All languages have quirks, but English is awful.
I only realized that the more I studied other languages, making me reflect on English.
Like, English doesn’t have a future tense. It seems like a pretty basic thing, but in English you say “I’m going to X”. Why do you use the verb ‘to go’ there? Why is that the way English creates a future tense? If you’re headed to the store now: I’m going to the store. If it’s happening later: I’m going to go to the store. WTF is this bullshit? “going to go”? Just stop and think for a second about “going” and “go” in that phrase.
And the verb “to do”, why is that part of questions in English? Statement: You have a dog. Question: Do you have a dog? What does “to do” have to do with any of that? Why is “doing” the verb that somehow is used to turn a statement into a question?
And then there’s “to use”. Using is to take, hold, deploy, consume… so why is it sometimes part of the past tense. Sure, you can say “I walked to school”, but if you want to talk about habits or routines: “I used to walk to school”. Why is “to use” even involved there at all?
That’s not even accounting for spelling and pronunciation which is just ridiculous in English.
We have a letter ‘k’ that reliably makes a certain sound, and a letter ‘s’ that reliably makes another sound. But, a huge variety of words use “c” which can make a ‘k’ sound like cat, or an ‘s’ sound like city. The letter ‘c’ has no sound of its own, it’s just a randomizer machine for one of the other useful sounds. The letter ‘g’ has one sound that no other letter makes, in words like “grip” and “great”. There’s another letter “j” that makes a different sound, like in “jet” and the name “Jim”. But, for some reason, sometimes the “g” makes a “j” sound, so “Jim” and “gym” have the same sound but completely different spellings, leading to bullshit like the confusion over how to pronounce “gif”.
English has roughly 20 vowel sounds, depending on the accent, but the vowel letters are ‘a’, ‘e’, ‘i’, ‘o’, ‘u’, and sometimes ‘y’. So, you’d think that at least those 5/6 are sorted and the other 20 come from combinations, right? Nope. In British English, for some reason “can” and “can’t” get a different vowel sound for the ‘a’, despite “can’t” being a contraction for “can not”, which literally contains “can”. The letter “u” can sound different between “put” and “putt”, even though you’re just tacking a ‘t’ to the end of that combination of letters. If you tack an ‘s’ on the end it doesn’t change, but if you tack an ‘e’ on the end… whoa, an entirely new sound different from both “put” and “putt”.
I’m glad the world is slowly converging on one language that allows everyone to communicate with everyone else, but it sucks that the language that came out on top is English.
English at least has “going to” and “will” for future. In Estonian you just use present simple and the only way to know you’re talking about the future is if you hint it with some time related word.
You just say “I go to the supermarket” and it’s ambiguous. You say “I go to the supermarket tomorrow” and you know it’s talking about the future.
Do you know if that’s unique to Estonian, or also true of Finnish? AFAIK, Finnish (and Estonian) are a weird language branch in that most of Europe is Indo-European. Even distinct languages like Italian and German are more related to each-other than Finnish.
Put is something you do to something (I will put this down), putt is a technique in golf (watch me land this putt).
Phonetically, put: /pʊt/ vs. putt: /pʌt/
ʊ is the sound from words like “book”, “hook”, “pull” or "should.
ʌ is the sound from words like “gut”, “double”, “butter”, “luck”, etc.
I just want to point out that English’s future tense does exist, but it’s just non-distinct in many cases because, well, as you’ve said, English is fucked.
“We’re eating steak.”
You need context to determine whether this statement is talking about the present or the future. So much of the language is implied contextually that you can just drop off words and assume the listener will understand.
“What are we eating?” vs. “What are we eating tonight?”
It’s so funny because whereas a lot of other languages have rules with defined exceptions here and there, speaking English is more of a theoretical approach.
It feels like English just happened one day and we’re all trying to figure out why.
My uneducated guess is that England had so many colonies throughout history that a lot of languages affected English and we have this Frankenstein of a language
That’s part of it, but I think a bigger part is all the countries that colonized the British Isles. English has elements of Germanic languages like German, Dutch, Old Norse, etc. It has elements of Latin languages from Latin itself to French. The British Empire definitely resulted in words being brought back from the various colonies, but the English they spoke then was fairly similar to what we know today. It was already this weird, bastardized Germanic / French language.
It’s so funny because whereas a lot of other languages have rules with defined exceptions here and there, speaking English is more of a theoretical approach.
