A recommendation for an idle weekend afternoon...if you love English, as I do and as I know many of you do, you might enjoy Olly Richards' video "10 Reasons English is Ridiculously Hard."

You probably know a fair number of these already, but it's entertaining to see them all gathered in the same place and presented so entertainingly. He gave me the best sense I've gotten yet of how hard it must be to learn English as a second language.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Comments

[Grant]

Having to deal with the complexities of the English language, is the reason that most North Americans drive cars with automatic transmissions.

[Albert Smith]

My wife was Japanese and made great effort to learn proper English. Every time she asked me a "How come...?" or "Why...?" question regarding some seemingly random broken rule or dissimilar spelling for like sounding words, I knew I was going to have to give an answer that she hated..."I don't know."

There are things about English that defy logic and it's too late to fix them now.

[Earl Dunbar]

Yes, English is ridiculously hard, but many (most?) other romance languages, as well as others that have no root connection with romance languages are gendered.

Even my son, whose phD is in computational linguistics, did a post-doctorl study at École Normale Polytechnique, then taught at Université de Paris 13, is now in the French department at University of Toronto …. Has hinted that gendering is a bit useless, if not totally so.

For me, who speaks French (though now much less well than when I graduated from high school) part of my struggle is remember which gender a particular noun or adjective may be. My best friend in Paris caught me calling a woman “fou” (crazy) when the correct gendered adjective is folle. I actually knew that, but since I don’t converse in French daily on the streets of Rochester, I am out of practice and, as I said, embarrassed.

[Sean]

Unless I missed it, he didn't touch on how the pronunciation of some words has changed whilst the spellings have remained the same, e.g., the K in knight and know was pronounced in Anglo-Saxon times, and beyond, but is now silent. It’s no wonder I’m an awful speller when so many words don't reflect their pronunciation.