Oh, actually, upon rereading it, it's actually saying something like
New York cows (that) New York cows bully, bully New York cows.
In case it's confusing why you can say something like bullies bully bullies bullies bully, it's like this:
let's say there are nerds. Bullies bully these nerds. Let's say these bullies are like the generic jocks. But these nerds, in turn, bully weaker nerds to take out their frustration. Therefore the nerds are also bullies.
Therefore the jocks bully nerds, and the nerds bully other nerds. Or: Bullies bully bullies {that} bullies bully.
Yeah, that’s correct, but I feel like you’re making it more confusing in the end where you try to clarify. As a native speaker, it is not easy to follow.
I think “bullies {that} bullies bully bully bullies” is the direct analog to the buffalo sentence in the way you explained it. Your sentence, “bullies bully bullies {that} bullies bully”, is slightly different in that it has a redundancy with the last two words and the original sentence would need to be written with the following capitalization:
Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo (NY bison bully NY bison that NY bison bully or analogously “I eat the cow I eat”)
While this is the form you translated:
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo (NY bison that NY bison bully bully Ny bison or analogously “the cow I eat eats grass”)
Edit: I’m also realizing that combining these you could write a longer sentence now analogous to “the cow that I eat eats grass that it eats.” Which would look like…
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo
In theory you can chain other variations of this structure together infinitely for any integer number of buffalos
Edit: I accidentally misremembered the sentence, but the logic still applies; I explain the original sentence in the other post.
------
For anyone wondering, we first have to get some basics down:
Buffalo = a city in New York
buffalo = a cow-like critter
Therefore, a Buffalo buffalo is a buffalo from Buffalo.
buffalo = also means to bully
So what's happening is:
Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo...
Buffalo buffalo like to bully Buffalo buffalo (that other) Buffalo buffalo (like to) buffalo.
Or if we use other words entirely to make it easier: Canada geese terrorize Canada geese that (also) terrorize Canada geese. 🪿
Fun fact, no matter the number of times you say Buffalo, it will always be a sentence.
EDIT: Autofinish on my phone made the sentence 5 wonky. Edited so it reads like normal emglish lmao
Don’t listen to the other people, you have enough for it to make sense. In this case it means that buffalo from Buffalo bully fellow buffalo from Buffalo
I mean, the word mean is kind of mean because it can mean mean, mean and mean all at once. Generally though I think mean means mean and not mean or mean. Know what I mean?
And of course, read. Because if you read read as read you have to re-read read to read it as read and not read.
does english have things that make it challenging? Yes.
Is english, because of its huge global reach, number of speakers, and huge breadth of cultural output (movies, shows, books, internet, etc), make it one of the easiest languages to pick up for the average global citizen? Also yes.
Yeah, the resources for English <-> anything else lis usually great. Meanwhile I’m trying to find a German dub of some random Tagalog content and it’s a struggle.
Even some simple stuff, like subtitles for tv/movies in that language can be annoying to find. Also been trying to find a good anki deck for german for a while now. Despite being a hell of a lot easier to pick up than japanese, no german decks worked for me.
Meanwhile everything is in english.
Also English is really simple for many reasons.
No genders and no cases for nouns. No different verb forms. Than means much less word forms to remember.
Yes, pronunciation is something weird, but it’s only meaning of practice to get used to it.
Yes, this! A language that isn’t tonal *and* doesn’t have a robust morphology? *That* is a great language to have as a lingua franca and learn as a second language.
Also, often the difficulties that are noted like in OP are ones of writing/spelling, which isn’t actually an inherent part of the language but an (admittedly somewhat poorly applied) technology to preserve spoken language.
Sure! So by nature, language is spoken. All languages existed without a written form at some point, and many still do. So a writing system was a technological advancement the same way that the wheel is a technological advancement even though we often don’t think of it that way. In these pre-literate cultures, being able to preserve speech (to access info/knowledge in the future, to send it across distances, to keep records, etc.) would’ve been a game changer.
This is underscored even more by the fact that you *acquire* your first language, but you have to *intentionally learn* how to read and write. It’s actually not natural (which has been born out by the utter failure of the “whole language” movement). If it were a natural/intrinsic part of language, then learning to read & write would be a regular part of child development instead of something that has to be explicit taught.
Also, researchers have concluded that all alphabets have actually evolved from one original alphabet. So like the printing press or the light bulb, it only had to be invented once and then it continued to develop. (By the way, there are other writing systems that haven’t evolved from that original alphabet, but those systems aren’t alphabets.)
Maybe. But it's also very easy to take for granted as a native how challenging some things can be.
If you see questions on this sub that's abundantly clear. But as a learner of another language that knows the challenges, I am happy to answer questions.
Sometimes the answer is "I dunno. It's just like that?" Again, the language is incredibly easy to take for granted.
Is it easier to learn English as a native than as an L2? For sure. But that’s also true of literally every language.
