Words that get on your nerves

English is so full of irregularities and inconsistencies, @NigelJ ... it must be well nigh impossible for foreigners to learn. Slink, slunk; blink, blinked; think, thought...

 

Remember the Slinky toy that could go down the stairs?

 

@shiney he only example of "slinked" is from a US newspaper!

@Liriodendron British English has many and varied roots which is why it is so rich and varied in both vocabulary and spelling and also why it can be both so poetic in literature and also so precise in science and technology.

 

Indeed, @Obelix-Vendée . Still a nightmare for foreigners to learn, though...

 

Never learnt another language, but I often wonder if learning a language means following all the rules, I'm sure most of those around here dont know a verb from noun, I dont , but I've never found making myself understood as being a problem, up til now anyway.

In normal language it about being understood and not about following rules.

 

Yes it is and most of these come from the different languages that have gone into English, various Germanic languages from the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, Norman French, Scandavian languages. Latin and more recently Yiddish and Indian; this has resulted in the enormous vocabulary available possibly over 1 million words of which 600,000 are in the OED this enables English to be the most descriptive, precise and accurate language available.

 

@pete It's pretty hard to learn decent French if you don't know a direct object from an indirect object and the difference between an adverb and an adjective. There are agreements and sentence structure involved.

Making yourself understood for basic needs is one thing but having spontaneous, every day conversations is entirely different. Fine for a holiday but not if you want to get to know a country or work or study in another language.

 

You're spot on! We did evening classes for donkey's years after our first holiday over here, but had mostly English native teachers and were rarely given rules to follow. What a difference that would have made! Once we had French teachers and found the right grammar books for us, it all became so much easier. Applying a rule or just learning the exceptions to that rule is so much less memory-consuming than the brain having to remember everything individually and from first principles. As far as accents go, though, it makes all the difference whether your exposure is mainly to the written word or immersion learning where you hear the language spoken and have to reply. At least now there are so many different sources and methods, so one of them is bound to work.

 

The best teacher I never met was Michel Thomas. We bought his Teach Yourself Portuguese tapes about thirty years ago when we were wondering if we might like to live in Portugal. Though we never got beyond learning the language I can still almost understand Portuguese when I hear it spoken. He was a phenomenon.

 

English would be difficult for a foreigner to master; after all most of us natives don't master it. But it's easy to learn to the extent that they can make themselves understood, because the grammar is relatively simple. If a person speaking broken English to you has found the right verbs and nouns, you can normally work out what they are trying to say. And it doesn't matter too much if they get the irregular verbs wrong. In many other languages word order is much more critical, and in some the pitch of your voice will change meaning.

 

They are still sold in great numbers. One of the modern uses for them is to put on the pole of a bird feeder to stop a squirrel accessing it. Have a search for videos of squirrels and slinkies.

 

Half a lifetime ago I learned spoken Mandarin Chinese. Mandarin has five “tones” and, depending on the tone used the meaning of a simple word like “ma” can convey startlingly different messages. For example, I might want to say “I went for a walk with my mother” but, in pitching the word “ma” with the wrong tone I might end up saying “I went for a walk with my horse” or even “I went for a walk with my cannabis plant”. Five tones, is nothing; Cantonese has nine!

 

Years ago, I used to host English Language students who attended the college in town. Mostly French, Spanish, Italian and German.
The evening meal was probably the time when we all sat down together. My African Grey parrot often wandered into the kitchen and enjoyed the attention he always got from the students. Unfortunately, one of his favourite expressions was "Oh sh*t" whenever he dropped something ( nothing to do with me of course ) . Altho I explained what it meant every time and that "Oh bother" was probably a better aternative, I often wonder how many of those students still used that expression on occasion.