When I was living in Japan I found spoken Japanese was quite easy to learn.  Granted I had a Japanese wife at the time and I was the supervisor for the Japanese work crew at the base bomb dump and I was taking lessons from the University of Maryland over there, but it was a straight forward language to learn.  I even learned how to read and write some of it.  That was a bit more difficult.

But English.  What can I say?  My Mom was raised in Belgium and Flemish was her native language.  She would often complain about the difficulty in learning English.

I can see why.

Except for the first letter these four letter words are spelled the same but pronounced differently:

Womb - Comb - Bomb.

And consider these.

Dove the bird and Dove - I dove into the swimming pool.

Minute a unit of time and Minute very tiny.

Sewer a drainpipe or Sewer, a person who sews with needle and thread. 

Tear, a drop of moisture from the eye or Tear a sheet of paper in two.

Bow and arrow or Bow, bend over at the waist.

Desert a great expanse of sand or Desert, to go AWOL from the military.

English is my native language and I sometimes have difficulty with it.  I feel for those who have to learn it from scratch.

Noel 

 

 

Pacific Ocean : three Cs all pronounced differently

“Though the tough cough and hiccough plough him through.” - Heinlein, The Door Into Summer

Hook

21 minutes ago, LHookins said:

The Door Into Summer

When it gets cold outside my cats are always looking for the door to summer...and so am I!

Noel

Edited September 21, 20223 yr by birdguy

"The Door Into Summer" was the first non-children's book I ever read.  I think I was about 12 years old, 60 years ago.  Previously I was reading Tom Swift Junior, so the book about an engineer was an appropriate sequel.

I recently found a copy for Kindle, and read it twice.  It's ever better now than it was then.

The second was "Have Space Suit Will Travel", also on Kindle, and just as good.

Hook

3 hours ago, birdguy said:

Dove the bird and Dove - I dove into the swimming pool.

Actually 'Dove' as in - I dove into the swimming pool, is an Americanism. Colloquial UK English would be - I dived.  But that just emphasises the point you were making about the sometimes strange variety of words in this language.

English is an amalgamation of multiple languages, I was taught that this was the reason for it being such a difficult and confusing language.

Uday uyay eakspay igpay atinlay?  🙃

I used to speak pig Latin Charlie.  But like Japanese, after years of non-use I've forgotten most of it.

Noel

 English is, indeed, a strange and inconsistent language... e.g.,

 We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes;
 but the plural of ox became oxen not oxes.
 One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
 yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
 You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice;
 yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.

 If the plural of man is always called men,
 why shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen?
 If I spoke of my foot and show you my feet,
 and I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?
 If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
 why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth?

 Then one may be that, and three would be those,
 yet hat in the plural would never be hose,
 and the plural of cat is cats, not cose.
 We speak of a brother and also of brethren,
 but though we say mother, we never say methren.

 Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
 but imagine the feminine, she, shis and shim.

 Some other reasons to be grateful if you grew up speaking English:

 1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
 2) The farm was used to produce produce.
 3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
 4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
 5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
 6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
 7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to
     present the present.
😎At the Army base, a bass was painted on the head of
     a bass drum.
 9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
 10) I did not object to the object.
 11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
 12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
 13) They were too close to the door to close it.
 14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
 15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
 16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
 17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
 18) After a number of Novocain injections, my jaw got number.
 19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
 20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
 21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
 22) I spent last evening evening out a pile of dirt.

 Screwy pronunciations can mess up your mind! For
 example...

 If you have a rough cough, climbing can be tough when going through the
 bough on a tree!

 Let's face it - English is a crazy language.

 There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger;
 neither apple nor pine in pineapple.

 English muffins weren't invented in England.

 We take English for granted.

 But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work
 slowly,boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor
 is it a pig.

 And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing,
 grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?

 Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but
 not one amend?

 If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them,
 what do you call it?

 If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught?

 If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

 Sometimes I think all the folks who grew up speaking English should be
 committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.

 In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?

 Ship by truck and send cargo by ship?

 Have noses that run and feet that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat
 chance be the same, while a wise man and a wiseguy are opposites?

 You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house
 can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out,
 and in which an alarm goes off by going on.

 If Dad is Pop, how's come Mom isn't Mop?
 

Edited September 25, 20223 yr by W2DR
kant spel