ST Alpha - "see but coming from learning chinese; tonal, gutterals, and genders are easy ...remembering english rules and exceptions to rules...not so easy -- nm" (Reading a Post)

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In response to "English is very poorly spelt, but it's pretty simple compared to all the others. Easy verbs, no gendered nouns, no tonal pronounciation etc -- nm" by Roger More

see but coming from learning chinese; tonal, gutterals, and genders are easy ...remembering english rules and exceptions to rules...not so easy -- nm

Posted by SyrDragon Jan 19 '10, 12:01

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Responses:

I once had a friend try to teach my some Korean words. "Guttural" is definitely a word that describes some of them. -- nm - con_carne Jan 19, 12:25
genders are hard to learn in a new language, but a cinch in your first language. -- nm - loosilu Jan 19, 12:10 1
- A turnip has a gender, but a young girl doesn't. -- nm - Mark Twain Jan 19, 12:15
Oh of course - whatever language you learn first is the easiest for you, and learning a second which has completely different rules is hard. - Roger More Jan 19, 12:08 13
- see but then learning Spanish...it's phonetic...things are spelled like they sound! -- nm - SyrDragon Jan 19, 12:11 11
  - Sure - but that's the one area where Spanish (and Italian and to some degree French) is simpler than English. - Roger More Jan 19, 12:21
  - I don't know so much about Spanish, but one of the huge advantages of English is that it's easy to speak it poorly and still be understood. - loosilu Jan 19, 12:14 9
    - but see change your 'l' sounds and 'r' sounds (as most chinese speakers do) and you get "Today is erection day!" -- nm - SyrDragon Jan 19, 12:29
    - also word order is much more flexible in English. -- nm - Reagen Jan 19, 12:24 4
      - in German it sounds funny if descriptors don't follow in order of time-manner-place so they say stuff like "I went yesterday by car to the store" even - zork Jan 19, 12:30
      - hmmm, I think it's the opposite, actually. English ditched word endings for simplicity, and word order is king. - loosilu Jan 19, 12:27 2
        
        but you can construct a sentence with many different word orders. -- nm - Reagen Jan 19, 12:29 1
        
        I did not know this - Roger More Jan 19, 12:33
    - You can speak Spanish poorly and still be understood. You just get laughed at, whereas in America, you might get elected President. -- nm - con_carne Jan 19, 12:20 2
      - I saw W on TV for the first time since he left office this Sunday. - Mel Profit Jan 19, 12:27 1
        
        this made me think, it's pretty surprising more world leaders don't die in office. - Andie Jan 19, 12:29
- in Chinese, I can't diffferentiate a lot of the tones. no way that would be easy for me. -- nm - loosilu Jan 19, 12:11

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