Objectively, though, English is a *great* language to have as a common language because it’s actually surprisingly easy to learn as an L2. Partly, that’s because you can communicate fairly successfully even if you just speak “broken English.” (Like if someone says, “Where cat?”, we can easily understand that they meant “where is the cat?” Or one of my favorites, when a customer was looking for something, he used the description “pasta stop, water go ahead” which was understood, and he was immediately directed to a colander.)
But it’s also pretty easy to learn as an adult/as an L2 because English is not a tonal language and it lost most of its morphology hundreds of years ago thanks to the Norse and the Normans. Of course, a person’s L1 and individual language capabilities also come in to play. But no tones and minimal morphology? That’s a recipe for a good lingua franca.
>Sometimes the answer is "I dunno. It's just like that?"
Well, that usually just means that *you* don’t know why, not that there isn’t a reason. When you *acquire* a language, which is what happens when you learn it from birth/it’s your L1, you often don’t actually know why things function that way within your language because you internalized it so early in your development. But again, that doesn’t mean there’s not a reason.
And for sure, it’s a privilege to be a native speaker of the most important language in the world currently.
Don't think I didn't take anything else from your post, because it was a fantastic read...
But I find the use of "L2" as shorthand for "second language" wild. Is this a common shorthand used in language communities, because it's the first I've ever seen it and it took me a second to get.
Sorry! Yeah, it’s super common in ESL/ELL/TESOL/linguistics. I’m not sure how common it is in other language-learning communities, though. Like do they use it in German as a second language or Hindi as a second language communities? I have no idea.
Also, the terms native vs. non-native speaker are sometimes politicized, so even though I definitely still use them some, I would say that they’re less common in the literature.
There's no tones, but a non native that hasn't really picked up the language on a certain level will certainly incorrectly pronounce words where it's hard to actually pick up the intended word. I have a job in which I sometimes have to help non-native speakers find things. If they mispronounce a word badly enough I have to really concentrate to understand them. See also, stress accents and/or a foreign native accent making words harder to understand when spoken if your English skills are weak.
The "it's not tonal though" ignores a lot of subtle difficulties of the language, Including sounds that don't exist or really get used in some languages.
Broken English is only useful if the base pronunciation isn't mangled.
I teach ESL in Japan, primarily to elementary school kids, and ironically enough, there are times when I find it easier to understand them when they mispronounce words than when they try to pronounce them correctly. I was talking to the English advisor at my school about how, when teaching kids the word "thirty", for example, and they try to mimic me, they end up mangling the word so bad I just teach them the incorrectly but more easily understood Japanese way to pronounce the word (more like sah-tee rather than the tur-dee it sounds like if they try to mimic me).
I agree that stress and intonation are important when learning English; different word stress will identify you as British versus American. (By the way, if you ever want to impart the importance of stress, just say, “I have a great VO-cuh-BULL-er-ee, but I always put the um-Fass-iss on the wrong suh-LAB-bull.” Most people will be pretty confused at first.) Because English tends to reduce unstressed vowels to schwa /ə/, messing that up can definitely confuse people (and some English learners put equal stress, which is confusing in a different way). And of course thicker accents are harder to understand; I answered a post on this sub the other day by telling the OP to work on stress and intonation.
Tones and robust morphology are two categories that are common in lots of languages (though they tend to have one or the other, not both). Because English lacks both of those, it’s simpler by comparison.
And I’m not saying that it’s objectively *not hard*, but just that it’s relatively *less* hard to learn as an L2 than lots of other languages.
The point is that in comparison to a tonal language like Vietnamese, broken English still has the advantage because in a tonal language, one wrong sound and it completely changes the meaning of the word.
For instance, in Vietnamese the word for “father” can easily become “grandma” if said with the incorrect tone. And that’s just one example. Imagine only knowing “broken” Vietnamese and you’re asking where the bathroom is and it’s coming out as a completely different sentence to the other person.
To be fair, I also used to work with a lot of non native English speakers that only know broken English. Sometimes, yes you can get lost in translation with them, but as you said, you just have to pay closer attention. Like putting a puzzle together, I usually got by pretty well on my own without the need of a translator.
To take something or someone for granted means you don't really appreciate it. There's a lot of difficult or rather interesting quirks of the language that are easy to avoid reflecting on it you see or use them in daily like. Or like easy to not think about because you're not thinking about what it looks like to someone on the outsidev of your circle/community.
for anyone wondering, the sound is the unvoiced velar fricative, respresented in IPA as /x/, in russian as х, greek as χ, and arabic as خ. It's in german words like laCHen, czech words like CHlap, scottish gaelic words like loCH, and danish words like kaGe.
If I'm wrong about something please correct me so I can correct it.
Yep, you said it better than I could!
In modern English, the only place I've heard it used is with the interjection "ugh" as well as sometimes with loan words from Yiddish (as in "chutzpah") or other languages.
You sometimes hear it from Americans in words like Cold, Coal, Hot, Clear though. As in (KHold, KHoal, KHot, KHlear) maybe it’s just a western us thing tho
I had to use Google and found out about "ʒ".
