/lit/ - Literature

I'm assuming you're a butthurt spanish speaker. It's true, though, kind of annoying.

And I'm not even taking weird accents into account. Do you even understand each other?

ghoti

food, pool, blood, door

WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT OO? WHY IS IT NEVER THE SAME?

Such is life in Germanic-language world. Vowels everywhere.

Where are you from?

>Watching movies/serials in american english
>Everyone cutting away every last syllable
>Watching movies/serials in british english
>Apparently everyone had a mouthful of shit before the camera started filming
>Only people talking intelligibly are foreigners
>How do anglophones even understand each other

>>2205064
>English
>Germanic

Don't make me laugh.

>>2205067
Plus, every single word has 10,000 meanings. I like english, but man.

>>2205067

This. A hundred times this.

>>2205074
And there are 10,000 words having the same meaning.

>>2205064
French is kinda like that. Nowhere near as vowel-happy, but not as rigid as spanish.

I don't know what you fucks are complaining about, English is fuck-easy to understand, especially on TV.

>>2205064
>German
>vowels everywhere

ahAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

>>2205051

often, no. For such a small country we have a ridiculous range between accents, and so many of them as well; literally every town and city has its own variation on the local accent, with the local accent usually being pretty narrow in its geographical range. I'm from Coventry, in the midlands, which has about as neutral an accent as you can get. Lived most of my life just down the road in a town called Leamington though, where everyone pronounces any word with an 'a' in it differently, maybe because of the differences in class (which I pronounce 'klASS' while everyone in Leam would say 'klARSE'). I get endless shit for it. It's also maybe down to the homogenized popular culture imported from the U.S. meaning I have an alien American spin to my accent. Either way it means I've often had people hear me say a few sentences and ask "Are you Scottish/Swedish/American/Finnish?"

The difference between Coventry and Birmingham though is ridiculous considering how close they are. Yanks should check out the Birmingham ('Brummie') accent on youtube for a sample of what is widely regarded as the most disgusting articulation of English you'll ever hear.

it's because english is hebrew
there are no vowels in hebrew
shit you not, i downloaded a book titled like that
another one was titled "hebrew is greek"

>>2205087

I love the variety we have. So much fun to try and wrap your tongue around a different accent. Brummie, Scouse and Geordie are the most fun for me. A generic southern accent is sometimes good as well.

Mancfag here.

Why does it seem like /lit/ has more of us Brits than any other board?

>>2205091
eh eh eh, Il put ya car on brickhhs and nichkh ya wheeels. eh eh.

>>2205094
THERE'S PLENTY AUSTRAYARANS HERE TOO

>>2205094
I didnea ken this wee board was full of southern fairies.

>>2205094
because britfags like paper and tea and sugar and spice and everything nice, everything nice and cra-zy.

>>2205100
one does appreciate a jolly good cup of tea when one reads ones book.

It's pretty easy to understand if you've grown up speaking it. Accents aren't really a problem for me. The only accents that give me trouble are the muddled as fuck Scottish accents.

>>2205099

It's funny you say that because I've only ever known three Scottish blokes and they were all gay. :/

>>2205104

southern britfag here and I've always been weirdly ok with even the thickest glaswegian accents.

scouse/brummie though fuck me...

but yeah I always found it weird that on TV many scottish people have subtitles when they speak, I'm always like wtf they're not THAT hard to understand

>>2205104

Did you see that documentary series called The Scheme? Filmed in a Scottish Council Estate (it was about the life of "Neds" I guess). I'm usually not that bad with accents, even Scots, but some of the people that appeared in that show were almost impossible to understand. Like, they should have been subtitled.

