| > 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. |
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)