The idea that English’s orthography is crazy because it came into written use late doesn’t really hold water. The ancestors of Modern English have all been written down for many centuries, even though post-1066 no-one was using it for a good while at court.
It’s more that English as a whole is split between a Germanic and Romance ancestry, with the orthography of both sources being represented, while standardisation took place right around the time of a huge shift in pronunciation - the great vowel shift - fossilising an orthography that represented a bygone pronunciation.
In fact I think more can be blamed on English writing being standardised early than late, and then not keeping up with changes in pronunciation: the infamous <gh> cluster used to represent a pronounced /x/ sound - compare English night with German Nacht, or knight with Knecht, or freight with Fracht. All these spellings were standardised from a language that pronounced this consonant! If English really standardised late, then the likelihood would be that these words would not have a (written) consonant where the pronunciation doesn’t have one.
It’s more that English as a whole is split between a Germanic and Romance ancestry, with the orthography of both sources being represented
It’s way more than those two…
a huge shift in pronunciation
That has absolutely nothing to do with grammar, just spelling…
Like, you seem to be solely focused on spelling.
And that’s my entire point, you don’t notice the other shit because it’s “normal” to you. That’s why you’d be paid money to “teach” English…
The rules are so convoluted and nonsensical (the adjective order is a great example) that even native speakers are often unaware of the rules, we just follow them without understanding them.
You can’t teach a non native speaker all the rules, it’s too much to remember. They need that whole “immersion” thing everyone says but never understands. They need to figure it out thru trial and error and learn it subconsciously otherwise they’ll always be focused on translating into English and abiding every rule and remembering each exception.
That’s also why you see internet comments of absolutely perfect classroom English, where the writer constantly apologized for their poor English. Textbook can be learned, but authentic English speakers rarely speak/write how we were taught, and that is what wealthy foreigners want their kids to learn, how the language is actually used.
That is nowhere near as big of an issue with any other language.
Because English isn’t consistent or logical. There’s a shit ton of exceptions to every “rule” and users constantly change things.
Getting deeper into how language influences our thoughts, and the rise of English could explain “the Americanization” of the world just because of how disorganized it can be leaving room for cheating and the importance it puts on the individual and capitalism:
Studies in psychology have found that bilingual people respond differently when they complete tasks in different languages. For example, one study randomly assigned bilingual people in India to complete a work task in Hindi or English.[10] Social norms were more effective at motivating people to work longer in Hindi, whereas payment was more effective in English, which is similar to results when people work in their native languages in the United States and India. Another study randomly assigned bilingual managers in Hong Kong to rate the importance of different values in English or Chinese.[11] When surveyed English, managers in Hong Kong rated conformity and tradition as less important and rated achievement and hedonism as more important.
It’s a fascinating topic, but I fully expect it to be one of those things no one’s heard of before, so people with no idea what is going on will reflexively defend English as a language.
Which ironically enough, they likely wouldn’t experience that response if their native language wasn’t English, even if someone was critizing their hypothetical native language.
I’m talking about orthography because the thread is about how language (German originally) is written - i.e. orthography. You didn’t mention anything about grammar until this latest comment; your previous comment mentioned orthography and vocabulary. All I did was continue talking about what I was already talking about.
The rules are so convoluted and nonsensical (the adjective order is a great example)
The adjective order is an old, overblown meme. The meme came with a ready-made exception (“big bad wolf”) which is no less of an exception for the fact that it came with ready-made excuse (“ablaut reduplication”).
Did you notice that “old, overblown meme” violates the order (opinion follows age)? That’s because it’s overblown.
Did you know that other languages have adjective orders of various specificity and rigidity?
Yes, it’s a fascinating topic, and yes, there are many markers of non-native English speaking which are impractical to teach. But it sounds like you’re trying to steer the conversation somewhere I don’t want to go, and I’m not going down there. As soon as you start categorising languages as “real” or “not real” you’re on your own. Your misunderstanding of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, likewise.
Did you notice that “old, overblown meme” violates the order (opinion follows age)? That’s because it’s overblown.
Did I notice how all the nonsensical rules have nonsensical exceptions…
Yes, that’s why I said:
You can’t teach a non native speaker all the rules, it’s too much to remember. They need that whole “immersion” thing everyone says but never understands. They need to figure it out thru trial and error and learn it subconsciously otherwise they’ll always be focused on translating into English and abiding every rule and remembering each exception.
If someone said “the bad big wolf” would you as a native English speaker react?
You would…
You wouldn’t be able to explain why, you wouldn’t understand why thats an exception and couldn’t explain it to someone else, you just know that’s an exception, we all do.
