What English does - but most languages can't
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- Опубликовано: 6 июн 2024
- English has unusual linguistic features most other languages don't! These skills really make English unique compared to other languages around the world.
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~ Briefly ~
The second of two fun, experimental takes on features English lacks and has. Part one lives here:
• Features English is mi...
Last time we met skills English is missing compared to other languages, now it's time for what it does have:
- (its spelling system)
- suppletive ordinals
- obligatory plurals
- definite and indefinite articles
- possession with "have"
- perfect with "have"
- passive voice
- asymmetric noun-pronoun alignment
- particle comparative with "than"
- interdental fricatives
- rhotics
- r-colored vowels (ahem, "coloured")
- nounless adjectives with "one"
Thank you for watching, and see my sources doc below for even more!
~ Credits ~
Art, narration and animation by Josh from NativLang.
My doc full of sources for claims and credits for music, sfx, fonts and images:
docs.google.com/document/d/1r...
![Rich Dunk (Ft. DaBaby) - BIG DAWG [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Pz2ewsSKAEM/mqdefault.jpg)
In Korean, if you want to say specifically "Fingers" you literally say "Hand Branches"
In Japanese, wrist is 手首, which is literally "hand neck".
In Hebrew, there is a word for finger, but there's no differentiation between arm and hand. To say hand, you say "arm spoon" (Technically the word spoon comes from a more general word, so it's also used for palm fronds and other vaguely spoon-shaped things)
In Czech and Slovak toes are "fingers on the foot" or leg since it's usually called the same word. Hand and arm also are the same.
@@kyriljordanov2086 oh, we call it similarly on portuguese! We don't have a specific word for toes so we just call them "fingers of the foot/foot fingers" (dedos do pé, on portuguese)
@@MirroMirro26
Similar of course to 足首, "leg/foot neck", or ankle...
Kurdish is really interesting too.
If you wanna ask: "do you have a cigarette", you ask
"Does your cigarette exist?"
Similar in Korean. We say "Cigarette exists?"(담배 있어?) or "You cigarette exists?"(너 담배 있어?).
In English English we say may I have a cigarette. Do you have a cigarette is not a request, it is merely asking if you are in possession of something.
It's the same with "can I get?"
In English English this is considered gauche and clumsy. It is asking a stranger to reveal something about yourself.
People from the UK say, "may I have?". This is asking the person in possession of what you if they are willing to give you something.
@@AndyJarman "People from the UK" almost never act as one, though you are right about the general case.
"Does your cigarette exist?"
"Well it did but it broke the basic laws of space time and stopped existing."
In Hebrew, "I have a cigarette" is "יש לי סיגריה", which literally translates as "there-is to-me cigarette".
A language professor was talking about how in many languages, a double negative would become a positive, but how there was no language where two positives made a negative, and one of his students replied:
"Yeah...right."
I hope to Da Lord he caught that.
Having been brought up in Scotland this was a common joke- except it was 'Aye...right'. It is true that when you hear a Scot saying those words you know that in the next phrase he's going to explain why you are a blithering idiot.
bruh that's just how logic works 😂
@@felixfourcolorwent over your head bro. "Yeah, right" is a double positive that means a negative
Technically that's more a matter of sarcasm than grammar, but it is quite clever.
I always thought English as both the easiest and hardest language to learn. Hard if you follow the rules, easy if you completely ignore them. Just as effective either way.
That makes no sense
English has very simple rules, a lot simpler than most European languages.
@@MikeYm98875
”the bombing in Gaza is a tragedy to the Palestinian people”
“Bombing in Gaza bad”
Both get the point across
@@johnc8643Hay the ated horses… 🤷♂️
good point, but does not mean intensity, and in that regard, it's kind bad (purposelly mispel)@@ultimatestuff7111
English: finger, toe, hair, wrist, ankle
Korean: hand-stick, foot-stick, head-stick, hand-neck, foot-neck
Korean is better tbh
English: wrist, ankle
Japanese: hand-neck, foot-neck.
@Kevin Pope is it a joke ? Right
@Kevin Pope is it a joke ? Right
Finger: toe-hand or finger-hand (ngón tay)
Toe: toe-foot or finger-foot (ngón chân)
Tay: hand , Chân: leg (foot)
Ngón is hard to translate, it could be toe or finger
Half these comments: “We do that in my (Western European) language. It’s not that rare”
This video: “These concepts are rare outside of Western Europe.”
Wait places exist outside Europe?
@@tibbygaycat Yeah, apparently there's this really weird place called Asia and its even larger
Whatever! Then don't say "English", say "Western European languages".
> “These concepts are rare outside of Western Europe.”
So they used to be unknown in East Germany until the Wall fell?"
@@LuisAldamiz Because it's a gradient. The farther away you get from English geographically, the more of these features disappear.
The thing I love about English the most is what wasn't mentioned in this video - the ease of introducing new or foreign vocabulary into a sentence. Pretty much most languages have some grammar rules that make the process difficult, but in English you just the vocabulary from another language, like "sushi" and throw it into the sentence as you'd do with any other food name. Or you can take a proper noun, like "google" and use it like a verb, because there are no grammatical rules that make it impossible, but in every other language I know - there are at least one or two rules of why nouns cannot be used like verbs.
Yep the redundancy is amazing, I can say like, I like your shirt, or your shirt is of the most divine style, or I can just say, yo fire shirt
And you can just omit words outright and... it still works. Like your "but in English you just the vocabulary from another language" has a single, clear meaning despite missing the "take from" words before the "the vocabulary". Don't omit _too_ many that the primary idea is lost but here you quite accidentally did a great job at proving that redundancy.
One thing I adore about the English language is the word “The” not the TH sound but the use of the word. The main thing is that English is a non-gender language. So you can use the word “The” For absolutely everything without having to think about its gender, the same also goes for plural. Even if the noun is a plural noun you can still use “The” for it as well. It can be used for all nouns and even plural ones. Very useful in getting the hang of a language lol.
Yeah. I speak Spanish and when I started learning English, I learned the definitive article the. The explanation: the is used for all nouns. Me: really? Is that it? How easy
@@hah-vj7hc Is it easy to learn at a basic level? I can't speak to that, it's my first language, but I always assumed it'd be troublesome all the way through. Nothing in the language seems all that consistent or intuitive compared to the two I'm currently learning.
@@juniperrodley9843 Think about all the people you have met that spoke broken English and realize you understood them. It’s inconsistent but very forgiving with out of order and missing words not screwing up the emssgae
That’s interesting,in my native language, we don’t have the/a/an or even the plural form of nouns. So having to learn to use it in english is confusing 😂
@@badart3204 Damn wait that's a very good point. Well, pretty good; there are people whose English has very much been too broken for me to understand, but I get your point.
English is pretty consistent at being inconsistent.
So true. And French is rather inconsistent at being consistent.
Jeff H I think Indo-European languages are generally pretty good at that!
@SandboxArrow No, not really. Due to it's history, English is rather inconsistent in some areas. Spelling, pronunciation (not pronounciation such as in pronounce, pronouncing or pronounced) and in some areas even constructions are sketchy. It makes for beautiful poetry and literature as the same thing can be said at least a half-dozen ways, but it makes English hard to learn due to lack of solid rules.
English is fairly consistent in writing but definitely not in pronunciation.
@SandboxArrow English is not consistent.
English: 97
French: 4 20 10 7
Danish: 7 + (-(1/2)+5) x 20
😂😂😂😂😂
Mandarin: 9 x 10 + 7
Yang Kong That’s the same as in English and probably most other languages.
@@birdsplaybs1234 just like arabic too
it's a terrifying observation that you can learn a language fluently end to end, be able to use it perfectly, but to break it down and explain WHY you use it the way you do, is an entire area of study, vast as the ocean and thrice as deep.
Most people I encounter in the United States hardly use English perfectly, much less from "end to end."
As I always tell my ESL students, " Don't worry about the grammar. No matter how you mangle it, chances are, you'll be understood. Besides, most native English speakers don't worry about precision, so why should you?"
