Not the easiest language

[Deleted]

I know a lot of people who absolutely agree with this:

Why English is so hard to learn

[traveler63]

Yes you are right K2. English is very hard to decipher with all of the confusion on words that are spelled the same but mean different thing and I just remembered they are called homonyms.

[Deleted]

Errr... I think that homonyms are words that are spelled differently but sound the same -- like

there / their / they're
hare / hair
wine / whine

Frankly, I don't know the name of words that are spelled the same but pronounced differently.

[livaco]

Aug 26, 2009 20:23:53 GMT kerouac2 said:

Frankly, I don't know the name of words that are spelled the same but pronounced differently.

They're heteronyms...

[hwinpp]

I had some after work drinks with a group of friends yesterday, an Australian, an American, and one Englishman who brought another friend, also English. The latter came from somewhere in Oxfordshire and I frequently couldn't understand a thing he said.
At times I just looked at him blankly, at time I thought he was really trying to pull my leg. What an accent!

[traveler63]

Term: Homonyms


Definition:

A Homonym is a word that is written and pronounced the same way as another, but which has a different meaning.

AN EXAMPLE OF A HOMONYM:

'Lie' can be a verb meaning to tell something that is not true or to be in a horizontal position. They look and sound the same, but are different verbs as can be seen from their forms:
Lie-lied-lied (to say something untrue)

Lie-lay-lain (to be in a horizontal position)


www.usingenglish.com/glossary/homonym.html

Homophones are words that are spelled differently but sound the same.

HOMOPHONE EXAMPLES:

* 'Rain', 'rein' and 'reign'
* 'To', 'Two', and 'Too'

from the same site as above.

[bixaorellana]

So many, many people are in a horizontal position when they lie.

[fumobici]

I was in an Irish pub in Rome a few months ago enjoying a few with an Argentinian, an Italian and a couple from Oxfordshire. In spite of being a native English speaker, the only one I couldn't understand was the fellow from Ox. To be fair to Oxfordshire, his wife spoke with admirable clarity.

Listening to an Italian and a Spanish speaker negotiating ad hoc rules for being mutually understood is actually pretty interesting. The further S in Italy the Italian is from, the easier it seems to go.

[lagatta]

Argentines find Italian much easier to understand than other Spanish-speakers do, and Italians understand Argentines more than they do other Hispanophones. A very large component of the Argie makeup is Italian, and the rhythm and tonality of the language, especially around Buenos Aires - and Montevideo in Uruguay (rioplatense Spanish) are very similar to Northwestern Italian dialects.

When I had to learn Spanish seriously, I sought out a teacher from Argentina as I knew we could at least understand each other - and she would correct my Italianisms.

bixa, there is a famous ditty about the Profumo/Keeler scandal:

"Oh, what have you done?" cried Christine,
"You've wrecked the whold party machine,
To lie in the nude
is not very rude,
But to lie in the House
is obscene"

As for the original link, remember - the Paris métro entrances! (Though sometimes it distils great ennui, on long commutes)...

[bixaorellana]

That caught my attention, Fumobici. Years ago when I saw the original version of "Swept Away", I found I could sometimes understand the southern Italians in the movie, whereas I didn't pick up anything from the other dialogue.

LaGatta, there are a few Argentine actors on tv here, and they're immediately identifiable by their "Italian" accents in Spanish.

Thanks for the ditty!

[fumobici]

There's still cultural cross currents rebounding across the Ocean between Italy and Argentina. The little comune near Arezzo where my father lives makes a point of keeping the channels open by inviting artists from the emigrant community in La Plata to perform in their theater. This is a poster from a show I saw there. It was interesting but I'm afraid the opera boxes where in the theater were built for people shorter than myself so I mostly remember my knees hurting.

[bixaorellana]

Well, that is something! Were the visiting artists children and grandchildren of the emigrants, or people who were born in La Plata?

[lagatta]

Well, they could quite well be both of those. They could even be great or great-great grandchildren, as mass Italian emigraiton to Argentina started a long time ago.

Indeed there has been a significant increase in height in Italy, not just from the long-ago opera house builders, but even from the wartime generation to those later on. I had a friend about 2 metres tall in Rome who somehow fit into an old FIAT 500!

I'd love to see that project and know more about it. Where is Christian Kiefer from? That is a German surname, but his given name isn't Spanish... (There was a large economic German and Germanic emigration to many South American countries as well - I'm not referring either to Nazis or refugees from Nazism, but simple economic migrants).

[Deleted]

[betsie]

English isn't really a difficult language to learn to speak, though learning to spell is challenging.

English grammar is much easier than French or German and many other languages. Before you can construct even the simplest sentence in German, you have to know the gender of the noun and adapt some of the other words to that gender, including adjectives. In English the gender of a noun is of no importance and all objects are "it" instead of he, she or it, as in German and many other languages.

[rikita]

as for the homonyms and homophones - afaik there are also homographs - spelled the same, but pronounced differently. though i can't think of any examples... ah yes - tear (tears rolling down my face) and tear (as in torn clothes).

as for difficulty - i disagree, betsie - it isn't only spelling that is challenging, it is also speaking correctly. it's true that english is one of the languages where you can communicate reasonably well with relatively little grammar (in part maybe because some of the most common things to say are relatively easy in english, and in part maybe because non-native speakers butcher the language so often that english speakers are more used to "wrong" english and understand it anyway) - but later on there are a lot of complexities, and especially if you see people whose native language is very different from english, there are a lot of things that are difficult and frustrating.

in the end, i would guess no language is "easy" or "difficult" per se anyway. the difficulties have much more to do with similarities and differences to your own language or other languages you have studied...

[Deleted]

People who speak broken English often understand each other better than native speakers. Anybody who has been to an international conference or seminar notices this immediately.

People who make the same mispronunciations and the same vocabulary and grammar mistakes usually understand each other perfectly, even if they come from completely different countries. If a native English speaker tries to listen to them, he or she won't understand as much.

[bixaorellana]

By the same token, if you, as a native English-speaker, also speak the mother tongue of the non-native-speaker of English, it's easier to understand that person. That's because you understand why he or she is making those particular errors, and can quickly convert them in your mind rather than getting hung up on mistakes.

[rikita]

i am not sure if that has to do that much with converting (in some cases that might certainly be true, but not sure if always) or with that you are more likely to be used to their accent and mistakes, because they are probably from a linguistic background you have to do with more often...