NationStates Jolt Archive

Languages are funny. I wonder who invented the word. Anyway, here are some hard languages and why I found them hard.
English: Someone once said that rules are made to be broken. Whatever group came up with English took that a little too literally.
I before e, except after c...or in ancient.

Spanish: rules, rules, rules. That and genders. Who thought up the idea that words needed genders? Why do adjectives always have to agree with the noun? I mean, if the noun is plural and femenine, so is the adjective, EXCEPT in some cases. wtf. Then, there are many variations of words that have to be memorized. I mean, woah. Why do I need to memorize so many forms of each word? Why so many suffixes?

French: Screwed up numb3r5. Even my mom finds them hard and she learned French for years.

German: Too many long words. How many words do they need to jam together? 5? 10?

Chinese: The lack of any real alphabet makes this one a nightmare. I mean, each word and sound gets it own little picture? Why not join the party and only require a few dozen? Spanish only has 30 letters. 26 for English. Maybe lower the amount to a thousand?

comments?

Just learn some easy language... like Swedish or Finnish or Greek...

I have always had a knack for languages. I love them, mainly due to their differences. They are more art than anything else in my view. French is my favourite. They are also an expression of a culture, and are very much a living thing.

Try Zulu. Not only does it liberally use suffixes and prefixes, it has INFIXES too. It's a wonerfully expressive language though. Pity I've forgotten 99% of mine...

I find Indo-Euro languages quite easy though. I think being brought up in a country that is multilingual (South Africa) helps.

Same here Preebs. They are easy due to being familiar to us. To a person who speaks a language not based on latin/greek/germanic, they can be a nightmare. Also South African btw, too bad I never learnt Afrikaans. :rolleyes:

German is awesome. Don't diss it.

The reason they put together so many words is just to make stupid people feel intimidated. Plus, it makes it easier to understand what the word means...

German is indeed awesome ^^ It has such a cool sound to it too.

Words Suck.

German is awesome. Don't diss it.

The reason they put together so many words is just to make stupid people feel intimidated. Plus, it makes it easier to understand what the word means...
Compare:

"Telephone" - requires you to know Greek to understand.
"Far-speaker" - perfect. Nice and concise and so on.

Although words like "Panzerkampfwagen" do require you to know what a "panzer" is, else all you can tell is that it's a panzer battle vehicle. I guess in the end all languages require you to be part of an "in-group".

Keep in mind, German is from a distinct linguistic group. It has some bases in latin and greek, yet its stem is germanic.

Languages evolve based on the culture which speaks them. Thus understanding the culture is essential if one hopes to at least partially understand the language.

German is indeed awesome ^^ It has such a cool sound to it too.

Ya, totally. I love the flem involved.

ICKKKKKKKKKuh bin blod. (with an umlaut over the o...)

It's great.

Languages are funny. I wonder who invented the word.

I think the Indo-Europeans invented the word "word," at least. Or the predecessor to it, anyway. Or maybe they just stole it from someone, but they got it somehow.

Anyway, the more complex languages are, the more fun it is to master them.

Word seems to have germanic influences in it. Not sure though.

Generally, a language is more complex if your native language is from a different linguistic group. For an English speaker, German and French should not be too hard, as English is 50% Germanic, 25% Latin, 25% Ancient Greek. Yet, to learn French for a Japanese person would arguably be far more difficult a task.

I am probably one of the worst Language students of all time. I just can't seem to find my way around any other Language other than my native tounge-English! Ask me anything about history and I'll (Usually) give you a precise answer, but I'm as lost as Santa Clause on a Desert Island when it comes to Languages.

In conclusion:I hate communicating!

Keep in mind, German is from a distinct linguistic group. It has some bases in latin and greek, yet its stem is germanic.

Languages evolve based on the culture which speaks them. Thus understanding the culture is essential if one hopes to at least partially understand the language.
I seem to recall that English is the language closest to the original Germanic language - closer even than German, although it has been bastardized in a number of ways since.

