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FYI! Last read at 03:22 on 2024/11/24.

Stupid languages

I heard it again. I can't learn French, it's stupid...

When we are learning a new language, we all at some stage utter the phrase "stupid language!". I mean, think about it...

[if you are male and thinking you're missing out on some sort of fun, just know that you shouldn't stick anything up your backside, ever... except maybe an endoscopy if you're ill and have no other choice...]

All of these "It's stupid!" about other languages. Time, I think, to whale on English. English, specifically, as being perhaps the most illogical and assinine language around in common use. Why? Oh, sure, it seems simple enough. No genders. No formal/familiar. No honourific system. That's to make up for the other nonsense...

To see how well some non-native English speakers do with English, check out what might be the closest I'll get to a real girlfriend:

http://www.kokoro-dreams.co.jp/english/robot/act/der2.html

Cute, isn't she?
Did you like the engrish?

I could write another page this size on the rest of the nonsense in the English language. It's okay for us, we grew up with it, but the number of times a foreigner learning English could exclaim "C'est vraiment stupide!, Das ist wirklich dumm!, To je stvarno glupo!, Det är verkligen dumt!, कि वास्तव में बेवकूफ है!, それは本当に愚か なのです!...

So the next time you are learning a language and you think "oh, stupid!", just remember what you've read here.

 

Your comments:

Rob, 19th November 2009, 18:06
Nice to see this pop up on the RSS : You're getting there .... :-) Unfortunately it had the wrong URL! >> b.log entry - 2009/11/17; on stupid languages, and why English may be stupidest of all? Article: http://www.heyrick.co.uk/blog/20091108.html << Our lad's learning Japanese ... I'm constantly amazed at how he can read words in Kanji and katakana.. then he says something like "but it's just English" written in the japanese "alphabet" lol .. great article ... How about the old, How do you pronounce the word "POLISH" to throw into the mix.. Best wishes, Rob.
Rick, 21st November 2009, 15:53
I have a number of books on learning Japanese, plus one about Kata/Hiragana which I guess I should TRY to learn so I can at least write my name properly. It's going to be a hard slog as it is very much NOT English - for example "I television night-before did watch not" would appear to be how to say I didn't watch TV last night. I can't quite get over that counters for objects depends on thin, fat, pointy, round, wibbly, and so on. Wow. But it is my rêve to visit the country and I don't want to be the annoying p**ck that expects everybody to speak English, so one of these days I'll have to YouTube a little less and concentrate on the language a little more.
This is all the harder because in a lot of languages you can try to guess by looking at the words, I can read a fair bit of French by knowing some words, ignoring the little words, and guessing the words I don't know. Like at work there was a sign about tell the line manager if you don't have your "tenue nominative". I don't know what "tenue" was, but it was something "named", the only named things we have are our uniforms... which was a correct guess. Not so easy with "購入金額にかかわ ;らず、お急ぎ便が ;無料に" (from www.amazon.jp)!
All well, I'll get there some day... ☺

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