The question is exactly as the thread title suggests.
English is among the hardest if not THE hardest language to learn in the world today. The only thing that comes close or surpasses it is any of the Chinese languages - Fookien, Mandarin, or Cantonese, and those are hard to learn because they're pictographic, not phonetic - which means that you have to learn how to write a new word from scratch almost.
But how far is English away from that anyway?
Without context, can you tell what someone means by the word "rain," when he or she pronounces it?
This kind of context and idiomatic complexity plagues English uniquely among most languages today because it's subject to great and rapid changes, lots of regional variations and dialects, and en-bloc absorption, among other things.
Going back to the word "rain," the word has at least three other words that sound exactly like it when spoken:
"reign"
"rein"
"rain"
This kind of phenomenon happens quite frequently in English today. In addition, due to pronunciation evolution and foreign spellings, letters and letter combination can have any number of correct ways to pronounce.
For instance, the letter "o" has many distinct sounds, all of which you have to learn from context, which is learned through experience with no real guidelines.
"Women"
"Bonnet"
"Boo"
"Both"
I'm probably missing some more. This happens with most letters and letter combinations in English. For instance, how do you pronounce "quet" Is it like in "bouquet" or as in "banquet?"
As you examine these occasions more and more, you get the impression that English is beginning to evolve into something that's more "pictographic" than it is phonetic.
I've been meaning to start off this discussion here for a while now, seeing as how many English guys frequent the D&D forums, but the Period thread got me finally going on this.
The question is exactly as the thread title suggests.
English is among the hardest if not THE hardest language to learn in the world today. The only thing that comes close or surpasses it is any of the Chinese languages - Fookien, Mandarin, or Cantonese, and those are hard to learn because they're pictographic, not phonetic - which means that you have to learn how to write a new word from scratch almost.
But how far is English away from that anyway?
Without context, can you tell what someone means by the word "rain," when he or she pronounces it?
This kind of context and idiomatic complexity plagues English uniquely among most languages today because it's subject to great and rapid changes, lots of regional variations and dialects, and en-bloc absorption, among other things.
Going back to the word "rain," the word has at least three other words that sound exactly like it when spoken:
"reign"
"rein"
"rain"
This kind of phenomenon happens quite frequently in English today. In addition, due to pronunciation evolution and foreign spellings, letters and letter combination can have any number of correct ways to pronounce.
For instance, the letter "o" has many distinct sounds, all of which you have to learn from context, which is learned through experience with no real guidelines.
"Women"
"Bonnet"
"Boo"
"Both"
I'm probably missing some more. This happens with most letters and letter combinations in English. For instance, how do you pronounce "quet" Is it like in "bouquet" or as in "banquet?"
As you examine these occasions more and more, you get the impression that English is beginning to evolve into something that's more "pictographic" than it is phonetic.
English isn't pheonetic. Germanic languages rarely are truly pheonetic, and English has way too many lingual influences (English proper is only ~480 words, we stole the rest) to conform to any one set of rules. Spanish is the best example of a truly phoenetic Western language.
If you think English is easy to learn, it's probably because you don't know many languages yourself, or started out with English as being a primary or secondary language.
English is hella difficult to learn, way harder than Japanese or Spanish.
It's so hard, in fact, that there are many instances on these boards where adults who consider themselves literate use the wrong word in an idiom or spell the word incorrectly.
The reason that spelling can be a contest in English is because it's so hard to determine how any one pronunciation ought to be spelled. In most cases, rote memory serves best - just like in pictographic languages. If everything (or even most things) in English were phonetic, spelling words wouldn't be much of a contest.
The way I see it, and everybody in my English class (teacher included) will agree, is that English is too much of a mongrel to put any defining label on it, besides mongrel. In fact, this is why we have English classes in the first place - to explore the intricacies of the monster we have created over time, and for the most part any seven-year-old child of average intelligence will have a definitive grasp of how things should be pronounced and the like, though their repertoire is somewhat limited. On top of this, English has a system of writing that adapts to Virtually any sound the human mind can come up with. This, in my opinion, makes it an actually easy language to learn, which may have a hand in why it is now so wide-spread (of course, that does not account for the English speaking population expanding throughout the world)
English is insanely hard to learn for non-native speakers, actually. Generally, the only languages considered as hard that are common in modern times are written Chinese and Japanese, and that's more because of how the characters work. Simplified Chinese (Kanji in Japanese, mostly) isn't so bad, but formal Chinese is supposedly a bear according to one of my Japanese professors, who had her Masters in Classical Japanese and was fluent in five other languages, including Chinese. Written Japanese can be tough because you need to know Kanji, Kana, Gana, and Romanji, all of which are commonly used. According to her, and I agree, Spanish is the easiest Western language to learn because it is strictly pheonetic and verb conjugations tend to be fairly standard (one verb form has but one variation in the entire language.)