Where the hell do words like "dog" and "squid" come from, anyway? o_O

It was, at a time, I think. Not anymore. Check a dictionary for the origin of those words :p

Latin kicks ass. All the other European languages are posers.

Latin is awesome, but I disagree. Each European language is unique and complete in its structure. They are fascinating.

Chinese: The lack of any real alphabet makes this one a nightmare. I mean, each word and sound gets it own little picture? Why not join the party and only require a few dozen? Spanish only has 30 letters. 26 for English. Maybe lower the amount to a thousand?
Actually, the alphabet that you're expecting is just in a different form. It's like Japanese, which you should add to that list.

In Japanese, there are two written languages, hiragana and katakana. Katakana is used for the transcription of foreign words ("television" is "te-re-bi"). There are roughly 44 unique katakana characters. Others are modified characters. For instance, "Ba" in katakana is like "ha", except with two dashes in the top-right, like English quotation marks. Katakana uses very little hooks and tails, and instead focuses on straight lines, and some very minor curves. Hiragana, on the other hand, is a smooth, flowing style of Japanese writing. Some even say it's more "feminine."

It's pretty intimidating to others, but it's only clear to me because I've been studying it for the past seven years. :)

French: Screwed up numb3r5. Even my mom finds them hard and she learned French for years.

I guess you and she never discovered "septante, huitante/octante, nonante"? Sure, they're Belgian and Swiss, but they work quite well for whose who find "soixante-dix, quatre-vingts, quatre-vingt-dix" difficult.

So instead of, say, "mille neuf cent quatre-vingt-dix-sept" (thousand nine hundred four-twenty-ten-seven" you get "mille neuf cent nonante-sept" (thousand nine hundred ninety seven) for "1997."

True, other European languages are unique, but many of them, i.e. Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian and Rumanian, evolved directly from Latin (Romance languages); others, e.g. English and German, borrow a great deal of their words from Latin. English, for example, is technically Germanic in origin, but so much of English is taken from Latin (by some estimates, 60% of English words have some base in Latin) that you could almost classify it as a Romance language anyway.

True, other European languages are unique, but many of them, i.e. Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian and Rumanian, evolved directly from Latin (Romance languages); others, e.g. English and German, borrow a great deal of their words from Latin. English, for example, is technically Germanic in origin, but so much of English is taken from Latin (by some estimates, 60% of English words have some base in Latin) that you could almost classify it as a Romance language anyway.
Naturally, I have acknowledged this fact already. What I love is how each language has a different take on their base languages. For instance, English say circumstances, French say circonstances.

I guess you and she never discovered "septante, huitante/octante, nonante"? Sure, they're Belgian and Swiss, but they work quite well for whose who find "soixante-dix, quatre-vingts, quatre-vingt-dix" difficult.

So instead of, say, "mille neuf cent quatre-vingt-dix-sept" (thousand nine hundred four-twenty-ten-seven" you get "mille neuf cent nonante-sept" (thousand nine hundred ninety seven) for "1997."
You do realise that using numbers like this is not allowed in exams right? Both written (in the case that the number must be written out) and oral french exams require you to use standard french numbers. So, whilst it may be fine in everyday life, when you are learning French, you can't really use the alternatives.

I have never had a problem with French numbers. Quatre-ving dix neuf may be an odd seeming way to say 99, but its hardly difficult. The original French style is preferrable in any case, at least for me.

Ya, totally. I love the flem involved.

ICKKKKKKKKKuh bin blod. (with an umlaut over the o...)

It's great.
The phlegm in German is NOTHING compared to Afrikaans. Hehe. And most of my German is acquired from Rammstein songs, so I hope I never get stuck in Germany with non-English speakers.

True :p Afrikaans (and Dutch) are actually quite hard for me to pronounce :confused: I have no problem with German or French though.

