English is not normal

https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-english-so-weirdly-different-from-other-languages

by nkurz • 11 years ago

56 66 11 years ago

jugad• 11 years ago

Almost any largely spoken old language will have unique quirks of its own... stating some unique and weird points of english don't suddenly make it extra unique.

irakli2• 11 years ago

Fun read, but alas factually inaccurate. Article says: "almost all European languages belong to one family – Indo-European – and of all of them, English is the only one that doesn’t assign genders that way."

1. There're quite a few languages in Europe that do not belong to Indo-European: Basque, Estonian, Finnish, Georgian, Hungarian, Turkish...

2. It is not true that English is the only Indo-European language the nouns of which don't have gender. Armenian for instance, does not and there are probably others.

robotresearcher• 11 years ago

You ignored the word 'almost'.

thaumasiotes3• 11 years ago

You didn't read the quote.

almost all European languages belong to one family – Indo-European

This is where we see "almost". Basque, for example, is a European language, but famously does not belong to the Indo-European language family.

and of all of them, English is the only one that doesn’t assign genders that way

No qualifier here. Armenian is an Indo-European language with no grammatical gender (making it even less gendered than English), which the quote states, boldly and without qualification, to be impossible.

You could make the argument that he ignored the word "European", because to you Armenian is an Asian language and not a European one -- but saying "English is the only language within an oddly-shaped geographic region to have some special feature" is a very strange way to assign significance. Saying "English is the only descendant of Proto-Indo-European to have mostly lost its grammatical gender" gets the idea of "what might be interesting" right -- it makes more sense to compare English to sister languages than to compare it to unrelated languages that happen to lie within the same weird gerrymander outline you drew on a map -- but it isn't true.

blowski• 11 years ago

It seems that the article found some bits of the language which are genuinely unique ("in conjugation only third-person singular changes") but these are so specific as to be irrelevant. If English had no way of expressing the conditional, for example, that would be genuinely interesting.

As it is, it reads like a teenager talking about their uniqueness because only they like eating peanut butter and ice cream while listening to Leonard Cohen.

noamyoungerm• 11 years ago

Also: Scots is a mutually intelligible language

On the other hand, just like trying to explain programming to someone who only knows how to use MS Word, trying to explain linguistics to someone without formal training is bound to end in misunderstandings and inaccuracy.

Turing_Machine• 11 years ago

"Also: Scots is a mutually intelligible language"

That's very strongly dependent on your native dialect. I know people who have to put on the subtitles to understand the movie Trainspotting, and (I think) that's not even full-blown Scots.

guard-of-terra2• 11 years ago

Armenia is located in Asia. Of course it is a formal distinction but it is there.

irakli2• 11 years ago

Doesn't matter. Even if it were on Mars, the language is qualified as part of the Indo-European group in all classifications.

oska• 11 years ago

I found this article mediocre and its conceit, that English is “weirdly different”, not well justified.

But what I have discovered recently, on the same subject, is a podcast called The History of English [1]. It's very, very detailed. So far there have been 69 episodes made, each about 45 minutes long, and the creator has only just got up to the Norman Invasion. I've listened to the first 22 episodes and in the last two episodes it's only just started discussing Old Germanic. So maybe more detailed than most people want but it's very good and quite easy to listen to.

[1] http://historyofenglishpodcast.com/episodes/

hasenj2• 11 years ago

All languages are not normal in that same sense.

Study any language and you will be struck with "weird" all the time.

rustynails• 11 years ago

I learnt French, German and Italian in school. Those languages may have complexities (eg. In German, Gender for a table is male, a fly is female). However, if you heard a word, you could spell it and vice versa.

English has many inconsistencies: Spelling vs pronunciation, completely different words for tenses (eg. Go/went), inconsistent pluralisation rules (look up fish vs fishes as one example), "me and" vs "and I" rules, etc.

I've heard many people say that English is one of the hardest European languages to learn. Supposedly, Japanese and Chinese are a different league altogether.

Mithaldu8• 11 years ago

Japanese and Chinese are in different leagues because they come from a completely different language root than european languages and require one to think differently.

For example instead of common sound based words in writing, they use kanji, which effectively are either small, simple and time-corrupted little pictures, or combinations of less complex pictures.

For example 新 consists of 7 "prime" pictures, of which three are easily recognizable, and as such can be remembered as "axe | standing-up, tree" => "new". ( http://jisho.org/search/%E6%96%B0%20%23kanji )

This is easly memorized but cannot re-use latin-based language patterns and requires creation of entirely new language circuitry in the brain.

hasenj2• 11 years ago

Two things happen when you learn another language

1) You face "weird" everywhere

2) You come to realize some absurdities in your own native language

For example, in Japanese, one of the super weird things is counting. You can't just say "five apples". You have to use a counter phrase, which is a concept that I've never seen in any other language (they say Korean and Chinese have the same concept). Essentially a counter is a word you must use. In the apples example, the closest thing to English would be "five pieces of apples". If you were counting books, you would use a totally different "counter".