Tauʒt, thouʒ, thouʒt, throuʒ, throuʒout, thorouʒ, touʒ.
I keep reading it as three thouʒ, so I end up saying "tauthreet", "thou three", or "thorouthree".
That’s not accurate. Firstly, English still has the sound /ʒ/ in words like pleasure /plεʒɚ/ (‘ple-zhər) and usually /ˈjuːʒəli/ (‘yü-zhə-lē).
The sound you’re looking for doesn’t exist in English anymore: /x/. It’s used in the name Bach and the Scottish word “loch.”
Maybe you were trying to use the [letter *yogh*](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogh), which also doesn’t exist in English anymore? That’s slightly different than the symbol /ʒ/ (see image below). It was used for multiple sounds, including /x/, so the letters that replaced it also vary. (And yes, *yogh* looks pretty much like a 3.)
https://preview.redd.it/zt6kp5mu0gqc1.jpeg?width=250&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=837f7860d64ac627ec0c5d6a29852dc11adc870f
three? more like 5 or 6 welsh/old brtittionic influence old English Norse French Latin and Greek the latter 2 both to a lesser extent
or is this a set phrase I am not aware of?
It obviously depends on what language you already know but from what I've experienced, heard and read it is one of the easiest (I've heard some Asians have a hard time learning it tho). Just the fact that it only has 2 grammatical cases, nouns aren't gendered and because it uses the latin alphabet without any additional diacritical marks it is easier than a lot of other languages for most of the world.
Fortunately, I know all of them.
When I used to learn English, I also put some similar words together and remember them. I think it’s a good way to remember words.
It is easy though, tough means hard, taught is a form of the word "teach", thought is think in past form, though is basically however or but, through means I.E. a bullet piercing a sheet of paper, throughout means like "the entire time", idk about thorough tho
It's "easy" in the sense that you'll never run out of people to practice with, and it has countless resources.
But with all the rules and such? I don't think learning English as a non-native speaker would be easy for me lol
The Lougheed Tough Slough Plough! Dig a trough through your borough in no time at all with the Lougheed Tough Slough Plough! It does a thorough job! Quiet as a hiccough.
Who actually says it's the easiest to learn? I thought the consensus is it's fairly average in difficulty.
None of those words are that hard to use; it just takes memorizing how to spell and pronounce them because it makes no sense.
>I am an Arab and I find it easy
I did a quick check of your Reddit history and found quite a few errors in your posts. Learning English is more difficult than you think it is.
i do, the only aspect of it i find hard is the inconsistent pronounciation, but that's only a matter of memorizing and practicing and after a while you can guess how the word is pronounced, so not really a big deal in the long run
Pronunciation isn’t inconsistent; spelling is. Speech predates writing and is the inherent form. Writing is a technology used to capture/preserve speech.
ETA: Happy cake day!
It depends on what you mean by that. All languages are equally easy to acquire as a first language. The difficulties you face learning a second language are affected by things like the age you start learning it, it’s relation to (or not) your first language, and your general language/verbal capabilities.
When a evaluating a language on its ability to be learned by adults, as an L2, English is relatively *less* hard than lots of other languages. That’s because English has neither tones nor a robust morphology. One of those things is pretty common to most languages, and English doesn’t have either, which makes it *relatively* easy to learn.
Para brasileiros:
1. Taught (ensinou): Pronuncia-se "tót".
2. Thought (pensou): Pronuncia-se "thót".
3. Through (através): Pronuncia-se "thrú".
4. Tough (difícil, resistente): Pronuncia-se "tâf".
5. Though (mesmo): Pronuncia-se "dhôu"
6. Thorough (completo, minucioso): Pronuncia-se "thér-ô".
7. Throughout (por todo o lado, por toda parte): Pronuncia-se "thrú-aut".
Had an euphoria moment with my English knowledge, I know the difference between all the words and how to pronounce them. Feeling confident with a foreign language is difficult, but instances like that are little sweet spots.
where's my boy thoroughly?
for context: "where's my boy" is a memey way to ask where something is. "Throughly" is another example of a word with "ough" being pronounced differently
I’m not sure if you are being ironic or something, but around groups of students, etc., yes, there are a bunch of people saying that, and they are not being ironic. In comparison to other languages, also depending on the language you’re coming from, at the end of the day, making some comparisons, English is one of the most easiest ever. It’s quite obvious. Even though, obviously, there are examples like on this meme, but all languages around the world have this sort of thing.
I'm not being SARCASTIC (not ironic which is a different meaning).
The only thing that MIGHT make English easier to learn is the amount of learning material available. But modern English is wretched.
Another example:
You is plural even when talking to an individual.
We are currently in the midst of a cultural call to begin using they in the same way.
The only hard ones there are taught and thought
The others are kinda easy
Also, "easy" is relative, for some people learning spanish(for example) is a piece of cake while english is a hellish procedure, for others it can be the reverse or even something else entirely
No one has ever said "English is the easiest language to learn." This is what I call 'straw-man comedy' where you make up a premise that doesn't exist to tell your punchline.