I always feel spanish is eaiser than English, considering spanish actually follows the grammatical rules the language sets, and not so many ways to pronoce those vowels, you can basically read most any word in spanish if you can pronounce the letters *for the most part anyways*

With english, who thought up cramming 20-odd different languages under Latin grammar rules? It also seems odd to me that when you see like...English, French and Spanish together, a paticular word usually looks similar in French and Spanish, but like a less common synonym of the English word. *shrug* I like being different when it comes to measuring stuff (Screw metric! Wooo! USA! USA! :D ) But the language is weird. (And the British don't help *grumblecallin'cookiesbiscuitsorsummatgrumble* [I jest :p ])

French: Screwed up numb3r5. Even my mom finds them hard and she learned French for years.


French numbers are difficult? :confused: I always thought they were pretty simple until you get up into the really high numbers, and that's just because I don't remember what the word for 'million' is, or anything higher for that matter.

You do realise that using numbers like this is not allowed in exams right? Both written (in the case that the number must be written out) and oral french exams require you to use standard french numbers. So, whilst it may be fine in everyday life, when you are learning French, you can't really use the alternatives.

We were allowed to use them in exams. I had a Congolese (Kinshasa) professor. :P And even for those DELPH (or whatever they were called) exams, they did not fault us when we used them in the oral part of the exam. I wrote both forms in the written.

I have never had a problem with French numbers. Quatre-ving dix neuf may be an odd seeming way to say 99, but its hardly difficult. The original French style is preferrable in any case, at least for me.

Personally, I prefer the Belgian forms because that's what I'm used to, and they are much easier to connect in larger numbers. "99" on its own is not difficult, but when it its "999999999," (neuf cent nonante-neuf millions etc vs. neuf cent quatre-vingt-dix-neuf millions etc) nonante just rolls off the tounge and enters my ears much more easily than quatre-vingts.

We were allowed to use them in exams. I had a Congolese (Kinshasa) professor. :P And even for those DELPH (or whatever they were called) exams, they did not fault us when we used them in the oral part of the exam. I wrote both forms in the written.

English university professors though are adamant in teaching pure French. So we aren't that lucky. :p

Personally, I prefer the Belgian forms because that's what I'm used to, and they are much easier to connect in larger numbers. "99" on its own is not difficult, but when it its "999999999," (neuf cent nonante-neuf millions etc vs. neuf cent quatre-vingt-dix-neuf millions etc) nonante just rolls off the tounge and enters my ears much more easily than quatre-vingts.
I am quite used to the pure French forms now. I see where it could pose a difficulty regarding larger numbers, perhaps being a little too convoluted. I could switch over to the Belgian form I suppose, at least in spoken French.

I always feel spanish is eaiser than English, considering spanish actually follows the grammatical rules the language sets, and not so many ways to pronoce those vowels, you can basically read most any word in spanish if you can pronounce the letters *for the most part anyways*

With english, who thought up cramming 20-odd different languages under Latin grammar rules? It also seems odd to me that when you see like...English, French and Spanish together, a paticular word usually looks similar in French and Spanish, but like a less common synonym of the English word. *shrug* I like being different when it comes to measuring stuff (Screw metric! Wooo! USA! USA! :D ) But the language is weird. (And the British don't help *grumblecallin'cookiesbiscuitsorsummatgrumble* [I jest :p ])
English is, at best, a convergence of 4 languages, mainly Latin and Germanic.

I personally speak enough of 7 languages to get around a little and explain I speak primarily english (english, french, spanish, italian, german, hindi/urdu, and pali [technically a dea language, but oh well... it's twenty times cooler than sanskrit and latin...]). It's very nice to know that I could go to a variety of countries and do something there. English and Spanish are technically my best, but I feel better expressing myself in german and hindi. French and italian are basically spanish with an accent.

I find French to be an extremely expressive language. I am fluent in English and Greek, and know some German. I find Greek extremely rigid. English is, of course, my native language and the one I can express myself in best. For some reason though, speaking French is like second nature.

