Is the english language too full of 'exceptions'?
Jan 29, 2018 23:14:43 GMT -5
araoro, VegetarianBacon, and 6 more like this
Post by yourbuddy on Jan 29, 2018 23:14:43 GMT -5
Time to respond to every single point made so far in this thread!!!!!!
Silent letters: These spellings are quite important in helping avoiding ambiguity. Suppose, using an example from French,
“sans cent bouteilles de sang” is pronounced “sã sã booteyz duh sã.” While in spoken language, context often makes up for this, in written language this context is often lacking.
Another aspect is the etymological factor. Back in the 1600s (when a great deal of words’ spellings were “standardized”), these “ough” endings were all pronounced with a voiced velar fricative (say a “zh” in the part of the mouth where you pronounce a “k”), and in Old English (~1000 AD,) they ended with “h.” By keeping these spellings alive, we can easily trace back cognates in languages like German, Dutch, and Swedish, as well as reconstruct older languages like Proto-Germanic.
Regarding the dental fricatives, they’re quite uncommon in the language, and due to this infrequency it is easy to guess whether it is voiced or not simply by just knowing the meanings of the words. Even in Old English, there was only the thorn.
Pronounciation of “bologna:” Bologna is a loanword from Italian, in which “gn” is pronounced like Spanish ñ. Americans then decided that “we can’t say bolonya so why not sound like absolute retards and say baloney.”
Verb Conjugation: Most “irregular verbs,” in fact, are not irregular. They are actually “strong” verbs, AKA verbs with a past tense formed with a change in the ablaut (last) vowel. They can be split up into 7 categories: (First = present, second = past, third = participle aka “have x’d”)
1.) Long “I” > Long “O” > Short “I.” Examples include write and drive.
2.) Mostly irregular due to the weak (“regular”) verb-ification and sound changed, but there’s only eight. Pattern: “ee” > Long “O” > Long “O.” Examples include freeze and cleave.
Since I’m lazy, you can go Google the rest, (most of them are like class two though because English, but in languages like German and Swedish they’ll always have a predictable pattern.)
Pluralization: The native English pluralization system is just one of many that could have been inherited from the Old English case system. In fact, without the huge French influence we’ve had, we’d most likely be saying “housen” and “forumen.” The “irregular” ones include words that conserved the ablaut system due to the fact that they were commonly used (“man” > “men”), and words which retained the “en” ending due to common use (“ox” > “oxen,” “child” > “children”) Again, not irregular, just archaic.
Who vs whom: The word “whom” was invented by some guy who thought “English is impure but it’s gonna be spoken all over the world soon and Latin is the pure™️ language so let’s revive some random Old English word no one uses becuase look, Latin has an equivalent so it must be a good idea!!!!!!!!”
I vs me, he vs him, etc: Only remnants of the Old English case system. In Old English, each noun would also have an object (me) equivalent, dative equivalent (to me, for example “him” in “I gave an apple to him”), and a possessive equivalent (still remnant as the ‘s ending). Almost every language (a notable exception being Mandarin Chinese) has this, so it’s not really an irregularity per se.
Accents actually make langages easier to learn because ambiguity is highly removed. Suppose, in Spanish, “gusto” and “gustó” have a big difference, and there is absolutely no other way to express it without an accent. About the word naïve: It’s a loanword from French,and in French, “ai” makes the “e” in the word “pet,” so the accent on the “i” is used to show that the “i” is pronounced separately from the “a.”
In “systole,” the “e” does have an effect...?
Spelling and pronouncaition being the exact same but different meanings: This is quite normal, and is true for basically any non ultra-specific word. An important thing to remember is that in spoken (and often written) language, context helps make up a for a lot of ambiguity in a language. People tend to neglect that fact. This is caused by semantic narrowing, drift, and broadening, and is a normal part of language change. Plus, this is a feature of literally every language, because there is very little chance a language would be able to survive with an individual word for literally every single different thing.
Side note: Most people don’t learn languages by memorizing rules in a classroom. They’re actively taking it in from their surroundings and through that, observing the way it works. Therefore, exceptions are much more easily learned.