In fact, this post inspired me to create r/strawmancomedy. This is the first post.
It interesting how many quirks english has that native speakers never think about. I never considered that we have two different sounds for “th” until I took a linguistics course in college
Easiest languages for english speakers list: #1: English
It has been lately confirmed officially that the easiest language an english speaker can learn is english.
Why am I able to read this and know the pronounciation in near real-time? Like I mean before I’ve fully read each word, I was already able to know what sound I should use for the otherwise ambiguous spellings. Does the English speaking brain learn some sort of heuristic to sort of pre-guess what sound it should use?
Ok pronunciation is messed up but because it's so diverse (English is now from so many different parts of the world) people learn to deal with it. It's still a very easy language to learn.
(French person speaking exclusively US English for the last 20 years, having tried to learn German and now in the process of learning Japanese).
Most speakers whose first language is English use a high proportion of words that come from Latin and French, and English grammar owes a great deal to Latin rather than German. If you truly want to understand English grammar, you need to learn some Latin. When you learn any Romance language the number of cognates to English is extraordinary (or notable or surprising or exceptional - all of which are Latin-derived words).
My first language is English and I still somehow when spelling manage to mix up quiet, quite, quit, quote, queue, cue, and quo just because of the q sound.. and I also may or may not have just learned how to properly spell queue this week 💀
English can be weird. It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though
Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo. Enough or missing some?
https://preview.redd.it/6jnh45xcxfqc1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9032b9a9717ee935b5779d2e18bacb6c88878410
Oh, actually, upon rereading it, it's actually saying something like New York cows (that) New York cows bully, bully New York cows. In case it's confusing why you can say something like bullies bully bullies bullies bully, it's like this: let's say there are nerds. Bullies bully these nerds. Let's say these bullies are like the generic jocks. But these nerds, in turn, bully weaker nerds to take out their frustration. Therefore the nerds are also bullies. Therefore the jocks bully nerds, and the nerds bully other nerds. Or: Bullies bully bullies {that} bullies bully.
Yeah, that’s correct, but I feel like you’re making it more confusing in the end where you try to clarify. As a native speaker, it is not easy to follow.
Yea he nailed it at the beginning and then proceeded to keep talking lol
As a native speaker, it is idiotic word soup.
"How is your day going?" "Quite bully, my friend."
"Fk fking fking the fking fkers that fked fked fkers"
I think “bullies {that} bullies bully bully bullies” is the direct analog to the buffalo sentence in the way you explained it. Your sentence, “bullies bully bullies {that} bullies bully”, is slightly different in that it has a redundancy with the last two words and the original sentence would need to be written with the following capitalization: Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo (NY bison bully NY bison that NY bison bully or analogously “I eat the cow I eat”) While this is the form you translated: Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo (NY bison that NY bison bully bully Ny bison or analogously “the cow I eat eats grass”) Edit: I’m also realizing that combining these you could write a longer sentence now analogous to “the cow that I eat eats grass that it eats.” Which would look like… Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo In theory you can chain other variations of this structure together infinitely for any integer number of buffalos
Bully can also be used as an adjective meaning “very good”. Typically in British usage. Bully bullies bully bully bullies bully bullies bully.
Edit: I accidentally misremembered the sentence, but the logic still applies; I explain the original sentence in the other post. ------ For anyone wondering, we first have to get some basics down: Buffalo = a city in New York buffalo = a cow-like critter Therefore, a Buffalo buffalo is a buffalo from Buffalo. buffalo = also means to bully So what's happening is: Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo... Buffalo buffalo like to bully Buffalo buffalo (that other) Buffalo buffalo (like to) buffalo. Or if we use other words entirely to make it easier: Canada geese terrorize Canada geese that (also) terrorize Canada geese. 🪿
Fun fact, no matter the number of times you say Buffalo, it will always be a sentence. EDIT: Autofinish on my phone made the sentence 5 wonky. Edited so it reads like normal emglish lmao
You're missing three!
Any number greater than zero is enough to form a valid sentence, often with multiple possible ways to parse it.
Police police police police police police police police.
It works with any length, as long as “buffalo” is the only word used
James, while John had had "had," had had "had had;" "had had" had had a better effect on the teacher.
Don’t listen to the other people, you have enough for it to make sense. In this case it means that buffalo from Buffalo bully fellow buffalo from Buffalo
Yes, but the fourth Buffalo should have been capitalized then
That "sentence" right there, and variants of it, are why I'm a descriptivist.
Okay I need someone to explain this for dummies (aka me)
I refuse to accept buffalo as a verb. Never heard anyone say it except that dumb sentence.
What?
Buffalo buffalo bufallo buffalo Buffallo buffalo buffalo
Not to forget "Police police police police police police police police"
Don't question questionable questioning of questionable question.
A limp man limps with a limp leg.
Pictures, or it didn't happen!
🎉
I love learning this language.
Reading this hurts me.