I personally speak enough of 7 languages to get around a little and explain I speak primarily english (english, french, spanish, italian, german, hindi/urdu, and pali [technically a dea language, but oh well... it's twenty times cooler than sanskrit and latin...]). It's very nice to know that I could go to a variety of countries and do something there. English and Spanish are technically my best, but I feel better expressing myself in german and hindi. French and italian are basically spanish with an accent.
Wow. *tips hat in Svetlanabad's direction and is suitably impressed*

English is the only language I understand enough to have a conversation in. Spanish has so many rules, half of which don't even make any sense. The whole adjective-noun thing kills me. Why is there a need for both noun and adjective to both be plural and, in some cases, the same gender? What the hell. French numbers are a bit too complex for me. German is a nightmare for me. I'm scared of what Japanese will be like. Can't there be one language that's simple? No broken rules? No overly complex rules? A simple number system? Is that too much to ask? Why must communicating be so complex? I want to get my point across without memorizing overly complex rules, a nightmare number system, or a list of exceptions to rules big enough to fill a dictionary? I understand English and it took me several years to truly master it. I even have a 142 iq. Why must all languages near me be written and invented by morons? I want simplicity over complexity. I would like a language that doesn't have complex, broken rules with a fractured number system. I want one that's just right.

No one person writes a language. :rolleyes: They evolve over time.

Having a high IQ doesn't mean you will be good at languages. It depends on how your mind works. Some people have better ability in using and learning languages, others in maths, others in music and so on and so on.

English is, at best, a convergence of 4 languages, mainly Latin and Germanic.

Yeah. English originally came from a combination of Anglo-Saxon and Norman French (Germanic and Romance, respectively). True, we do have a hodgepodge of words/phrases lifted from other languages (coup d'etat, tsunami, mosquito) , but these are relatively isolated and not necessary to learn the language. Plus, the majority of other languages do that as well. And as for the Latin grammar thing? Not really. The original (written) Latin language had virtually no grammar. There was no punctuation, no sentences, not even any separation of words. Even when you do divide Latin into words and sentences (which is necessary to learn the language), you use inflections (endings) to derive meaning, unlike English, where syntax (word order) is king. The only word order needed in Latin is that certain words need to be next to each other, and that's it. There is a preferred word order, but as long as you put certain words together and get the inflections right, the meaning is the same.

I believe English also has slight celtic influences.

I heard that Indonesian was a very simple language. Either that or a language from somewhere around there. No adding "s" or anything like that to make it plural, just say it more than once. Say it 3 times if you mean a lot of them. Or something like that. I think it was something like Bahasi Indonesian.

This makes it simpler? :p

Spoken Chinese is pretty easy...nothing gets conjugated. And the characters aren't terribly difficult to learn once you get used to them Most characters are composed of several familiar components (radicals) anyways. Traditional form is good for understanding etymology, while simplified form is good for when you're in a hurry.:)

Japanese grammar isn't terribly difficult in that most conjugations stick to regular forms. Of course, you're conjugating adjectives as well as verbs, and you have honorific and humble vocab changes as well. Since conjugation form is based on relative social status of the speakers rather than a fixed form for a given subject (I speak, he speaks etc), it can be a bit tricky for non-Japanese. The worst part of reading Japanese IMO is the many variants of pronunciations that are available for each kanji.

Spanish has got to be one of the easiest European languages: it follows the rules most of the time and it's incredibly easy to spell. Portuguese and French aren't difficult either, although knowing one Romance language definitely helps with the others. French spelling gets a bit wierd at times though. Portuguese is just fun~

Actually, English is closest related to Dutch. And if you think that those languages are hard, imagine learning the African language of Xhosa. It has 45 different clicking sounds! And Basque (spoken in northern Spain and Southern France) has no related language groups or languages remotely close to it.

