Is English the most logical language?

[FoxEye]

The English spelling of this word was originally key, and that's one way to pronounce it even today, an alternative to "qway." Quay comes from the Old North French cai, "sand bank." The change of spelling in the late 17th century was influenced by the modern French spelling quai.

If you pronounce it "kway", people will outright laugh at you. I know this from experience For some reason I didn't encounter this word until late secondary school. When asked to read (to class) from that day's text, I read the word "quay" and pronounced it "kway". Cue riotous laughter from the English teacher and everyone else

I would not say "kway" due to being mentally scarred from that experience

 

[4K8KW10]

"would you please" works fine in that context and is English English. "may you please" presumably works fine in other dialects of English, but it definitely isn't English English.

But "would" is used for future tense in the past which is not what I want to say.

I want to say - can you do it but more politely, since may is the more polite form of can.

 

[Angilion]

But "would" is used for future tense in the past which is not what I want to say.

I want to say - can you do it but more politely, since may is the more polite form of can.

'would' isn't just used for "future tense in the past". 'may' is not just the more polite form of 'can'.

Not in English English, anyway. Maybe those things are true in other dialects. Just like "may you please", which is simply wrong in English English. In English English, "would you" is the more formally polite request for present or future action. Adding "please" would be a slightly clumsy repetition in that context. And "can you" can be very polite. It depends how it's said.

If you pronounce it "kway", people will outright laugh at you. I know this from experience For some reason I didn't encounter this word until late secondary school. When asked to read (to class) from that day's text, I read the word "quay" and pronounced it "kway". Cue riotous laughter from the English teacher and everyone else

I would not say "kway" due to being mentally scarred from that experience

The "kway" pronunciation is a local mistake in some parts of the USA. People unaware of the pronunciation of the word made a guess at pronunciation when reading it and their incorrect guess stuck. In that way it's like Gotham City of Batman fame. It's from Gotham, England. Which is pronouced Goat'em, a smoothing and slurring of Goat Ham.

 

[danlightbulb]

Update on the apps.

Only Duolingo has let me progress beyond the first few days of lessons without a subscription so that's the one I am using at the moment.

The others I liked were Rosetta Stone followed by Babbel and Mondly. But those only provide free access to a couple of lessons then it stops.

I tried learning some word lists but it had no structure to it so it didn't suit me.

 

[finga]

Update on the apps.

Only Duolingo has let me progress beyond the first few days of lessons without a subscription so that's the one I am using at the moment.

The others I liked were Rosetta Stone followed by Babbel and Mondly. But those only provide free access to a couple of lessons then it stops.

I tried learning some word lists but it had no structure to it so it didn't suit me.

why are you doing apps, you have a native speaker.
ask her how to tell her she has nice eyes, nice lips, nice legs etc.
ask her how to say these things:
I have, I want, I need
ask her what the different foods on your plate are called
now use these things with her instead of the english versions, EVERY TIME
This is how you start, and also how you learn the colloquial language

 

[rubberduck]

I heard an alarm going off? Really? If it was off how did you hear it?

Also

Not good = bad
Not bad = good

 

[danlightbulb]

why are you doing apps, you have a native speaker.
ask her how to tell her she has nice eyes, nice lips, nice legs etc.
ask her how to say these things:
I have, I want, I need
ask her what the different foods on your plate are called
now use these things with her instead of the english versions, EVERY TIME
This is how you start, and also how you learn the colloquial language

Yeah doing this too but obviously that approach is quite slow because if we were to talk in Polish the conversation currently wouldnt get past about 10 words.

 

[danlightbulb]

Not good = bad
Not bad = good

I don't know how can you argue these examples aren't logical? NOT is itself a logical operator function.

Speaking in a code form might not be natural but it is implicitly logical.

Out of interest, do foreign language coders code using English based logic?

 

[touch]

I don't know how can you argue these examples aren't logical? NOT is itself a logical operator function.

Speaking in a code form might not be natural but it is implicitly logical.

Out of interest, do foreign language coders code using English based logic?