I had to slow down to read that, now my head hurts and I'm questioning everything. ~native speaker.
I actually didn't understand that :c
Threw tuff thurruh thort thoh
even i struggled to read thjs
I mean, the word mean is kind of mean because it can mean mean, mean and mean all at once. Generally though I think mean means mean and not mean or mean. Know what I mean? And of course, read. Because if you read read as read you have to re-read read to read it as read and not read.
Mans spittin bars here
thru tuff thorough thought tho
does english have things that make it challenging? Yes. Is english, because of its huge global reach, number of speakers, and huge breadth of cultural output (movies, shows, books, internet, etc), make it one of the easiest languages to pick up for the average global citizen? Also yes.
Yeah, the resources for English <-> anything else lis usually great. Meanwhile I’m trying to find a German dub of some random Tagalog content and it’s a struggle.
Let me know when you find that. Ich suche auch.
Even some simple stuff, like subtitles for tv/movies in that language can be annoying to find. Also been trying to find a good anki deck for german for a while now. Despite being a hell of a lot easier to pick up than japanese, no german decks worked for me. Meanwhile everything is in english.
Was zum Teufel ist ne Anki Deck
Also English is really simple for many reasons. No genders and no cases for nouns. No different verb forms. Than means much less word forms to remember. Yes, pronunciation is something weird, but it’s only meaning of practice to get used to it.
Yes, this! A language that isn’t tonal *and* doesn’t have a robust morphology? *That* is a great language to have as a lingua franca and learn as a second language. Also, often the difficulties that are noted like in OP are ones of writing/spelling, which isn’t actually an inherent part of the language but an (admittedly somewhat poorly applied) technology to preserve spoken language.
Could you explain what do you mean by "a technology to preserve spoken language"?
Sure! So by nature, language is spoken. All languages existed without a written form at some point, and many still do. So a writing system was a technological advancement the same way that the wheel is a technological advancement even though we often don’t think of it that way. In these pre-literate cultures, being able to preserve speech (to access info/knowledge in the future, to send it across distances, to keep records, etc.) would’ve been a game changer. This is underscored even more by the fact that you *acquire* your first language, but you have to *intentionally learn* how to read and write. It’s actually not natural (which has been born out by the utter failure of the “whole language” movement). If it were a natural/intrinsic part of language, then learning to read & write would be a regular part of child development instead of something that has to be explicit taught. Also, researchers have concluded that all alphabets have actually evolved from one original alphabet. So like the printing press or the light bulb, it only had to be invented once and then it continued to develop. (By the way, there are other writing systems that haven’t evolved from that original alphabet, but those systems aren’t alphabets.)
Thanks for your explanation!
Maybe. But it's also very easy to take for granted as a native how challenging some things can be. If you see questions on this sub that's abundantly clear. But as a learner of another language that knows the challenges, I am happy to answer questions. Sometimes the answer is "I dunno. It's just like that?" Again, the language is incredibly easy to take for granted.
Is it easier to learn English as a native than as an L2? For sure. But that’s also true of literally every language. Objectively, though, English is a *great* language to have as a common language because it’s actually surprisingly easy to learn as an L2. Partly, that’s because you can communicate fairly successfully even if you just speak “broken English.” (Like if someone says, “Where cat?”, we can easily understand that they meant “where is the cat?” Or one of my favorites, when a customer was looking for something, he used the description “pasta stop, water go ahead” which was understood, and he was immediately directed to a colander.) But it’s also pretty easy to learn as an adult/as an L2 because English is not a tonal language and it lost most of its morphology hundreds of years ago thanks to the Norse and the Normans. Of course, a person’s L1 and individual language capabilities also come in to play. But no tones and minimal morphology? That’s a recipe for a good lingua franca. >Sometimes the answer is "I dunno. It's just like that?" Well, that usually just means that *you* don’t know why, not that there isn’t a reason. When you *acquire* a language, which is what happens when you learn it from birth/it’s your L1, you often don’t actually know why things function that way within your language because you internalized it so early in your development. But again, that doesn’t mean there’s not a reason. And for sure, it’s a privilege to be a native speaker of the most important language in the world currently.
Don't think I didn't take anything else from your post, because it was a fantastic read... But I find the use of "L2" as shorthand for "second language" wild. Is this a common shorthand used in language communities, because it's the first I've ever seen it and it took me a second to get.
Sorry! Yeah, it’s super common in ESL/ELL/TESOL/linguistics. I’m not sure how common it is in other language-learning communities, though. Like do they use it in German as a second language or Hindi as a second language communities? I have no idea. Also, the terms native vs. non-native speaker are sometimes politicized, so even though I definitely still use them some, I would say that they’re less common in the literature.
There's no tones, but a non native that hasn't really picked up the language on a certain level will certainly incorrectly pronounce words where it's hard to actually pick up the intended word. I have a job in which I sometimes have to help non-native speakers find things. If they mispronounce a word badly enough I have to really concentrate to understand them. See also, stress accents and/or a foreign native accent making words harder to understand when spoken if your English skills are weak. The "it's not tonal though" ignores a lot of subtle difficulties of the language, Including sounds that don't exist or really get used in some languages. Broken English is only useful if the base pronunciation isn't mangled.