Simplified Chinese approaches phonetic languages in structure (which is apparently how you can use a chinese keyboard), but formal Chinese is a *****. 10 000 complex unique characters to learn to be considered literate! Ouch.
English, even with its varied pronunciation and other anomalies, wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the idioms. Those are REALLY hard.
Technically, you could get by in Japan knowing only Kana and Hiragana (which are strictly phonetic) because Japanese don't presuppose that everyone knows Kanji forms all that well. In fact, though you're supposed to be able to write and spell your name in Kanji and Romanji, using that form exclusively is kinda uncommon (from what I hear, anyway - just hearsay).
Yeah, but Kanji shows up in the damnedest places. Same with Romanji. Especially depending on the targeted audience. Younger, more "hip" things tend to include more Romanji, sometimes even downright going to English, and things looking to grab the "older" or more traditional groups tend to include more Kanji. Shopping can be a real bear in Japanese markets sometimes, because of this, though they tend to stick with Gana, thank god.
I dunno. Knowing mostly only Hiragana and Romanji, my sis didn't have much of a problem shopping. It's not like it's embarassing to ask help for Kanji words when they appear. Those are explicitly pictographic words anyway.
It's not embarrassing, just inconvenient. And leads to problems with language mastery. Same way non-phoenetic spellings can. Still, shopping in Hispanic markets is still easier for me due to not having to swap multiple alphabets and worry about hidden crows that got rubbed off or faded.
Technically, you could get by in Japan knowing only Kana and Hiragana (which are strictly phonetic) because Japanese don't presuppose that everyone knows Kanji forms all that well. In fact, though you're supposed to be able to write and spell your name in Kanji and Romanji, using that form exclusively is kinda uncommon (from what I hear, anyway - just hearsay).
Simplified Chinese approaches phonetic languages in structure (which is apparently how you can use a chinese keyboard), but formal Chinese is a *****. 10 000 complex unique characters to learn to be considered literate! Ouch.
English, even with its varied pronunciation and other anomalies, wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the idioms. Those are REALLY hard.
I would like to take the time to point out that you can get along in Japan (or at least the Tokyo environs) very well knowing nothing but English.
And while I agree it can be difficult to remember certain words, those that are most commonly incorrectly used are things like "your" and "you're" or "there," "their," or "they're." All of which are very different and common enough people should understand.
I would like to take the time to point out that you can get along in Japan (or at least the Tokyo environs) very well knowing nothing but English.
And while I agree it can be difficult to remember certain words, those that are most commonly incorrectly used are things like "your" and "you're" or "there," "their," or "they're." All of which are very different and common enough people should understand.
Yeah, but Tokyo's so boring. The interesting bits you have to go out into the boonies to find (Sorry, I'm a Religion major with an emphasis on history.) Now you can get along fine with just English in Osaka, which is the only major city in Japan that's worth it. Granted, I'm a sucker for a city that turned to the culinary trades for vice then the government told them they couldn't have shiny things. And takoyaki. Mmm...
Japanese actually isn't that hard, actually, supposing that we consider only Hiragana. That form is strictly phonetic (and many Japanese words are ported direct phonetically from English anyway).
As for sites, Akiba's my main interest in Tokyo. And Shinjuku, I guess. Apart from those, I think I'd head on straight to Kyoto, then Osaka. Tokyo being so boring isn't really all that different from most cities around the world (and that includes most State capitals in the US).
Comparatively, Manila's like a treasure trove. It's literally almost like a jungle in there - very interesting indeed if you can take the bugs and the smell.
Proin:
And while I agree it can be difficult to remember certain words, those that are most commonly incorrectly used are things like "your" and "you're" or "there," "their," or "they're." All of which are very different and common enough people should understand.
You say that because you're a native or secondary speaker. The fact that native speakers still have problems with common words and pronouns points to how difficult the language really is.
Farmer42:
Japanese actually isn't that hard, actually, supposing that we consider only Hiragana. That form is strictly phonetic (and many Japanese words are ported direct phonetically from English anyway).
