The Real Evolution of the English language

[Yanah_God]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_the_English_language

Now apply those changes to Latin and you start getting an idea of how stupid our language sounds. =)

[-Izzy-]

Re: The Real Evolution of the English language

World wide, english seems to be the easiest language to learn. Id rather have been born japanese and just learned english.

[stretchypanda]

Re: The Real Evolution of the English language

I'm told English is actually the hardest language to learn, because there are so many homonyms and synonyms. So many people place such emphasis on learning it because it is the primary language of the most powerful nation in the world. If you want to do business with Americans, you learn English.

[GuidoHunter]

Re: The Real Evolution of the English language

It's easiest to be able to learn, not the easiest to learn.

--Guido

http://andy.mikee385.com

[-Izzy-]

Re: The Real Evolution of the English language

Ok, i guess i would be biased twords that anyways.

[banditcom]

Re: The Real Evolution of the English language

Yeah. English is a must in regards to the business of trade.

I think it all depends on the person. I'd say anything that is different from the style of the person's native language is the hardest.

Arabic would be one of the hardest, I believe. Plus reading and writing in Arabic are different from each other.. haha

[stretchypanda]

Re: The Real Evolution of the English language

My dad used to speak Arabic very fluently. He went to high school in Iran. His diploma is probably the coolest thing I've ever seen.

Learning a language by immersion is a totally different thing, though.

[Omeganitros]

Re: The Real Evolution of the English language

I was wowed when I found out that there's a languages where, in one word, your tone of voice and how you say it can give it, like, 5 completely different meanings.

[Squeek]

Re: The Real Evolution of the English language

The sad part is that among all the regulars on this site, someone who has posted on this thread has the least grasp of the language they are currently posting about.

Guess who =o

~Squeek

PS - Japanese people butcher our language because it's annoying to change formats of subject, verb, etc from the Japanese layout to English, and other things as well. Look at a few Japanese people posting in English and you'd see it. English does not come easily. Most people born in America in this day and age still cannot speak / type / write it correctly.

[mattyohh]

Re: The Real Evolution of the English language

I was reading a article the other night about the French Prime minister kicking up a stink because at a business meet some one dared to address him in English.

[talisman]

Re: The Real Evolution of the English language

Most of the bilinguals I know say English really isn't that hard... it's more of a function of when you start to learn it, the earlier being the better, and whether or not it's immersive.

[GuidoHunter]

Re: The Real Evolution of the English language

One German lady I know says it was the easiest for her to learn. Most Europeans know it, both because it's taught all over the place there and it's everywhere else in the culture. English is easy to find for anyone, but I can't find a good Czech-English dictionary to save my life.

--Guido

http://andy.mikee385.com

[Yanah_God]

Re: The Real Evolution of the English language

I was wowed when I found out that there's a languages where, in one word, your tone of voice and how you say it can give it, like, 5 completely different meanings.

rofl, I wouldn't touch Chinese or Vietnamese with a 10 foot stick and a hazmat suit with earplugs and no eyes.

I love the Arabic abjad. It's so much easier to write than the Latin alphabet. Well, maybe it flows more smoothly, but it isn't actually easier to write, since you have to think about whether the letter is going to connect to the next one. But if I was going to learn a language that was written with the Arabic abjad, I would probably choose something like Farsi or Urdu, since they're Indo-European and hence have a similarity, however vague, to English.

[msbrunnettemickey]

Re: The Real Evolution of the English language

Yeah. English is a must in regards to the business of trade.

I think it all depends on the person. I'd say anything that is different from the style of the person's native language is the hardest.

Arabic would be one of the hardest, I believe. Plus reading and writing in Arabic are different from each other.. haha

True that.
Because Hebrew was my first language it wasn't that hard to grasp, since someone spoke it to me all the time from the moment I was born.
But there are two different Hebrew writings and readings. For example, school in Israel taught you how to actually be able to learn two different languages at once including the "old" Hebrew... The Torah. We learned English through reading and Arabic because it's Israel's second language.

Even though my mom is Iraqi and speaks Arabic it was really hard for me to learn it even though it is the closest thing to Hebrew. I can read a little bit, but my writing is horrible. My mom can't stand it.

I am trying to strengthen my Russian, my father is Ukrainian and he speaks it to me everyday and that's how i learn, but i still cannot read/write well.

I used to do so bad in English class in Israel. I knew how to read and I understood everything the teacher was reading but i had no idea how to spell things or use the right grammar. It even took me awhile to just spell "Carrot".

The more I practice one language the less I know the other language.
Like right now... My spelling in Hebrew is starting to get worse and worse and read slower than usual =(

[whorlichan]

Re: The Real Evolution of the English language

Haha, Mickey, I'm the exact opposite--I'm doing an independent study class in Hebrew and so my writing and grammar and spelling, etc. are getting better, yay!

When I first came to the US I was 5--easy enough to stick me in a non-ESL classroom with a 6th-grade helper to translate the important stuff and let me pick up the rest on my own. By 2nd grade I was doing the translating for smaller kids--and then I got shunted into a school where they DID speak Hebrew. Nice timing, huh?

But--and this is the funny part--the Hebrew school didn't do any of the standardized CA tests so when I got to 9th grade and had to go to public school because the Hebrew high schools were too expensive, I was put in an ESL class because they had no record of my ability to speak, read, or write English, despite the fact that I was right in front of them and talking like a native. I spent that semester reading a book in the corner--the teacher realized it was ridiculous for me to be there and they put me into the Honors English class the next semester.

I don't remember learning English all that well--to recall, it seemed hard for a couple of days and then everything seemed to make sense all of a sudden--but that could have been all of kindergarten rather than a few days or weeks.

I do know that learning Spanish was not that hard in high school, and I took it for three years and did really well, and then I never used it again so I forgot all of it.

Hardest to learn: Well, I've never TRIED to learn Arabic, but the writing looks insane. All the letters look the same to my uninformed eyes. I have, however, tried to learn Japanese, and did relatively well (I used to be able to write in hiragana almost as well as a 5-year-old Japanese kid!) That was very difficult, but mostly because the writing is nothing like English OR Hebrew, and the grammar on different lines again. That was closer to the Hebrew though--where in English you say "red car" in Hebrew and Japanese you say "car red."