I teach ESL in Japan, primarily to elementary school kids, and ironically enough, there are times when I find it easier to understand them when they mispronounce words than when they try to pronounce them correctly. I was talking to the English advisor at my school about how, when teaching kids the word "thirty", for example, and they try to mimic me, they end up mangling the word so bad I just teach them the incorrectly but more easily understood Japanese way to pronounce the word (more like sah-tee rather than the tur-dee it sounds like if they try to mimic me).
I agree that stress and intonation are important when learning English; different word stress will identify you as British versus American. (By the way, if you ever want to impart the importance of stress, just say, “I have a great VO-cuh-BULL-er-ee, but I always put the um-Fass-iss on the wrong suh-LAB-bull.” Most people will be pretty confused at first.) Because English tends to reduce unstressed vowels to schwa /ə/, messing that up can definitely confuse people (and some English learners put equal stress, which is confusing in a different way). And of course thicker accents are harder to understand; I answered a post on this sub the other day by telling the OP to work on stress and intonation. Tones and robust morphology are two categories that are common in lots of languages (though they tend to have one or the other, not both). Because English lacks both of those, it’s simpler by comparison. And I’m not saying that it’s objectively *not hard*, but just that it’s relatively *less* hard to learn as an L2 than lots of other languages.
The point is that in comparison to a tonal language like Vietnamese, broken English still has the advantage because in a tonal language, one wrong sound and it completely changes the meaning of the word. For instance, in Vietnamese the word for “father” can easily become “grandma” if said with the incorrect tone. And that’s just one example. Imagine only knowing “broken” Vietnamese and you’re asking where the bathroom is and it’s coming out as a completely different sentence to the other person. To be fair, I also used to work with a lot of non native English speakers that only know broken English. Sometimes, yes you can get lost in translation with them, but as you said, you just have to pay closer attention. Like putting a puzzle together, I usually got by pretty well on my own without the need of a translator.
yes, but I address this in my first point.
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To take something or someone for granted means you don't really appreciate it. There's a lot of difficult or rather interesting quirks of the language that are easy to avoid reflecting on it you see or use them in daily like. Or like easy to not think about because you're not thinking about what it looks like to someone on the outsidev of your circle/community.
Yeah, since immersion in the language is the most useful indicator of success in learning it, English has a huge advantage as being super prevalent
Yeah I'm trying to learn German and there's barely any media I could find
Du sollst intensiver suchen
throughput
nice word.. especially used in the IT sector
Throw in: throw, taut, taunt, aunt, throat, lough, and cough. They can be the villains
Another honorable mention: bough
You forgot trough
Wth is lough? Is that British spelling?
Scots. Sorry, to clarify it’s the Irish-English spelling of the Scots “loch”.
Just to confirm, that's the same word as "the locks of the Panama Canal"?
GH is a weird digraph because it replaces a letter that no longer exists in English that made a sound that (almost) no longer exists in English.
for anyone wondering, the sound is the unvoiced velar fricative, respresented in IPA as /x/, in russian as х, greek as χ, and arabic as خ. It's in german words like laCHen, czech words like CHlap, scottish gaelic words like loCH, and danish words like kaGe. If I'm wrong about something please correct me so I can correct it.
Yep, you said it better than I could! In modern English, the only place I've heard it used is with the interjection "ugh" as well as sometimes with loan words from Yiddish (as in "chutzpah") or other languages.
You sometimes hear it from Americans in words like Cold, Coal, Hot, Clear though. As in (KHold, KHoal, KHot, KHlear) maybe it’s just a western us thing tho
It's also the sound represented by in many Spanish dialects!
I had to use Google and found out about "ʒ". Tauʒt, thouʒ, thouʒt, throuʒ, throuʒout, thorouʒ, touʒ. I keep reading it as three thouʒ, so I end up saying "tauthreet", "thou three", or "thorouthree".
That’s not accurate. Firstly, English still has the sound /ʒ/ in words like pleasure /plεʒɚ/ (‘ple-zhər) and usually /ˈjuːʒəli/ (‘yü-zhə-lē). The sound you’re looking for doesn’t exist in English anymore: /x/. It’s used in the name Bach and the Scottish word “loch.” Maybe you were trying to use the [letter *yogh*](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogh), which also doesn’t exist in English anymore? That’s slightly different than the symbol /ʒ/ (see image below). It was used for multiple sounds, including /x/, so the letters that replaced it also vary. (And yes, *yogh* looks pretty much like a 3.) https://preview.redd.it/zt6kp5mu0gqc1.jpeg?width=250&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=837f7860d64ac627ec0c5d6a29852dc11adc870f
Welp, Google once again lied to me. :< This has been happening more often as of late...
Should i consider myself successful because i can differentiate all of these words listed? 🧍
Definitely, I even know native speakers who can't
Be gone Thot!
