What's strange about *your* language?

[Zantos]

The English language is weird. Apparently we're fine with stealing French words and using them as our own.

What the hell was a café before it was named with a French word?

They even steal from us the words they lack,
Le weekend, le camping and cul de sac,
That's why I hate the French, ooh oh oh.

What? Wait. You think cul de sac is English? Hate to break it to you, but cul de sac is a French term. It literally means "bottom of the sack". Or were you joking? So hard to tell on the internet sometimes.

I tried to make it obvious I was quoting a song with the inclusion of the ohs, but the internet is a damn tricky place. I actually speak a passable amount of French, so I was fairly aware that of the words they did steal, cul de sac wasn't one of them.

Spoiler: Not actually Rowan Atkinson, but from his stand up show

 

[Maclennan]

Everyone always says English is one of the hardest languages on earth to learn because it has so many rules and exceptions while at the same time everyone including those that say it is difficult to learn ignores most of those rules.

 

[rob47]

The strange thing about the english language is this: Almost all of our words have two meanings.

 

[Exerzet]

The word "Church" originated in the norwegian (then norse) language, as the word "Kirk". This I guess could be considered weird. For what on earth did they call them before trying to christen scandinavia? Oo;

 

[Xifel]

Swedish lacks words, and we borrow heavily from other languages. There is a funny clip on youtube where they point this out, but I write some of it down. The problem is that many word mean multiple things, depending on kontext and intonation. A few example with translations:

Lyssna på rock iklädd rock
(Listing to rock while wearing a coat)

De olika stegen på stegen
(The different steps on the ladder)

Jag ska ha sex vid sex
(I'm going to have sex at six)

Det ligger en banan på banan
(There is a banana on the race track)

 

[go-10]

I'm a native of both English (my dad was American) and Spanish (my mom is Puertorican)
so I had huge problems with Spanglish growing up, still I love English for how easy it was to learn and speak, but Spanish on the other hand changes based on where you are, I once went to South America and everyday Spanish to me was considered sexual insults to them, but then I went to Spain and the words I used were considered polite and professional, so yeah it's a messed up language... I still can't write it for shit though

 

[remulean]

i speak icelandic a language that hasn't really changed in 1200 years. so the strangest thing about it is basically all of it eyjafjallajökull for example. a perfectly innocent and simple word for icelanders that then was completely impossible for others to pronounce.
many of the newer words don't make sense. For example, the direct translation for boots is "stepping machine.

 

[AperioContra]

I speak midwestern/southern slang quite fluently, and I will say it is quite unsettling that we refuse to pronounce the end and middle of a word or any oo sound for that matter. We have a weird way of using double negatives, Also there's a tenancy to use a sophisticated word in the midst of our slang.

This all can create some perplexing sentences, like: "Ya don' s'pose he's not meanin' somhm by that perfunctory look he givin'?" For those of you who think I'm being hyperbolic or Sensationalist, come to the midwest and have a bit of a chat with the locals, you'll find out pretty quickly.

 

[mm2publish]

I speak English, & Spanish. Of the two I think Spanish is more difficult mainly because the words are much longer and have more syllables not to mention the tenses (past, present and future)are more difficult in Spanish however I should mention that going from English to Spanish is much easier than going to any other language because many of the words are nearly the same.

 

[mm2publish]

We need a "WORLD" language. I don't care which one. Just pick one! an easy one preferably, so we can start learning it, and then we will all be on the same page in the future! How about html? Lol

 

[AperioContra]

Btw, stop saying English is regarded as one of the most difficult languages to learn, no one thinks that. You don't even have genders for inanimate objects.

I'm just going to play the devil's advocate here, and point out that there have been countless studies and polls that confirm English as amongst the hardest languages to learn as a second language, (Including one by the FSA and the British Foreign Offices (whereas Portuguese is considered one of the easiest)) so the evidence weighs heavily on that side. This is precisely because we don't have other verbs for proper or formal conversation or for male or female. The perceived simplicity is boggling from a person who is used to that formula. Also, our pronunciation is considered notorious nonenglish speakers.

But to be fair, difficulty in language often depends on the primary language on the speaker. If you happen to have roots in a Romantic Language (Spanish, Italian or French) or a Germanic Language (Scandinavian, Dutch) then you're going to find English relatively easier than if you have roots in an Asian language (Farsi, Cantonese or Japanese) or worse yet and African Click language, in which our language has absolutely nothing in common with, besides a brutally mispronounce Sayonara or a flirtatious whistle.

 

[SckizoBoy]

eyjafjallajökull for example.

Oh, so that's how you spell that name. That's the name of that blasted volcano that ruined European air-travel last year, wasn't it?! =P

 

[Zyxx]

Btw, stop saying English is regarded as one of the most difficult languages to learn, no one thinks that. You don't even have genders for inanimate objects.

I'm just going to play the devil's advocate here, and point out that there have been countless studies and polls that confirm English as amongst the hardest languages to learn as a second language, (Including one by the FSA and the British Foreign Offices (whereas Portuguese is considered one of the easiest)) so the evidence weighs heavily on that side. This is precisely because we don't have other verbs for proper or formal conversation or for male or female. The perceived simplicity is boggling from a person who is used to that formula. Also, our pronunciation is considered notorious nonenglish speakers.

But to be fair, difficulty in language often depends on the primary language on the speaker. If you happen to have roots in a Romantic Language (Spanish, Italian or French) or a Germanic Language (Scandinavian, Dutch) then you're going to find English relatively easier than if you have roots in an Asian language (Farsi, Cantonese or Japanese) or worse yet and African Click language, in which our language has absolutely nothing in common with, besides a brutally mispronounce Sayonara or a flirtatious whistle.

Gotta side with AperioContra here. One of the complaints I've often heard from ESL learners is that everything in English seems to have an exception. "I before E except after C or when sounding like A as in neighbor and weigh," and even that's hardly exhaustive. Plural nouns add an s (unless they don't), plural verbs don't add an s (unless they do). A German friend told me his relatives were perplexed with the existence of both "maybe" and "perhaps" (rather than just one.)

"English doesn't borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them out and goes through their pockets for loose grammar." - some shirt my friend has.

OT: One of my biggest obstacles in my study of Japanese is its extreme context-sensitivity. Depending on your relationship with whomever you're talking to, words can get longer or shorter, particles or even entire parts of speech can be added or dropped.
The subject of a Japanese sentence is often implied rather than stated, which has led to some rather amusing circumstances when I misinterpreted what the subject was supposed to be (e.g. I thought someone was asking me if I'd already eaten when he meant that HE was going to go get some food.)

The subject-object-verb structure (which isn't unique to Japanese) makes it difficult when my friends ask for running translations into English, since I have to wait for the speaker to finish a sentence before I can translate it accurately, by which time he has moved on to the next sentence.

captcha: hedediu guidance. Which is exactly what I needed, because my hedediu is pretty lost.