Mine is people who separate words when they write. I’m Norwegian, and we can string together words indefinetly to make a new word. The never ending word may not make any sense, but it is gramatically correct
Still, people write words the wrong way by separating them.
Examples:
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“Ananas ringer” means “the pineapple is calling” when written the wrong way. The correct way is “ananasringer” and it means “pineapple rings” (from a tin).
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“Prinsesse pult i vinkel” means “a princess fucked at an angle”. The correct way to write it is “prinsessepult i vinkel”, and it means “an angeled princess desk” (a desk for children, obviously)
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“Koke bøker” means “to cook books”. The correct way is “kokebøker” and means “cookbooks”
I see these kinds of mistakes everywhere!
English isn’t really a language, it’s a shambling amalgamation of a bunch of different languages so it’s got all sorts of insane, nonsensical rules and exceptions. I can totally understand why it’s a frustrating language to pick up, and IDK that I would’ve bothered to learn if it wasn’t my native language.
As a norweigan, it is one of the easiest languages to learn
Hmm, maybe I should try learning some Norwegian or Sami…
Did you know any other languages before you learned English? Also, when did you learn it?
I didn’t speak any other languages than my native tongue before english, and I think I started learning English when I was around 10. This was early 90s, and they perhaps start even earlier now.
We knew alot of english before we had it in school. Music and films were a big influence on us, as it is still today.
Ah yeah, I forgot about the shitloads of media we pump out. Being constantly exposed to a language over a long time definitely makes it easier to learn.
eh i don’t really understand why people are so obsessed with rules in language, like that’s not how humans inherently learn language anyways and just memorizing rules seems like a great way to make yourself use the language wrong for a long time.
The ideal way to learn languages is immersion, expose yourself to the language as much as possible and your brain will just automatically start making sense of it, and when you do it this way the regularity of the language is basically irrelevant.
English is not my native but I hate how they just assemble bunch of words together to make a single adjective out of it, and you can’t know that until the very end. It gets obvious how stupid this is if I replace all whitespace with commas.
A desktop, computer, environment.
Air, missile.
Air, plane.
Pocket, record, player.
Water, beer, pong, table, thong. Okey I made this one up
This is very popular in newspaper headlines. It’s sometimes called a “noun pile”.
Times chief editor: Thirteen-word headline noun pile author firing race controversy rebuttal!
(That is: “The chief editor of the Times has responded in the matter of the firing of headline writer Joe Jones. Jones alleged that his firing from the Times was due to racial bias. However, the chief editor claims in response, that Jones was fired for writing a headline composed of nothing but thirteen nouns.”)
Beer pong is a party game played on a table. If you put the table in the pool, you can play water beer pong. Attach some floats so it doesn’t sink, and it is a water beer pong table. If you then strap a skimpy swimsuit to that table, the swimsuit is a water beer pong table thong.
And when beetles battle beetles
In a puddle paddle battle
And the beetle battle puddle
Is a puddle in a bottle
And the bottle is upon
A water beer pong table thong
…they call this
A tweetle beetle
Bottle puddle
Paddle battle muddle
Water beer pong table thong
In German, the formal address is the same as the third-person plural, just capitalized. This can lead to ambiguities when talking.
Do you have an example? My german is as rusty as Blücher
“Sie sind hier” can mean “you are here” or “they are here”
In English, lack of second-person plural, aside from a dozen regionalisms: y’all, yinz, youse, etc.
No distinction between inclusive & exclusive ‘we’: if I say “we’ve got to go now”, do I expect you to come?
Unnecessarily generated pronouns. I know ‘they/them’ has been used for individuals for ages, but I still find it awkward. I wish we just used one set of ungendered pronouns for every specific person.
Doesn’t “you all” qualify?
Englishes have words for the second-person plural pronoun, but Standard English doesn’t have one word for it.
If two speakers are from the same background, they probably share a word for it. If they’re from different places or different races, they might not.
Spanish has genderneutral terms and they are not the default, people are trying to move away from defaulting to masc pronouns but it’s been hard to get everyone on board
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What I hate about English is what I love about English. The spelling.
I hate that it’s an impossible system to teach in any logical way. No child can sound out common words like “once”.
But I love that the ridiculous spelling of our words gives you a look into the history of the language. That it’s not just transliterations of the sounds, but letters in a pattern that holds more information than that.
“-sts” and “sps” et al
e.g. ghosts, frosts, wasps, clasps, flasks, basks.
Just a stupid sound.
i propose we return to the germanic roots of english and replace the endings of those words with “-en”, ghosten, frosten, waspen…
“Frosts”!?