On the other hand, learning Japanese has made me realize how absurdly complicated Arabic grammar can be. Every verb/adjective/noun has to be modified to signify gender, singularity-vs-plurality, first-vs-second-vs-third-person, etc. Every verb tense has about 8 to 12 different conjugations, depending on the (implicit) pronoun.

Japanese on the other hand, is deceptively simple (and has more ambiguity) in that regard. The concepts of singular and plural forms pretty much don't exist. There's no definite or indefinite article. The subject is often not mentioned. It's as if you refer to all people in third person.

The past tense of a verb does not change to signify anything about the subject(s).

On the other hand, it can change for a completely different reason: to indicate politeness level.

pazimzadeh• 11 years ago

Having learned English as my third language (after French and Farsi) I found it more streamlined, full of shortcuts and easier to pick up than any other language. Not sure if that counts as weird.

keerthiko• 11 years ago

I think that's more a function of easy exposure and constant bombardment by English medium content that makes it less strenuous on your brain's language center to make the necessary connections to retain it effectively.

I felt the same way about Japanese because I consumed a lot of anime and other Japanese media as hobbies I enjoyed. However, it is objectively a harder-to-learn language than Korean, which I had markedly less success with. And I don't think I have some kind of untraditional language processing algorithm in my brain.

wodenokoto4• 11 years ago

Objectively harder than korean? I've always been told Korean is more difficult than Japanese in terms of grammar. Obviously it has a simpler writing system, but I'm not sure that counts as the language, fundamentally. More as a gateway to the language.

Mithaldu8• 11 years ago

As a german the commentary here strikes me as sadly defensive.

I'm in contact with and kinda familiar with a lot of languages, and out of the ones i know English is the weirdest one, if only by its most basic property:

English text does not remotely map to english pronounciation.

This may sound weird to native english speakers, but it's the truth. To give a more concrete example: With many languages in movies, it is easy for me to listen to them, i.e. in a movie, even when whispered, and accurately transcribe them into script; even when i don't actually speak them. English movies consistently keep me getting subtitles because i can't make out what's being said even at normal volume.

His mention of the existence of a "spelling bee" as a sign of how weird english is was spot-on.

m12k• 11 years ago

Here's a contrived but hilarious example of just how wrong you can get it, if you assume pronunciation and spelling are aligned in English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti

switch007• 11 years ago

As a native English speaker, I struggle with many modern movies. I find the speech very muttered and scripts full of quick, short retorts. English /can/ be perfectly clear. There must be other explanations.

Mithaldu8• 11 years ago

Maybe it's a bit of both? If you're curious, try having a listen to this and transcribe some of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpawK7gm2tM I'm sure you'd get most of it correct.

nommm-nommm• 11 years ago

I know quite a few non hard of hearing native English speakers who watch movies with the closed captioning on for that reason as well.

Movies are unique in that sense, not sure what it is about them.

thaumasiotes3• 11 years ago

English text and English spelling would refer to the same thing any way I can understand them, but it's true that English spelling is more loosely coupled to pronunciation than Italian spelling is. That reflects the fact that English hasn't had a spelling reform in a while; spelling always starts out perfect and fails to drift while the spoken language does drift. If Italian had no written form, and everyone there made all their written communications in classical Latin, you might have more trouble.

English spelling reform is difficult to do at this point because there's no one place that can claim to be authoritative; it isn't possible to spell words phonemically in a way that's simultaneously valid for American and British English.

All that said, Japanese spelling is infinitely worse than English spelling.

Mithaldu8• 11 years ago

You're right, i mixed up spelling and pronounciation.

ingas• 11 years ago

All that said, Japanese spelling is infinitely worse than English spelling.

I think you're overestimating weirdness of 日本語. For native Russian speaker, Japanese is slightly weirder than English. The only rule: be prepared that every rule could be broken.

wodenokoto4• 11 years ago

Bullshit. If you don't speak Chinese or Cantonese, good luck transcribing them. Even Danish, which is very close to German, you'd have trouble.

acqq2• 11 years ago

"English movies consistently keep me getting subtitles because i can't make out what's being said even at normal volume."

For me, it's the recent movies synchronized to German where I need the subtitles, and the old ones (like, 50 years old) being easy to understand. Often it's that in the modern ones the music is playing over the voice, the female voice often attempts to sound "cooler" to the point of the actor doing the sync almost sounding like speaking with the closed mouth and therefore being hard to understand. At the same time, the male voices sound a little clearer to me but also significantly worse than in the old movies. In the old movies, the actors tended to be clear like in the theater.

Mithaldu8• 11 years ago

Interesting note. I have to admit that since original language material is now easy to acquite, i have not seen a single german-dubbed movie in years.

ericschmidt• 11 years ago

What a conceptually interesting article. There are a few cool framing devices in here.

I like how is using English to describe how English is weird. That's like using a spray can to illegally graffiti the phrase "vandalism is dumb" on a building.

