This stuff must drive English learners crazy

Alkanadi:This stuff must drive English learners crazy

Only 10!?

These are nice features! English's ability to take words 'as they are' and use them as nouns or verbs or whatever without modification is part of why it has been successful, I think. Foreign words are easily included, for example (English is fine with 'ninja' but Esperanto needs it to be 'ninĵo'!). And beginners don't need to learn how to modify nouns at all before they can start to make simple sentences (You have a ninĵo? I'm sorry, but I think you mean you 'have a ninĵon!').

There are definitely some legit difficult and weird things with English (third person '-s' is annoying, as are articles), but I personally love our freedom with nouning verbs, etc!

And don't forget: 'I' before 'E' except after 'C' unless the word is "weird".

I was visiting some friends who are not native English speakers. They told me to park "in the front". So I parked near the street, which was in the front. They meant that I should park in the driveway near the house. Then I realised that they didn't want me to park in the front. They wanted me to park in front of the house.

"Park in the front" denotes a general location. This means that I should park far away because the invitation to park closely was not indicated.

"Park in front of..." denotes proximity to the object and a more specific location.

Natural languages are a mess.

[erroneous mis-reading of previous post redacted]

"Park in the front" denotes a general location. This means that I should park far away because the invitation to park closely was not indicated.

"Park in front of..." denotes proximity to the object and a more specific location.

Interesting, I would have not made that distinction. If someone said "park in the front" to me, I would not be certain whether that meant the driveway or the kerb on the street in front.

Alkanadi:And don't forget: 'I' before 'E' except after 'C' unless the word is "weird".

The full rhyme is:

I before E except after C
And when sounding like A as in "neighbor" or "weigh."

As you noted, there are many exceptions. i remember a movie title from the 1980's- "Weird Science," which, in just two words, violates the rules in each line of the rhyme !

Oreso, the problem is pronouncing those words - have you tried that? that is why here in the USA we spend years - yes, years - learning how to spell - and even though I was born here and wrote my dissertation in English, I still need to look up words very often before I write them. There are a lot of words that I even avoid using because I can't remember how to spell them.

robbkvasnak:Oreso, the problem is pronouncing those words - have you tried that? that is why here in the USA we spend years - yes, years - learning how to spell - and even though I was born here and wrote my dissertation in English, I still need to look up words very often before I write them. There are a lot of words that I even avoid using because I can't remember how to spell them.

Heck, even a spelling bee champion would be a liar if they told you they never need to look up a word. That is one big problem with English that could have been solved long ago. I would love to know how much of our tax money goes to teaching spelling. So much effort wasted on such a worthless subject. I say this, but I still have a hard time not judging someone who makes many spelling errors. (perhaps that is the purpose of our dreadful spelling system)

kaŝperanto:Heck, even a spelling bee champion would be a liar if they told you they never need to look up a word. That is one big problem with English that could have been solved long ago.

I remember in school the teacher showed us how English would look if it was written phonetically. I am not joking about this. She showed us a paragraph that said things like "beecuz". Every word in the paragraph was written phonetically like this. She said that, because it was hard for us to read, there was no point in writing English phonetically. I told her that people would get used to it and probably understand it better in the long run. She laughed at me and told me that I am ridiculous.

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This iz an ekzampal of fonetic tekst

By the way, how come the word "phonetic" is not spelled phonetically? Very ironic.

Actually, when we see words in English, we don't sound them out in our head. We see them as symbols, which is why you can scramble the letters of a word and it still is easily understood.

Alkanadi:

kaŝperanto:Heck, even a spelling bee champion would be a liar if they told you they never need to look up a word. That is one big problem with English that could have been solved long ago.

I remember in school the teacher showed us how English would look if it was written phonetically. I am not joking about this. She showed us a paragraph that said things like "beecuz". Every word in the paragraph was written phonetically like this. She said that, because it was hard for us to read, there was no point in writing English phonetically. I told her that people would get used to it and probably understand it better in the long run. She laughed at me and told me that I am ridiculous.

This is an example of regular text
This iz an ekzampal of fonetic tekst

By the way, how come the word "phonetic" is not spelled phonetically? Very ironic.

Actually, when we see words in English, we don't sound them out in our head. We see them as symbols, which is why you can scramble the letters of a word and it still is easily understood.

English spelling doesn't even have to be totally phonetic/phonemic to be much improved. If we just eliminated all silent letters (except for the "e" at the end of the word to make the short vowel long) and then standardize the spelling of some of the vowel sounds (the schwa for one!), that would go a long way in simplifying learning to read and write (or "reed and rite"?)