Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

reditusername39479 t1_je6a314 wrote

English is not one language but 3 wearing a trench coat pretending to be 1

97

fantollute t1_je6dxvo wrote

And in that coat is loose merchandise stolen from even more languages

43

wombey12 t1_je6y1g9 wrote

>"We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."

-James Nicoll

17

CurrentIndependent42 t1_je6vtcp wrote

This old chestnut. English isn’t particularly unusual in this regard. What’s unusual - though not unique - is having an old orthography that hasn’t been updated or uniformed to reflect modern pronunciation.

20

dragonmp93 t1_je7735q wrote

The problem with English is that it has 5 vowels with 13 sounds.

3

CurrentIndependent42 t1_je77sgx wrote

That’s one issue. Danish has even more, and other funny phonological stuff going on, though even then has more consistent sound to spelling matching.

1