Octopus: Loandwords, loanwords, loanwords. Octopus is a word that came from Greek to English through Latin. Octopodes is the correct Greek / Latin Plural (octopi came off of an incorrect assumption of the etymology), and octopuses is the correct English form.
British English: They’re the actual pure ones, the American spellings are modifications of them. Most of these British spellings came from the unmodificed forms of the original French words. (Zee was also just a dialectal form of zed for a long time).
“I before E except after C” is just a stupid rule that should be taken out of everyone’s minds, becuase e, in more situations than not, is before i.
Grammatical gender was created originally as a form of classifying nouns (but not actually by the gender), and eventually evolved into what we have now. English is an exception to this among Indo-European languages, with the only one I can remember besides English being Bengali. While most IE languages, as well as Niger Congo (Sub Saharan Africa, usually 16-20 of them) and Afroasiatic (North Africa and Middle East) language have gender, it’s not very common outside of them.
VegetarianBacon, English is Germanic, not Romance. Romance languages evolved from Latin, English came from a group of Germanic dialects spoken in Northern Germany and Southern Denmark.
All in all, none of this stuff actually impedes communication between us, so who cares? As Creativeguy says, I’d really hate it if I had to relearn my own native language.
By the way, if you want, I can make this post even longer ;)
Update: Here are all of my arguments against spelling reform:
You’ll have to relearn how to spell your own native language. I don’t know a single person who would want to do that.
The old spellings will remain in older documents, and it’ll take a long time and lots of money to make the transition. How will people read the older documents?
But the biggest reason it’s not a good idea is because of the fact that there are many differences between British and American pronounciation. Using RP (UK) and GA (US) as examples, Brits don’t pronounce their “r”s unless they’re before vowels, have a lot more “o” and “a” sounds, make their short “a”s (cat) long “a”s (father) before the unvoiced “th,” “s,” “f,” and “n” with a consonant after it. Will we write the way Brits say it, or Americans? And if you reply to have two systems, it’ll be really hard to communicate between countries If you want a compromise, then what’s the point of reforming?
Anyways, that’s it for now.
Silent letters: These spellings are quite important in helping avoiding ambiguity. Suppose, using an example from French,
“sans cent bouteilles de sang” is pronounced “sã sã booteyz duh sã.” While in spoken language, context often makes up for this, in written language this context is often lacking.
Another aspect is the etymological factor. Back in the 1600s (when a great deal of words’ spellings were “standardized”), these “ough” endings were all pronounced with a voiced velar fricative (say a “zh” in the part of the mouth where you pronounce a “k”), and in Old English (~1000 AD,) they ended with “h.” By keeping these spellings alive, we can easily trace back cognates in languages like German, Dutch, and Swedish, as well as reconstruct older languages like Proto-Germanic.
Regarding the dental fricatives, they’re quite uncommon in the language, and due to this infrequency it is easy to guess whether it is voiced or not simply by just knowing the meanings of the words. Even in Old English, there was only the thorn.
Pronounciation of “bologna:” Bologna is a loanword from Italian, in which “gn” is pronounced like Spanish ñ. Americans then decided that “we can’t say bolonya so why not sound like absolute retards and say baloney.”
Verb Conjugation: Most “irregular verbs,” in fact, are not irregular. They are actually “strong” verbs, AKA verbs with a past tense formed with a change in the ablaut (last) vowel. They can be split up into 7 categories: (First = present, second = past, third = participle aka “have x’d”)
1.) Long “I” > Long “O” > Short “I.” Examples include write and drive.
2.) Mostly irregular due to the weak (“regular”) verb-ification and sound changed, but there’s only eight. Pattern: “ee” > Long “O” > Long “O.” Examples include freeze and cleave.
Since I’m lazy, you can go Google the rest, (most of them are like class two though because English, but in languages like German and Swedish they’ll always have a predictable pattern.)
