[joolze]

This is absurd.

First he complains about the fact that we use an alphabet. Does he even have experience with heiroglyphic languages like Chinese? Basically the Chinese dictionary is split into 200-something "families", so when you don't know what a word means, you get a dictionary, and you flip to a family, then you basically brute force your way through the family to find your word.

Now he complains about the pronunciation. Sorry, but that fucked up pronunciation is one of the main _strengths_ of English. English readily absorbs needed words from other languages. Some languages like French actively remove words from their language.

And the phonetics? Go try out fucking Czech. I've heard it's legitimately impossible to become fluent in Czech. Or Austrian dialect, which has something like 4 different "r"s.

"Hawaiian no consonant is ever followed by another consonant" ... yeah you also frequently run into the german nightmare of neverending words like "humahumanukanukaapuaa". You think that's a better way to deal with things? An easy to pronounce marathon?

The large vocabulary is undesirable? The large vocabulary, with extreme possible specificity, is what makes English so attractive for scientific application.

And complaining about grammar? English has one of the easiest grammars to learn and get started with, sure it will take a few decades to not make any mistakes, but for just getting going, it is remarkably easy. No genders (some languages have 5 or more genders for things, see czech), no conjugation.

Sorry for the rant, but if you're just gonna post some BS one sided oped I'm gonna do the same. I personally don't think English is the best choice either. But one sidedness is ultra-obnoxious.

[kuschku]

> Now he complains about the pronunciation. Sorry, but that fucked up pronunciation is one of the main _strengths_ of English. English readily absorbs needed words from other languages. Some languages like French actively remove words from their language.

That pronunciation makes it hard to learn. Seriously, people always complain about gender of words being complex – english pronunciation and spelling is several times worse.

> The large vocabulary is undesirable? The large vocabulary, with extreme possible specificity, is what makes English so attractive for scientific application.

Wrong. Having a word for every topic is what makes english useful – but that doesn’t mean a large vocabulary.

If you build words piece by piece – say, "backyard-filled-with-children" (kindergarten) or "spirit-of-the-time" (Zeitgeist) or "joy-of-someone-else’s-pain" (Schadenfreude) they are easily understandable, people need a tiny vocabulary to understand even the most complex words or legal terms, and it’s easily writable, too.

> And complaining about grammar? English has one of the easiest grammars to learn and get started with, sure it will take a few decades to not make any mistakes, but for just getting going, it is remarkably easy. No genders (some languages have 5 or more genders for things, see czech), no conjugation.

LOL. Ever tried understanding all the different versions of time in English? Simple past, past progressive, present progressive, simple present, etc and your brain starts melting.

[josinalvo]

> That pronunciation makes it hard to learn. Seriously, people always complain about gender of words being complex – english pronunciation and spelling is several times worse.

Are they, though? Take a fixed set of rules for english pronunciation. Add a list of exceptions. Is this list as big as the list of nouns of portuguese, spanish, or french? (we can define as big in number of words, or try some information theoretical construct, or even go to some psicological measure, should one exist. I am still betting that the english pronunciation, evil as it is, is not as bad as a gender to every noun)

(I am a native portuguese speaker, and only got mad about gender in nouns when leaning french)

[kuschku]

That’s the thing, there are no real fixed rules.

Home vs. some, Foot vs. boot, versus vs. verses, they’re, their, there, etc.

Pronunciation vs. pronounce.

The only solution is to learn every word twice.

[majewsky]

> "backyard-filled-with-children" (kindergarten)

A kindergarten is most definitely a backyard filled with children. You would call that a "playground", most likely. Or just a backyard filled with children. A kindergarten is a daycare center for children aged 2-6.

[kuschku]

Yes – that’s why the AWO decided to name their Kindergartens Kinderhäuser instead.

[gjm11]

> First he complains about the fact that we use an alphabet.

No, he doesn't. What he says is: "it has probably the worst alphabetical writing system in the world", and "What an alphabet does is spell out the sounds of words at the level of consonants and vowels. And I don’t think you can find a language that does it worse or more perversely than English does."

I think you've misunderstood the structure of the paragraph in which he says those things. He mentions Chinese and Cambodian not to say "these would be better" but to say "you might want to respond to my complaint about English orthography by saying these languages are worse, but that would miss the point because they're the way they are because they're non-alphabetic, and what I'm claiming is that among alphabetic systems English has a particularly bad one".

> The large vocabulary [...] is what makes English so attractive for scientific application.

What Pullum says is: "You may think of this as a rich lexical treasure-house that we should prize; some might call it a needless and memory-burdening overstock of alternatives, reminiscent of the cereal aisle of a modern supermarket. The English lexicon could have been far less profligate, given a little forethought." In other words: yeah, it's good to have a wide variety of ideas represented in your vocabulary, but the English lexicon is redundant and could have been markedly smaller without substantial loss of expressivity and flexibility.

(I am not sure whether I agree with him, but I'm pretty sure I disagree with you if you're suggesting that science benefits particularly from the rich vocabulary of English. Technical terms can be, and are, imported into any language; that's not where English is unusual; and science doesn't make particular use of e.g. the ability to distinguish between {cow,beef,veal} or {sheep,lamb,mutton} or {sleepy,tired,fatigued,knackered,exhausted,weary,...}.)