How come that the English language happened to be so rigid in terms of morphology, with no diminutives for adjectives in there and without a proper phonetic writing system? I myself have been learning English on my own for almost 2 years now and even at such a cheesy level it strikes me already with its primitiveness and rigidity. Perhaps you all need to learn Russian or even Old English to be more creative and less stupid I think.
>>7915500
>at such a cheesy level
wat
Older English nist of thilke rigidenesse but it's accordingly a worse mess. Other than for pronunciation I guess
>>7915522
>>at such a cheesy level
>wat
i meant still insufficient
English grammar is simple to the point of being crude. It gains a lot of its depth from the sheer number of words in the English lexicon, which is estimated to be over 1 million. For reference, the average English speaker is estimated to know only around 20,000 different words. Mastery of English can be directly linked to how many words you know, and the more words you know the more deliberate your writing and speech becomes. English speakers with small vocabularies use rote phrases and cliches in their speech, while those with larger vocabularies put thought into the words they use because they actually have options. So everything they say or write is a choice, including the choice to be lazy.
>>7915500
Well, you have to admit that it's better for a lingua franca to be something simple like English, rather than, say, Latin or German.
>>7915696
>lexicon
>over 1 million
are you sure it's not around 20000 for a literate graduated person?
>>7915696
What makes English grammar so simple?
>>7915889
90% of the english grammar is a word order
bump 2
bump 3
>>7915901
How's grammar work in other languages
>>7915999
In my mother tongue, that is Russian, you can put words in whatever order you like due to having a lot of inflexions as well as 6 case systems not to mention about 3 genders.
fuck english and all its native speakers
I know this is bait but your English isn't even good enough to compete with the average /lit/ post; how do you presume to judge a language aesthetically with such a meager understanding?
>>7916180
did you actually read what i posted? i mentioned about my still bad english. and by the way where did i go wrong?
>>7916180
in other words, fuck your language bitch ass nigga
>>7916258
Please feel free to stop writing in it at any time.
>>7916268
so what exactly went wrong in my post? why is my english bad i thought it's cool
WHAT THE HEEL IS WRONG WITH MY ENGLISH?????????????????????????????????????????????FUUUUKKKERSSSSS!! REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
>>7916291
If English is so primitive then how can all of us tell that your English is bad even though there's technically nothing grammatically misplaced?
Though to be fair I'm sure you're just as stupid in any language.
>>7916343
you got me into perplexity, i'm really sorry for my misdemeanors towards yourself, but seriously where are my errors?
>>7916343
c'mon dude
>>7915500
This post is terribly written, it's giving me a fucking headache. You are clearly not a native English speaker which makes this entire thing seem like some kind of self-aware joke.
>>7916416
how would my post have been written then if it were to be written by a native speaker?
>>7916425
better
>>7916425
You have an autistic conception of language, which puts your criticism of English in a relevant light.
>>7916436
in what manner? can you show me? I mean no offence i just think it would help me to do better next time
>>7916440
>autistic
emmm, sorry? I actually usually pick up russian chicks when feel bored.
IF ANYBODY DOESN'T GET MY WRITING OR WHAT EVEN WORSE HAS A HEADACHE I RECOMMEND YOU TO WORK ON YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF YOUR OWN LANGUAGE, PEACE!
>>7916488
your english is perfect don't listen to those fuckers they are ignorant indeed
>>7916361
lel n8b8m8
i knew that you westerners are all racist towards those who try to learn their language
>>7916545
not racist enough
>>7916550
fucking trump supporter you need to shut the fuck up
>>7916550
and keep your microograssion fooo yaself bitch
>>7915901
That's arguably just as difficult to learn as a large case system, plus there's stuff like learning which infinitives can go with which auxiliaries.
>>7916622
are you serious or is it just a bait?
>>7916634
I'm serious, all Indo-European languages are roughly equal when it comes to complexity of grammar. You can brag about your case system but there are languages in the Caucasus with dozens of cases.
>>7916686
aren't you by any chance from Russia?
>>7915500
From your use I don't wonder why you think its primitive
>>7915500
What's the big deal about diminutives?
did an adverb kill your dog or something?