Then it's the nightmare of English spelling. I tell them, " WE have problems with it, so you're on the same level as us. It's insane, no rhyme or reason, and very few people are perfect spellers, so just relax."
Once they know that nobody will judge them harshly, they can start enjoying their lessons.
@@hah-vj7hc There, there, don’t mind them. It’s easy to get “there”, “they’re”, and “their” all mixed up as they’re all pronounced the same. They’re fine.
(the above line aside, it really is easy to get them mixed up. but half of the U.S.A? i have no words)
@@fluffytail5000 It depends where you live and what your accent is. I'm from Scotland where we pronounce "their" differently from "there" and "they're". As for getting things mixed up when writing, sometimes it is the dreaded autocorrect that takes over.
🫡
Yeah we only care if you're a commie!😤😡🤬
@@hah-vj7hc To be fair, it's and its is kinda confusing, since its is the only possessive form of a noun/pronoun in the English language that doesn't have an apostrophe. It's just a really weird exception to the rule of adding ' or 's to the end of a word.
Here are the rules of English:
1. There are no rules except rule 2
2. Any rules that are taught to you in school are wrong and get broken repeatedly
"are* wrong" looks like the broken part is working though.
@@TaIathar Fixed. I wrote it late at night as I remember.
To posit that English is an exception in having numerous exceptions is exceptionally naive.
Idiotic. You shouldn’t break them if you want to speak clearly and advance professionally.
@@stephenpowstinger733 Bruh, I meant rules like i before e except after C that gets conveniently trashed. Lighten up, it was a JOKE
English is like a second language to me, but I still haven't found the first.
What ever language you spoke originaallly
lmao
If you watch British TV, you'll find you're not alone. Estuary English is second only to Chinglish for sheer impenetrability.
@@casualposters what if English is my original language
@@casualposters I think that's the joke
One of my favorite features about informal English is that you can make phrases or even entire sentences into verbs. In my language it's not as easy to say "to groundhod-day someone" or "Stop I'm-counting-to-three-ing me!"
Yep. I think English is the only language on earth where you could come up with a sentence like "I came in and nope'd right out of there" lmao.
I think English is the only language with interwords as well. Un-freaking-believable, as an example
I always thought that the most unique English feature was the auxiliary verb do, which has many purposes and allows to express things difficult to express as simply in other languages.
in german the english do is "tun" , there is nothing in english you cant say even better in german! you can express even much more things but sometimes it gets to difficult and foreign german language learners have a hard time. It was easy for me to learn english because anglo saxions are an old german tribe so german and english vocabulary are very similar. Sadly the middle Europe german tribes made their grammar very precise and complicated after the anglo saxions went to England.
Maybe to much influence from the slavic south european and islamic world, idk!
Everything said in this vidio you could also say about german(deutsch). With one difference, German is the most precise Language and even more complicated than english. One examle?, the english "the" is "der die das" in german: Der Mann(the man) mostly masculine or singular or things with a name, die Frau(the woman) mostly female or plural or things without using the name, das Haus (the house).
When you use the name of things it gets complicated and is mostly allways the gender article der or die and very rare the article das, mostly used for houses with a name like "das Weisse Haus"(the white house)!!!! And sometimes it doesnt make a lot of sense, "the PC the Car the Saw": (Der PC, Das Auto, Die Säge). Why is the car neutral, the PC male and the saw female? idk and i am a native german speaker, it makes no sense at all and should be removed!
Das Auto(the car) mostly things without a name. One example: Das Schiff, das Auto, die Titanic(the ship, the car, the titanic), very complicated for german learners and maybe not really nessesary. Cars like "der BMW, der Ford Mustang" are male, ships like "die Titanic, die USS Missouri" are female and i really dont know why? male and female for things???
Even worse is: the axe= die Axt female, the hammer=der Hammer malel. WTF almost identical tools with different articels instead the english The
Sometimes i dream that linguist from enlish and german sit at a round table and made a language (R)evelution with new similar grammar as an advancement. And all new things like Smartphones (Handy in german) should have the same name in all countries. By the way, the vietnamese People did a very good job by switching to latin letters, the chinese india and japanes and some other country people should do the same to give their children easier learning in school!! No need to learn 11000 japanese letters when 26 letters are fare better and 100 times easier and even more precise!
I am learning Welsh and was surprised to discover that some of the features you note are also found in Welsh, even though it belongs to the Celtic language family, is gendered, uses VSO word order and has no word for "have". For example, the perfect tense is common, although differently expressed: "I am after going". Welsh, like English, makes extensive use of auxiliary verbs such as "be" and "do". I had assumed that this was copied from English, but I recently watched a video suggesting that this useful feature may have been acquired by the Anglo-Saxon invaders from the Romano-British population as they intermarried.
@ryandylan6946 It's a little ironic you're bragging about your language with such terrible grammar and punctuation.
I know Japanese has "shimasu".
Italian has "fare". I think most languages have some such all-purpose verb. At least, that's my impression from the precious few languages I've come across.
English nouns do not have genders, while in most European Languages they do.
Some nouns have genders. Waitress and waiter, widow and widower, and actor and actress to name a few.
Edit: Since so many people are still replying to this comment correcting me, I'm just going to leave this here. Yes, I am well aware that other languages have non-living objects that have "genders" whereas English does not. I understand now that that is what the original commenter was talking about. I misunderstood the original comment because it said, "English nouns do not have genders" which IS technically false, but now I realize they (even though it was not specified) were referring only to inanimate nouns having no gender in English.
@@FirstNameLastName-oz5ij well yes, but in other languages nouns like "ball", or "water" also have genders.
S Y These are not inanimate objects, though. These are gender markers based on the actual gender of the person. This is not the same as saying that a table is feminine and a shoe is masculine.
@@Maki-00 *based on the sex of the person
@@omp199 ? She was correct
What surprised me a lot about Japanese was the fact that the word for “foot” and “leg” is the same. It just seems so... Inconvenient.
Same in Czech, and probably other slavic languages
人１：俺の足が傷つける！
人２：どの足
人１：はい
It's the same in Irish, "cos" can be either foot or leg depending on the context
Sort of the same in Burmese. There’s a root word chì that could mean anything below the hips. We just add another word to specify
@@Yy_3514 Probably not but who cares, it was just an excuse to flex my limited japanese ability lol
English seems like the most descriptive or specific of all the common languages. I think that might be because English is made from multiple languages. We don’t just have “finger, hand, and arm,” we have “digit, palm, backhand, wrist, forearm, etc.”
Also "limb," "extremity," "thigh," "lower leg."
I wonder if some languages have no distinct name for what we call "thumb."
@@hah-vj7hcThose phrases aren't really more descriptive, just specific. What he's referring to are the number of unique words used for available objects and concepts. "Extremity" and "limb" can both be referring to a body part. Or limb can refer to a tree. Extremity can refer to a quantity or degree of something "the extremity of the heat wad unbearable."
@@hah-vj7hc everyone knows what you were trying to say, we were just telling you that you missed the point of the original comment. it's a valid point, but not in response to the above, because english having more specificity in terms of verbs (see the 'cool' vs 'tepid' comment) and german nouns being self-explanatory are completely different concepts
@@somethingforsenro German kinda cheats by slapping 40 words together to form one immense word, their point was that English has the most unique and non-conjoined words that mean different things, take “small” and “finger” as two separate words that come together to make “pinky” in German, for most cases, a word that is conjoined in German is a singular word in english
violently seeking out other languages to pillage for lexicon helped
I am a little bit surprised that you didn’t mention the fact that English has in almost everyevery case, two words for any given idea; one descended from the Germanic languages, and the other from Latin and/or Greek! With subtle differences between them. Doesn’t that indicate a tremendous ability to differentiate between minute differences in concepts?
Probably has more to do with the Norman invasion of England and several Romance words entering the language because of it.
I believe french once being the lingua franca and the language spoken by many medieval English aristocrats also has something to do with that
You should include here English in the Germanic languages. Namely those home grown words from England: about, mind, round, entropy, ....
There is not always a choice. Sometimes native English is needed. Reading an Encyclopedia will familiarise you to many abstract words but if you want to speak plainly Germanic is the way; Tolkien, Orwell, King James Bible, The Sun, ...