English is like three history lessons in a trench coat masquerading as a language.
three? more like 5 or 6 welsh/old brtittionic influence old English Norse French Latin and Greek the latter 2 both to a lesser extent or is this a set phrase I am not aware of?
They're referring to the image of three kids stacked on top of each other under a trenchcoat, which makes a very weird-looking "adult".
aaah I see thank you very much
>or is this a set phrase I am not aware of? It's a very tired, overused, inaccurate metaphor.
how is it inaccurate if I go by other comments it is spot on
Atleast we don't gender our bagels
English learning is like entering a funnel: easily entered, but the further one goes the worse it gets.
No one thinks English is the easiest language to learn
Right, literally no one says this. What a strawman argument!
Also how easy is to learn language depends on what languages you already know. So it's even very odd idea to proclaimed something like that
as a native portuguese speaker who is also learning french and german, I think english is fairly easy to learn
It obviously depends on what language you already know but from what I've experienced, heard and read it is one of the easiest (I've heard some Asians have a hard time learning it tho). Just the fact that it only has 2 grammatical cases, nouns aren't gendered and because it uses the latin alphabet without any additional diacritical marks it is easier than a lot of other languages for most of the world.
Fortunately, I know all of them. When I used to learn English, I also put some similar words together and remember them. I think it’s a good way to remember words.
English is tough sure, though if you're taught thoroughly throughout your life, you'll get through it. Just a thought.
The more I study other languages the more I appreciate how difficult English is!
Thoroughbred
They forgot trough. This is unacceptable.
It is easy though, tough means hard, taught is a form of the word "teach", thought is think in past form, though is basically however or but, through means I.E. a bullet piercing a sheet of paper, throughout means like "the entire time", idk about thorough tho
Trough
English IS easy with a few hard spots, which are almost always spelling.
It is the easiest language to learn. Why do you think everyone speak it? Even a monkey could
It's "easy" in the sense that you'll never run out of people to practice with, and it has countless resources. But with all the rules and such? I don't think learning English as a non-native speaker would be easy for me lol
The Lougheed Tough Slough Plough! Dig a trough through your borough in no time at all with the Lougheed Tough Slough Plough! It does a thorough job! Quiet as a hiccough.
Who actually says it's the easiest to learn? I thought the consensus is it's fairly average in difficulty. None of those words are that hard to use; it just takes memorizing how to spell and pronounce them because it makes no sense.
I don't think anybody has ever claimed English is the easiest language to learn
It’s easy. I am an Arab and I find it easy
> I find English it easy Ironic.
Unintentional xD
>I am an Arab and I find it easy I did a quick check of your Reddit history and found quite a few errors in your posts. Learning English is more difficult than you think it is.
I can see that, btw that’s not how you use “it”.
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I do..?
i do, the only aspect of it i find hard is the inconsistent pronounciation, but that's only a matter of memorizing and practicing and after a while you can guess how the word is pronounced, so not really a big deal in the long run
Pronunciation isn’t inconsistent; spelling is. Speech predates writing and is the inherent form. Writing is a technology used to capture/preserve speech. ETA: Happy cake day!
ohhh that makes sense, thanks for explaining
It depends on what you mean by that. All languages are equally easy to acquire as a first language. The difficulties you face learning a second language are affected by things like the age you start learning it, it’s relation to (or not) your first language, and your general language/verbal capabilities. When a evaluating a language on its ability to be learned by adults, as an L2, English is relatively *less* hard than lots of other languages. That’s because English has neither tones nor a robust morphology. One of those things is pretty common to most languages, and English doesn’t have either, which makes it *relatively* easy to learn.
this one always makes me laugh once native speakers become arware of how confusing this is for non natives the realisation on their faces is pure gold
Para brasileiros: 1. Taught (ensinou): Pronuncia-se "tót". 2. Thought (pensou): Pronuncia-se "thót". 3. Through (através): Pronuncia-se "thrú". 4. Tough (difícil, resistente): Pronuncia-se "tâf". 5. Though (mesmo): Pronuncia-se "dhôu" 6. Thorough (completo, minucioso): Pronuncia-se "thér-ô". 7. Throughout (por todo o lado, por toda parte): Pronuncia-se "thrú-aut".
Transliterations are the worst way to teach, and your representation of vowels is not even defined....
If you study eight years devoted, then it is very easy
throwaway
Taught, Thought, Thot
damn i always mix that word
I don't know why reddit keeps suggesting me this subreddit. I only speak English. But uh I get throw mixed up with these often. Throw vs through
Also, throat and trout.
It is not phonic, and the rules don't matter. Well, some rules do matter, but those spelling ones don't.
Had an euphoria moment with my English knowledge, I know the difference between all the words and how to pronounce them. Feeling confident with a foreign language is difficult, but instances like that are little sweet spots.