>>7916163
You're just mad because our language throws touch downs and yours gets shoved in lockers, dweeb
>>7915879
http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2013/05/vocabulary-size
>>7915500
It's not that your English is bad, but it sounds a bit clunky. e.g.:
>humanity is encountering with
>even at a such cheesy level[1]
>how come that[2]
[1](of learning English for almost two years?)
[2] this one might be debatable. something feels off about it. might be a dialectical thing, but 'that' seems unnecessary to me, as someone from the american east coast.
>>7915500
>Russian
Ha, it's you again. No one's forcing you to learn it, Ivan. Just learn some other language or switch to some other subject.
>>7917621
get smart, your disgusting
Agreed with op. Myself am an English speaker and approve of this message. Sometimes it feels almost impossible to convey all you want which evidently is possible in Russian.
>>7915500
>Why is it that the English language came to be so rigid in terms of morphology, without any diminutives for adjectives, nor a proper phonetic writing system? I have been learning English on my own for almost 2 years now, and even at such a superficial level of understanding the language strikes me with its primitiveness and rigidity. Perhaps you all need to learn Russian, or even Old English, to be more creative and less stupid.
Fixed
>>7918529
Thanks, dude. I still oughta pick up some grammar. But in what case do we use the word cheesy?
>>7918571
Cheesy is something sort of played out or clichéd.
Also, I might amend one part of my correction:
>and even with a superficial level of understanding of the language I am struck by its primitiveness and rigidity.
>>7915732
Latin is actually pretty simple: relatively small core vocabulary, fairly static over time - it's estimated that a 500 word vocabulary is sufficient to understand most words in most ancient texts, for instance. The morphology and some aspects of syntax may be challenging to Anglophone monoglots, but are not really all that complex (even as compared with, say, Greek), and irregularity is not very common.
>>7918745
you seemingly don't have a clue what diminutives mean, do you? Those aforementioned phrases can be literally translated into Russian. You simply don't use diminutives and convey it analytically using the word 'little' which is applicable only for nouns. And yeah, I know that in informal speech you also have endings -let, ling and so on.
>>7915999
In some cases, morphology is much more important: the form of words indicates their relationship, rather than (or at least significantly more than) their relative position. In Latin, for instance, the difference between "Mark killed Luke" and "Luke killed Mark" is which of them is in the nominative (subject) and which in the accusative (direct object) case: Marcus Lucam necavit (Mark is the killer), vs. Marcum Lucas necavit (Luke is).
In such cases, word order is highly but not infinitely variable (Latin prepositions must precede the words they govern, for example), and is often used for emphasis rather than basic sense.
>>7918774
I know exactly what diminutives are (my second and third languages use them regularly). My point is that in English, despite its possession of some vesitigial and loaned diminutives, the function performed by diminutives in other languages is most often fulfilled by other means, particularly modifiers (and something similar is generally true of English: word order and prepositions do in English what morphology does in highly inflected languages). And English modifies adverbs as well as adjectives in this way.
Note that I am not arguing (as some foolishly do) that English is somehow superior or more expressive; just that it is structurally different from more highly inflected languages.
>>7918839
I get your point. It just makes you struggle in the beginning when trying to learn a new language, you know. Incidentally what are those languages that you know beside English? How long did it take you to master them, if you have of course?
>>7918874
As a native Anglophone, I would hate to try learning English - not just the size of the vocabulary, but also the volume of loanwords and influences; which is one reason English has such phonetic inconsistency. It sometimes seems as if English is just one shibboleth after another.
My other languages are Afrikaans (which is Germanic, with strong Dutch ancestry, influenced by other languages) and Latin. I certainly wouldn't say I've mastered either - my Afrikaans comprehension is acceptable, and I have read it to a fairly high standard in the past, but I am not at all a confident speaker and never have been (mainly because I know my accent is horrible); my Latin is at best moderate. Started the former at primary school age; later in my teens; so decades's experience in each case.
>>7918916
Aren't you from South Africa? Because if not then It seems weird to me that americans or british learn such a language at primary school.
>>7918937
ZA primary school, yes - this was apartheid era, so English-Afrikaans bilingualism was compulsory. Apart from the standard school examinations, I actually passed the three grades of a more demanding external examination in Afrikaans that essentially certified you as bilingual. But it was a written exam, so accent and speaking fluency did not matter; and it was a long time ago.
>>7915500
Perhaps you'd be happier posting on a message board in your native language?