Plenty of other languages have that, korean and japanese for example have native and chinese words for the same thing.
Or that a lot of Latin based words aren’t really used these days. Because there is comedienne but I rarely hear it anymore.
English: toes
Spanish: ;)
English: please no...
Spanish: fingers of the feet
Overused joke, ik
Toenails: nails of the fingers of the feet... 🤦🏻♂️
in Romanian you would say: the fingers from feet (degetele de la picior)
The same in Czech. A term for "toes" exist in medicine, but colloquially it's "legs fingers"
I love Angelique Dedo del pie = finger of the foot = toe.
Portuguese too
A bar was walked into by a sentence in the passive voice. "Ouch!" was said.
LMAO this makes me wonder if there are any stories out there written only using the passive voice. Now that would make for an interesting read.
This joke is being stolen by me
I love it when you say that your sealing that joke about the passive voice WHILE SPEAKING IN THE PASSIVE VOICE... ERM... WHILE THE PASSIVE VOICE WAS BEING SPOKEN IN!
*ahem*
I can't claim credit for the joke. Though sometimes I do like to take things I hear and have fun creating a sort of "Passive Voice Theatre" in my mind.
This hurts me because it reads like something I would've written when I was trying to sound sophisticated in middle school.
Shouldn't it be:
"A bar was walked into by a sentence. In the passive voice, "Ouch!" was said."
In Polish, we have specific words for "arm" (ramię), "forearm" (przedramię), "palm/hand" (dłoń), and "finger/s" (palec/palce), but we also have a general word for the whole limb (ręka) that can sometimes be used in the same context as "palm/hand". Oh, and fun fact: we have no word for "toes". We literally just say "foot fingers" or "fingers of the foot" :P
The palm of your hand is a different world than hand
I am in favor of adopting "foot fingers." This is objectively better than toes.
That sounds awesome, I’m gonna learn polish after I learn german
In Russian, it's the same
Foot fingers is also used in Italian and Spanish. It's only logical...
English is great for its subtlety. I also speak Swiss German fluently, and French and Vietnamese with some proficiency (wife is a native Vietnam speaker). So I fully get how languages affect the understanding. They're number of tenses in English is one thing that really sets it apart. It also has a voluminous vocabulary. German is great for technical words, and I learned a lot about seeing the world differently through Vietnamese
The adjective "one" in English gets even weirder when you're talking about multiples: "The red ones". That's right, English has a plural form of the word "one"...
A lot of languages have a plural form of "one" or "a(n)".
@@fernandobanda5734 unos, uns
romanian also has a plural for one, also a masculine and feminine. unul/una, unii/unele
Because each individual thing is one.
Haha, that does seem strange. I'm fairly sure that 'one' as a number and 'one' as an indefinite pronoun are distinct senses though, so they can have different behaviour; surface forms don't equal underlying forms! You could also say 'one' as a regular noun, in the sense of 'a symbol that represents one', so you can talk about the 'ones' on the page.
One of the things that always comes across in videos like these is that when you hear speakers of other languages speaking broken English, they are actually precisely translating the thoughts in their head.
The problem with a wordy language is it can take a long time to say what you want to actually say and convey your point.
Indeed, I speak portuguese and I can translate well most of the time; but sometimes it gets kinda broken due to me translating wrong due to a false cognate (push, that sounds like "puxe", which means pull, is a common one), messing with the word order due to the difference in sentence structure (like, for example, on portuguese the adjective usually comes after the substantive, but you can put it before and still maintaining the meaning and not being wrong, it's just odd and not usual or common) or not having a precise word for translating what I mean (as an example of this, I present you the word "guerrear", which can be translated as battling or fighting but none of these are precise translations, since "guerrear" derives from "guerra", war; the word actually mean a type of battling specific and exclusive to war, and it also includes other acts related to war such as battle strategy and such; and english doesn't have a word with this exact meaning =/)
The thing thats good though to me, is that an English speaker can still understand whats being said despite it being broken even heavily broken English... from what ive gathered it doesnt quite work that way in reverse (ie an English speaker using heavily broken speech in some other langauge).
@@NZBigfoot well yeah, I've seen english speakers trying to speak portuguese before, they mess the gender of the words, the verb tense, the substantive, the order of words (many things use a different order, like adjectives being after the substantive); if it's too broken it's near impossible to understand what precisely they mean =/
I love listening to broken English. People feel ashamed of their mistakes, but I don't hear mistakes, I hear poetry.
I grew up speaking English, but have lived in Germany. I also speak some other languages. I basically have a soup of vocabulary swimming around in my brain. When I construct a sentence in my mind, I could end up pulling from any of these sources. Although English has an immense vocabulary, sometimes a word in a different language just matches my message better. The thing I like about English, is that when I'm talking to my family (who also speak German), I can throw German words into an English sentence and they make sense more easily than if I did the same in German. I suppose this is because it evolved as a melting pot for other languages... I don't know enough to explain what this phenomenon is caused by, but I like it.
What I love, as a native English speaker, about German is the consistency of pronunciation. Even if I don’t know what a word means, I can still say it. Also the creativity of stringing small words together into a long one.
@@gstlbYeah, Indonesian is also completely phonetic. Try reading “Aku makan jeruk” our loud - there is a 90% chance you read it correctly, without knowing what that means (I eat an orange). Whereas English, every word can have a different pronunciation (not phonetically consistent)
Das kann ich gut verstanden. Ich denke auch in mehrere Sprachen, und ich wähle die Wörter, die am besten im Kontext passen, wenn ich etwas sagen möchte.
English has a masterful way of incorporating words from other languages.💯
A line, not mine, that has always stuck by me: English is hard but can be taught through tough thorough thought though.
I'm highly dyslexic but never struggle to read only write.
When reading I basically predict the next word based on context and look for a recognisable letter for confirmation.
I had to read that centance 3 times to do that.
That's a stupid line, just because those words look similar shouldn't confuse anyone since they are used so differently. Just learn how to use context and suddenly English not only stops being hard but actually very easy.
brett fluhr Not stupid at all. If a person, who just started learning English, saw that sentence, they'd have no idea that "ough" is pronounced five different ways! That's the point, not how the words are used!
That was really good to me!
Like, "whether the weather is hot or whether the weather is not, we weather the weather, whatever the weather, whether it's hot or it's not". A little rime I learned in school in the Netherlands 35 years ago. Never forgot.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the odd role that "do" plays in English. "Do you believe me?" "Did you clean the bathroom?" Or as an emphasis -- "They did go to the store!"
in italian “avere” (have) has pretty much the same role
@@cnardx yes English and italian are closely related
this is called do-insertion, either emphatic or for questions.
In many Balkan and Slavic languages you have "Czy"(Polish) or "Dali"(Macedonian and Bulgarian) or "Jel"(Serbian, Bosnian, Montenegrin, Croatian) or "A"(Albanian) which have the same role as "Do"
Esperanto has it for some reason. Makes it easy for english speakers to learn, kinda defeats the point of making it the easiest second language.
One thing that must be considered with English(and most euro languages, but especially English) Is that the modern form is actually a complex and ever evolving conglomeration of many languages and etymological roots. It is also important to understand that English evolved from a supremely "written language" culture. What I mean by this is, that it has a vastly expanded vocabulary compared to many others, especially when it it comes to descriptor words that apply to science, medicine, technology, or ANYTHING that delves into a subject that involves "Precision"....SL: "The cat is up the tree" WL:How far is the cat up the tree? SL: cat is up the tree, or it's not up the tree. WL: I need to know how far that damn cat is up the tree?: SL: This I can not say, because there is no word ....This is because most languages evolved from a "Spoken language" culture and were extremely limited by the human brain's capacity to memorize and recall. Spoken language culture tends to limit the descriptor especially when it comes to abstract thought. The English placed extreme importance on abstract thought and revered it as a gift directly from the triune god. They took it upon themselves to create a vocabulary that could convey abstract thought to peers or subjects, quickly and efficiently. So while every child that received a classical education learned Greek and Latin, this expansion of English was necessary to fulfill true destiny. As missionaries went out to the 4 corners of the earth, these English(and other occidental missionaries), to the best of their limited abilities, filled in the blanks as they crafted the dictionaries for these spoken word cultures, into a written form.