There's plenty of clips on YouTube if anyone's interested in hearing the most fucked up English-speaking accent

English is the easiest language to learn, and the spelling and pronunciation isn't that complicated. At least the nouns don't change. A dog is always a dog. In my language nouns have seven different forms based on their position in a sentence-dog:pas, psu, psa, psu, psom etc.

languages that codified their writing system several centuries ago, and that have undergone a lot of sound change, have this problem.

see: french, russian; although both are arguably more rigorously phonetic in their correspondence (i.e., looking at the spelling of a word, once you know the rules, you can basically figure out how it's supposed to sound).

deal with it.

this >>2205112

it's the lack of masculine/feminine and other assorted bullshit that makes english so easy to learn and

plus there's the fact that even grossly mispronouncing english rarely makes it impossible to understand for a native. immigrant's 'mispronunciations' are never that far from the clusterfuck of accents we have to deal with anyway

the exception is americans and american/canadian accents. fucking international students when i went to uni; horrible american accents everywhere, surging with arrogance and absolutely butchering some basic words in the most bizarre ways.

>D&E leaked his trip the moment he felt threatened
foul play.

>>2205130
You should let yours be known as well.

Short ansr, english hasnt had a reform in many centurys, and wen a languaj that hasnt had that also chanjd a lot in those centurys, then we get somthing like english (and danish) as it is today. I am somthing of an expert on this topic. For how to fix it, see e.g.: http://www.spellingsociety.org/aboutsss/leaflets/cutspelhb.php

>>2205064

Actualy, jermn is prety good, and not surprisingly, it has had a lot of reforms (eevn recntly). English, danish (and to a lesr degree th othr scandinavian languajs) is a lot wors.

>This fucking guy
>Whenever a word should end as "a", it ends with "r" instead, clear and loud
>HOW EVEN IS THIS EVEN

>>2205072

English is a jermanic languaj. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_language

"The most widely spoken Germanic languages are English and German, with approximately 300–400 million[1][2] and over 100 million[3] native speakers respectively. The group includes other major languages, such as Dutch with 23 million[4] and Afrikaans with over 6 million native speakers;[5] and the North Germanic languages including Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, and Faroese with a combined total of about 20 million speakers.[6] The SIL Ethnologue lists 53 different Germanic languages."

>>2205112

Lol no. English is a hard languaj to lern (cf. "engrish"). I dont no if it is actualy nown wich languaj is th eesyest but Esperanto is prety likely ryt up ther. <3 Esperanto.

>>2205112
English is very easy as far as writing/reading goes. Which makes it all the more astounding to see the awful butchering it often gets by shitheads allegedly older than 15. I know nobody would take youtube comments as a good example of... anything, but that's one of the few places I get honestly pissed

Pronunciation/hearing? Lots of first-hand contact is required to get familiar with the way SOMETIMES words are MAYBE PERHAPS spelled PARTLY MORE OR LESS. Luckily, everybody's getting their popular culture in english by the truckload nowadays, so it's all fine and well.

>Spelling bees even existing
This should say a lot

>>2205149

Why are you typing like that

>>2205141
>>2205149
Yeah it's all a pretty dream but a dream nonetheless; the Feersum Endjinn schtick is never gonna catch on. Sadly. It's exactly the same as what happens with the qwerty and dvorak keyboards. Or, you know, yeah you know what's coming, the metric system.

>>2205158
y r U typin lake dad

>>2205152

No, english is horibl with respect to riting and reeding. Th good part of english is its rathr simpl gramticl systm, e.g., no gendrd nouns (in contrast to all othr jermanic languajs afaik). And jenrly verb conjugation is rathr simpl; not quite as simpl as danish but eesyr than jermn.

>>2205159

Not so. Othr languajs hav had reforms, eevn in newr times. Ther is nothing imposibl about it. Cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_reform#Examples

But wat it does requir, is that we get serius about it. As for english, first a centrl languaj organization needs to be created, becus afaik, there isnt one. Danish has one but its powrs ar too limitd for praticl purposs.

>>2205161

Nice try (no irony), but u shud probably hav ritn somthing like:

y r u typing laik that?