Your subconscious would just flag it as off, because people not conforming means they may be from another tribe…
You’re literally proving my point, the only way to learn “big bad wolf” is exposure and letting the subconscious handle that.
But it sounds like you’re trying to steer the conversation somewhere I don’t want to go, and I’m not going down there.
Then just dont reply?
It’s literally that easy, buddy, if you can’t manage that I’ll just block you now that way you can always chime in not getting the point and then I won’t “force” you into a conversation trying to help you.
In case anyone is interested now this “helpful” character has departed:
The conventional explanation for “bad big wolf” sounding “wrong” is that “big bad” is an example of ablaut reduplication, which has a fixed sequence of vowels.
This is a weak explanation for two reasons: a good example of ablaut reduplication is for example “bish bash bosh” where only the vowel changes. This is a weaker example, and so ablaut reduplication is a weaker predictor of the pattern, because the final consonant is not the same between “big” and “bad”. Secondly, “big bad wolf” is a phrase from a folk tale and hence deeply embedded in the language in its own right. It’s hard to disentangle whether “bad big wolf” sounds strange to native ears because it’s a violation of the pattern of ablaut reduplication, or because it’s a violation of the specific example, “big bad wolf,” that all native speakers heard many times as children.
Remember, this is all a tangent from whether English has a rigid adjective order. A stronger example to consider is A1: “big beautiful house” versus A2: “beautiful big house”, and B1: “little beautiful house” versus B2: “beautiful little house”. As a native speaker, I strongly prefer A1 but B2. The adjective order adherents say it should be A2 and B2.
So, I don’t think the supposed rule of adjective order really exists.
I think if the helper were still around, they would say that actually this just proves their point. Even though they complained about the “rule” of adjective order, actually the fact that there is no rule is even worse! (how convenient, if true), and you just have to learn each example - B2 not B1, A1 not A2 - one by one, and their real point is that English is particularly bad because of this.
Unfortunately, because they are apparently not any kind of linguist, they never presented any comparative examples. Tagalog has a strong preference for adjective order, for example. Languages with flexible word order in general, such as Finnish, nevertheless have a preferred default word order and if you don’t learn it you will sound weird. Languages which use prepositions pair certain verbs with certain prepositions (so in English you sit in your seat, watch the performance in English, and in the end the good guys win) but this pairing is arbitrary and if you pick the wrong one you’ll generally be understood but sound wrong (in German you sit im Sitz, watch auf Deutsch, and am Ende the good guys win).
Languages - all languages - abound with aspects that mark out non-native speakers. That’s because they’re complex things that incorporate huge aspects of culture, not merely a means of communication. That’s not something that anyone needs to “defend” and it’s not something that makes a language cease to be “real”. Is it the same degree in all languages? I’m sure it isn’t, but that’s not the point either.
The idea that English’s orthography is crazy because it came into written use late doesn’t really hold water. The ancestors of Modern English have all been written down for many centuries, even though post-1066 no-one was using it for a good while at court.
It’s more that English as a whole is split between a Germanic and Romance ancestry, with the orthography of both sources being represented, while standardisation took place right around the time of a huge shift in pronunciation - the great vowel shift - fossilising an orthography that represented a bygone pronunciation.
In fact I think more can be blamed on English writing being standardised early than late, and then not keeping up with changes in pronunciation: the infamous <gh> cluster used to represent a pronounced /x/ sound - compare English night with German Nacht, or knight with Knecht, or freight with Fracht. All these spellings were standardised from a language that pronounced this consonant! If English really standardised late, then the likelihood would be that these words would not have a (written) consonant where the pronunciation doesn’t have one.
It’s way more than those two…
That has absolutely nothing to do with grammar, just spelling…
Like, you seem to be solely focused on spelling.
And that’s my entire point, you don’t notice the other shit because it’s “normal” to you. That’s why you’d be paid money to “teach” English…
The rules are so convoluted and nonsensical (the adjective order is a great example) that even native speakers are often unaware of the rules, we just follow them without understanding them.
You can’t teach a non native speaker all the rules, it’s too much to remember. They need that whole “immersion” thing everyone says but never understands. They need to figure it out thru trial and error and learn it subconsciously otherwise they’ll always be focused on translating into English and abiding every rule and remembering each exception.
That’s also why you see internet comments of absolutely perfect classroom English, where the writer constantly apologized for their poor English. Textbook can be learned, but authentic English speakers rarely speak/write how we were taught, and that is what wealthy foreigners want their kids to learn, how the language is actually used.
That is nowhere near as big of an issue with any other language.
