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   MaddieTaylor (madelainetaylor@mastodon.scot)'s status on Friday, 21-Apr-2023 21:54:44 JST MaddieTaylor

   in reply to

   • Stories and Folklore

   @wihtlore @languagelovers @oldenglish @histodons @anglosaxon I'm not sure english is the only language like this... If you only learn a language by speaking and listening rather than in an education setting you'd probably be confused in any language... If you wrote "because the green glass" the way you hear it in french you'd probably get something like "Pasker le vare vare" Which is nowhere near right ?

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     Stories and Folklore (wihtlore@thefolklore.cafe)'s status on Friday, 21-Apr-2023 21:54:46 JST Stories and Folklore

     Quite and interesting article:

     English speakers know that their language is odd. So do people saddled with learning it non-natively. The oddity that we all perceive most readily is its spelling, which is indeed a nightmare. In countries where English isn’t spoken, there is no such thing as a ‘spelling bee’ competition. For a normal language, spelling at least pretends a basic correspondence to the way people pronounce the words. But English is not normal.

     #histodons #AngloSaxon #AngloSaxons #OldEnglish

     @languagelovers
     @oldenglish
     @histodons
     @anglosaxon

     https://getpocket.com/explore/item/english-is-not-normal

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     MaddieTaylor (madelainetaylor@mastodon.scot)'s status on Friday, 21-Apr-2023 21:56:40 JST MaddieTaylor

     • Stories and Folklore
     • goatsarah

     @goatsarah @wihtlore Well, Portuguese would be a good way to back up the premise... French counters it and Finnish ends it. (that last one was a poor joke... I shall get my coat ? )

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     Ghost of Hope (grayface_ghost@tech.lgbt)'s status on Friday, 21-Apr-2023 22:01:42 JST Ghost of Hope

     • Stories and Folklore
     • goatsarah

     @goatsarah @madelainetaylor @wihtlore I'm pondering Japanese now, for... reasons. Basically spelling is either perfectly phonetic (hiragana, katakana) or ideographic so the question makes no sense so I don't know why I'm pondering it at all!

     I always thought the hardest thing about learning English would be its excessive reliance on idiom.

     Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra, an' all that

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     Ghost of Hope (grayface_ghost@tech.lgbt)'s status on Friday, 21-Apr-2023 22:18:38 JST Ghost of Hope

     • Stories and Folklore
     • goatsarah

     @goatsarah @madelainetaylor @wihtlore You may have explained better ;)

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     Ghost of Hope (grayface_ghost@tech.lgbt)'s status on Friday, 21-Apr-2023 22:19:35 JST Ghost of Hope

     in reply to

     • Stories and Folklore
     • goatsarah

     @madelainetaylor @goatsarah @wihtlore I've never studied English grammar really. Got an A at O level but that was basic stuff back then.

     I'm glad I learned it by the "modern method" of immersion!

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     MaddieTaylor (madelainetaylor@mastodon.scot)'s status on Friday, 21-Apr-2023 22:19:36 JST MaddieTaylor

     in reply to

     • Stories and Folklore
     • goatsarah
     • Ghost of Hope

     @grayface_ghost @goatsarah @wihtlore Might May have made the effort to explain better?

   • Embed this notice
     MaddieTaylor (madelainetaylor@mastodon.scot)'s status on Friday, 21-Apr-2023 22:24:10 JST MaddieTaylor

     in reply to

     • Stories and Folklore
     • goatsarah
     • Ghost of Hope

     @grayface_ghost @goatsarah @wihtlore Yeah english grammar wasn't taught when I was in school... I never learned what a colon was let alone the various tenses. Most ESL teachers I know had no clue and kept cheat sheets handy when they were teaching.

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 21-Apr-2023 22:35:29 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Stories and Folklore

     @wihtlore @languagelovers @oldenglish @histodons @anglosaxon according to Wikipedia, there are spelling bees in Dutch, Hindi, and Bangla.

     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_bee?wprov=sfla1

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     MaddieTaylor (madelainetaylor@mastodon.scot)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 02:26:22 JST MaddieTaylor

     • Stories and Folklore
     • goatsarah

     @goatsarah @wihtlore French is weord. It's one language that was entirely, deliberatley, created by scholars rather than mixing and merging and developing into what it is, it's heavily monitored and protected by the dept of language and yet it still kinda sucks to learn.

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     Ghost of Hope (grayface_ghost@tech.lgbt)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 02:27:46 JST Ghost of Hope

     • goatsarah

     @goatsarah I don't think Ancient Hebrew or Aramaic had the subjunctive.

     Which is kinda interesting if I'm right given the Gospels are Koine Greek (which had it, I think) accounts of things said probably in Aramaic. I'd ask a couple of friends who would know, but I've had two hours sleep and I'm up early to fly down your general direction tomorrow for a few days away from Terf Island (yay) and I'm not starting a theology debate right now :)

     Actually sod it let's find out...

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     Ghost of Hope (grayface_ghost@tech.lgbt)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 03:13:02 JST Ghost of Hope

     • goatsarah

     @goatsarah I'm not surprised from what I know of português, but thanks for the confirmation.

     I'd have been thrown a bit sideways if it didn't because Koine had it and the Gospel writers used it here. Romance languages translated it that way - via the Vulgate although that's not an issue here - correctly to textual source.

     But the "fun" bit for Christians of a... let's just say slightly orthodox-wise of an esoteric persuasion, is... what did Jesus actually say given he was almost certainly saying it in a language that had no subjunctive?

     The theological bit of my brain is screaming BIAS just asking the question.

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