Thread: English.... worst language.... ever!

[/quote]
I never studied German but don't you see the rooots "Bundes"(I guess it's kinda "federal"), "doppelt" (kinda "double"), so, menschen - men, Arbeitsmarktreformen - it's clear - "work market reforms", Straße- street, in.[/quote]

Okay, actually I was being a little disingenous when I said I did not have a clue what it said. There are several things in the sentence that I can understand, but I was trying to represent the view of the "man on the street".

I'm not sure the average person would draw those conclusions --in fact, the conclusions come precisely from the fact that you and I (and probably a bunch of the educated folks here) DO know some German words by osmosis and extrapolation from English uses. Look at your examples:

Bundes -- I could have figured out from the old name of Germany (but how many people know that).

Doppelt -- probably could be gotten from "doppleganger" (but how many people know that).

Arbeit -- the "Arbeit" part is not obvious (although related surely to Labor), but a natural source for lots of educated people would be that notorious Nazi phase "Arbeit Macht Mann Frei" (but is that really common knowledge).

Not trying to be a snob here (that was the opposite of my original intent), but my point is we may not be the most representative group when it comes to ability to draw conclusions about ability to decipher languages.

JJ: I can tell you that a German who has never learned English is absolutely unable to unterstand English (the same is true of course for the other direction).
The fact that many words have the same origin does't help very much. You cannot not grasp the sense of whole sentences. The chance to understand some single words my be higher for written texts as dogboy alread mentioned. But nevertheless: An English or German person will not be able to unterstand a text in the other language if he doesn't have any training.
BTW: English has more words of french than of German origin. But the most basic words are nearly all German which makes it near to impossible to build a complete English sentence without using "German" words.
I don't believe that you think that somebody who speaks and understands Englisch can unterstand French?!

OK JJ, smarty pants. Decode this. I bet you never will.

"Lange haben wir rumgezirkelt, um in ehren unter den hammer zu kommen."

The vocabulary is 1st year basic. Sure, u could know everyword, but to udnerstand it you probly have to be a fluent speaker of german. Something your little mathematical equations can't help you with.

And, i'd also like to expand on what texas mark said... Unless you have studied german (which most people havn't) or an ancient language (which most people havn't) which enables you to easily decode roots of words.. YOU CANT JUST UNDERSTAND GERMAN. you can however, understand ukrainian.

Omg for example last night, i know this doesn't prove anything... But a ukrainian friend (2 of them actualyl) came by last night and talked ALL in ukrainian. I understood like 96.547 % of it. Everything he told me from drinking on the sidewalk and the cops came and he said "these bottles arn't mine" and the cops candcuffed him, took his cigarrettes, and then let him go. Plus, he wanted me to watch Бумер, i told him i have it and i have already seen it 5 times. Then he said "Man i speak ukrainian all day, it's wierd to hear a russian accent!"

I no this doesn't prove anything ... but im saying that, and for the last time.

A russian who has know knowledge of ukrainian (or most others slavic langauge) can just go on understanding, without formal much effort.

English V German, or flemmish, or netherlands(langueg name? ? dutch?) on the other hand. Hah, good luck! Even look at swedish. the basics are close to germanic languages, but one from scotland cant just go to sweden and buy a car. It's not possible like it is with slavic language.

That's it, im done !

Of course, some gemanic languages ARE really similar . . Dutch is similar to German and Dutch and Flemmish are the same language (okay, maybe technically different dialects of the same langauge, but the point is that the different names are more political than linguistic). Bit like Hindi and Urdu (but even more similar than those).

Here's my question. Are Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, mutually intelligible to the same degree Danish, Norwegian and Sweedish are? Or are they more like, say, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian (i.e., further apart, but to a varying extent, somewhat guessable)?

-- Mark

Here's my question. Are Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, mutually intelligible to the same degree Danish, Norwegian and Sweedish are?

Yes, and probly more so.

Cool. Good motivation to learn Russian to know that one might get some basic knowledge of other languages chucked in as freebies.

Originally Posted by Dogboy182

OK JJ, smarty pants. Decode this. I bet you never will.

Dogboy, you've lost the matter we started talking about. See:

Originally Posted by Pravit

English is really not a hard language.

Originally Posted by Dogboy182

Yea, that's true pravit.
....
I think i'd rather be russian learning english than english learning russian.
.....
All the german foriegn exchange students said if someone wants, they can get good at english in about a year...

I said and I say it again - the easiness of studing English for German (or for german and imho for romanian language group) students is not a characteristic of English global easiness as a language. I've proved it by the first TexasMark's sentence, he said:

Here's some random German. First line of the main news story today in Die Zeit:....

Now you offer me to translate

I bet you never will.

But it will prove nothing, cause i said I never studied German. From this point our discussion has no sence. Let's stop it, ok? Let's talk about something more interesting.
BTW, about easiness of languages... Do you know that during the WWII in the USSR there were 1.5 - 6 months courses of interpreters from german into russian. Maybe german is easier? Actually, they studied German every day for 10 hours...

