Is English the most logical language?

[danlightbulb]

My girlfriend is Polish so I have just embarked on trying to learn it.

I am faced with the same illogical grammatical structures that I remember back from school when we were forced to learn French and German.

It begs the question to me whether English is by far the best language, and by 'the best', I mean the most easy to understand and construct.

For example, in Polish and in many other languages they have masculine and feminine terms. For some unknown reason to me, in Polish, a horse is masculine and a cow is feminine. Ive just learned that if I wanted to say 'one horse' I would have to say Jeden kon whereas if I wanted to say 'one cow' I would have to say Jedna krowa. How in any possible logical argument can you say that you need two separate words to say the number 'one'? It simply is an unnecessary addition.

Im sure English has its oddities too but to my mind there is certainly no odd/illogical grammatical behaviour.

 

[Dolph]

You're confusing familiarity with ease of learning. English is a horrible language to learn as a non-native speaker because it lacks consistent rules and structure, and even when it seems to have some structure, there's loads of exceptions and special case rules.

The fact that many native speakers lack the ability to use the language, either in spoken or written form, well, speaks volumes for the challenges.

 

[Diddums]

No, logically speaking English is a trainwreck of a language, exacerbated by the many, many variables that alter it further, like the Americans dumbing it down and it being one of the most spoken languages known (second only to Mandarin iirc?).

 

[Feek]

How to spot a non native English speaker.

They can't use 'since' correctly.

"I have been doing this since one year".

 

[M1k3H]

It's not odd, most languages are like that. If you think you struggle, imagine knowing these 'structures' in language A and then realising language B uses the reverse for some words (i.e. in your example, some languages might consider the horse to be feminine). That was my biggest struggle trying to learn french.

You convey a lot more information, not just masculine and feminine, but also plural vs single as well as mixed groups vs female/male groups of something, without actually describing.

Even names are either male and female so again there's very little confusion like 'is X a man or woman?'.

 

[M1k3H]

How to spot a non native English speaker.

They can't use 'since' correctly.

"I have been doing this since one year".

If the Home Office defined native English people by their ability to use the language... the housing crisis would be solved overnight

 

[danlightbulb]

English is a horrible language to learn as a non-native speaker because it lacks consistent rules and structure

In what way does our language lack consistent rules and structure? Obviously I speak it so Im biased, but to me English structure is highly logical.

There is no logic in an inanimate object being male or female.

 

[Feek]

Obviously I speak it so Im biased, but to me English structure is highly logical.

It's highly logical because you speak it. If you didn't, you'd be as confused about it as you are with Polish.

 

[FerretBoy]

Wait, aren't cows female in English and bulls male? Similar to dog and bitch

 

[Lysander]

In what way does our language lack consistent rules and structure?

As one example. The letter 'g' is pronounced like, well, g.

As in golf, glue, grate, glee, glib.

Apart from in the word "gent" where it's pronounced as a 'j'.

Apart from in the words "rough" and "cough" where it's pronounced as an 'f'.

Apart from in the words "light" or "night" where it's not pronounced at all.

 

[danlightbulb]

Wait, aren't cows female in English and bulls male? Like dog and bitch

Thats different. Whilst we can use separate words for some male and female animals, we dont have separate ways of refering to them or counting them. We still say 'one' cow or 'one' bull. And its rare, most animals are simply one word - cat, dog, horse, fish, gerbil.

 

[danlightbulb]

As one example. The letter 'g' is pronounced like, well, g.

As in golf, glue, grate, glee, glib.

Apart from in the word "gent" where it's pronounced as an 'j'.

Apart from in the word "rough" where it's pronounced as an 'f'.

Apart from in the word "light" where it's not pronounced at all.

Ah that is different. Those are separate and independent words, not related to grammar at all. Im referring to how we structure sentences.

 

[alx]

In what way does our language lack consistent rules and structure? Obviously I speak it so Im biased, but to me English structure is highly logical.

There is no logic in an inanimate object being male or female.

Probably the most 'illogical' part is words that sound the same, sometimes even spelt the same, but mean completely different things. Here's some examples: https://www.funny-jokes.com/english..._Words_-_Illogical_Yet_Funny_English_Language

 

[Lysander]

Ah that is different. Those are separate and independent words, not related to grammar at all.

Oh sorry, you said rules and structure, not grammar. But OK.

 

[Blackjack Davy]

No lol. Its as illogical as you can get. If you want something regular and (mostly) logical learn japanese

English spelling is notoriously difficult for foreigners due to spelling largely having remained unchanged despite shifts in vowels and dropping of consonent clusters

Danish is another due to having been ruled by sweden for a long time spelling is like swedish but pronunciation is very difficult so they can read swedish papers but not necessarily converse in it copenhagen is pronounced something like kefnhavn

 

[danlightbulb]

Oh sorry, you rules and structure, not grammar. But OK.

Yeah sentence structure, rather than spelling and pronunciation.

We have, to my mind, a very logical way of constructing sentences.

No lol. Its as illogical as you can get. If you want something regular and (mostly) logical learn japanese

In what way is it illogical?

 

[peterwalkley]

No, logically speaking English is a trainwreck of a language, exacerbated by the many, many variables that alter it further, like the Americans dumbing it down and it being one of the most spoken languages known (second only to Mandarin iirc?).

Very true. Its all because of those dammed invading immigrants: Romans, Vikings, Normans ....

I believe Esperanto is the most logical language having been invented to be easy to learn.

 

[alx]

Yeah sentence structure, rather than spelling and pronunciation.

We have, to my mind, a very logical way of constructing sentences.



In what way is it illogical?

Word order and sentence structure can very significantly and isn't always very logical.

 

[Lopéz]

How to spot a non native English speaker.

They can't use 'since' correctly.

"I have been doing this since one year".

Since and also when it comes to deadlines : By/Until/Before all get used interchangeably, which causes me untold chaos when I'm trying to work out when things are needed by.

Having a Slovak Mrs, and working around the world for many years, has shown me lots of things like this just don't get taught that well when it comes to English.

 

[danlightbulb]

I see our language as like a set of base lego. Our smallest building block for example is the 1x1 lego piece. However other languages their smallest block might be the 2x4 piece, so they then have to have multiple versions of that word to convey the meaning or they cant disagregate the word further, whereas we can simply use our smaller building blocks to construct the right sentence.

Example in English - He is a man.
In Polish - On jest mężczyzna.

Now 'man' in English is mezczyzna in Polish. But Mezczyzna can also mean 'a man' or 'the man' they don't use the 'a' or 'the'.

How about this:

Mężczyzna je jabłko = A man eats an apple OR A man is eating an apple. Je = eating, eats, is eating.

There is not differentiation between past and present tense.

There is no logic there really.