this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
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Alright, are you calling English sane?
There are parts of English that are simple and there are parts that are complex. Same as any language! The cool thing about linguistics is learning about the neat features of some languages. For example, Chinese doesn't use articles!
Are articels useful at all?
What's the advantage of having a female /male table?
they can create tablets
I'm still smiling at this.
Gendered articles probably not but having "a" vs "the" removes the need for additional cases (eg. I/me/my). Latin and Russian don't have articles but they have more cases which have different suffixes that have to be applied to all nouns. Usually simplifying one part of language makes another part more complex. English has a very simple case structure but the word order is much more strict
I remember a study that gendered articles slightly increase understandibility among native speakers.
Neither does Russian, Ukrainian, and I’m guessing, many other Slav languages.
Oh, trust me, we are 😭
If the teacup fits.
sure, how complex is: their, there, they’re. sure, they sound the same but there is no reason they’re difficult to use in their intended purpose.
English grammar is alright as far as languages are concerned. There is some bs but nothing exceptional.
Pronounciation in the English language on the other hand is absolute insanity. If there are any rules besides grouped up exceptions then let me know.
And reusing the same word to mean a plethora of completely unrelated things lol.
EG:
Jam = a fruit preserve, to play music, stopped traffic, a door that's held open, to cram something into something else
Set = a collection of something, to change an option on a device, when something gelatinous becomes more solid, when the sun goes down, a stage or movie background, a list of songs at a concert, to put something down, and about 50 other things
Run = to move quickly, to enter a contest (ie run for President), to have something turned on (is that computer running, running a tap), to be a certain length (this films run time is 90 minutes), to be behind (this bus is running late), to be in charge of something (I'm running this place), a hand in poker, to be liquid (this egg is runny), a tear in a pair of tights
German also does this. I think a good 20% of all verbs are just variations of "ziehen" (to pull).
Umziehen - to change clothes, to move to a new home
aufziehen - to tease or ridicule someone, to wind up a clockwork, to raise kids
abziehen - to leave, to scam someone, to pull something off something else
herziehen - to gossip about someone
Anziehen - to attract something, to put on clothes
Yeah there are some of these for ziehen. You might be on to something. But for many generic verbs there are many variants with vastly different meanings. Like Machen - to make, or tun - to do, gehen - to go.
I wonder how much of that is due to french and how much from german/saxon dialects. French love mute consonants and wildly different vowel sounds.
It's all of the above and then some. A good read on the subject is John McWhorter's "Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue." It's intended for a non-technical/popular audience and doesn't get too deep into the weeds so you don't need a degree in linguistics to follow it.
A lot of the problem is that we use Middle English spellings for a lot of words, but the pronunciation continued to change after the spellings were standardized.
As far as I know the only rule is, that I (German) pronounce it always wrong.
I have the same rule for Gaelic.
I guess you haven't seen polish then.
Oh I have, it's not sane either.