Microblog Memes

Shit like this is why I doubt it when people say you can learn English by learning the spelling of sounds, because no you can’t.

It's what it's

That's because when you learn a foreign language correctly, you start with boat or ship and add subdivisions of those as your command of the language improves. You can fuck up a lot and still be understood too. People who are native English speakers have a tendency to get hung up on using languages correctly instead of just using them. The question "when you boat go water?" is the same as " when does your yacht set sail?" But much easier to say when you dont have a large vocabulary.

Also having a bunch of people who understand your native language doesn't incentivise you to learn. It's something I notice a lot with people who come over from Eastern and central Europe. Some of them will have almost no vocabulary and then a couple of months later can hold a conversation and are pretty fluent within the year. Whereas a Brit can live in Spain for a decade and stil only know a couple of sentences in Spanish.

As someone who learned English in school, I can assure you that the word "yacht" is rather at the bottom of the list of troubles.

See: "The Chaos" (poem)

The word for yacht is jacht in Dutch, so that one's easy.

What makes it slightly harder is that jacht can also mean hunt.

However, the hardest part of learning English when you're Dutch is trying not to sound like Mark Rutte.

English is just Esperanto with no rules.

Welcome to mandarin.
How many ways can you write the same sound?
The answer is yes.

« Shī Shì shí shī shǐ »

Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī.
Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī.
Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì.
Shì shí, shì Shī Shì shì shì.
Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shì shì.
Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shí shì.
Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shí shì.
Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī.
Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī shī, shí shí shí shī shī.
Shì shì shì shì.

《施氏食獅史》

石室詩士施氏，嗜獅，誓食十獅。
氏時時適市視獅。
十時，適十獅適市。
是時，適施氏適市。
氏視是十獅，恃矢勢，使是十獅逝世。
氏拾是十獅屍，適石室。
石室濕，氏使侍拭石室。
石室拭，氏始試食是十獅。
食時，始識是十獅屍，實十石獅屍。
試釋是事。

I think people from places that use idiographic languages that have to be transliterated probably actually have an easier time with English orthography than people whose language uses a Roman script and is pronounced phonetically. People who are used to puzzling through the layer of abstraction/obfuscation that sometimes ambiguous transliterations will have can see that English orthography is almost always substantially different than its pronunciation.

TL;DR: it's easier for a Chinese person to learn to read English aloud than a person from Romania, but the European would have studied it in school either somewhat or a lot

It's easier than Dutch at least

Fuck censorship.

This sound like something someone who only speaks English would say.

I think "Eunuch" might be a worse offender of this

You don't have to blur fucking on Lemmy.

I'm so glad that fucking was censored (although not really at all censored, since I can clearly still see the word), I would have been offended if it wasn't.

Imagine bad language on the internet.

Monolinugal people thinking that the pronounciation of some rare words is the big issue when learning languages...

Dude, try memorizing the correct grammatical gender for every single noun or every single exception to regular declinations. And that's just for a medium-difficulty language like German.

You know how there's simple English versions of news articles? The same thing exists with German. And the language in these Simple German articles is more difficult than the regular English version.

English is THE easy mode language of the world, which is why e.g. pretty much anyone in Europe defaults to it if they are speaking to anyone who speaks a different native language. Like, if someone from Austria speaks with someone from Ukraine, they will use English.

Bitch please:

Skildvagtslymfeknudeundersøgelse

Welcome to Danish.

The term, yacht, originates from the Dutch word jacht (pl. jachten), which means "hunt", and originally referred to light, fast sailing vessels that the Dutch Republic navy used to pursue pirates and other transgressors around and into the shallow waters of the Low Countries.