As for sites, Akiba's my main interest in Tokyo. And Shinjuku, I guess. Apart from those, I think I'd head on straight to Kyoto, then Osaka. Tokyo being so boring isn't really all that different from most cities around the world (and that includes most State capitals in the US).
Comparatively, Manila's like a treasure trove. It's literally almost like a jungle in there - very interesting indeed if you can take the bugs and the smell.
I know, but when you get things mixed up I just find it too inconvenient to have to keep switching. I'm mixed lateral in terms of brain function, right dominant and right handed, with mixed emphasis as a result. I'm creative enough for it to bother me,, and logical enough to still do the conversion every time. Written Japanese tends to give me a headache as a result. Never been to the Philippines as a developed human being, though My mom was over there while I was still just a fetal Farmer. I'd like to though. One of my goals is to retrace Roosevelt's While Fleet.
After the War of Independence Webster wanted to make American English truly phonetic - a new language for the new nation. So Tough Women would be spelt "Tuff Wimmen" and so on.
Webster was held back and in the end only a few of his less radical changes came through: "Centre" to "Center", "Colour" to "Color", less than a 20 I believe.
Chomsky states that the English language is optimised - so regular past verbs end in "ed" even it they're pronounced " 't " as in "walked" or " 'd" as in "played".
I dunno though, when Italians give the spelling, they just repeat the word slowly and clearly and that's enough for you to spell it correctly. That's how it is with a phonetic language.
Then there are words like neighbor, which is nowhere near phonetic, but terribly fun to say that way.
English is a difficult language to learn, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.I envy those that tackle it and become better at it's function and usage than those that have studied and spoken in their whole lives.
If I were to pronounce "Quet" without the benefit of the rest of the word, I would probably just say "Ket", but as you can guess, that would probably vary.
You should have read the thread on how to pronounce the name of the monster "Bulette". It was dumb in places, funny in places and it would give you a great overview of how even native speakers that are very fluent sometimes grapple with the language.
The idioms are a great source of confusion even among English speakers because not all of them are used in all areas and some have changed so over the years that they are unrecognizable as the phrases that actually made sense.
Actually, the localized idioms are not as much of a problem generally speaking because most of the users of these idioms recognize them as such and refrain from using them when attempting to communicate.
The problem is mainly in those idioms that are considered universal to all dialects of English which are still very difficult to master (largely because there's a lot and most are pretty obscure). Most people who speak English use these idioms without even thinking, without realizing that they're using an idiom to begin with.
For instance, the phrase "he's passed on" is a very common euphemistic idiom that nearly all fluent speakers of English recognize and commonly use. Some speakers don't even believe that this is an idiom.
It's easy to explain in intellectual terms once you've spent a little time analysing it, but hard to teach and hard for students whose languages have no equivalent (most languages have no equivalent to our Present Perfect). Then there's the difference between "I have drive", "I have to drive" and "I must drive" lots of stuff where we add modifiers to the same words while other languages usually plump for another word.
Still there is a difference between how deep you go into a language - you can learn to converse in Italian easily, you will struggle to pronounce it and learning correct written grammar is hard even for Italians.
Esperanto is the easiest language to learn (being an artificial language). Apparently you can become fluent in three months of study.
"he's passed on"
Yes, this is a common way of speaking. I have found that using contractions has become so common that not using them in both speech and sometimes within writing can sometimes sort of confuse others. Saying "he is passed on" might cause then to think a second about what you said for they aren't use to hearing the sentence said that way. If you use the contraction and say it as "he's passed away" you are then saying it the way that everyone is used to hearing it and thus can avoid confusion and save time.
Part of the reason to why English is hard to understand and learn is that standard English is an unrefined collection of at least half a dozen other languages. If anybody had actually decided to refine and standardize English then it would make sense and be easier to learn, but that is only because it would then truly be its own language rather than just a combination of them.
1. awe: thought, bought, fought, brought, ought, sought, nought, wrought
2. uff: enough, rough, tough, slough, Clough, chough
3. ooh: through, slough
4. oh: though, although, dough, doughnut, broughm, Ough, furlough
5. off: cough, trough, slough
6. ow: bough, plough, sough
7. ou: drought, doughty, Stoughton
8. uh: Scarborough, borough, thorough (alt), thoroughbred, Macdonough, Poughkeepsie
9. up: hiccoughed
10. oth: trough (alt)
11. ock: lough, hough
12. oc[h] (aspirated): lough
13. ahf: Gough
14. og: Coughlin
Also there are plenty of sounds used in other languages that have no use in English and no clear way to spell them, though for obvious reasons I can't point them out here :P.