The author is "going meta" to English, while using English. Respect to that strange and thoughtful recursive writing technique

Gosh this comment is weird

raverbashing5• 11 years ago

English is the PHP of languages

It has its weirdnesses, but in the end it's easier to learn than other languages (and thankfully, unlike PHP, natural languages don't have issues with maintainability or addition of new features)

wodenokoto4• 11 years ago

It's in no way easier to learn. It's just more ubiquitous.

eva1984• 11 years ago

Hardest part is what the author has mentioned: vocabulary. Those french words drive me crazy when I tried to memorize them for the sake of GRE. Very little pattern, and the pronunciation is also different, some of them I don't even know how to start, e.g. cliché.

atomwaffel• 11 years ago

I'd say that English is easier to learn than most languages (precisely because of that ubiquity), but harder to master. The analogy to PHP holds: PHP is everywhere (a lot of websites run on it), learning material is easy to come by, and it's widely understood (most commodity web servers will just take your .php files and run them without any trouble on your part), but it will take years until you stop tripping over its quirks.

raverbashing5• 11 years ago

You are wrong about this and google is your friend

vlehto3• 11 years ago

I'm pretty sure Swedish would be easier language to learn than English. But Hollywood changes that picture completely.

EDIT: Actually I'm not so sure. Swedish has genders and most of time it's not based on anything. I'd call it a tie.

raverbashing5• 11 years ago

How many genders? Do the genders follow some logic? (all things are neutral for example?)

Do they decline depending on the case?

So, probably harder than English

ekianjo3• 11 years ago

Obviously whoever wrote this is far from being a luingist or even familiar with several languages. So many of his statements are completely false.

crishoj• 11 years ago

According to the byline, "John McWhorter is a professor of linguistics and American studies at Columbia University."

ekianjo3• 11 years ago

Well then i would avoid learning anything from him.

intopieces• 11 years ago

Which statements are completely false?

beefhash• 11 years ago

What’s the difference? It’s that -ful and -ly are Germanic endings, while -ity came in with French. French and Latin endings pull the accent closer – TEM-pest, tem-PEST-uous – while Germanic ones leave the accent alone.

As someone learning English as a second language, I must say that I'm really grateful to have read that passage. This spares me a lot of learning accents by rote.

acqq2• 11 years ago

"In Old English, however, ‘Ving-Thor was mad when he woke up’ would have been Wraþmod wæs Ving-Þórr/he áwæcnede. We can just about wrap our heads around this as ‘English’"

That particular example doesn't appear to be so hard:

Wrath-mad was Ving-Thor, he awokend.

gpvos2• 11 years ago

I'd say wrath-mood and awakened, but yes.

asgard1024• 11 years ago

I think you could find the similar problems with many languages (for example, my native Czech has a unique sound that's quite difficult to learn, and all the different declensions and conjugations will make your head spin).

But I also take the issue with: "Spelling is a matter of writing, of course, whereas language is fundamentally about speaking." I think with English it's not the case, English is like modern Latin, more people write/read in English than those who speak it.

pandaman• 11 years ago

Regarding spelling bees being unique to English. While it's probably true, spelling competitions exist in other languages but in a form of dictation. Do a search for "national dictation contest" to see it happening in multiple countries and, I imagine, searching in different languages will reveal more. I figure the reason why spelling single words is not practiced in other languages is that many languages inflect words in irregular ways so being able to correctly spell a default form of a word is not a very impressive skill. But I would be very surprised if a form of spelling bee does not exists in China.

adimitrov• 11 years ago

While this article has surprisingly little of it, there's still some bæd linguistix here. Among others, comparing the utterly conservative Icelandic, spoken on a remote island by (today!) merely 300,000 people, with the language of England, which was invaded from every which way every couple of centuries until the 1400s. That's just ridiculous. To take a much more adequate example: To most Germans, the Nibelungenlied in its original rendition is just about as understandable as Beowulf is to modern English speakers.

English is in dire need of a spelling reform (the Celts have you one-upped here, Scottish and Irish have had very successful reforms,) but I don't think it is "weirder" than many other languages of peoples that have had widespread linguistic contact to other societies. French, German, Spanish, all have their oddities, on a similar scale of magnitude as English.

gpvos2• 11 years ago

Hmm, I heard several times that English has almost a double-size vocabulary[0] since it imported almost all of French on top of Anglo-Saxon, but this guy says it was only about 10,000 words, and there was a bit of Latin too. Now which is it?

Note that most other European languages also imported roughly the same scientific vocabulary from Latin and Greek.

[0] compared to other somewhat comparable languages such as German and French, and assuming you can find suitable criteria for determining what a word is; e.g., discounting compound words such as the Dutch roltrommelhuisvuilophaalwagen.

anon4• 11 years ago

I would love it if I could say groundwrought, endsay and saywhat. It would be very good if we could make a pressed together work and come up with a word list of other ways to say words of French root.

amai• 11 years ago

German is far ahead in weirdness compared to english. It is the 10th most weird language in the world. English is only on place 33. See

http://idibon.com/the-weirdest-languages/

English is not normal

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