Languages are funny. I wonder who invented the word. Anyway, here are some hard languages and why I found them hard.
English: Someone once said that rules are made to be broken. Whatever group came up with English took that a little too literally.
I before e, except after c...or in ancient.Most of the grammatical rules of English come from the post-Middle English adoption of Latinesque grammar by the self-appointed inteligencia. (In a kind of "Proper English is spoken by the right kind of people. We are the right kind of people." situation.) Other than the fact that they couldn't do it in Latin, there's really no good reason why we shouldn't split an infinitive if we want to. Doubtless a lot of speeling rools were similarly imposed, except that as a hybrid language with a dangerously non-phonetic correlation of pronunciation (and many dialects to boot) there are bound to be a few exceptions to a lot of the rules. ;)

Spanish: rules, rules, rules. That and genders. Who thought up the idea that words needed genders? Why do adjectives always have to agree with the noun? I mean, if the noun is plural and femenine, so is the adjective, EXCEPT in some cases. wtf. Then, there are many variations of words that have to be memorized. I mean, woah. Why do I need to memorize so many forms of each word? Why so many suffixes?I couldn't get the hang of just the genders in French. Never even tried for German (three genders), just used it regardless. Never even learnt Spanish so I really can't comment on the adjective issue.

French: Screwed up numb3r5. Even my mom finds them hard and she learned French for years. You mean like in "four-twenties, ten, nine" for 99? There are plenty of similar wierdnesses in plenty of languages. Including English. (11 = "Onety-one", anyone?)

Amazing how many (relatively) modern languages do tend to treat as exemptions the numbers 11-19 to different rules, unless you consider how those numbers (on top of the 1-10 range) are the standard set that would be used everyday. (Thus they'd be as potentially irregular as "to be" is in English and "etre" in French. They started to be used in their current forms before anyone started thinking up rules to govern verbs.)

The thing I personally didn't like about French (excepting genders, as already mentioned) is that there are /three/ types of regular verb to learn the regular alterations of, on top of the (aforementioned) irregular ones that walk their own wal through the tenses of life.

German: Too many long words. How many words do they need to jam together? 5? 10?There's a (basic) logic to the compounding, distant cousin to some kinds of noun-grouping in English. (Or so it was explained to me. Probably wrongly... ;)) It's the rules for deriving acronyms from such compound words that confuses me. Best I can work out, they choose letters from the midst of the compound titles that look good when grouped together (and sound Ok when pronounced), not necessarily even the ones from the original word-starts...

Chinese: The lack of any real alphabet makes this one a nightmare. I mean, each word and sound gets it own little picture? Why not join the party and only require a few dozen? Spanish only has 30 letters. 26 for English. Maybe lower the amount to a thousand?There you have a system that was, for a long time, intended to be restricted to the 'scribe classes' and above. No real reason to make an easy to work with written language. (Also handy when different dialects used the same symbols for the same concept, even when the word was different in the tongue. Handy building an empire across large areas of the Far East.)

Of course, Japan uses three(?) separate writing systems, depdending on the situation, two phonetic and the other symbolic, I think. The most I can (intentionally) write in far-eastern pictograms, however, is the Chinese symbol for China itself (essentially the "our world" representation, 'cos foreign ghosts don't exist ;)).

With any language, there are going to be quirks. Articles annoy me more than anything else. I mean who thought up this idea that one had to make a distinction between one object and one particular object that is different from all others?

Other annoying things: perfective and imperfective verb tenses.

Absolute most annoying thing in the English language: collective nouns. I mean who sat around thinking that when you have a group of rhinoceruses, it should be called a crunch of rhinoceruses, or, even better, an exhaultation of larks?

To be honest, I have no particular problems with any rules used within a language. Even if they make little sense, I quickly figure out how a language works. Most of them evolve over the centuries and are spoken by huge numbers of people. It is only natural, thus, that they will be characterised by odd rules and vocabulary.