EDIT: When I say functional, I mean barest bones able to communicate in stores and with people to find out what you need to know. I couldn't, for example, discuss literature or sports in any but my primary 2 languages. But getting a small handle on a foreign language is comparatively easy (again, with Chinese a notable exception).
Germanic languages rarely are truly pheonetic,
When you say "Germanic" languages, are you including modern High German, or are you only speaking of the off-shoots like Icelandic, Dutch, etc.? I'm just curious because High German is extremely phonetic. After learning basic pronunciation, you're able to pronounce generally any word you see without difficulty.
When you say "Germanic" languages, are you including modern High German, or are you only speaking of the off-shoots like Icelandic, Dutch, etc.? I'm just curious because High German is extremely phonetic. After learning basic pronunciation, you're able to pronounce generally any word you see without difficulty.
Icelandic is extremely phonetic. There are historical pronunciations that are more common than phonetic ones ('h' being pronounced like 'k' when it is followed by a 'v' in a word), but phonetic pronunciation is accepted and understood. It's the noun declension and verb conjugation that gets students.
When you say "Germanic" languages, are you including modern High German, or are you only speaking of the off-shoots like Icelandic, Dutch, etc.? I'm just curious because High German is extremely phonetic. After learning basic pronunciation, you're able to pronounce generally any word you see without difficulty.
Germanic based languages. High German and Icelandic are relatively "pure" linguistically, and so they avoid the bastardization in phoenetics that is inherent in largely borrowed languages. That's one of the reasons French is so screwy. Someone thought it would be a good idea to mix German and Latin. English isn't much better. As was mentioned, though, it's the standardized "modern" English that's weird. Within their own lingual structure, Old English and Middle English are consistent in their phoenetics. Welsh and Celtic, on the other hand, have a lot of exceptions in pronunciation. And in response to "been, gone, and went" that problem actually occurs fairly commonly in any language with a diverse structure around "be."
English is considerably difficult for those learning it as a 2nd language. Bit out there, but I had heard Swahili is a close approximation for some reason. I don't know myself, my credits were in German & Latin.
German, being damn easy to pick up if you start in English. Very similar vocabularly. Just reading it, being ignorant of formality, it's simple enough to pick up at times. And of course, Latin, that's the gateway to the rest of Europe...and med/law school, not much else. Still, it's useful.
Without context, can you tell what someone means by the word "rain," when he or she pronounces it?
Yeah, see, that's one of the many problems and I shudder when I think about anyone who's not in the UK or US that must come to grips with the new "international business language". I mean, damn.
The diplomatic one is still French, yes? Lanuage of the gentry/nobility and nearly our's if Jefferson had his way, but somehow the mutts won out...
The diplomatic one is still French, yes? Lanuage of the gentry/nobility and nearly our's if Jefferson had his way, but somehow the mutts won out...
English is fairly common in the diplomatic circles. The French tend to only do formal diplomacy in French, though (seriously, we all know you can speak English, so when you're at a mojor world summit being held in the US or UK, please be courteous enough to speak it...) Britain had a large footprint on the world, and pretty much every country was either controlled by GB or the US or had a neighbor that was at one point or another, and those that didn't were very mindful of the fact that we had very powerful weapons starting in the 1950's.
(...) On top of this, English has a system of writing that adapts to Virtually any sound the human mind can come up with.(...)
OK, try to tell me the difference between "ś" and "sz". English people write them both as "sh". ;)
Same with "ć" and "cz", and there's also this Czech "č" thing, all written as "ch" or "tch".
Not to mention this African "!" sound, or the fact that English speakers can't even pronounce "rrrr!" properly. ;)
When it comes to Japanese, I know about this funny "koen" word. It has many more meanings than "rain"
I can also point out a funny difference between learning English and German: English seems very easy at first, but the more you know, the less sure you are about your grammar being proper. German on the other hand, strikes most people as really difficult (me included, even though I was fluent with English beforehand), but turns out to be rather simple after a month or two of learning.