"like" is pronouncd /laɪk/, so th most obvius speling is just that "laik". Same goes for "fake" /fɛɪk/ → "feik", "eight" /ɛɪt/ → "eit", etc.

Doing this consistntly wud be a huj chanj, but one that has to be made (→ meid) soonr or later.

>>2205165
...then what aspect does that apply to?

I'm guessing you're a native english speaker?

>>2205173
>soonr or later.
Why not latr (or sooner)?

>>2205175

Th horibl part? Teribl sound letr corespondnce.

No, i am danish but i also hav a strong interest in english reform, and jenrly all languaj reform.

Why would we want to make our language look horrible written down? That makes no sense.

>>2205173
Really, it's something that I would also like to see, but really, it's not going to happen. Partially given how english is now more of an international language. And on the other hand, well... you just try doing a trip to /k/ and even suggest that this two hundred years old little text should be proof-read because it's fucking ambiguously retarded and two hundred years old.
Also, METRIC SYSTEM.

>>2205112
>English
>Easiest language to learn
Japanese has to be the easiest language to learn
Most simplified pronunciation and grammar.

There is no future tense
There is no plural
There are no spaces between words
etc.

Once you learn your basic symbols (Hiragana and Katakana) you will be able to pick up words left and right. Kanji is another story but it's not totally requires to understand.

>>2205181

Reed th Cut Speling Handbook: http://www.spellingsociety.org/journals/books/books.php

In those two cases:
1) becus cuting it to "latr" wud sujest th sound /lætəɹ/ i.e. same as th word TO/CS "latter"/"latr".

2) Becus unstred vowls ar cut and th E in "sooner" is a such /su:nəɹ/, hence "sooner" → "soonr".

>>2205200
>becus cuting it to "latr" wud sujest th sound /lætəɹ/ i.e. same as th word TO/CS "latter"/"latr".
Not sure if I understand what this implies; isn't the system suited to be learned by people who didn't previously know english? Because that "suggests latter" thing makes me think it's for people who already speak it, since otherwise what would it suggest.

I.e. the feeling I'm getting is that you're supposed to first translate-think in regular english and THEN translate it to the unambiguous one? That's what I'm having to do now anyway.

>>2205185

It is definitly not going to hapn if no one trys, THAT is for sur. ;) It IS worth trying.

Chanjing english now is hard becus it is a intrnationl languaj, so it wud probably need to be chanj in at leest a majr english speeking country to get th reform startd, so eethr UK (comnwelth, watevr), US or AUS. But it wud be much betr if two or three of those on that list wud do it togethr.

Yes, i forgot to comnt on th metric systm. And yes, i agree, th imperial systm is moronic and a is a leftovr from th past. So is th 12-our time systm, btw. At leest, danish has 24-our time systm and th metric systm, but it has a similarly fukd up letr sound corespondnce.

>>2205193

Japanees is much hardr that Esperanto. I wil bet money on that. Th riting sytm is so complicated, with a huj numbr of syns [signs] to lern (and three difrnt systms!).

Th lak of a futur tens seems mor like a problm to me than a strength, no? Afaik all jermanic languajs lak a futur tens systm and that is a problm.

>>2205224

It is desynd to work for both peepl who dont and peepl who do no english as it is now, IIRC. It has been a wile (→ "wail") since i red th CSH. :)

If one did chanj ("cut" th speling of TO "later" to "latr" and also chanjd TO "latter" into "latr", then we wud hav creatd th new amgiuos speling "at" for both /æt/ and /ɛɪt/, and so th systm wud not be markdly superior to wat it is curntly.

If we keep th speling "later" for TO "later" th speling "ate" wud continu to be asociated with th sound /ɛɪt/ and th speling "at" can then be unambiguosly asociated with th sound /æt/ (/æ/ is th sound in TO "cat").

why does spelling have to obey perfect phonological correspondence with speech?

tell me.

