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English makes no damn sense

Discussion in 'General' started by HPPT, Mar 10, 2023.

  1. HPPT

    HPPT !!!

    I started with a computer course at some point in my mid-20s but that was a quickly aborted half-ass effort. My job was exhausting me mentally and I didn't have the energy for that.

    Either way, I was never going to get good at it. It would've been a different story if I had started as a teenager.
     
  2. HPPT

    HPPT !!!

    My interest in beer is at Taliban level. Not sure that would have changed anything anyway. I love German cars about as much as you love beer.
     
  3. Mongo

    Mongo Administrator

    But you never spent time in Germany? Kind of surprised really.

    Granted as I personally proved, not knowing languages isn't a huge hurdle in Europe.
     
  4. nigel smith

    nigel smith Well-Known Member

    Santana. Somewhat ironically, given the context of this discussion, it was a clone of the quintessentially English Land Rover. Is French your native tongue? Speaking as one born to the English language, I find French rather confounding. Many of the words contain letters that apparently just needed a place to go, as they seem intent on making no sound.
     
    Yzasserina and fastfreddie like this.
  5. HPPT

    HPPT !!!

    French is absolutely retarded. I just figured most people on this forum probably don't use it enough to have an interesting discussion about it. I could be wrong, but I don't think so. :D
     
    Yzasserina likes this.
  6. fastfreddie

    fastfreddie Midnight Oil Garage

    Are there any basic rules like in Spanish or German?
     
  7. tzrider

    tzrider CZrider

    You just need to remember that the table is a 'She', the stairs are a 'He', a chair is a 'She'....

    Enough to make any red-blooded Anti-woke go bananes....
     
  8. HPPT

    HPPT !!!

    Yeah, lots of rules. And a lot more exceptions.
     
  9. fastfreddie

    fastfreddie Midnight Oil Garage

    So, nothing basic about it.
    Was France somewhat geologically locked from the rest of Europe (the world) during mankind's awakening?
    Like, no one wanted to hump their asses through that region so the indigenous just learned to communicate like cavemen with no rhyme or reason?
    Had it developed from "this grunt meant that" and "that grunt meant this", but "both grunts together" meant something else entirely? o_O
    Greek and Latin is highly prevalent in English and the meanings of words with Greek and Latin roots can be reasonably induced if one knows those root meanings.
    What about French? It seems to be completely foreign, even those words that have infiltrated the English language don't seem to have any recognizable roots...or am I just that ignorant of the language?

    Afterthought: Any connection to Gaelic? Don't nobody understand the words coming out of their mouths, either. :D
     
  10. Mongo

    Mongo Administrator

    French is almost purely a romance language like Spanish or Italian and is Latin based. It's just been frenchified by the frenchies :crackup:
     
  11. HPPT

    HPPT !!!

    A lot of French is derived from Latin. It's not a big challenge for French speakers to learn Spanish or Italian. German is another story.
     
  12. fastfreddie

    fastfreddie Midnight Oil Garage

    I woulda never guessed. Can you give some examples of Latin-based French?
     
  13. Mongo

    Mongo Administrator

    Seriously?

    l'amour?

    Have you never heard French?
     
  14. ahrma_581

    ahrma_581 Well-Known Member

    Mostly a question of spelling vs pronounciation? Perhaps the spelling is related to now archaic forms of the language (something like the difference between Old and Modern English)? English spelling is a bitch, but you can usually convey the idea even with misspelled words. (Probably a good thing considering the level of education in the US.)

    What English does have going for it is the simplified grammar/syntax. Gender is only where it actually is gender. None of that male forks and female spoons BS, and no different endings for adjectives. And having a fixed syntax, no special forms for direct and indirect objects. In German you can say 'I threw the dog a ball' or 'I threw a ball the dog' and they mean the same thing.

    Verb conjugations can be irregular, but that's true of most languages. Russian has two forms for most verbs (each with its own conjugations) one for something you do in general, and another for doing a single instance of something, like right now, or 'I just did it yesterday'. Russian also has no articles ('a', 'an', 'the') which is one reason the Boris Badenov comic accent sounds the way it does.

    Fun stuff. Probably why people keep inventing artificial languages and the general poplution keeps rejecting them.
     
    HPPT likes this.
  15. fastfreddie

    fastfreddie Midnight Oil Garage

    Okay...got me, but I don't speak of romance.
    Give me another word.
     
  16. pickled egg

    pickled egg Tell me more

    D’ya go? Are you a goer? D’ya? D’ya? D’ya? Knowutimean? Wink-wink nudge-nudge. Nudge’s as good as a wink to a blind man.
     
  17. HPPT

    HPPT !!!

    Animal
     
  18. cBJr

    cBJr Well-Known Member

    [​IMG]
     
    Yzasserina likes this.
  19. fastfreddie

    fastfreddie Midnight Oil Garage

    I resemble that remark, but I don't judge myself. :D

    Seriously, animal is French? I see no mention of French in its etymology.
     
  20. HPPT

    HPPT !!!

    I thought you were asking for French words derived from Latin.
     

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