• khannie@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    2 months ago

    True enough but I feel like English has more quirks than other languages though I acknowledge that may be bias.

    I used to have near fluent Irish way back when and I don’t recall any shenanigans like this (again I acknowledge I may not have been presented with them). I feel like most other languages have a more clearly defined set of pronunciation rules too.

    Irish looks horrific (Siobhán is shiv-awn for example) but very very closely follows pronunciation rules so that pronunciation would be no surprise to a native reading it for the first time. English sure as fuck does not follow rules like that.

    Near. Neat. Book. Boot. Etc.

    (Some small subset of Irish folks do say “boo-k” though)

    • pyre@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      1 month ago

      maybe I should have clarified: not every language has quirks in the same ways. German has weird articles that make no sense. French has different pluralization rules for up to four objects. e: this is probably wrong but there are many languages with different pluralizations for two objects (a dual) and for any number more than two. there are remnants of this in English as well, in words like both, either and neither.

      But even of you just want to think about writing: German makes super long words that look monstrous by mushing words together. French doesn’t pronounce half the letters in its spelling. Arabic doesn’t really have vowels but instead uses diacritics that are often omitted so you have to be really familiar with the language to read at all.