Pluralization: The native English pluralization system is just one of many that could have been inherited from the Old English case system. In fact, without the huge French influence we’ve had, we’d most likely be saying “housen” and “forumen.” The “irregular” ones include words that conserved the ablaut system due to the fact that they were commonly used (“man” > “men”), and words which retained the “en” ending due to common use (“ox” > “oxen,” “child” > “children”) Again, not irregular, just archaic.
Who vs whom: The word “whom” was invented by some guy who thought “English is impure but it’s gonna be spoken all over the world soon and Latin is the pure™️ language so let’s revive some random Old English word no one uses becuase look, Latin has an equivalent so it must be a good idea!!!!!!!!”
I vs me, he vs him, etc: Only remnants of the Old English case system. In Old English, each noun would also have an object (me) equivalent, dative equivalent (to me, for example “him” in “I gave an apple to him”), and a possessive equivalent (still remnant as the ‘s ending). Almost every language (a notable exception being Mandarin Chinese) has this, so it’s not really an irregularity per se.
Accents actually make langages easier to learn because ambiguity is highly removed. Suppose, in Spanish, “gusto” and “gustó” have a big difference, and there is absolutely no other way to express it without an accent. About the word naïve: It’s a loanword from French,and in French, “ai” makes the “e” in the word “pet,” so the accent on the “i” is used to show that the “i” is pronounced separately from the “a.”
In “systole,” the “e” does have an effect...?
Spelling and pronouncaition being the exact same but different meanings: This is quite normal, and is true for basically any non ultra-specific word. An important thing to remember is that in spoken (and often written) language, context helps make up a for a lot of ambiguity in a language. People tend to neglect that fact. This is caused by semantic narrowing, drift, and broadening, and is a normal part of language change. Plus, this is a feature of literally every language, because there is very little chance a language would be able to survive with an individual word for literally every single different thing.
Side note: Most people don’t learn languages by memorizing rules in a classroom. They’re actively taking it in from their surroundings and through that, observing the way it works. Therefore, exceptions are much more easily learned.
Octopus: Loandwords, loanwords, loanwords. Octopus is a word that came from Greek to English through Latin. Octopodes is the correct Greek / Latin Plural (octopi came off of an incorrect assumption of the etymology), and octopuses is the correct English form.
British English: They’re the actual pure ones, the American spellings are modifications of them. Most of these British spellings came from the unmodificed forms of the original French words. (Zee was also just a dialectal form of zed for a long time).
“I before E except after C” is just a stupid rule that should be taken out of everyone’s minds, becuase e, in more situations than not, is before i.
Grammatical gender was created originally as a form of classifying nouns (but not actually by the gender), and eventually evolved into what we have now. English is an exception to this among Indo-European languages, with the only one I can remember besides English being Bengali. While most IE languages, as well as Niger Congo (Sub Saharan Africa, usually 16-20 of them) and Afroasiatic (North Africa and Middle East) language have gender, it’s not very common outside of them.
VegetarianBacon, English is Germanic, not Romance. Romance languages evolved from Latin, English came from a group of Germanic dialects spoken in Northern Germany and Southern Denmark.
All in all, none of this stuff actually impedes communication between us, so who cares? As Creativeguy says, I’d really hate it if I had to relearn my own native language.
By the way, if you want, I can make this post even longer ;)
Update: Here are all of my arguments against spelling reform:
You’ll have to relearn how to spell your own native language. I don’t know a single person who would want to do that.
The old spellings will remain in older documents, and it’ll take a long time and lots of money to make the transition. How will people read the older documents?
But the biggest reason it’s not a good idea is because of the fact that there are many differences between British and American pronounciation. Using RP (UK) and GA (US) as examples, Brits don’t pronounce their “r”s unless they’re before vowels, have a lot more “o” and “a” sounds, make their short “a”s (cat) long “a”s (father) before the unvoiced “th,” “s,” “f,” and “n” with a consonant after it. Will we write the way Brits say it, or Americans? And if you reply to have two systems, it’ll be really hard to communicate between countries If you want a compromise, then what’s the point of reforming?
Anyways, that’s it for now.