You don't need to be too precise with your verbs; you just use adverbial phrases for that precision. "The cat is twenty feet up the tree". Or you can be more-or-less precise: "The cat is about twenty feet up the tree".
@@BudgieJane Or relative, "The cat is halfway up the tree".
This is interesting, because I've been learning Japanese lately and one thing I started thinking about is how difficult it is to actually express yourself in English by comparison. On the other hand, also how difficult it is to write stories from the third person in Japanese.
This would explain why. English is hyper specific, unwieldy and unpersonable, but it also makes for good third person storytelling. Japanese, being a primarily spoken language until relatively recently, is extremely good for self-expression and much less unwieldy, but also not as specific and struggles with third person storytelling.
TLDR, english feels better to write, japanese feels better to speak, who would've known languages have their own strengths and weaknesses based on their origin
I am Dutch and grew up learning English and just on the English side of youtube, and most of the language features in this video are pretty much the same in Dutch. But that last one (lol) blew my mind, since Dutch does do that different and I've literally never thought about how it's different.
Any English noun can become other parts of speech given the right context.
This lets us sentence however we like.
It's a nightmare for translators.
I've said this before although I just say "It's a flexible language" cuz you can bastardize our language and still derive some meaning from it...probably.
Most languages seem to have this weird property where one wrong part of a word makes you go from talking about the fish at home to how a pencil got stuck in your toaster.
@@TheGreatBackUpVIDEOS English has that problem as well. It's very important that any instructions one gives are absolutely clear. This makes sure nothing gets stuck where it doesn't belong, e.g., the toaster or ceiling fan.
@@SouthernersSax Instructions unclear, got dick stuck in ceiling fan.
Sentencing strangely is rather enjoyable.
"few languages have more distinct vowel sounds than English"
*Danish has entered the channel*
soooo true tho
I wish NativLang the best of luck making a system out of Danish. I'm sure there is an answer, a system, a law. But it has eluded my glorious people for a at least a thousand years.
Wher do you think English got its flair from
Roeaghgdgroeaogaugh maed floaede
Specifically the English channel. They're coming over and won't leave for a few centuries.
I like that English can and does convert nouns into verbs. House, cup, hand, fridge, strike, shade, and catch are just a few examples of words that often act as both nouns and verbs.
And, thanks to the normalcy of this phenomenon, even nouns not typically turned into verbs can sometimes see use as verbs. The statement "the man moused across the floor" makes sense despite "mouse" not being a verb. The use of a verb suffix and contextual details such as "across" demonstrate the intention of the sentence: the man moved across the floor in a manner like a mouse
3:05 I think you forgot a very popular one here, the one in Slavic languages. E.g. Russian «У Меня» (doesn’t exactly have a translation exactly, меня is the genitive case of я), can be translated as “by me” (meaning near me, next to me). In Russian, we can add есть to make у меня есть, “I have”, and then use an undeclined noun like масло (butter). We can also say у меня and then the genitive case of the object. So while they can be considered a bit different, у меня масла and у меня есть масло both are translated as “I have butter”, without a proper “I have” verb.
I have enjoyed two years of Russian at school, and one thing many seem to find difficult is that there is no "to be". "I am Marcus" becomes "I - Marcus" "ya - Marcus", where the dash is only written, never spoken. "You are good" becomes "you - good". Once you get accustomed to it it's absolutely clear. Why does one even need such a basic word as "to be" when it is quite clear from the rest of the words what is meant? It makes such a lot of sense. It's the same with "to have" "u menya masslo" is quite clear, no need for the fancy word. It seems that English is a good first candidate for "I've got the most unneccessary words" 😂
I'm pretty sure English is actually 3 languages in a trench coat.
Oh no. It's far more languages than that. Celtic, French, Danish, German, and its orthography was fixed by Latinphiles who decided that we couldn't simply use f for phi, we needed to use ph because reasons.
@@jkfecke quite a bit of Greek and even some Asian words as well such as tsunami, sushi, etc..
@@jkfecke "German" is actually quite misleading. That makes people think of the more recent southern dialect "high German" and the similar "standard German" they typically hear in movies. The language mainly related to English (as well as to Scandinavian) was the language of the Hansa leauge, called Low German or plattdeutsch, etc. Basically another language (and closer to Proto Germanic than what the sound changed and latinized high German is). These two kinds of "German" are as distant as Dutch and standard German, and grammatically *almost* (a little stretch) as different as Swedish and English.
That is a very clever comment.
Herr Friberger well actually standard german originates from north germany, not south germany. High german dialects are not really close to standard german, biggest one for example would be bavarian. Standard german originates in north germany.
One of my favourite things about the English language is how nouns/names can be used as verbs and adjectives. You can say "I am so going to chimney you!" or "That was very Lady Gaga of her." and while the meaning of these have never been defined, the sentences they're used in are technically correct and invoke a very specific thing.
Without any derivational suffixes, that is. The ability to turn nouns/names into verbs and adjectives is not limited to English, but I think the ability to do so without using derivational suffixes could be rather unique.
that's how English slang becomes enhanced
@@tiihtu2507 It's generally how isolating languages work, actually. When you don't have a lot of morphology telling you which word class any given word belongs to, you tend to just sort of throw them in wherever.
@@HeadsFullOfEyeballs Not "wherever." The words get put into specific word order patterns, and that's how the part of speech is made clear.
Sa Yu in the uk, if you say “you’re such a...” followed by an adjective it sounds like a plain insult. For example, my nan used to call me a “soppy date” if I ever did something stupid. Basically she was calling me a stupid/wet fruit... thanks nan
I've learned a lot today thank you.. plus the comment section was incredibly helpful too! Thank for the knowledge everyone
This is one of the most high value channels on RUclips. Thank you for your mind, your passion, and your work.
I've always had empathy for whoever learns English as a second language. Sometimes it seems like familiarity and memorization takes over logic when it comes to spelling or grammar
true. if it wasn't the international language, it would be a lot harder. we all manage because it's everywhere
@@carb_8781 dude, what language is your native? English is one of the easiest.
@@SHIFTSRK I think they mean spelling and pronunciation which is all over the place in English.
@@SHIFTSRK there's no easiest language to learn, that isn't a thing.
@@albertacorralez2871 yeah that is definitely a thing lol
Just knowing some German and something about other languages and I'm actually quite impressed with English. It's highly flexible.
Germans super flexible though.
German’s way more flexible than English
Knowing a little bit of German and a some Chinesee as foreign languges I'm just keeping to *laught in russian*.
In English pronunciation and spelling is a bitch, but I love English for it shortness, logic, and almost always one way to make a sentence. It's not flexible at all, even comparing with German where they have two possible word orders in a sentence instead of one (and comparing to Russian it is still nothing).
@@jeveuxmourir4370 how
@@Heretogasunu Declensions (which means there’s more ways to say the same thing) and compound nouns (which leads to a lot of more complicated/abstract vocabulary). You’d have to at least learn German grammar to know the pedantics of it, though.
There's a Brazilian Portuguese variation (generally spoken in the countryside) features a very similar "r" as in English ("porta", "melhor", "fazer"), and it is because the European "r" phonem was non-existent among the languages spoken before the Portuguese arrived, ending up in a mix between "L" and "R".
Interesting analysis video! Thanks for uploading!
I was floored when I first learned awhile back that the ending -r sound is used in the two most widely spoken languages in English and Chinese... and by virtually no one else. It's funny how that sound is used by a large quantity of speakers, but by a very small quantity of languages. I'm glad you brought that one up, I was looking to see if it would make it!
The English -r sound also exists in Brazilian Portuguese
In Portuguese we speak this sound quite often (whenever an R is between a vowel and a consonant, like in the word "alert": "alerta"), except on some of Brazil's states, where it can be replaced by an "h" sound, or by the "r" sound that you hear in spanish
I know, it's like a joke.
It appears in some form in rural Swedish dialects, especially in Finland.