I feel like this also makes it useful in that you can butcher the hell out of it, and still communicate somewhat effectively. I don’t feel that’s the case in some other languages, or maybe I’m willing to put up with my colleague’s broken English far more than they’re willing to put up with my broken German/Spanish/etc.
I think English allows you more different ways of doing things than most other languages. The future tense being “going to X” and one of the past tenses being “used to X” means that new English learners don’t need to spend as much time studying yet another verb tense.
OTOH, the spelling and pronunciation is such a massive hurdle compared to a simple language like Spanish.
English’s future tense
There are various future tenses.
Future Simple / Simple Future: Will + [base form] – I’ll eat that later; or Going + [infinitive] – I’m going to eat that later.
Future Continuous: Will be + [present participle] – I’ll be eating that later.
Future Perfect: Will have + [past participle] – I’ll have eaten that later.
Future Perfect Continuous: Will have been + [present participle] – I’ll have been eating that later.
There’s also using the present continuous to talk about the future – I’m eating that tomorrow.
Also, the simple present – I eat that tomorrow.
English is flexible, but it’s also weird. There are a lot of distinctions that matter to native English speakers but that are really hard to put into rules. Like “will” vs. “going to”. They have slightly different meanings, but good luck coming up with an easy to understand rule about when to use each version.
As a dane, you have no idea how good you have it. Be happy that English became the lingua franca and not something worse.
There’s so many it’s hard to think of them all.
Let’s start with the fact that Danish is practically two languages in one - the written language and the spoken language. There is very little connection between the two. You cannot look at a word’s spelling and know how it is pronounced, and often it is not pronounced how you would think it is pronounced by looking at the spelling.
The grammar is simple, but it’s so full of irregularities that you basically need to memorise a wide array of words and phrases.
The spoken language has more vowel sounds than the alphabet has vowels, even when Danish has added three extra (æ, ø and å). Each vowel can therefore be pronounced in different ways depending on the word. No, there is no system to tell you which sound is the correct one, you just have to know and memorize it.
Add to this the fact that the pronounciation is quite complicated and basically impossible for foreigners to learn without having a heavy or at least moderate accent.
What does “going to” have to do with it? Do they need to spiritually travel to the motivation center of the brain before you go to the store? I’m just saying, if you say “going to go” over “will”, you’re gonna get tongue cramps, and for all intents and purposes, they mean the same thing. This is language that we’re talking about. All words are made up, so just try to keep up and you will be fine.
Until you realize that home is also an adverb. Just to, y’know, drive home the point
Is it truly an adverb, though. Would that statement be considered proper English? It is a colloquialism, or some might say a metaphor, but is it considered an appropriate use of the English language to use that type of phrase? I could just imagine someone’s English professor returning an essay with a red line through that phrase.
It’s not any of what you said. It’s an adv. according to many a dictionary. I doubt that any of my pals would call that wrong or anti–English class.
(From today on, I aim to not say the fifthglyph for all 2nd posts to promote !avoid5@sh.itjust.works)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/home
Home is a noun, adverb, adjective, and a verb. Yes the statement is proper English.
My favorite confusing English sentence is “I have had too much to eat.”
- “Have had” is the same word twice, once in present tense, and again in past tense. It counts as one verb.
- Both “too” and “to” used.
- “Eat” is a noun.
Think of it this way - it’s “have had” because
“I had too much to eat” would be past tense, meaning you ate too much, say, last week
“I have too much to eat” is future tense, meaning you went to the buffet and got carried away, now you’ve got a massive plate of chicken in front of you
So "I have (right at this moment) had (just ingested) too much to eat (and now I’m farting a lot)
Also, in this case “to eat” isn’t a noun, it’s the infinitive verb
Reminded me of this sentence:
James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher.
Most people are talking the infinitive case for “eat”, but I’d like to point out the verb, “have had”, is the present perfect case. Still confusing and still agree with your simplification of “I ate too much”. But there’s still a meaningful difference between the two sentences.
Because home isn’t a normal location, it’s “home”.
It’s where you’re from.
Like, no one says “I’m house” or “I’m apartment building” because it’s not about the physical structure. It’s about being where the heart is. How many pillows do Grandmas need to stitch that on?
No, actually it’s not even tickling any resemblance of confusion
You’re clearly fluent if you describe “tickling any resemblance” of an effect. Learners would likely say something akin to “make me confused” or similar or less.
The concept of multiple languages seems to confuse so many monolinguists.