This thread is probably already dead. I think we can conclude (1) that some languages are easier than others depending on your first language and target language and (2) no generalizations can be made just because something is in the same language group.

As my final word on the subject, to prove my point in (2) above, rather than give a German quote, how about this one, from another Germanic language:

"F

Dogboy, since you asked
Wissen Sie wo die Schule ist?

German has two words for Eng. "know", kennen you use with people.

I've followed all the answers and posts since now, and here is my opinion.
I've studied languages at the University, and graduated in French - german as second language.
As an italian native speaker, I think that every language is neither easy nor difficult to learn. I think it depends mostly on the commitment and will to learn it, whatever language it is.
By the way, you were talking about similarities between languages of the same ancient origin (german and english, slavic languages, etc.) I have an anecdote about Italian and Spanish.
In Italy, most of the people think spanish is a very easy language because "sounds like" italian. Young students at the University, back when I attended, chose spanish as second or first language in their studies because they were convinced it was "easier" ! I've always thought this is a superficial way to study and a very light motive.
I started to study Spanish too, and I quit afterwards, but I assure you, this language has a lot of grammatical rules as Italian, or French , etc.. The fact of being a language originating from Latin as Italian and French are, doesn't have to be a reason to think it easier to learn than others.
So, if German is similar to English, or Ukrainian to Russian, they all have to be considered as equal and studied with the same seriousness.
Now, trying to learn Russian, I've found out a new world to discover, and I'm really interested in the russian culture.
Anyway, I just wanted to give you a point of view from a non-slavic non-german native speaker...

Ciao
:P

[quote=TexasMark]This thread is probably already dead. I think we can conclude (1) that some languages are easier than others depending on your first language and target language and (2) no generalizations can be made just because something is in the same language group.

As my final word on the subject, to prove my point in (2) above, rather than give a German quote, how about this one, from another Germanic language:

"F

I've loved everything that everyone has written... however:

FRENCH seems to be the hardest language to pronounce...even worse than English! German is phonetic, and both Spanish and Russian seem to be, also.

When it comes to declension steps/styles, etc.....I give the award to Russian.

I just think that words spelled BEAUX, and pronounced bose...and YEUX, pronounced yuh...make a language harder than it should be!

JUST MY OPINION!!!

Dogboy:

Have a look at this for starters: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English

The most famous text in Old English (aka Anglo-Saxon) is probably Beowulf. There is a recent bilingual translation by Seamus Heany that you can probably find at any Barnes and Noble or Borders (probably in poetry or classics). It's a good read, but the Old English part is only barely recognizable as English. (Don't read it aloud in public unless you want someone to think you are one of those Lord of the Rings nerds.)

Middle English (few hundred years later) is a lot easier (although still a challenge). The obvious example there is Chaucer's Cantebury Tales (make sure you aren't reading the modernized version that probably give kids in school).

Fun story -- a friend of mine was interviewing for a job (she's a lawyer) and she had on her resume that she had studied Anglo Saxon at Oxford. The lawyer interviewing her totally floored her by speaking to her in Anglo Saxon (this was at a NYC firm). I've heard of people testing out claimed language skills, but that was something she was not expecting.

I just think that words spelled BEAUX, and pronounced bose...and YEUX, pronounced yuh...make a language harder than it should be!

N.B, language fans: 'Beaux' is not pronounced 'bose' unless followed by a vowel.

In which case, 'boze' is, in fact, a far neater approximation.

So, how is it that 1000 years ago ? english was ... well, not so easy to understand for us "modern" english speakers. But, about 500 years ago or so, its not that bad (like around shakespears time and stuff). What happend in that period ?

Originally Posted by Dogboy182

So, how is it that 1000 years ago ? english was ... well, not so easy to understand for us "modern" english speakers. But, about 500 years ago or so, its not that bad (like around shakespears time and stuff). What happend in that period ?

Short version -- the Norman conquest. That caused a bunch of Romance elements to enter the language and the funky inflections mostly went away. After the sixteenth century, the language sort of settled down a bit (after the Great Vowel Shift) and England became more centralized and powerful which seemed to have the effect of stabalizing the language.

At the risk of raking over old ground (apologies, I'm new to the forum), if someone said 'Kennen Sie....' in Scotland or the very north of England, then there's a good chance they'd be understood. 'Ken' is a Scottish word for 'to know', and still very much in use today among the natives....

At the risk of raking over old ground (apologies, I'm new to the forum), if someone said 'Kennen Sie....' in Scotland or the very north of England, then there's a good chance they'd be understood. 'Ken' is an old Scottish word for 'to know', and still very much in use today among the natives....

Originally Posted by solaris

At the risk of raking over old ground (apologies, I'm new to the forum), if someone said 'Kennen Sie....' in Scotland or the very north of England, then there's a good chance they'd be understood. 'Ken' is an old Scottish word for 'to know', and still very much in use today among the natives....

Sure. Here's another -- my grandmother spoke in Bristol dialect. Here's how she would say "he is in the pub" -- "he'd a bist down th'pub". Obvious German connection there too . . .