They don't mean the r sound itself, more the quality of the vowels before the r sound at the end of words, which is unique to english and mandarin
One thing that I find interesting about English is how it's completely lost grammatical gender except in the 3rd person pronouns, despite the fact that gender is so common throughout Indo-European languages.
Gendered suffixes can be found on some nouns, but they're typically optional.
This is my favorite thing about English. I would love to know if their is a historical linguistic reason for that.
I think this is a major positive attribute of English over its companion European languages; I’d appreciate it if I was learning it as a second language. Trying to comprehend that inanimate objects were considered male or female seemed pointless when I first studied French 50+ years ago. Stupid, in fact.
Persian has gone farther than that and eliminated gender 100%. The 3rd-person singular pronoun in Persian is "u" which means he/she/it.
English has no grammatical gender. We have gendered pronouns for gendered objects (animals and people), but inanimate objects do not have gender (keys are not inherently male, cats are not inherently female)
One thing I have noticed is that a lot of other languages will have a lot of different words all meaning the same thing... In English, we have alot of words that are pronounced exactly alike, but have different meaning...
That just something some friends told me about learning English as a second language
It's funny that you mentioned how "th" is difficult for people who speak other languages. My Dutch grandmother used to pronounce my name Machew because she had trouble pronouncing the "th" sound. As far as strange language features, the future perfect of Latin is pretty strange to me.
....and some folk learning English feel awkward about showing the tip of their tongues when saying 'the'.
English has clearly pirated the "arrrr" sound.
It's spelled R. See the Bertie Wooster books. I suspect it stands for "Right"
@@rodschmidt8952
Crew Member: The canons be loaded Captain.
Captain: ARE. The canons ARE loaded
Arrr ye matey
You all ought to know that The typical accent we associate with pirates was only introduced by an actor in the 40's. Robert Newton in his performance as Long John Silver in the 1950 film Treasure Island.
He adopted that accent from the West country. Otherwise there's no special reason to think pirates would have that accent. Most of them probably had cockney London accents...
Good one!
English way of using "do" as a verb pronoun and for verb emphases is unusual.
John McWhorter thinks that's something English picked up from the Celtic languages of the Britons.
That’s one I’ve heard my friends who have learned English as a foreign language talk about a lot. And mostly they love it! It’s so versatile. Many told me they wish they had it in their L1. I think it was definitely worth a mention
McWhorter will tell you himself that the Celtic hypothesis isn't his, it's just something that makes a whole lot more sense than anything else that has been proposed for the origin of do-support.
Also, there's the whole "present tense" thing. We don't have one. The "verbs" that are rendered in what we might see as present tense aren't really verbs, they're more like state and relationship indicators. Anything else that looks like present tense is either habitual or in (for want of a better phrase) in "narrator mode". "She walks to the door" is either a stage direction, a description of what your player character is doing this turn, or a thing she does every time she hears the doorbell ring.
Can you give an example? I'm not sure I understand.
@@stanrogers5613 English only has past and non-past tenses linguistically. Everything else is due to centuries of people explaining English grammar as though it has to fit an ancient Latin grammar book.
A lot of these distinctions are actually quite important. I can't imagine speaking a language without some of these kinds of specificity. I imagine it would affect everything, how you think... probably not for the better. I wonder what the most specific language is.
Eichiro Oda, author of One Piece, is really good at writing word puns and number play into his writing (originally Japanese) that translates well into other languages, and sometimes the reverse is true, he’ll use an English word that translates back well into Japanese. Of course some of his word play CANNOT translate because of how Japanese is constructed, but if you’re interested in languages, Oda is really interesting to read because when studying his work across multiple translations it reveals hidden clues to his story.
Oh wow, I didn't know that! Sounds very interesting
What I find most fascinating is how language helps to shape how people think and process information and how that works out in action.
That’s really fascinating to me too!! Have you seen the movie “Arrival”? It touches on that theme, it’s pretty cool :)
I remember watching a travel documentary where an Indian guy who ran a large tea plantation in Darjeeling, said that he actually thought in English. Being a typical Englishman myself and never really learning any other language- though I've tried, I always wondered how strange it seemed to think in a second language.
@@stephenmcdonagh2795 I'm gonna tell you, the human mind has capacities beyond the conventions of any language, but it is often specific language that facilitates the development of those capacities. One language may be more like geometry and another like music. If you know both languages and can "speak" them you know that your mind will accommodate the necessary mode of thinking based on the need of the circumstance and conventions of the language. New words are made then, when the language doesn't meet the need of the communicator. It probably occurs with all of us quite often and on different levels in circumstances that we wouldn't normally think would qualify. Languages are just systems for communicating ideas. I think it's more fascinating, nuanced, complex and simple, at the same time, than we can imagine.
@@rembeadgc That makes a lot of sense. The other week I was sleep talking to someone, unlike a dream which they say can last only a few seconds, I'd actually remembered sitting up and seemed like I was having a perfectly normal conversation with someone- though obviously there was no one there, it was quite strange. To my knowledge I've slept walked only two times, and both of these I'd put down to sleep deprivation. Now I hide my car keys, hoping I'll not remember where I'd put them if I was to wake up and tried to jump in the car. It seems a lot of knowledge you didn't know you had comes together whilst in REM sleep.
@@rembeadgc I think all languages have their geometry and their music. There are fascinating ways in which languages differ, but I think people often romanticize those differences too much. I've learned of very few features in other languages that would seriously change how I thought of anything, and they're all fairly arbitrary issues, nothing that has a big impact on ideas, decision-making, interests, or personality: non-decimal number systems, fewer or greater basic colors, and different spatial representations of time.
Honestly, it feels weird that English is a language that actually exists and that I actually speak when I think about it sometimes.
It is not that weird when you speak more than 1 language, trust me, you get used to switching the language, especially if you live in a bilingual area like I do.
@@itzelmontalvo6645 I'm Trilingual you know
@@itzelmontalvo6645 as a trilingual who also lives in a pretty bilingual area i second this
I get this feeling as a native English speaker as well. Sometimes I think about a sentence I just said and think “what a weird language. Why is that sentence structured like that?”
Exactly 😭
One awesome thing about English is that it’s very flexible with conjugation. Almost any word can be made into a noun, verb, adjective, adverb, or even interjection depending on the context and suffixes used. Not many languages do that IME
I love how we can sentence however we want
I used to believe English was the only language using the 'soft R', but it seems like I keep coming across examples of other languages/accents doing this too: Swahili, Chinese, Swedish (in some region), people from Holland (a province within NL), some (or I know at least one) guys from West-Flanders, some West-African language (it might've been Twi)... Idk there's probably more
Explaining "the" and "a" to someone who doesn't know those concepts is really hard lol because I don't have an actual understanding of the function, just an intuitive one.
It's better to explain "a" and "the" from a communicative perspective than by giving rules. What are you trying to communicate in a particular sentence in a particular conversation? Does the other person know what you're referring to? Are you introducing something new to the conversation?
Example:
"A dog bit me yesterday."
[Beginning of conversation. Introduction of one dog. Use "a".]
"Then it ran away."
[Pronoun "it" used because the dog is "activated" in the conversation right now. The other person knows what you're referring to because it's what you're talking about.]
"Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you that I bought some more dog food for Fido, my poodle."
[Topic of conversation was changed briefly.]
"Okay, so after the dog ran away, I went home."
[Referring back to the dog at the beginning of the conversation. It is being re-introduced since the topic had shifted. The other person knows which dog you are referring to. Use "the".]
@@kathyh.1720 thanks, it is really helpful
@@mufazahd2782 Definite vs. indefinite is just that - the former is specific or assumed to be known, the latter is much more general - not necessarily about a specific object. To explain this, you could say as an opening to a conversation, one would state, "A dog bit my leg." Once the dog is introduced or "known," the definite article would be appropriate after, as in "I yelled, then the dog ran away." Besides articles, German does something vaguely similar with "there is/are." General statements use es gibt (There are penguins in Antartica); specific one use da ist (There is my coffee).
I've had a difficult time explaining past tense to people (I think they were Asian). I'd try to explain something that I did already, but they think I'm talking about the present moment.
