Is English the most logical language?

danlightbulb said:
That's fair enough. I don't know how far down the list of words the word 'beer' is though. So it's like learning thousands of words when in any situation you might only need a handful. Maybe there is no way around it.



I suppose the ideal situation would be to absorb the language passively over time rather than forcing it.
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I wouldn't treat that list as like a ranking of 1-1000 of the most important being 1 as the MOST important.

The point is learning as many as you can out of that 1000, if you want to rearrange it, go ahead. As that Johnny Harris guy says, it's not Maths, there is no right or wrong. Just start learning and you actually need to memorise stuff the hard way.
 
I will give you an example that I was in this Japanese Yakitori place, a very traditional place where they don't speak English. However I can read some Chinese so I know roughly what I was ordering, however after pointing at the menu of what I want he asked me something but I recognised the word "Tare" and "Shio", which basically mean "Sauce" or "Salt". Base on those 2 words and my knowledge of what Yakitori is I knew he was asking whether I want the meat skewers to have sauce drizzle or salt sprinkled on top.

So I said "Tare".

Job done. I didn't know what the other words he was saying at all. Just the most important ones worked.

And he probably had no idea how LITTLE Japanese i knew but the fact that I answer his question straight away was good enough.


Similarly in reverse, in a Ramen restaurant sometimes you can ask for a disposable bib to protect your clothes. I never asked for one because i had no idea what the word bib is in Japanese.
 
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My example was in Slovak btw but the same applies.

Of course practicing and immersion helps but you just need a bank of words to start learning.

I made a list of Slovak words I have picked up from the Mrs. Helps me communicate with the mother in law.

Hello
Please
Thank you
Big
Small
Beer
Cheese
Sweetcorn
Yes
No
What?
Come here
This way
Stop
That's enough
Help me
Look at that
Beautiful
Horrible
Mosquito
Spectacles
Mask
Jacket
Crisps
Blue
Wallet
Passport
House
Good morning
Good night
Bon appetit
Now
Work
Disaster
Okay
Wedding
Alright

I cannot string a decent sentence together in Slovak, but I can understand things to give me context and I can make blundering 2 or 3 words requests, and for now that's all I need.
 
I've just remembered that back in 2006 I started to learn Italian while I ran to and from work every day using an audio program called Rosetta Stone.
I got quite good and I could hold basic conversations with my Merloni Managers.
In April 2007 they announced the closure of the factory and that was the end of that.
 
Raymond Lin said:
Exactly! And if you are there as a tourist, imagine sitting there mumbling in English, and the barman clearly know you are foreign and going on about in English but don't know what you are saying. If you manage to even say "Pivo", that's good enough for him and he will probably be impressed and glad that you managed it. The fact that you didn't say please is irrelevant at this moment.

If you had known the structure of how to string together a sentence in Polish at a degree level will not help you at all at this point if you didn't know the word for beer.
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I don’t drink beer, but that’s irrelevant, I knew that it was pivo.
When I was in Poland, I developed a taste for vodka, and although my Polish girlfriend chided me for not ordering it correctly, I always got what I wanted in a bar.
She told me the word for double, but I could never remember it, but I knew that duźy was big or large, so I’d ask for duźy wódka prosze, and I’d get a double vodka.
She’d say, “You were close, but not quite right.”
Taking a sip, I’d smile and say, “I got it though didn’t I? You know I love you, can you ask them for some ice, dziękuję bardzo?”
 
Start with days of the week, counting to 20, day, week, month etc
then foods, occasions, body parts
that will do to start with to practice your pronunciation, which is crucial to get right as some words are loooong and tonguetwisting
 
danlightbulb said:
It just feels to me like there should be a better way. Kids don't learn English by reciting lists of words do they. I agree with whoever mentioned immersion but you can't immerse yourself in Polish tv or books without knowing the basics first or it will just sound like garble. Are those words on that list the basic words you would teach a toddler?
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I really don’t understand your expectations. I was relatively fluent in French when I left school. That doesn’t mean I knew all the words, but I could have been a functional member of French society. I learned French from quite a young age, but lots of my classmates learned it for 7 years and were at the same level, some better, some worse, than me. That’s exactly how we started learning - lists of words so that we could begin to recognise the language. That was probably nouns, then we started with verbs and learning how to conjugate them, then aural, then written French.

Unless you’re going for total immersion, it’s going to take years and that’s the long and short of it. Why not get your girlfriend to speak to you in Polish??
 
Going back to 1979 I was pretty good at French and spent 3 months in mid France gigging with my Dad.
One thing most countries do is help you with the language barrier so somebody could come here and we'd help them through a conversation but the French were a pain in the butt.
It was as though if I said anything wrong they wouldn't know what I was on about so for example one day I asked "Avez-vous une bouteille de lemonade" and I just got blank looks. I'd walk around the supermarket asking staff but still got a blank look.
I then found a bottle and she said "Oh limonade".
 
SexyGreyFox said:
Going back to 1979 I was pretty good at French and spent 3 months in mid France gigging with my Dad.
One thing most countries do is help you with the language barrier so somebody could come here and we'd help them through a conversation but the French were a pain in the butt.
It was as though if I said anything wrong they wouldn't know what I was on about so for example one day I asked "Avez-vous une bouteille de lemonade" and I just got blank looks. I'd walk around the supermarket asking staff but still got a blank look.
I then found a bottle and she said "Oh limonade".
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It’s too late now, but you might have had a result if you’d tried, “Est-ce que vous avez du 7 Up ou Sprite?”
Although in saying that, I’ve no idea if Sprite or 7 Up was available in France in 1979.
I’m quite au fait with the language, but I’ve had been inclined to say “Je cherche 7 Up ou Sprite”, (I’m looking for 7 Up or Sprite), but I agree with you, if I heard lemonade, I would have thought ‘this guy wants limonade.”
 