"ough" is a little gem-of-a-syllable from English:
1. awe: thought, bought, fought, brought, ought, sought, nought, wrought
2. uff: enough, rough, tough, slough, Clough, chough
3. ooh: through, slough
4. oh: though, although, dough, doughnut, broughm, Ough, furlough
5. off: cough, trough, slough
6. ow: bough, plough, sough
7. ou: drought, doughty, Stoughton
8. uh: Scarborough, borough, thorough (alt), thoroughbred, Macdonough, Poughkeepsie
9. up: hiccoughed
10. oth: trough (alt)
11. ock: lough, hough
12. oc[h] (aspirated): lough
13. ahf: Gough
14. og: Coughlin
This is summed up nicely by an early Dr. Seuss work:
The Tough Coughs as He Ploughs the Dough.
I just like the phrase my History of the English Language prof put it: English doesn't borrow from other languages. It chases them into darkened alleys, beats them over the head and goes through the pockets for loose grammar.
In phonetics, we are undefeated!
-Joni
And I love it.
about this:
Saying "he is passed on" might cause then to think a second about what you said for they aren't use to hearing the sentence said that way. If you use the contraction and say it as "he's passed away" you are then saying it the way that everyone is used to hearing it and thus can avoid confusion and save time.
Is it possible that the reason they have to stop and think about it is that if you don't use the contraction the phrase should read: "He has passed on"?
@df
about this:
Is it possible that the reason they have to stop and think about it is that if you don't use the contraction the phrase should read: "He has passed on"?
that too. using has is using is but both make sense. Either way I find that people seem to sometimes get a bit confused if you don't use contractions. Heck I have confused myself when I had gone a period not trying to speak, read or write contractions.
that too. using has is using is but both make sense. Either way I find that people seem to sometimes get a bit confused if you don't use contractions. Heck I have confused myself when I had gone a period not trying to speak, read or write contractions.
I might have to try that sometime just for fun. (My life is so lame.
)I might have to try that sometime just for fun. (My life is so lame.
I really don't recommend it. You sound strange when you don't use contractions. It's one of the reasons most essays in academia are so painful to read out loud, though they seem fine, if a tad dry, on paper. Seriously, go to a campus near you that has an open library and check out some of the theses on Twain, something which should be fairly entertaining, and try reading them out loud. Unless the writer is really good or uses a lot of hyperbole (both of which violate academic rules) it's going to sound stilted and awkward.
Verbal English has evolved faster than written academic English, to the point where even most academics will use colloquialisms, contractions, and euphemisms in lectures, simply because that's how it is normal for us to communicate. Which makes learning English even harder, because all of these things we do when we speak we're taught from a very early age to not do when we write.
I really don't recommend it. You sound strange when you don't use contractions.
I used to know a bunch of these kinds of phrases... like "My house was burning up, but they couldn't put out the fire and it burned down."
Perhaps others might recall a few.
And English is one of the greatest languages in the world if you like puns. All the different words meaning the same basic thing... just wonderful.
I really don't recommend it. You sound strange when you don't use contractions. It's one of the reasons most essays in academia are so painful to read out loud, though they seem fine, if a tad dry, on paper. Seriously, go to a campus near you that has an open library and check out some of the theses on Twain, something which should be fairly entertaining, and try reading them out loud. Unless the writer is really good or uses a lot of hyperbole (both of which violate academic rules) it's going to sound stilted and awkward.
Verbal English has evolved faster than written academic English, to the point where even most academics will use colloquialisms, contractions, and euphemisms in lectures, simply because that's how it is normal for us to communicate. Which makes learning English even harder, because all of these things we do when we speak we're taught from a very early age to not do when we write.
You've touched on something here.
Our language is never really static, constantly shifting. People are constantly inventing slang, name dropping, using archaic verbiage ("verbiage", who says that?), and posturing in general in an attempt to seem more fringe or exclusive. More me's and less us.
"TV, where straight teeth in your mouth are more important than the words that come out of it." -The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy
The hijacking of modern language (like religion, and science, and education, and bla bla bla) in an attempt to add more panache and style has actually done more harm than good. Essentially, going "form over function" it would seem. Ppl want to add even more window dressing cuz' apparently the English language wasn't ecclectic enough.
Consider: It took Merriam Webster forever to compile the 1st American dictionary. Longer than any other account by any other language in a contemporary capacity. Perhaps it was by virtue of the sheer size of the country and all the dialects, who knows. The point was (is) the staggering amount of work and time it took this poor soul to make it happen illustrates the complexity & redundancy at parts of our language.