Sure, the morning frosts began a few weeks ago around my area. That’s when everything frosts over from the humidity and cold temps.
Oh no, the most I’ve dealt with a similar problem is knowing when to use porque vs. por que in Spanish. I still don’t know
Porque: because
Por que: for which
Por qué: whyIt’s weird to explain this in English, but also strangely easier.
Ambiguously used words like “biweekly”. Does it mean twice per week? Every other week? Business meeting calendar scheduling terminology is especially bad with this.
Odd phrases like you can chop the tree down. Then but then you proceed to chop that same tree up.
Parking in a driveway and driving in a parkway is also a good one.
A driveway is where you drive to get the residence, vs the walkway. Parkways are landscaped with park-like greenery .
After your alarm goes off… You turn it off.
Norwegian is more accurate. “Biweekly” means “annenhver uke” (every other week)
It does here too. It’s not an unclear thing, just not used all the time so people don’t remember.
Biweekly is every other week, fortnightly.
Semiweekly is twice a week.
All the French that’s embedded in it. Stupid Normans making it sound weird if I go to a restaurant and order pig.
Actually, I find the french and double dose of viking influence quite fascinating. English etymology is a wild ride!
I can respect that. Normans are basically pesudo norwegians.
When they got the question “what do you want to eat, sir?”, the reponse was “gris, di fett!” (give me a pig, you cunt!)
Yeah, it really is. “I’ll have the pig, please” sounds kind of humorous. “I’ll have the pork chop” sounds totally normal and way more elegant.
What really fascinates me is how English lost its cases and endings. Old English could outdo modern German, but then the Vikings came along, and later the French.
I think most of the declinations were already gone by the time the Normans invaded though. Supposedly Old Norse and English were pretty mutually intelligible, so if you drop the pesky endings, you end up with something that everyone understands pretty well.
That second example is… Wow.
These are all real examples. Here’s a picture of someone posting that they want to give away a princess desk
Last sentence, “godt brukt”, means “well used”
Princess fucked at and angle. Well Used.
I mean… It still fits?
Depending on exactly how well used, I suspect quite a lot fits.
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The word “colonel”
Colonel Kernel
And “lieutenant” in AE and “lieutenant” in BE
Not my native language, but the one I speak the most is (American) English.
So many homophones-words that sound the same but are different in meaning or spelling such as knight/night, altar/alter, ail/ale, isle/aisle/I’ll.
Also homographs-words with same spelling but different meaning and/or pronunciation like minute, bass, capital, wind, moped.
So confusing for people trying to learn English and also for people that actually speak it
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I can’t speak for all native English speakers, but in my experience we’re very accepting of imperfect grammar from non-native speakers because we know how crazy this language is.
Tanks!
Capital is always pronounced the same, but the similar word capitol is a homophone in most accents.
Homographs are just cruel. As a native english speaker, it’s like… bullying for someone trying to learn the language. Read vs. Read - evil.
English person: “What’s your name?”
Norwegian person: “Knut”
English person: “Nnuut?”
Norwegian person: “Kno 😢”
https://youtu.be/j53z6RfFb7U?t=28
I hain’t a helk, I’m a g-nu!
It can be pretty confounding, the words that look the same but are pronounced differently. Through, though, thorough, tough, trough.
There are no rules, you just have to learn it. And it could be confusing if you mix them up. Through and throw, for example.
English has never had a spelling reform, but you can see the “real” spelling in informal language sometimes. Through = thru (in texts and chats). Tough = tuff (in slang and brand names).
“I threw the trough thoroughly through the thoroughfare” was a sentence my english teacher had us say and write. Good times!
“Though the tough cough and hiccough, plough them through.”
Oh wow, that’s definitely a tongue twister!
(American) English: Inflammable vs flammable vs non-flammable.
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Inflammable and flammable don’t strictly mean the same thing.
Flammable can be set alight
Inflammable can set itself alight.
I think “enflammable” was the intended meaning
I’ve known the difference ever since I decided to look it up one day, but I’ve always felt the ‘in-’ prefix was the wrong choice (especially when labeling potentially dangerous substances). “In-” is more often used to qualify a word as “not”.
“Autoflammable” would have been my choice.
It’s prefix is in- because of “it can become inflamed”.
How about ignitable instead.
superbesplodey
Remember: invaluable is a synonym of priceless, but not of worthless.
So much of English just does not make sense. lol
tbf it’s referring to the verb “to value”, not the noun. long as you keep that in mind it makes perfect sense
