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    Philologist Senior Member ajaxfetish's Avatar
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    Default Re: English words that conflict with your language.

    Quote Originally Posted by Centurio Nixalsverdrus View Post
    [*]the grammar is so simple, it suffices to learn it at age 90, no need to start as a baby[*]English native speakers normally don't care if anyone uses the language right, leading to an incredibly high amount of bad grammar and orthography among speakers, even native ones[*]English native speakers normally have no clue about vowels thanks to the incredibly ridiculous pronounciation of their mother tongue[*]due to the limited English grammar, it must be really hard for native speakers to learn a foreign language, since these normally tend to have grammar
    *English grammar is just as complex as that of any human language.
    *English native speakers definitely care about correct use of the language, and are as unlikely to make genuine grammatical mistakes as native speakers of any language.
    *English vowels experienced a shift in the early modern period. If the orthography hadn't already been fixed, there'd probably be no confusion between English's and other languages' vowels. It's an artifact of the orthography, as English has basically the same vowels as most other European languages (though our mid vowels are universally diphthongized, and we've got a particularly rich lax vowel inventory).
    *Again, English grammar is as rich as any natural language's. The greatest problem faced by English speakers learning other languages is the worldwide prevalence of English. If English speakers felt a greater need to learn other languages, and especially if we started learning them much younger, it would be much easier for us.

    Quote Originally Posted by Viking
    It could still drop the inflection of verbs according to grammatical person:

    I am
    you am
    we am
    he, she, it am
    they am
    you am
    English syntax is sufficiently rigid that it doesn't require a richer morphology. Most verbs have only one present-tense variant (the 3rd person singular), a random relic, and would be just as clear if that form were the same as all the others. Because be is still highly inflected, it looks weirder to level it, but it would do no more to inhibit meaning.

    Ajax
    Last edited by ajaxfetish; 12-14-2009 at 00:17.

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