You have to "present" your noun or its too direct and rude.
I'm a Portuguese native speaker and in Portuguese we only have one word for ''fingers'' and ''toes'' which is ''dedos'', I remember finding it amazing that English has two different words for those when I first started learning English. Didn't know other languages could go as far as to have only one word for hands, arms, fingers etc lol!
@??? sim, é de origem alemã. Se não me engano o original era ''Engelmann'', aí aportuguesaram para englemam.
English does have another word, "digit," which means "finger or toe." But it's much less commonly used. It was slightly mind-blowing when I first learned about "dedos" in Spanish too. I felt bad for the poor Spanish toes, not even getting their own name.
@@jpanosky I didn't know about ''digit''. Anyways, in Portuguese and Spanish we can specify ''dedos das mãos'' and ''dedos dos pés'' if we need to emphasize which part of our body we're talking about. But even so, not the same thing as having a unique word as English does!
same for romanian! the word toe is so funny to me. it's so useless and yet makes sentences shorter so it's not skshfj
my poor toes will always be feet fingers in my head. always compared to the better fingers. what a sad life
@@carb_8781 Foot fingers 🤣🤣🤣🤣 That would be so weird lol
As someone who is currently trying to learn a new language, I found this extremely interesting and it answered a lot of questions
You can see how much English is directly effected by militaristic pasts.
Even if it's a non descript noun you can quickly state "the green one" or "the green three" and give a quick and accurate description. Doubling down on plurals allows for a quick and secure way to describe numbers. Our sentence structure is built around emergencies by always placing the subject and verb first then followed by an adjective. We speak in exclaimations all the time. "Fire, burning, fast", "cavalry, flanking, right" "i, run, away"
The experience he had had had had no impact on the ultimate result.
Full disclosure: my word nerd self had to read that twice before I got it
@@susanzoeckler4926 Full disclosure: I did not invent it myself. I heard something like it once and it stuck with me
@@carolmeindl8973 👩🏫 probably most such grammar goodies are borrowed -- still a great choice! Thanks
Or more eloquently rendered: "His experience had no impact on the result."
I don’t understand what This means after the second had lol
about the “th” sound, i never realized how uncommon it was until my mom told me when she was learning english that she would go home, sit and look in the mirror and just repeat that sound over and over until she could get it right
An unrolled R sound is uncommon too, I'd say
My German-born mother came to England as a teenage refugee and never in her over seventy years here got the hang of that fricative. Her written English was perfect and she devoured books in English but she never got the 'th' thing.
Never knew that was difficult before this video. Makes sense though. Reminds me of the "Tsu" sound in Japanese. That's Hella hard to pronounce correct apparently no matter how many times I think I do it right haha
@@KuroshiKun I don't know why it's difficult but it is. I've worked all over Europe and the majority of mainland Europeans have difficulty with it even if their English is very good. Swedish people, who generally speak English very well, struggle and the same is very true of native German speakers. Dutch people use 'th' to make a different sound entirely in their own language which creates a mental block. I have a Dutch friend who was taught to practice "This thick thing thinks that thing is thick" at school.
@@peterd788 if the sound doesn't exist in your native language it's difficult to reproduce despite hearing it. That was may issue with "Tsu". Like I'd pronounce "Tsunami" as "Sunami". I don't even know it well enough to spell it out phonetically how it's supposed to be said lol
While its spelling is truly atrocious, and its grammar might seem "complicated," the obvious fact is that English is easily the most dynamic language on the planet. The most common explanation for this that English only became a "world language" due to the dominance of America in the postwar world, but that only (partially) explains why so many people from so many different cultures have adopted it as a second language after the war. There have always been second languages. In many places, from tiny postal stamp-sized countries in Europe like the Netherlands and Switzerland to the language-rich countries of Africa, people often learn 3, 4, 5 or even more languages when there is no real lingua franca.
French was that lingua in diplomatic and literary circles in Europe and elsewhere for hundreds of years, but even then, in Central and Eastern Europe, from the Baltics to the Balkans, and all the way to Russia, German was the preeminent second, presumably "universal" language.
But here's how we cut to the chase on the question of how and why obtuse and ridiculous English, originally spoken by far less than a million souls on a tiny, soggy, unimportant island, became the unchallenged world language that it is today: it's all in the vocabulary, man. Wortschatz ("word treasure" in German.)
The real reason that English is king is because it is so mongrel, so fluid, so acquisitive and so inventive. French got defensive, establishing an academy to root out foreign "words," while English--the flooziest language ever--cheerfully adopted and adapted words, phrases and whole concepts pell-mell and willy-nilly, which is to say with joyous abandon. Many languages do this to some extent, but none like English. When I listen to and read modern German attempts to incorporate new words and ideas, for example, what I am most struck by is how awkward this is. But then, this is the most awkward sister language of English, the language that instead of inventing or adopting a word for "gloves," decided to go with its ancient practice of lumping together two existing words: Handschuh, "the shoe of the hands." This is why even non-native English speakers prefer to write their songs in English, the great whore language.
We have, at bare minimum, 750,000 words. The other European vocabularies maybe 100,000 on a good day. The central reason why English is so dynamic and rocks so hard--despite its greatest fault, its frivolous abandonment of phonetics--is actually connected to that sense of abandon. The story of English is in many ways the story of modern humanity. The irony of arguably unrivaled colonial cruelties also giving us this clearly unrivaled cornucopia of "phanopoeia, logopoeia and melopoeia" in our equally voracious language!
That the whip of the Master would provide the tools of novelists, songsmiths and pamphleteers, playwrights and rappers, the modern griot-poets from both the projects and the alienated conurbations, and also even unto the rural enclaves--and from there across a world connected not so much through its stupid devices as through the first truly global language--all slinging their diverse songs in that same weird, obscure, profligate and flirtatious, many-flavored and eminently whorishly bastard language, English.
allenginsberg.org/2015/04/meditation-and-poetics-78-phanopoeia-logopoeia-and-melopoeia/
Except that Murrica isn't only dominant in military and economics, but especially in pop culture and entertainment. this is also the only relevant reason English is so popular: an endless amount of things that form the thesaurus of "pop culture memes and references". Movies, Songs, Videogames, and most important essentially all the technology that makes the internet possible is in English.
English isn't easier, more creative, more unique, more anything than other languages, it just was there at the right time when globalisation truly kicked in. Why is Korean so popular in the West, why is Japanese so popular in the West? Both countries are no match to China, economically or military, nor are these languages easier. But they offer a much more compelling pop-culture.
@@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx573
Funniest thing about reality is that two or more seemingly contradictory things can all be simultaneously true.
@@YunusDrillinger
Kann man nur so hoffen, gell?
@@YunusDrillinger
Schon klar. Es gibt kein Stehenbleiben mit Sprachen. Ausser vielleicht Baskisch, die einzige noch lebende präindische europäische Sprache auf dem Kontinent. Ich staune nur dass so eine unlogische, gar nicht phonetische Sprache wie Englisch ueberhaupt zur Weltsprache wurde.
I can tell this is an interesting and we'll researched video. Perhaps it's because I'm tired, but, unfortunately, much of it was lost on me. Still, I can tell you're passionate about it. Thank you for sharing your knowledge even if it was a bit lost on me.
Victor Borge had a joke about interdental fricatives:
"I'm from Denmark, and we don't have this 'th' sound. Our language is more like ''. It was very hard going from '' to 'th'. I had a friend who tried to go the other way, from 'th' to '' -- he drowned."
Ah, the late, great and sorely missed Victor Borge. "Inflationary Language" never ceases to amuse me. "You look twoderful threenight". The man was fantastic.
@@bikkies I'm going to add the other bit of the 'th' joke, for completeness:
"My English teacher told me, 'Thpeak like thith for a month and get uthed to it onth and for all.' Tho I thpoke like thith for a month, and got uthed to it onth and for all. It worked very well -- ethept when I met other people who thpoke like thith. Or in crowded liftth."
@@JamesRedekop That is what the thpanish did with their language! It is totally different to thpanish everywhere elsth in the world.