Jean-F said:
but I agree with you, if I heard lemonade, I would have thought ‘this guy wants limonade.”
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it was everything, if I said "Puis-je avoir un croque messeur s'il vous plaît?" they would act as though they hadn't got a clue because I didn't say messieur.
 
Lopéz said:
I cannot string a decent sentence together in Slovak, but I can understand things to give me context and I can make blundering 2 or 3 words requests, and for now that's all I need.
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even if you know the words literal translations or whatever if takes hundreds of hours before your brain can actually process fast enough in real time.

my last partner spoke like 5 languages, her second language was pretty much english, she needed English subtitles for every movie or she just couldn't follow the plot at all.
A new dialect/accent is like a whole new language as far as your brain is concerned it seems, it just doesn't join the dots
 
Jean-F said:
It’s too late now, but you might have had a result if you’d tried, “Est-ce que vous avez du 7 Up ou Sprite?”
Although in saying that, I’ve no idea if Sprite or 7 Up was available in France in 1979.
I’m quite au fait with the language, but I’ve had been inclined to say “Je cherche 7 Up ou Sprite”, (I’m looking for 7 Up or Sprite), but I agree with you, if I heard lemonade, I would have thought ‘this guy wants limonade.”
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He had it right in the first place, although he said lemonade not limonade. You’re taught avoir very early on
 
danlightbulb said:
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.
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No English is bizarre and make it a **** to learn otheres
 
SexyGreyFox said:
it was everything, if I said "Puis-je avoir un croque messeur s'il vous plaît?" they would act as though they hadn't got a clue because I didn't say messieur.
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They would probably be acting, though. French isn't at all tonal, so getting it fairly close to right should be enough to be at least mostly comprehensible.

IME accent is often more of an issue when it comes to English. Someone I know fairly well is from Glasgow. English is their native language but I can often find them hard to understand. Harder than some people for whom English is a foreign language they're not at all familiar with. I would expect the same to be true for French. Maybe your accent was more of an issue than your slightly incorrect French.
 
SexyGreyFox said:
it was everything, if I said "Puis-je avoir un croque messeur s'il vous plaît?" they would act as though they hadn't got a clue because I didn't say messieur.
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They obviously didn’t know you like we know you Foxy, either they didn’t like you, or they didn’t like your Potteries accent, or they got the zig because you said messieur and not m’sieur or monsieur, did any bartender say, “Arrête, vous me rende fou?”
 
Angilion said:
They would probably be acting, though. French isn't at all tonal, so getting it fairly close to right should be enough to be at least mostly comprehensible.

IME accent is often more of an issue when it comes to English. Someone I know fairly well is from Glasgow. English is their native language but I can often find them hard to understand. Harder than some people for whom English is a foreign language they're not at all familiar with. I would expect the same to be true for French. Maybe your accent was more of an issue than your slightly incorrect French.
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Could be right.
Back in 1974 when my Mum and Dad left me at 16 I lived with a Glaswegian and it was hard work, what was harder was a comedian he listened to and I couldn't understand a single word he said while Harry was on the floor crying.
That comedian was Billy Connolly who then started to make his accent more accessible.
 
SexyGreyFox said:
Going back to 1979 I was pretty good at French and spent 3 months in mid France gigging with my Dad.
One thing most countries do is help you with the language barrier so somebody could come here and we'd help them through a conversation but the French were a pain in the butt.
It was as though if I said anything wrong they wouldn't know what I was on about so for example one day I asked "Avez-vous une bouteille de lemonade" and I just got blank looks. I'd walk around the supermarket asking staff but still got a blank look.
I then found a bottle and she said "Oh limonade".
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It is bizarre how mis-pronouncing one syllable in French gets you the blank look. I’ve had the same happen when I’ve used the wrong gender for an item as well.

I was at the recycling centre once and asked the bloke that runs the place which skip to lob some polystyrene packing pieces into.

He didn’t get polystyrene at all, so I said something along the lines of “hard white foam inside the box when you get a new TV” and his face lit up “Ah polysteerene!” and pointed at the correct skip.
 
Blackjack Davy said:
I've heard it said more than once that your native or first language is the language that you think or dream in, I remember the newsreader Huw Edwards saying his thoughts are in welsh he does a sort of internal translation before speaking aloud in english
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i dream in both german (mother tongue) and english as my wife tells me when i'm talking in my sleep :cry::(

also i well jealous of people being fluent in multiple languages and don't seem to have problems switching. when visiting Germany for example i randomly start speaking the wrong language to the wrong person i.e. german to my Mrs :o
 
Terminal_Boy said:
It is bizarre how mis-pronouncing one syllable in French gets you the blank look.
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This is what got me, Angilion mentioned accents but here in Britain we listen to all sorts of accents and mispronounced words but we help the speaker through it and that goes for other countries except for my 3 month experiences in France in Clermont, Limoge & Lyon.
It was as though they all thought "It's a long haired 20 year old Englishman, let's pretend he's thick".
 
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