Logical operators (or any other coding logic) are not using "english-based" logic. Logic is independent from language. The concept that something is equal to something else or not equal to something else exists independently from the language used to describe the concept.

Coding is very similar to learning another language, as it happens. The logical operators in most modern coding don't use English words so you need to translate it anyway, an example:
! means NOT
&& means AND
|| means OR
> means greater than

So when I write a line of code like:
if(a != b && b > c)

I translate that in my head into "if value a is not equal to value b and value b is greater than value c". I presume native speakers of other languages would translate the symbols into their own language when they read/write code.

 

[finga]

Yeah doing this too but obviously that approach is quite slow because if we were to talk in Polish the conversation currently wouldnt get past about 10 words.

Yeah obviously, I think the problem here is you are over reaching.
You are not going to learn polish that well in months, that will take years. Lessons or apps will not get you there quicker, they may help you with pronunciation but parrot method will only enable you to converse as well as a parrot!
Its going to take a looong time, unless youre prepared to move to Poland and be completely immersed in it…
I learnt more Polish drinking vodka with young Polish people than any other method, you could try that

 

[Feef]

I heard an alarm going off? Really? If it was off how did you hear it?

While the example doesn't really work (in the sense that the alarm would be off, not going off), phrasal verbs are one of the most soul destroying things to get your head around in English. They're not exclusive to English by any means, but the sheer number of them, and the frequency with which they're used in everyday speech, drives learners crazy.

To use the above example anyway:

The alarm is going off
I think the milk has gone off
He's gone off to France for the weekend
I've gone off their music
He went off on a tangent (off on, as a bonus)
The heating will go off at 11

If you used "put" or "get" as the verb, there would be many hundreds of meanings to list... But I don't want to go off on one.

 

[danlightbulb]

Logical operators (or any other coding logic) are not using "english-based" logic. Logic is independent from language. The concept that something is equal to something else or not equal to something else exists independently from the language used to describe the concept.

Coding is very similar to learning another language, as it happens. The logical operators in most modern coding don't use English words so you need to translate it anyway, an example:
! means NOT
&& means AND
|| means OR
> means greater than

So when I write a line of code like:
if(a != b && b > c)

I translate that in my head into "if value a is not equal to value b and value b is greater than value c". I presume native speakers of other languages would translate the symbols into their own language when they read/write code.

Ive dabbled with learning some modern programming languages like C, python etc and struggled. Whereas basic languages, eg visual basic in Excel, I've been ok with.

In English we would use a lot of operator type words naturally I think and they stand alone, whereas in other languages they are altered depending on meaning.

 

[FoxEye]

Ive dabbled with learning some modern programming languages like C, python etc and struggled. Whereas basic languages, eg visual basic in Excel, I've been ok with.

In English we would use a lot of operator type words naturally I think and they stand alone, whereas in other languages they are altered depending on meaning.

If anything modern programming languages are easier than ever. Assuming you never have to rely on MS documentation, that is...

But as someone who first dabbled in the 90s when you had to "malloc and free" everything, today you can do so much with quite a lot less code.

And the (very basic) logic @touch was talking about is the same in all of them. The syntax changes a bit but these are fundamental concepts all languages need.

But C isn't a modern programming language. It's positively ancient!

 

[HangTime]

How can a simple 2 letter word 'My' meaning owned or belonging to me, be simpler when made into a 3 letter word? How can a simple 2 letter word 'is', essentially meaning '=', be simpler as a 5 letter word 'estas'?

The problem you have is that there are lots of words, and they can't all be small, because the smaller the words the fewer the permutations.
Hence, I suspect you will find in comparison to other languages a bit of 'swings and roundabouts' - that is, English may look more efficient for some words, but less for others.

 

[XeNoN89]

As someone trying to learn russian I'm going to say no. Russian is extremely difficult to learn and I'm terrible at languages in general, there are lots of odd rules but at least they are consistent. With English there are so many random things all mish mashed together and rules that only apply half the time that it must be a nightmare for foreigners to learn !

