I think Rusty that with all due respect the majority of what you said, while feeling intuitively correct, is in fact false, if something is overly inefficient then it evolves and dies out, calling something a 'hangover from the past' is a testement to how useful it is, if it wasn't useful it would have died out. Those words you list are totally understandable, if you know them then you can pronounce them, and your suggested revisions are just as arbitrary in assigning sounds to symbols on a page.

It's clear that words like 'fewer' are in the process of dying out, through redundancy, is it that 'less' is wrong in certain situations, or that the rule that it is wrong is unnecessary? Who's to say, but there is no logic to it, language is an instinct that humans are born with, it is like a spider creating a web, you wouldn't say that the spider is wrong in developing a different method of spinning a web, even though earlier versions of the web in previous generations must have been simpler. It simply evolves to be as efficient as possible, there's no logic behind it, and it defies intuition.

That's one which can annoy me. Let me give you an example from a recent GCSE Maths paper. I can't remember it exactly, but it was something like:



To my mind, the question should have been "which is the fewest number". I know the grammar is really messed up, but you can see the distinction and why less is not fewer.

With all due respect, Daily Mail-esque fail.

I never said that proper use of language is restricted to the bright. My point was that non-systematic, exception-ridden languages like English take much longer and much more effort to learn than those that are systematic. Thus it takes effort, time, energy and resources away from learning other things. The use of English creates barriers to learning that simply magnify differences in intelligence. This is even more of an issue if you have a learning difficulty that makes it even harder to handle the oddities of the language.


Therein lies the issue; they're easy and totally understandable if you know them. The issue is the lack of predictability in the pronunciation of the "ough" letter sequence.

If you're learning the language anew, you simply cannot learn how to pronounce "ough" - you have to learn each esoteric pronunciation individually. If you come across a new word, you have ten or more possible sounds to choose from. This is terribly difficult and obfuscatory.

I agree that my spellings are arbitrary but then all communication schemes are to some extent. However, there's a load of difference between the systematic but arbitrary transcription of a certain phoneme and rampant unpredictability.

No, it's not fewest. I almost want to say "lesserest" because least sounds wrong strangely, even though it's grammatically correct. I think to get around it I'd say "smallest number".

Least common?

Oh right, yeah of course. Least common is what it should be. I was misunderstanding the question...

... which proves JJ's point surely?

Spelling fail from the town events manager - the use of the word 'courses' instead of 'causes'.
Also, entire letter set out in italics. In something like Zapf Chancery. *shivers*

Is this in the wrong thread per chance?

Yes. Apparently it is.

I'd say it is overweighed by the massive factor of whether it's the first language you learn or not. All languages have exceptions and weird conventions you have to learn, except possibly Esperanto. In Italian, for example, you have to learn whether things are male or female even when they're neither. It's just massively easier to do so if it's you're 'native language'. If you think English is bad, try learning Japanese, it'll turn your brains to cheese. Yet Japanese people all manage it somehow.

Pretty much everybody in England is capable of speaking/reading/writing English well, or at least is not inherently prevented from doing so. There are obviously a small number of people who have genuine physiological or psychological issues with doing so but they are a tiny minority. The fact most people don't is because they largely don't see the value in it. People do things well when they see a reason to do so.

And this has sod all to do with the Daily Mail thank you very much, and I rather resent the insinuation.

Jon

I'm not sure that's relevant.

My contention is that, all other things being equal, English is much harder to learn than more systematic languages.

For instance, is it easier for a child to learn English or Swedish as a first language?


Again I think you're missing my point (or more likely I'm not communicating it properly - irony indeed)

Yes it seems easier to learn a language when it's your mother tongue. My question is whether parsing text to speech (and v.v.) in English carries an inherent penalty due to its strange and archaic spelling (non-)system. If it were true (and I'm pretty certain it is) then communication and learning as whole would surely have to be demonstrably adversely affected.

Your allusion to Japanese is quite pertinent here I think. A few years ago I made a stab at learning Japanese - I've forgotten it all since I'm sorry to say . However one thing became very clear to me very quickly. Once I learnt the Hiragana symbols and their attendant sounds, it didn't take me very long at all to be able to read Hiragana text out loud or to be able to transcribe speech into passable text.

I freely admit that the Japanese then proceed to mess it up with the Katakana (letters for foreign words) and the Kanji (10,000 strange pictograms borrowed from Chinese for those that don't know). However my point is that if they'd stuck to just one alphabet, Japanese could be lightning-quick to learn. Sure it takes a little while to get your head around subject-object-verb grammar but again, that not material to my argument. If you can't spell or pronounce a word, it doesn't really matter where it's supposed to go in a sentence.


Again this isn't quite the point I was making.

What I was trying to say was that while most people are capable of speaking/reading/writing well per se, having to do it with an esoteric and chaotic spelling system makes success a whole lot less likely.


I didn't mean to suggest that you have any to do with the DM.

Rather I was trying to respond to what I saw as your reaction to something that wasn't in what I wrote. In my defence however, I was being nagged by wife and mother whilst typing it on a Windows laptop and trying to find news that wasn't about the budget or miners. Oh and I did stop myself going way over the top and comparing you to Marklarr - that would have been unforgivable .

Apologies for any offence - none was meant.

Would it be helpful to have a new thread for this debate about language? It would seem we are veering a little off topic.

It's the nature of the beast, I suppose.

Moving swiftly on... I got brought tea and toast in bed this morning!