Hahaha I can relate, I'm an English speaking Australian learning Danish!
@@Astrologist 0.o I now want to learn more about Danish
What I find fascinating about English is the descriptiveness it gives because of the utter amount of adjectives and adverbs. Like, in my first language we don’t have words like ‘facinating’ & ‘descriptive’ & ‘insecure’ & ‘absolutely’ & ‘loyal’ & ‘spunky’ & ‘edgy’ & ‘perturbative’ and thousands more
A decent bulk of these are probably thanks to Germanic and Romance variants of the same concepts. Others are different parts of speech transmuted into adjectives and adverbs.
"fascinating" -> present participle turned adjective of "to fascinate," from Latin
"descriptive" -> adjectival suffix + "to describe," from Latin
"insecure" -> negative prefix + "secure" from Latin; "secure" also has verb form "to secure"
"absolutely" -> adverbal suffix + "absolute" from Middle French; also has noun form "an absolute"
"loyal" -> from Middle French
"spunky" -> adjectival suffix + "spunk," apparently fully Germanic
"edgy" -> adjectival suffix + "edge," from Germanic
"perturbative" -> adjectival suffix + "to perturb," from Old French
Of these 7 adjectives, 3 are from verbs, and 2 are from nouns. The one adverb is derived from another adjective. There are even multiple different ways to transmute the same word's part of speech.
then how do you describe a fascinating thing?
I love how English just keeps on expanding really fast. My language also lacks most of these words and we have to use english ones instead.
@@TooDeepForSleep wait actually? You just toss in an English word when you don't have a word for something? 😂
@@huntno My Maltese relatives would always be throwing in english words in conversation for things. (made it easier to fill in the gaps for me understanding them). I think it's because there were either often short snappy english words that didn't need to (relatively) complex construction to form it in, or was just more commonly used.
Maybe it's like me trying to speak portuguese, and dropping into French when i get stuck.
English is a wonderful language in poetry and song .
Because there are so many one syllable words in English ,it makes for nice even flow of lyrics in songs . This is especially useful in ballads.
There are a few non English language songs I like but by and large you can't beat it
Excellent video!!!
A German friend of mine, who taught English, once said to me that English is a beautiful language, because there are *so* many ways of saying the same thing.
Also, regarding playing word games, double meanings and rhyming, it makes it the perfect language for poetry, prose and song writing.
I commend your grammar, Sir.
I honestly love English and I fully agree with the idea that having so many synonyms and different sentence constructions lends itself to poetry and expression.
The English language was the most effective weapon the Irish had to use against the English.
Of course your German friend would think that. When I was learning German, our tutor said if I he sees the same word twice within 5 sentences, it is not good German. (Context: darum, deshalb, deswegen...)
I know you are talking about different structures of conveying the same meaning but Germans really do like their variety :)
That's quite funny because German has some of the best poetry... And it can express things with words that English doesn't have
I like the current usage of “going to” meaning “about to” as opposed to “going to a place”
Spanish uses it that way too
French does it both ways
I prefer to use the more formal "fixin' to"
@@Big_Tex How about Finna
This is a load of barnacles “going to” saves me in spanish class since we don’t know future tense yet lamao
The word 'have' is achieved even more strangely in Russian. They say, literally, 'with me there is', or 'next tome there is'.
And in Chinese, there is no word for 'yes' in answer to a question. You have to repeat the verb back to the questioner. For example, if someone asks, 'Would you like some food?', the correct response is to reply with: 'Like'. That's all.
In Russian, you only have fingers, and no thumbs. The thumb is called simply, 'big finger'
A great video, thank you!
American English has clear "r" sounds... but then there are the British. If it's at the end of a word, it might as well not exist.
I've been teaching this to my Chinese students recently. British soft r versus hard American r.
Except in southwest England. Have them say 'Cider' to you!
@@frazzleface753 Ah yes, you are right there :p. I think we should be clearer and either say 'most British accents' or just go with 'received pronunciation'.
When I was a kid in Jacksonville people said “idea” as “idear”. At an early age I decided to stop that as it didn’t make sense.
@@stephenpowstinger733 Well. That's a good ol' southern twang. And in Texas, everything is bigger. Including the words.
English: Lobster
Mandarin: *Dragon shrimp*
My mom: Seabugs. Haha
English: Dragon
Finnish: Salmon snake
English: noun
Mandarin: name word
English: adjective
Mandarin: describe word
English: verb
Mandarin: move word
English: computer
Mandarin: e l e c t r i c b r a i n
@@bens5093
English: computer
Finnish: knowledge machine
Nice work on this .. THANKS …❤️❤️❤️
I love how flexible (non-standard) english is. The amount of word-forging you can do, how you can verb using nouns, how creative spelling can demonstrate different accents while still remaining ledgible.
English: "I can do lots of stuff, what can you do, Georgian?"
Georgian: "*sfdjjgotnins;nfpoadn!*"
Yeah I can have a stroke in English too you're not that special
*Abkhazian and Ossetian freedom noises*
I think they make creams for that. Damn girl!
The first time I saw the Georgian alphabet I lowkey thought it was a fake alphabet created for a fictional language or something because it just looks so different to others, especially compared to other Eastern European countries
@@minihwas Look up the Glagolitic script. I'm Croatian and understand that it was used far in the past in the slavic region where croatia is now, and even further, though I don't know the details.
I love the way almost everything can become a verb - like Jerry Seinfeld once said "she shooshed me!", or "text me", "facebook me" and so on.
I like to use the phrase, "In English, we can verb whatever we want."
Like Robert Bork has had his last name become a verb and adjective.
"He was borked by the senior staff."
"Don't tell them that or they will bork you."
@@billkeithchannel You can be litt up, too.
We do that a lot in scandinavia too. Hanging an -a at the end of a noun is often sufficient, makes the noun into a verb (text -> texta, boll -> bolla, lek -> leka, spel -> spela, skit -> skita, piss -> pissa, etc...)
you can do that on turkish too
3:15
Personally, for my newest conlang, I use "to with." It incentivizes a strong connection between two nouns. But the replacement for to be would probably be like "to and," since it's like saying both nouns are one and the same.
We're really good at stealing words, making up words, forcing words to be anglecized, and turning everything into a noun or a verb with little effort. There's also a lot of nuance. I've had discussions on the different between nice and kind as an example. Because we have a massive lexicon from both Latin and Germanic to begin with, we have a lot of overlap that allows for nuance and specificity.
English is like the Blob or Frankenstein's monster or Pickle Rick of languages. We sort of just graft on more when we need it.
Tahiti person: Doctor, I cut off my hand.
Tahiti Doctor: Would that be the hand, finger or arm?
Tahiti person: Yes.
oh god
"uuh the handtips"
Bavarian person: I have hurt my foot.
Doctor: top or bottom?
Reason why our English teacher said: In English your foot starts at the ankle not the hip.
@gamer time it's a joke
@gamer time I bet you're fun at parties.....
In Russian if you switch the numeral and the noun, you'll get the meaning "approximately", e.g. три часа "three hours" vs. часа три (literally "hours three") "three hours or so". As far as I know, no other language can do that :-)
I've never noticed that. I like it!
Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian can do it too.
*Tri sata-sata tri*
or
*Tri časa-časa tri*
@@minchy4926 sounds like slav thing
@@fool4343 it is 😂
@@minchy4926 An eastern european feature, perhaps?
Always interesting!
It's nice to learn how the Langue I grew up with is unique in a special way and no framing it as a bad thing thank you!
One thing I've always wondered about English is the fact that you can absolutely butcher the grammar, and still be mostly understood, at least at a basic level. You can flip subject/object, adjective/noun, misconjugate verbs, leave out articles, just about anything, and as long as the basics are there, you'll get your point across. That does not seem to be the case in ANY other language, where if you flip just one pair of words or use the wrong declination, it changes the meaning 100%. It seems that English has redundancy BUILT IN to it, so it can at least be used even if you're not fluent. The same is not the case for "most" other languages. That's the way I see it, anyway.
Interesting perspective. I come from Balto-Slavic background and local patriots like to brag about their languages being superior to English since due to cases you can flip the word order. But now I do think that an incorrect ending can leave someone thinking for seconds before understanding what was said, that is worse than just flipping words that don't have a case at all.