What pisses me off is Americans pronouncing o as "ao" for example:

Wow (as in World of Warcraft) becomes Waow (Wah-oh). Dollar becomes Daollar (Dah-lar)

American accents are gay as fuck. Except some neutral ones like Florida and New York which sound similar to Canadian.

>>2205267

No one ITT has sayd that. Not eevn me and i am probably th most foneticly mindd (→ maindd ) person here.

>>2205248
>If one did chanj ("cut" th speling of TO "later" to "latr" and also chanjd TO "latter" into "latr", then we wud hav creatd th new amgiuos speling "at" for both /æt/ and /ɛɪt/, and so th systm wud not be markdly superior to wat it is curntly.

I get that, but OP's problem with English is that it's not consistent. The difference in writing would suggest, to the less knowledgeable, a difference in pronouncing.

>>2205281
what's your basic argument then

>>2205294

Also to th nolejbl. English speling is notoriusly 'inconsistnt' (beeing a logician, i dont quite like how this is used here!).

For an overview of english's iregularitys (betr term!), see e.g.: http://www.spellingsociety.org/spelling/irregularities

>>2205310

Argumnt for wat? I dont recall making any argumnts ITT.

because we steal words about about 5395 languages and then anglicize them however we want

>>2205326
Its actually because the great vowel shift occurred during the advent of the printed press and the explosion of literacy, some words had there spelling formalized early on before the vowels drifted too far, and some later.

>>2205193
the existence of tenses and numbers makes a language clearer and easier to learn rather than harder. The more guesswork there is, the worse it is for a new speaker/reader.

>>2205346

And no reform since that, unfortunately.

>>2205278

Florida accent is the New York accent. People move from NY to FL when they retire. New York accent sounds nothing like Canadian, unless you are talking about far north upstate.

>>2205354

Sort of. Languajs also difr in how 'inflectd' they ar. Som languajs ar so inflectd it is almost imposibl to ges wat a singl word meens becus it has been modifyd in all kinds of ways. IIRC, th iniut languajs ar very 'inflectd', but it has been a wile since i red about it and i dont hav acces to th source ryt now.

Som amount of 'inflection' is good, having mor than a set amount is bad, and les than a set amount (not necesarly th same amount) is also bad.

>>2205357
Legislating language is ridiculous. Maybe not to the Germans can legislate spelling reforms, but they're well known to take government leadership far too easily (*cough*holocaust*cough*)

Written words are not meant to represent groups of phonemes, they represent words as a whole, there is no reason why it should be reformed.

>>2205364

Can u giv som or an argumnt? At leest, normaly wen peepl ar against reform, they cite a bunch of crap argumnts.

A comn one is how languajs ar organic, and how tempring with natur is bad. Som such crap. (Obvious apeel to natur falacy: http://www.fallacyfiles.org/adnature.html).).

Slytly mor sofisticated ar th argumnts about that previus litratur wil be hardr to reed. Since this is actualy tru, th disagreemnt has to be resolvd in a discusion of wich prefrnces ar mor importnt. I am okay with that (reform wins by far again, but at leest it is worth discusing).

-

Ther is also wat is plausibly interpretd as a gilt by asociation falacy: http://www.fallacyfiles.org/guiltbya.html .

An th very implausibl comnts about wat "words" ar 'ment' to do. I think one can actualy made a prety bad argumnt out of that if one reely tryd. Perhaps u can try that?

>>2205380
I'm not giving an argument that you SHOULDN'T, because what I'm saying is you CAN'T. It will not happen.

>>2205384

"you" as in me and ?, or "you" as in ?

I wud love if peepl wud stop using "you"/"u" in th impersonl sens.

I dont undrstand wy anyone wud say that it is imposibl wen i just cited a bunch of exampls or othr majr languajs that hav had a reform in recnt times.

>>2205393
I didn't say it was impossible for ALL languages. Some actually are phonetically based, which is fine if that's what you're into. english isnt'.