This is perhaps an overgeneralization, but I think it goes w/out saying.
And now, these days...
You know credibility has left the building when "bling" gets added in proper dictionaries.
I really don't recommend it. You sound strange when you don't use contractions. It's one of the reasons most essays in academia are so painful to read out loud, though they seem fine, if a tad dry, on paper. Seriously, go to a campus near you that has an open library and check out some of the theses on Twain, something which should be fairly entertaining, and try reading them out loud. Unless the writer is really good or uses a lot of hyperbole (both of which violate academic rules) it's going to sound stilted and awkward.
Verbal English has evolved faster than written academic English, to the point where even most academics will use colloquialisms, contractions, and euphemisms in lectures, simply because that's how it is normal for us to communicate. Which makes learning English even harder, because all of these things we do when we speak we're taught from a very early age to not do when we write.
Sometimes, I deliberately use contractions. Sometimes I deliberately leave them out. Personally, I feel neither way is better, it depends upon circumstance. I believe that not using contractions sounds best in formal communication.
As to the evolving bit, I believe that is what makes English such a beautiful and poetic language, even if I am not personally the best practitioner of the art.
You know credibility has left the building when "bling" gets added in proper dictionaries.
LOL I have that one.
T... In fact, this is why we have English classes in the first place - to explore the intricacies of the monster we have created over time, ...
I thought it was just to give people who couldn't do anything or teach jobs.
The fact that we have to teach spelling has hindered us greatly, instead of working on eloquence and rhetoric. I say we just use Greek letters instead.
It is impossible to write english using formatted letters (such as those computer ascii letters you are seeing from your monitor screen).
le français par contre, ça passe très bien comme langage de communication formatté (c'est-à-dire qui utilise toujours les mêmes courbes et déliés, avec des variations propres à chaque police de caractère);
une explication plausible serait l'absence de signes dans la langue anglaise;
un signe c'est quand tu mets des accents sur certaines lettres, de manière à guider la personne qui lit ton message en lui donnant des indications.
il y a plusieurs genres d'indications que tu peux vouloir donner à quelqu'un;
"j'ai du mal à exprimer ce concept";
"je trouve que tu t'exprimes de manière imprécise";
"nous pourrions amener ce sujet qui a été évoqué ici ou ici";
etc
down with the french!
The reason written English is so strange is that it has imported countless words from other languages (especially Scandinavian, French, and Latin/Greek, in that chronological order), and mostly preserves the spelling that someone from that language would use. As such, words from different root languages end up with different ways to interpret their spellings. This gets even more confused when you consider the Great Vowel Shift, where English speakers inexplicably changed how they pronounced every vowel in the language, but retained the old ways of spelling them (no seriously, this actually happened, and is why the vowel "e" became "i" but is still spelled "e", and the "i" became the diphthong "ay" but is still spelled "i", and so on for every vowel).
Of course, even ignoring the written aspect, I can see why spoken English would be hard to learn. English is the most widely spoken language on the planet (mostly thanks the British Empire), and it has more dialects, registers, and other such sociolects than you can imagine. There are three main dialects in American English alone (all three have existed since well before the country was founded), and many sub-dialects and registers on top of that. Brooklyn English vs. Valley Girl English, for example. The particular sociolect of Academic English is another thing. There are even a few sociolects that balance out many of the other dialects to a fair degree, like Salt Lake City English (AKA American TV English). Many of these dialects don't even share vowels with each other, let alone something like British English (the word "bird" is pronounced with a different vowel in the US and Britain, for example).
Still, if we are talking about languages and phonetic alphabets, I think the Japanese Katakana is probably the single worst that I am aware of. It is supposed to be a special phonetic alphabet for dealing with non-Japanese words, but in that regard it totally fails since it is thoroughly built upon the phonetics of the Japanese language. It is nothing but a different way of writing the Hiragana, and can't even wrap itself around consonant combinations like "tr" or "dr", let alone consonants like the voiced/unvoiced "th" sounds or the "ng" (Japanese treat that one as a regional way of pronouncing "g", but English speakers lump that one in with "n", unless it is seen in the "-ing" suffix). Meanwhile, from what I am aware the Korean phonetic alphabet is extremely good and very adaptable for use with other languages.