Because English isn’t consistent or logical. There’s a shit ton of exceptions to every “rule” and users constantly change things.
Getting deeper into how language influences our thoughts, and the rise of English could explain “the Americanization” of the world just because of how disorganized it can be leaving room for cheating and the importance it puts on the individual and capitalism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_and_thought#Studies_concerning_the_Sapir–Whorf_hypothesis
It’s a fascinating topic, but I fully expect it to be one of those things no one’s heard of before, so people with no idea what is going on will reflexively defend English as a language.
Which ironically enough, they likely wouldn’t experience that response if their native language wasn’t English, even if someone was critizing their hypothetical native language.
I’m talking about orthography because the thread is about how language (German originally) is written - i.e. orthography. You didn’t mention anything about grammar until this latest comment; your previous comment mentioned orthography and vocabulary. All I did was continue talking about what I was already talking about.
The adjective order is an old, overblown meme. The meme came with a ready-made exception (“big bad wolf”) which is no less of an exception for the fact that it came with ready-made excuse (“ablaut reduplication”).
Did you notice that “old, overblown meme” violates the order (opinion follows age)? That’s because it’s overblown.
Did you know that other languages have adjective orders of various specificity and rigidity?
Yes, it’s a fascinating topic, and yes, there are many markers of non-native English speaking which are impractical to teach. But it sounds like you’re trying to steer the conversation somewhere I don’t want to go, and I’m not going down there. As soon as you start categorising languages as “real” or “not real” you’re on your own. Your misunderstanding of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, likewise.
Did I notice how all the nonsensical rules have nonsensical exceptions…
Yes, that’s why I said:
If someone said “the bad big wolf” would you as a native English speaker react?
You would…
You wouldn’t be able to explain why, you wouldn’t understand why thats an exception and couldn’t explain it to someone else, you just know that’s an exception, we all do.
Your subconscious would just flag it as off, because people not conforming means they may be from another tribe…
You’re literally proving my point, the only way to learn “big bad wolf” is exposure and letting the subconscious handle that.
Then just dont reply?
It’s literally that easy, buddy, if you can’t manage that I’ll just block you now that way you can always chime in not getting the point and then I won’t “force” you into a conversation trying to help you.
In case anyone is interested now this “helpful” character has departed:
The conventional explanation for “bad big wolf” sounding “wrong” is that “big bad” is an example of ablaut reduplication, which has a fixed sequence of vowels.
This is a weak explanation for two reasons: a good example of ablaut reduplication is for example “bish bash bosh” where only the vowel changes. This is a weaker example, and so ablaut reduplication is a weaker predictor of the pattern, because the final consonant is not the same between “big” and “bad”. Secondly, “big bad wolf” is a phrase from a folk tale and hence deeply embedded in the language in its own right. It’s hard to disentangle whether “bad big wolf” sounds strange to native ears because it’s a violation of the pattern of ablaut reduplication, or because it’s a violation of the specific example, “big bad wolf,” that all native speakers heard many times as children.
Remember, this is all a tangent from whether English has a rigid adjective order. A stronger example to consider is A1: “big beautiful house” versus A2: “beautiful big house”, and B1: “little beautiful house” versus B2: “beautiful little house”. As a native speaker, I strongly prefer A1 but B2. The adjective order adherents say it should be A2 and B2.
So, I don’t think the supposed rule of adjective order really exists.
I think if the helper were still around, they would say that actually this just proves their point. Even though they complained about the “rule” of adjective order, actually the fact that there is no rule is even worse! (how convenient, if true), and you just have to learn each example - B2 not B1, A1 not A2 - one by one, and their real point is that English is particularly bad because of this.
Unfortunately, because they are apparently not any kind of linguist, they never presented any comparative examples. Tagalog has a strong preference for adjective order, for example. Languages with flexible word order in general, such as Finnish, nevertheless have a preferred default word order and if you don’t learn it you will sound weird. Languages which use prepositions pair certain verbs with certain prepositions (so in English you sit in your seat, watch the performance in English, and in the end the good guys win) but this pairing is arbitrary and if you pick the wrong one you’ll generally be understood but sound wrong (in German you sit im Sitz, watch auf Deutsch, and am Ende the good guys win).
Languages - all languages - abound with aspects that mark out non-native speakers. That’s because they’re complex things that incorporate huge aspects of culture, not merely a means of communication. That’s not something that anyone needs to “defend” and it’s not something that makes a language cease to be “real”. Is it the same degree in all languages? I’m sure it isn’t, but that’s not the point either.
What exactly are you trying to “help” me with?
Welp, nothing now.
Best of luck
lmao.