>>2205364

Exactly. A lot of people don't realise that the reason English has such seemingly inconsistent spelling, pronunciation etc. is for the most part because the sources of English words are so heterogenous, and that it tends, unlike many other languages, to retain the original aspects of the word rather than adopting them too radically into English. This means that with some basic knowledge of Latin, French etc. you can have a real grasp of how diverse English is, and of the etymology of many of its words.

>>2205396

So, u ar merely saying that it is imposbil to reform english? In wat way?

English speling is overwelmingly foneticly based. I dont no wy anyone wud say othrwise. Non-foneticl spelings wud be nuts.

>>2205408
it was phonetically based, once upon a time. Now its not. I don't see any reason to go back to the middle ages.

>>2205407

I dont think anyone who is a serius resercher/scolr denys that english speling is bad becus, among othr reesns, that english 'hav failed' to chanj th spelings of loan/foren [foreign] words.

Desyning a lauguaj in a way so that one has to lern two (or watevr numbr) othr languajs to use it is very stupid. Obviusly, english was not desynd to any larj degree, but if one did (and it is posibl).

>>2205418
cry moar

>>2205418
what kind of serious researcher or scholar would describe its spelling as "bad"? is that a technical term now? Am i just so uneducated in philology? What are you complaining about, English is a rich language, and I am loathe to give up any of it, from its synonymy to its diversity of sound to its diversity of word-shape. Tetris would be a stupid game if the blocks didn't come in weird shapes, English is the same way.

>>2205413

It also is now, but it is geting mor and mor etymologicly based. Wich is bad.

>>2205423
why the hell would that be bad? Sounds awesome from where i stand.

>>2205422

Lots of them. Basicly, if one did not say that english speling is bad wen askd, it wud be very unlikely that one is a serius reserchr/scolr. It is unlikely that a serius reserchr wud make such a stupid mistake. Perhaps one who has not studyd english much or at all, but those ar rare or non-existnt today.

And "no", to ur retoricl questions.

Cute Tetris metafor, and nice rationalization, but u shud get rid of that status quo bias: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_quo_bias

>>2205424
Language should not have a history. Language should be spontaneously generated according to ruleset.

Name any decent language designed in the last two hundred years that is etymologically based.

Somebody, take this anon's suggestions straight to the Executive Committee in Charge of the English Language!

>>2205424

I dout that, but then again, we do not jenrly hav languajs to suit th needs of one persn or th very small group of peepl who wud reely, and seriusly like their languaj to be etymolojy based. That wud make it very, very hard to lern a languaj. Perhaps u want to go bak to spelings such as "gaol" for TO "jail"? No no, not etymologicl enof! Lets go bak to latin "cavea" and stil pronounce is /ʤɛɪl/ ! That wud be awsom, ryt? That way, the text and sound wud corespond about 0%, thus making it all th mor impresiv if peepl actualy manaj to lern and use th languaj.

Th last part is ritn half in jest, but only half! One persn did actualy, in all seriusnes, sujest that we keep spelings bad so that one cud mor eesily demonstrate one's intelijnce towrd th les intelijnt. And eevn that persn did not continu to think that aftr i called him/her out on it.

>>2205432
if you're gonna write tl;dr posts, use standard fucking english spelling

there's nothing remotely clever, funny, provocative, or insightful in intentionally misspelling 99.7% of the words in your posts

>>2205429

Th cool thing about languajs 'with no history' in a particl sens, is that they ar especialy wel-suitd to be intrnationl languajs, since they ar not 'nativ' to any languaj, France (e.g.) cant wine about how th English ar opresing them.

Ofc, this was actualy part of th reesn for making Esperanto in th first place. Unfortunately, both Hitler and Stalin disliked th languaj, othrwise, it wud hav been much mor populr today.

And if anyone noes wy Stalin disliked it, tel me. Afaik, Stalin didnt dislike jews, and so he cud not use th same reesning that Hitler used. Or perhaps it was just part of som treety with Nazi Jermany?

