What are the most annoying things about English? (lemmy.xylight.dev)

submitted 1 year ago by Xylight@lemmy.xylight.dev to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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here's some I've noticed:

Why do we have articles? They're mostly useless.
Why do capital letters exist? (this is mainly an issue with the Greek and Latin alphabet though)
Why is "I" used plural for verbs?
Why are there so many inconsistent prefixes for tenses?
's is used for possessives. However, "its" is the possessive and "it's" is not.
Why do we have another set of pronouns for possessive pronouns?
Why do adjectives go before the noun compared to basically every other language?

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[-] freamon@feddit.nl 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

English lets you get away with saying things you don't exactly mean. A lot of the efforts from groups that might be disparaged as 'woke' over preferred terminology exist because it allows for so much ambiguity.

To use a common example: there's a difference between "Group X struggle to get bank loans" and "Banks have consistently not loaned to Group X" in terms of where the fault lies, but because English allows us to use the former to mean the latter, it seems like an imposition to be reminded.

Other languages - e.g. German - don't allow for this: your intended emphasis changes the word order, so you have to think about what you really mean.

[-] XTL@sopuli.xyz 5 points 1 year ago

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Time_Enough_for_Love

In the first place, very little thinking was ever done in English; it is not a language suited to logical thought. Instead, it’s an emotive lingo beautifully adapted to concealing fallacies. A rationalizing language, not a rational one.

[-] freamon@feddit.nl 4 points 1 year ago

That book seems stacked for quotes.

“Son, I hate to say this — because, if you've been reading a lot of English, I see how you reached that opinion — but you are one hundred percent wrong.”

[-] Falmarri@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

let's

[-] freamon@feddit.nl 2 points 1 year ago

Fixed, thanks.

this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023

28 points (80.4% liked)

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