No one person writes a language. :rolleyes: They evolve over time.
I usually just stalk the forums (and play the game, of course), but I couldn't resist pouncing on this one (being a conlanger myself).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructed_language

I am aware of this already. French is one language that was artificially manipulated by linguists. This does not hold true of most languages though. And even French, having been manipulated, is now evolving. Languages do not stagnate.

There you have a system that was, for a long time, intended to be restricted to the 'scribe classes' and above. No real reason to make an easy to work with written language. (Also handy when different dialects used the same symbols for the same concept, even when the word was different in the tongue. Handy building an empire across large areas of the Far East.)

Of course, Japan uses three(?) separate writing systems, depdending on the situation, two phonetic and the other symbolic, I think. The most I can (intentionally) write in far-eastern pictograms, however, is the Chinese symbol for China itself (essentially the "our world" representation, 'cos foreign ghosts don't exist ;)).

Entirely alphabetizing Chinese is a godawful idea because scores of characters are pronounced the exact same way. Meaning in Chinese is not carried in the phonetic sounds of a word, but rather in the components of the character. Japanese would have many of the same problems, what with its massive borrowing of Chinese vocabulary. Plus reading page after page of kana would give me quite the headache.

Here's a FAQ on Chinese characters: http://zhongwen.com/faq.htm

We, as a species, have nuclear power, tanks, concrete, and computers. Yet we can't have a god damn language that's easy and makes sense? Even dogs appear to agree on a language. Are we dumber than dogs? The latin languages have genders. Outside of the obvious male/female thing, why the hell would we need genders? Come on. You even have 4 words for "the" in Spanish. We English speakers picked one and stuck with it. The adjectives have to agree with the noun? Why? I think we can figure out how many without all this complex BS. In English, it's 3 red pies. In Spanish, once directly tramslated, it's "3 pies reds". Would "3 pies red" confuse Spanish-speakers? Heck, I'd be satisfied with "3 pie red" or "3 red pie". You get what, what color, and how many. Don't bring up German because I have some bones to pick.

We, as a species, have nuclear power, tanks, concrete, and computers. Yet we can't have a god damn language that's easy and makes sense?

Does seem like a good idea, but ego's get in the way.


Don't bring up German because I have some bones to pick.

Consider

#1 A poll showed 50% of NS General [ those who voted in the nationality poll ] to be German

#2 Anger is a wind which blows out the lamp of the mind.
--Robert Ingersoll

You seem to forget that the very beauty of languages lies in their various forms and their complexity. Their illogicality is the very thing that gives them their mystique. They are as much art as they are tools for communication. It would be interesting to see though the creation of a new language which "makes sense" as you say, perhaps as a new international language (perhaps a heavily modified form of English?).

We were allowed to use them in exams. I had a Congolese (Kinshasa) professor. :P And even for those DELPH (or whatever they were called) exams, they did not fault us when we used them in the oral part of the exam. I wrote both forms in the written.



Personally, I prefer the Belgian forms because that's what I'm used to, and they are much easier to connect in larger numbers. "99" on its own is not difficult, but when it its "999999999," (neuf cent nonante-neuf millions etc vs. neuf cent quatre-vingt-dix-neuf millions etc) nonante just rolls off the tounge and enters my ears much more easily than quatre-vingts.

Bloody hell! I've been learning French on & off for almost 20 years & I've never even been taught the "nonante" etc. Bastards! I've always had to say four twenties, ten and nine. That said, I love the French language. I speak a bit of German too, but nowhere near as much as my French.

Bloody hell! I've been learning French on & off for almost 20 years & I've never been taught the "nocante" etc. Bastards! I've always had to say four twenties, ten and nine. That said, I love the French language. I speak a bit of German too, but nowhere near as much as my French.

Yeah, a lot of people who study French never seem to learn about the alternative forms. Damn France-French and their attempts to suppress the linguistic guerilla!

Viva la résistance!