>>2205431

No need. They shud get somone mor competnt, say, The English Spelling Society (membrs of it): http://www.spellingsociety.org/

>>2205439 Unfortunately, both Hitler and Stalin disliked th languaj, othrwise, it wud hav been much mor populr today.

Everyone dislikes the language. There is no room for play in it, compared to "organic" languages.

>>2205432 Perhaps u want to go bak to spelings such as "gaol" for TO "jail"?

What do you mean, "go back"? Gaol is still a perfectly cromulent word.

>>2205429
I honestly don't see why. Languages should have history, they should have subtleties, beautiful shades of meaning that comes from history. Who wants something so sterile as a rule-generated language. Languages will just evolve chaotically over time anyway, the rules will be bent in use and we'd have to start the whole thing over.

If you want some perfect language of commerce or whatever, fine you deal with that, I'll stick with a subtle language fit for literature and poetry.

>>2205448

Plees, just go lern th languaj. It is actualy far eesyr to play in Esperanto than in English and Danish.

>>2205452

It is a prety bad speling for /ʤɛɪl/, and almost no one uses it, for exactly that reesn. "g" for /ʤ/ is somwat comn in english but is a bad idea. "ao" for /ɛɪ/ is uniq, afaik. "l" for /l/ is fine, ofc. Th best speling, if we restrict outselvs to not introducing new caractrs, for /ʤɛɪl/ is probably "jeil".

>>2205453

See now u ar using "history" in a difrnt sens that he did. Obv. words in Esperanto (e.g.) hav historys in th sens that they ar copyd from som othr languaj (wel, mostly, copyd and re-fit to fit with th rules of Esperanto, such as nouns ending in O/OJ/ON/OJN (simpl, pl., and simpl object and pl. object).).

Yes, languajs tend to becom wors/degrade ovr time. Duh. That is wy we need to continualy fix/repair them. If we dont, they tend to go bad. I meen duh, this is th hole point! English hasnt been 'repaird' (if we continu with th mecanicl device/car metafor).

>>2205472
I dissent.

>>2205473

Hard to argu against "i disagree".

>>2205346
>some words had there spelling formalized

>>2205549

Derp. Obivusly, u undrstood wat he was saying. Wat is th problm?

>>2205553
There doesn't have to be a "problem" for something to be funny, you stupid cunt.

japanese pronunciation = ftw

>>2205145
English is Germanic only by name then because de facto it comes mainly from Latin.

>>2205183
OH GOOD LORD ITS THIS FAGGOT AGAIN

JUST MAKE YOUR OWN FUCKED DIALECT ALREADY

>>2206519
But at least you know how to read his words.

>>2206433
i see what you did there, but that doesn't make you right.

"england"="Angle land", "angle"=germanic-language-people who invaded the british isle and took over, imposing their speech over the celtic and welsh-speaking people [though a fair amount of that survives, too.] ergo, english is at base a germanic tongue.

latin was borrowed for specialized ideas that old and middle [germanic] english didn't express. plus england was for a great while ruled by the normans, whose french was obviously a latin derivative.

but to say english is latin not germanic is like building a brick house, then later putting up aluminum siding on it. the house is not built of aluminum. it just helps cosmetically. so there.

>>2206866
why do almost all your words come from latin then?

>>2206874
Less than a third of modern English words have Latin roots.

Yes, it's complicated, but on the plus side, it reveals when people don't know their stuff.
Like when I was in school and some girl was giving a report about Archimedes and pronounced it ARCH.

Misspellings, mispronunciations, and a multitude of grammar and syntax errors help reveal posers.
In life just as in 4chan, observance of hundreds of unwritten rules and the avoidance of faux pas help display experience with the language, which gives you a sense of having experience with life in general.
To say nothing of the tiny variances in pronunciation and word choice that let you infer region from accent, and in an almost Sherlock Holmes way, allow you to tell other things about the person merely from the way things are said as opposed to just what was said.