 

[SheepBeast]

I haven't read the entirety of the thread up until now but I did read the first several pages. I'm a native English speaker but I also speak Chinese fluently (learned myself as an adult) and I can say with 100% certainty that Chinese is way more logical and simple than English, in terms of sentence structure.

Here is one example to illustrate it - let's look at a pair of sentences in both languages. The first sentences are statements and the second ones are questions.

He went to the library yesterday
Where did he go yesterday?

他昨天去了圖書館 (he yesterday go [completed action marker] library)
他昨天去了哪裡？ (he yesterday go [completed action marker] where?)

As you can see, in Chinese if we want to turn a sentence into a question, all we need to do is to put the question word (in this example it's 哪裏 meaning "where") in the same location in the sentence as the original noun (圖書館 "library") was. But with the English sentence, the entire word order must change, the words "to" and "the" get removed, "went" becomes "go", and a random "did" must be added. It boggles the mind how much more simple Chinese is grammatically when compared to English (or I assume other Indo-European languages).

Of course Chinese can be difficult in terms of pronunciation (as a tonal language, it can be hard for learners whose native language is not also tonal), and memorising thousands of character forms is much harder than learning the 26 symbols of the English alphabet.

 

[alec]

English is a difficult language

It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though

 

[Blackjack Davy]

The "kway" pronunciation is a local mistake in some parts of the USA. People unaware of the pronunciation of the word made a guess at pronunciation when reading it and their incorrect guess stuck. In that way it's like Gotham City of Batman fame. It's from Gotham, England. Which is pronouced Goat'em, a smoothing and slurring of Goat Ham.

Reminds me of the way americans pronounce "buoy" as boo-ey

 

[FoxEye]

I haven't read the entirety of the thread up until now but I did read the first several pages. I'm a native English speaker but I also speak Chinese fluently (learned myself as an adult) and I can say with 100% certainty that Chinese is way more logical and simple than English, in terms of sentence structure.

Here is one example to illustrate it - let's look at a pair of sentences in both languages. The first sentences are statements and the second ones are questions.

He went to the library yesterday
Where did he go yesterday?

他昨天去了圖書館 (he yesterday go [completed action marker] library)
他昨天去了哪裡？ (he yesterday go [completed action marker] where?)

As you can see, in Chinese if we want to turn a sentence into a question, all we need to do is to put the question word (in this example it's 哪裏 meaning "where") in the same location in the sentence as the original noun (圖書館 "library") was. But with the English sentence, the entire word order must change, the words "to" and "the" get removed, "went" becomes "go", and a random "did" must be added. It boggles the mind how much more simple Chinese is grammatically when compared to English (or I assume other Indo-European languages).

Of course Chinese can be difficult in terms of pronunciation (as a tonal language, it can be hard for learners whose native language is not also tonal), and memorising thousands of character forms is much harder than learning the 26 symbols of the English alphabet.

How the heck do people read those characters? I have to press my face up against the screen - they're so tiny! I imagine in hand-written form they're much larger?

But sheesh, unless I change to something like 200% zoom I can't see how you could read that at all. Without getting a massive headache.

e: I don't think white-on-blue helps either...

 

[Raymond Lin]

How the heck do people read those characters? I have to press my face up against the screen - they're so tiny! I imagine in hand-written form they're much larger?

But sheesh, unless I change to something like 200% zoom I can't see how you could read that at all. Without getting a massive headache.

e: I don't think white-on-blue helps either...

When you read enough of them and used to them, you just know by the outline, it’s almost like the whole phenomenon where you can wirte a wohle snetnece and at a glnace wihle raednig it qucikly sitll konw waht I am wirting.

Your brain fills in the rest, the rest as in how the word is written because you would have that memorised.

You don’t read a word by reading every single letter, you read the word as a whole, as a singular object, you know the start and finish and roughly the length and your brain knows roughly the characters in the middle. It’s like that.

In school we have “spelling” exams, a teacher read a passage and you write…too slow and you are stuffed. There is no way to spell except memorise it all. So you just get to know the words quite well and sometimes when you see half a word you anticipate the next one so if the next one fits roughly the right shape your brain says “yes” and you keep going, at very fast rate.