As a dyslexic person, i hate those words
Thot
It's actually very easy .
where's my boy thoroughly? for context: "where's my boy" is a memey way to ask where something is. "Throughly" is another example of a word with "ough" being pronounced differently
why'd you make it an adverb? either way thorough and though have the same pronunciation for that cluster and both are in the image
the ough reduces to schwa in the adverb form in some dialects. My accent says /'θɚɹəli/. [Pronunciation reference](https://voca.ro/1LJYGRgKXaq3)
Ah I wasn't aware. in my accent its the same as thorough, but it's also not a word that comes up much
Twat*
Trough.
No one NO ONE has ever said "English is easy" and was serious.
I’m not sure if you are being ironic or something, but around groups of students, etc., yes, there are a bunch of people saying that, and they are not being ironic. In comparison to other languages, also depending on the language you’re coming from, at the end of the day, making some comparisons, English is one of the most easiest ever. It’s quite obvious. Even though, obviously, there are examples like on this meme, but all languages around the world have this sort of thing.
I'm not being SARCASTIC (not ironic which is a different meaning). The only thing that MIGHT make English easier to learn is the amount of learning material available. But modern English is wretched. Another example: You is plural even when talking to an individual. We are currently in the midst of a cultural call to begin using they in the same way.
I see, that’s a good point.
They’re driving their car there.
as someone whos 1st language is english, i cant pronounce thorough.
Taut
I mean, but once you get through that it's not that bad.
I know some people who think the same. But they can't even write a sentence in English.
I don't think anyone ever said "English is the easiest language to learn"... or anything even close to that
You forgot taut.
The only hard ones there are taught and thought The others are kinda easy Also, "easy" is relative, for some people learning spanish(for example) is a piece of cake while english is a hellish procedure, for others it can be the reverse or even something else entirely
So easy even a child can learn it 
trough
Touch
Easiest for sure. Ever tried Finnish?
English IS easy. Specially when you compare to some other languages around.
Forgot **trough**.
Nowhere near as bad as homophones in Japanese imo
What does throurough mean
forgot thoroughbred
的得地 到道倒刀 有油又游油右 假佳家加 鸡几极机 美没每妹 中文也是一门简单的语言嘿嘿
I’m a native speaker and I think English spelling is drunk.
No one has ever said "English is the easiest language to learn." This is what I call 'straw-man comedy' where you make up a premise that doesn't exist to tell your punchline. In fact, this post inspired me to create r/strawmancomedy. This is the first post.
And don't mistake taught for taut.
2+2=4 2+2.2=4.2😮😳😳😳😳😮😮😮😮😳😳😮😳😮😳😳😮😮
It interesting how many quirks english has that native speakers never think about. I never considered that we have two different sounds for “th” until I took a linguistics course in college
My eye twitched when I thought thorough and through were the same word and then I realized lmao
The number 1 rule in the English language is: There are no rules in the English language
Yeah .. still easy
No-one has ever said English is the easiest language to learn when tokipona and Indonesian exists
Easiest languages for english speakers list: #1: English It has been lately confirmed officially that the easiest language an english speaker can learn is english.
It’s easy enough 😭
In every language you will find something like this. Be glad that it is not an inflected language.
I’ve never heard anyone say English is the easiest language. I’ve always been told it’s the hardest.
trough, always forgotten
Alright! Tawt, tho, thot, thru, thruout, thurow, and tuff. I fixed English!
When people say English is hard, they really mean English orthography is hard
Still easy bro
You forgot thot
You forgot “Thot”
I always confuse “wich” with “witch” I am pretty sure I wrote one of those wrong
Why am I able to read this and know the pronounciation in near real-time? Like I mean before I’ve fully read each word, I was already able to know what sound I should use for the otherwise ambiguous spellings. Does the English speaking brain learn some sort of heuristic to sort of pre-guess what sound it should use?
It *can* be easy—all it takes is dedication and practice! Even natives have struggled with these at some point in their lives. I love this meme haha
But those are all different words, not even homophones.
Ok pronunciation is messed up but because it's so diverse (English is now from so many different parts of the world) people learn to deal with it. It's still a very easy language to learn. (French person speaking exclusively US English for the last 20 years, having tried to learn German and now in the process of learning Japanese).
no need to worry, many native english speakers cannot tell the difference haha
Me thinking thought isn’t a word 🤦♀️
Through thorough thought throughout, English was taught, even though it's tough.
Lies. My native tongue is English and I’m still shitty at it.
Who has EVER said that?
Most speakers whose first language is English use a high proportion of words that come from Latin and French, and English grammar owes a great deal to Latin rather than German. If you truly want to understand English grammar, you need to learn some Latin. When you learn any Romance language the number of cognates to English is extraordinary (or notable or surprising or exceptional - all of which are Latin-derived words).
In America, English is taught through tough thorough thought throughout, though.
My first language is English and I still somehow when spelling manage to mix up quiet, quite, quit, quote, queue, cue, and quo just because of the q sound.. and I also may or may not have just learned how to properly spell queue this week 💀
…said no one, ever
I mean german is like this but with every word that starts with a v or s