|
|
|
|
|
|
by jfengel
1875 days ago
|
|
|
Definitely. English is hardly even the worst offender there. I'm learning French, and as a non-native speaker I am utterly lost at anything close to conversational speed. The language has many homophones and near-homophones, and liaison makes word boundaries unclear without context. Get slightly lost and it's all over. |
|
|
There's very little blame to be placed on liaison, since word boundaries are unclear in every language, including languages that e.g. don't allow syllable-final consonants. English speakers feel like they have a strong grasp of where word boundaries occur because of the orthographic space, but the space in the writing system does not coincide with word boundaries in the language; it is heavily conventionalized.