Yeah, a lot of people who study French never seem to learn about the alternative forms. Damn France-French and their attempts to suppress the linguistic guerilla!

Viva la résistance!
You have probably just given some french purist, somewhere, a heart attack :p

You have probably just given some french purist, somewhere, a heart attack :p

Oh, I do that regulary with my refusal to use "immeuble" in favour of "building." I do say "baladeur," though. *shame*

Oh, I do that regulary with my refusal to use "immeuble" in favour of "building." I do say "baladeur," though. *shame*
Even though I do like shocking them, I still love the pure form French as well. Using the word "opportunite" instead of "occassion" is a lovely way to get them going :)

Yeah, a lot of people who study French never seem to learn about the alternative forms. Damn France-French and their attempts to suppress the linguistic guerilla!

Viva la résistance!

Yes, I learnt quite a few new words when I was in France earlier this year, none of which had ever passed the lips of any of my French teachers. I'll forgive them though, as long as they teach me some of the "unofficial" words when I start lessons again in the new year. I think they feel that they have an obligation to uphold "pure" French around the world. As if Australians are ever going to speak proper French, we love to mangle the English language as it is! :)

Whoever said Finnish is easy to learn is a liar! It has 14 cases, compared to 3 in swedish and 4 in german (nominativ, ackusativ, dativ, genitiv). Finnish sounds cool, but finlandsswedish is way cooler!

I have a thing for conlangs. You know, constructed languages. Like Nadsat from Clockwork Orange or Lojban, the perfectly logical language.
I hope we get a unifying langauge soon(english seems to be on it's way) but I hope the old languages remain too. All the wonderful expressions of other languages... I couldn't live without them.

Wie ein bunter hund : Like a colourful dog - Means "well-known"
Das ist für mich nur Böhmische Dörfer : That's just Böhmish villages for me -Means "I don't understand it"
Han har tomtar på loftet : He has gnomes on the attic - Means "He is nutty"

Just found this classic: :D

The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short).

In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c". Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard "c" will be replaced with "k". Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik emthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced by "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20 per sent shorter.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent "e"s in the languag is disgrasful, and they would go.

By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" by z" and "w" by v

During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou", and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer.

Ze drem vil finali kum tru!

Chinese: The lack of any real alphabet makes this one a nightmare. I mean, each word and sound gets it own little picture? Why not join the party and only require a few dozen? Spanish only has 30 letters. 26 for English. Maybe lower the amount to a thousand?

comments?

Actually Spanish has 26 letters: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, Ñ, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, X, Y, Z. We don't have W but we add the Ñ. Ten years ago, we used to have 28, but in the last reform made by the "Real Academia de la Lengua", Ch and Ll were no longer considered as unique letters.

I believe English also has slight celtic influences.

Actually quite a few - stuff like Bog, Bother, Brat, Clan, Crag, Croon, Jilt, Pet, Slew, Slug, Smiggen, or Swig all come from the Gaelic (in this case more closely related to Scots because of cultural acceptance).

Personally I'm comfortable (can use at the pub) with Scots Gaelic, Irish Gaelic, English, Latin, Old English, and French ~ currently looking into Welsh and German.

ETA - and yes I drink at a pub where all of the above can and will be used :D

Yeah. English originally came from a combination of Anglo-Saxon and Norman French (Germanic and Romance, respectively). True, we do have a hodgepodge of words/phrases lifted from other languages (coup d'etat, tsunami, mosquito) , but these are relatively isolated and not necessary to learn the language. Plus, the majority of other languages do that as well. And as for the Latin grammar thing? Not really. The original (written) Latin language had virtually no grammar. There was no punctuation, no sentences, not even any separation of words. Even when you do divide Latin into words and sentences (which is necessary to learn the language), you use inflections (endings) to derive meaning, unlike English, where syntax (word order) is king. The only word order needed in Latin is that certain words need to be next to each other, and that's it. There is a preferred word order, but as long as you put certain words together and get the inflections right, the meaning is the same.