As one final quip... There is no such thing as a phonetic or pictoral language. There are phonetic and pictoral written languages, but there is no absolute tie between written scripts and spoken languages. I am pretty you can easily devise a way of writing English with kanji, or Japanese with the Korean alphabet.
PS: Uglyvan, accented letters do exist in English, they just aren't present on the keyboards. There are a couple ways of accessing them, from Alt coding them in or just inserting characters. But they are present.
Well said and a very detailed opinion.
Let me give my commentary.
It's true that the English written language hasn't been phonetic for a very long time. Of course, we're talking about the written language here, since spoken languages are neither phonetic or pictographic, those being qualities of the written word.
Any commentary on spoken language is strictly side commentary as far as the main thread topic is concerned.
I agree that the Korean written phonetic alphabet appears to be quite excellent, but from the little I know of it (practically nothing actually), it still doesn't seem to be all inclusive of all sounds in most spoken languages, which you would need in order to have an exhaustively phonetic written form.
Of course, letter combinations CAN be made to create or recreate sounds which we normally ascribe to the usual ones that no longer make any sense, such as the "ch" sound, to say nothing of the "gh" absurdity.
To this end, I refer those interested to the Alibata Philippine alphabet in the pre-Hispanic, or modern Filipino, which is still nascent and as far as I can tell, somewhat more phonetic than most languages based on Roman characters.
The limitation of Roman characters necessitates pictographic usage a lot, of course, but not to the extent of English or even Japanese written in Roman characters.
PS: Uglyvan, accented letters do exist in English, they just aren't present on the keyboards. There are a couple ways of accessing them, from Alt coding them in or just inserting characters. But they are present.
The really confusing part of Japanese? When they absorb a new word into the language, they drop different consonants, and they aren't consistant about which ones they drop. Apple? Apuru. Wonderful (seriously, they tend use it instead of Japanese equivalents) Wandurufulu or Wonderufu(l/r)u. And they still haven't quite decided on whether or not they want to let the "L" play. Sumetimes they do, sometimes they don't, and it's completely arbitrary when they do or don't. /Rant about Japanese
PS: Uglyvan, accented letters do exist in English, they just aren't present on the keyboards. There are a couple ways of accessing them, from Alt coding them in or just inserting characters. But they are present.
no, they just change the words to suit the Japanese alphabet, maintaining phonetic status. L=r is just part of the language/accent.
no, they just change the words to suit the Japanese alphabet, maintaining phonetic status. L=r is just part of the language/accent.
QFE. Kana conversion of foreign words is completely phonetic within the limitations of kana's pronunciation. The apparent inconsistency comes from considering the word according to its English spelling rather than pronunciation.
(sidetrack: I'd have to disagree with farmer42 claiming Japanese use "wonderful" and other borrowed words more often than their own equivalents (suteki, rippa, subarashii). Perhaps it is different in the southern parts of honshuu, but I was actually pleasantly surprised to find that kana-fied english is not spoken too much in the north... it's found in writing and not much else.)
Kana is perfectly phonetic: it is always read exactly as it is spelled.
English isn't perfectly phonetic, for plenty o' reasons detailed by other posters, but in my experience teaching ESL, understanding the general rules of English phonics are certainly a boon to learning it.
"Do you know of the Invisible army???"
"Here in France we claim that the cold war has ended in december 1989";
"Mr Bruce Dickinson goes further in proclaiming that Satan has left the killing floor!!!!"
That emote pretty much sums it up. Na zdrowie!
I´m Spanish. Reading and writting English is easy for me, but hearing and speaking... I´m practically deaf for oral English. When I hear a English-language song I can´t understand. Sometimes only a word or two, but never a total phrase... (but "I love you").
Don't worry Louis, most English people can't understand English language songs either. Try a song by the Beatles (generally fairly clear).
Also related is that english is in many ways a merging of a germanic tongue with french, which was already a merging of german and latin. Then we tossed in a slew of greek words, anglicizing much of the pronunciation, but almost none of the spelling. More recently, we have added words from many languages, simply slotting them in and adopting them as our own (with mangled pronunciation, of course).
IMO, the result is an extremely versatile and poetic language that is devilishly hard for an outsider to pick up. English IS actually still phonetic, but the phonetic rules are different based on the origin of the word. I have won spelling contests in the past, and I did it by being able to intuit the spelling based on the sound and meaning of the word. Certain letter combinations are made to do bizarre things (like ough), but it is possible to intuit spelling in english. Its just very difficult to do so.