 24 14 February 2010 at 6:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
I understand the point. Then you should never decide to learn Danish. Danish has the characteristic that you write something completely different than you speak. In the very beginning of my Danish study I felt lost in the pronounciation jungle, but as I learn more and more language examples, I start developing a feeling for the pronouncaiton of Danish. Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 14 February 2010 at 6:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| jdmoncada Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5035 days ago 470 posts - 741 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 23 of 24 20 February 2011 at 4:10am | IP Logged | |||||
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I read a book a few years ago by James Essinger called Spellbound: The Surprising Origins and Astonishing Secrets of English Spelling. It was a wonderful study of the reason WHY English is spelled the way it is. I really enjoyed it, and left an Amazon review for it (<- mentioned because you may recognize my name). I found the book accessible to me as a language nerd, but I'm sure other people would enjoy it, too.
As a native English speaker, I love the craziness of my language. It shows our history and growth and things both good and bad. We say that learning a language well requires learning a culture, and ours has a special one. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4829 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 24 of 24 19 September 2011 at 2:34am | IP Logged | |||||
This is an old posting, but I will risk responding to it: How long did it take you to reach that stage, and have you continued to make progress since making this posting? I ask because I am interested in trying to learn one of the three Scandinavian languages properly (one day ...), but have been put off Danish, for this very reason. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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