No grammar? What are you on about?!

In Latin you have:

3 genders of nouns, adjectives and pronouns - masculine, feminine, neuter

5 cases of nouns, adjectives and pronouns - nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative

2 verb voices - active and passive

2 verbal moods - indicative and subjunctive

ridiculously many verb forms - present, imperfect, future simple, future perfect, perfect, pluperfect, imperative, infinitive, gerund, gerundive, participles (present, future and perfect, all of which are found in all genders and cases) - all of which are found in both voices and moods

I agree with the word order thing absolutely, but to claim there's virtually no grammar is beyond ridiculous. I wonder what reaction I'd get if whilst waiting to go into my Latin accidence collection next term I said "hey don't worry guys, Latin has virtually no grammar!" Jeeez....

Yeah. English originally came from a combination of Anglo-Saxon and Norman French (Germanic and Romance, respectively).
Modern English is an amalgamation of Ancient Greek, Latin, Germanic (Saxon, or Anglo-Saxon), Old English, Norse, and early medieval French. Perfectly simple to understand :p

Just learn some easy language... like Swedish or Finnish or Greek...
Say WHAT? Swedish easy?! I'm swedish and I have problems with the mindless grammar. Whoever made some of those rules up should have been shot! I mean you'd expect bokhandel ("bookstore") in plural to be bokhandlare, bokaffärer ("bookstores") or some other sensible plural. But not in swedish, here it's called "bookboxes"! The å's, ä's and ö's also makes it impossible to spell swedish names in english (trust me, I've tried "S...T...R... O with two dots on it... No? Er... Just give me a paper."). At least we don't have any "the"-like words, we add -en and -et instead (which is easier, especially when trying to figure out which wordclass it belongs to).

Say WHAT? Swedish easy?! I'm swedish and I have problems with the mindless grammar. Whoever made some of those rules up should have been shot! I mean you'd expect bokhandel ("bookstore") in plural to be bokhandlare, bokaffärer ("bookstores") or some other sensible plural. But not in swedish, here it's called "bookboxes"!

Va? "En bokhandel, flera bokhandlar." I fail to see what is so irregular about that. "Boklådor" I never use.

Say WHAT? Swedish easy?! I'm swedish and I have problems with the mindless grammar. Whoever made some of those rules up should have been shot! I mean you'd expect bokhandel ("bookstore") in plural to be bokhandlare, bokaffärer ("bookstores") or some other sensible plural. But not in swedish, here it's called "bookboxes"! The å's, ä's and ö's also makes it impossible to spell swedish names in english (trust me, I've tried "S...T...R... O with two dots on it... No? Er... Just give me a paper."). At least we don't have any "the"-like words, we add -en and -et instead (which is easier, especially when trying to figure out which wordclass it belongs to).
You do realise he was being sarcastic, right? Finnish is widely acclaimed to be the hardest language in Europe. Greek, whilst not as difficult as many claim it to be, is rather difficult, mainly as it uses a slightly different alphabet to most European languages. As for Swedish, though I do intend to learn it, I can say little, yet it is definitely not what one would call easy, by any means. Learn to detect sarcasm :p

Modern English is an amalgamation of Ancient Greek, Latin, Germanic (Saxon, or Anglo-Saxon), Old English, Norse, and early medieval French. Perfectly simple to understand :p
Indeed, with a huge portion being based on germanic/norse.

I take spanish for my second lang. Hard as any language. But my 3rd is Arabic...FKING HARD! TOTALLY INSANE! *goes crazy and burns Arabic Textbook, which is also my HEAVIEST one. That really encourages me to take it home and study..*

I've got hebrew as my second language. It's annoying, but at least it's apparently not as illogical as most languages. You get used to the differences in english, I.E. 30 in hebrew literally means threes, 20 is tens. There's a good reason for that last one, but you do need to get used to it when you first learn it.