I will say, in some languages word order is important, in some it is not important at all (grammatical relationships are indicated in other ways). English might be unique in that way among languages for which word order is important.
I actually believe English has a very straight forward and simple structure.
There was a commentary above, using German as an example, where
"An apple eat I" doesn't make any sense and "An apple I eat" sounds incomplete and can only exist as "I eat an apple", while the German
"Den Apfel esse ich" and "Ich esse den Apfel" are both correct.
The Spanish "yo como una manzana", "una manzana como yo".
Like, in English class (for not natives) you have those really specific charts that, even if I have learned a much more complex way to structure my sentences, they don't seem to break that much, while the other two languages I learnt (German and Japanese) where more confusingly flexible with their structures even if I just learn the basics.
Nah.
could you give an example.
The non-specific (and perceived overuse of) "it" seems odd to many foreign speakers. It's hot (the weather), it's time to go (the situation), what is it (cause of an emotional state), it's 8:30 already (the time), etc.
"it" is an implicit identifier. It (in this case "it" is the implicit identifier) generally refers to an obvious subject or a previously mentioned subject.
i.e.
I could say: The House is red. The Houses is amidst other houses. The house is two-story.
or: The House is red. It is amidst other houses. It is two story.
It is far less repetitive and time-consuming. (
@@whenthedustfallsaway Yeah but the distinction being made isn't that other languages say the house is two-story, it's that they say "two story" or "is two story"
@@DuhMasto what you're talking about, while true, has nothing to do with this comment chain and the OG comment.
I noticed this too when I started learning Spanish. Spanish just uses different verbs for weather! (e.g. llover, to rain; llueve, it’s raining)
@ Evan Andrews
It has everything to do with it. In fact it was you who missed the point. "It" is highly overused in English, as most languages just state the subject or omit it entirely. For instance, Japanese natives find it annoying hearing English speakers using "sore wa/ga" ("it" as a subject or topic) all of the time. The subject is just omitted, or it is directly stated when introduced or for comparison.
I am a Lithuanian speaker. My notes:
1. I know only two languages that pronounce R the same way, it is English and Albanian.
2. People who haven't been learning English from early age have real trouble saying "th" sounds. Often "the" turns to "ze". I know many.
3. Writing being different from pronunciation was a struggle in school. I was wondering why English speakers aren't doing like we do: 1 letter = 1 sound.
good stuff man. Congrats
I guess this is more about how European languages are weird than English.
well, the rich vowel system is characteristic of the Germanic group whereas the interdental fricatives are kind of all over the place yet mostly rare in Europe. (By the way, doesn't Icelandic also have them still?)
Greek and Spanish also have both dental fricatives
@@Alex-fv2qs Arabic also has one dental fricative. I think the voiced dental fricative is a bit more common than the unvoiced one.
@@vytah Arabic has both a voiced & unvoiced dental fricative. The letter "ث" makes the unvoiced dental fricative sound whereas the letter "ذ" makes the voiced dental fricative sound. In fact, they use fairly standard notation to indicate this when transcribing them to the English alphabet; 'th' for thaa & 'dh' for dhaal.
@@dr.zoidberg8666 Ah true, I confused few things. I was thinking about pharyngealized dental fricatives. Arabic has both /θ/ and /ð/, but only /ðˤ/.
This video is even more interesting when you're fluent in another language. Fun to compare.
I realized that Danish is actually extremely similar to English. Makes sense though, they were both originally Germanic languages. English just has more French mixed in. And danish Vikings also conquered England and influence English
Unless you have watched this twice, once before becoming fluent, I'm not sure you can make that call
Quirke1337 haha, good point!
@@niclas3672 They ARE Germanic languages. They were both originally Proto-Germanic. Germanic is a language family, not to be confused with German the language.
And yeah you're right, I speak some French and it has most of the "weird features" mentioned in the video. So do most other western European languages IIRC.
Something I don't hear mentioned very often and I am curious about is how common it is to say that you would have done something in a different situation. I remember reading somewhere that it is a pretty unique way of thinking to consider alternate possibilities given different past events, but I don't know how true that is.
The best ;)
Not only is "best" hanging out there all alone, but it's a couple of steps away from where it started.
english: *Vacuum cleaner*
swedish and all other languages on earth: *"inhales"*
english: *no, don't*
swedish and all other languages on earth: *dustsucker*
*Edit because of comments*
*Edit again* damn so many likes for such a shitty comment
In Spanish the word we use literally means "aspirator"
German: Staubsauger
"Staub" means dust, and "Sauger" means sucker.
Germanic languages for the win!
In Czech we use *vysavač* . It means basicly sucker.
Russian: Пылесос (dustsucker)
Finnish: "imuri" meaning *sucker*
or "pölynimuri" meaning *dustsucker*
Remember,
when you find yourself in a difficult situation regarding "English" language, you can always say "pardon my French".
"Pardon my French" is a euphemism for acknowledging ruefully that you were swearing, and probably should not have.
When the french swear, do the say "pardonnez mon anglais?" Is there a joint bilateral treaty of linguistic banter?
@@karenvaughan8521I am probably being whooshed, but I thought "Pardon my French" was a reference to how 40% of the English Vocabulary comes from Latin mostly introduced by French
@@irgendwer3610 no
@@user-nf9xc7ww7mWhenever something is slightly unsavoury we call it French: French letter is a euphemism for a condom, French lessons is a euphemism a prostitute uses to advertise her services, French kiss is a kiss with tongues. And yes, the French return the insult:"Capote anglaise” is slang in French for condom
I thought you might say something about our vast catalog of synonyms, which makes English such a good language for poetry. Or our vast catalog of homonyms and homophones that can drive English learners crazy! My favorite oddity (from a Bulgarian friend who spoke English like a native after 2 years of learning!): When I turn on my radio, it makes a sound. When set off an alarm, it also makes a sound. Intuitively I get it, but cognitively, what???
Loved the video, and realized how diverse languages are when I couldn't compare some of the grammatical things to my second language (Japanese) because it operates on an entirely different scale of rules
This one's for you, English. In part one, you lacked. In part two, you're all "have"s.
Do a video on different sign languages , Braille , or kinesics if you haven't already.
@@tyrranicalt-rad6164 when requesting a favor of someone higher than you, imperatives come off as rude; a feature of many languages.
Well, many of those didn't impress me that much, and it made me realize I might be a little too Euro-centric. I guess I really should learn a non-European language, but that will have to come after Polish, as I need to learn it now.
@@user-kd1eb6vc7y really ? IDK I'm sorry. 😞. I'll unsub now , thanks for the info.
You forgot stranded preposition and the funky pronoun system (both independent and bound to the verb).
“Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?”
- Kevin Malone
I read that completely differently
"Kevin Malone" ?
Try the Spartans 2500 years ago.
It’s a scene from “The Office” where Kevin tries to save time by saying fewer words.
m.ruclips.net/video/_K-L9uhsBLM/видео.html
IM WEAK
Beltalowda
That was excellent!
ARTICLE FOR SUBJECT OF A TURKISH SENTENCE
"a/an=bir"
"the=if there is not "bir" then it is the"
İf subject is identified then do not add "bir"
Bir adam geldi = A man came.
Adam geldi = The man came.
If subject is plural, then add some adjectives that means uncertainty such as"bazı,kimi" to mean there is not "the"
Bazı çocuklar geldi= some childeren came.
Çocuklar geldi= the childeren came.
ARTICLE FOR OBJECT OF A TURKISH SENTENCE
kitabı oku= read the book. (accusative case means the)
kitap oku= read a book. (if there is not accusative case then it means "bir=A" )
if object noun does not have any noun case then "bir=A" is not needed even "bir" must not be written because it already has "bir=a" meaning.
if object noun has a noun case then it means identified object "the". so if you want to make it unidentified then add "bir". so if object noun has a noun case other than accusative case then "bir" must be written otherwise it will be as if identified noun "the".
dative case example
bir ata bin = ride a horse.
ata bin = ride the horse