Fantastic Features We Don't Have In The English Language
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- Опубликовано: 30 май 2013
- tomscott.com - @tomscott - There are lots of interesting features in other languages, some of which English would really benefit from having. I'm going to talk about four of them: time-independence, clusivity, absolute direction, and evidentiality.
Also, I've learned from last week: no irritating piano music this time!
UNESCO list of endangered languages: www.unesco.org/culture/languag...
I love how I can watch a tom scott video and never know if it’s from 10 years ago or 10 minutes ago
Omg bruh what AAAH
wow, just noticed that now, I thought the video was more recent
@@lucasthech Same exacly, I just saw that one in recomended under the newest video, I thought it's like a week old or smth
I kinda like this lighting more
Wait what
“I’m east-handed, when I’m facing north”
How handy!
"I'm west-handed, when I am facing south."
OMG, I laughed so much!
im south handed when facing north
"I'm south-handed when I'm facing east"
I'm learning Swedish and I discovered that it has 2 words for yes. 'Ja' and 'jo'. 'Ja' is used as we use yes, but 'jo' is used when someone asks a negative question like "Aren't you coming?" and you'd say "Jo" or "nej" so there's no confusion whether you mean "Yes, I'm not coming" or "No, I'm not coming".
That’s brilliant
Norwegian too :)
in french too
This features in all Germanic languages (except English) and in French.
That has always been one of the biggest sources of confusion in English for me. That's great. Although, I believe old English had that at one point.
Being bilingual in English and Cantonese, it is much easier to chat with other bilinguals using a mixture. Actually, once you start, it is extremely difficult to revert back to one language or the other without contamination, unless a monolingual third person joins the conversation.
English-Finnish bilingual here and I agree. I mix the two languages a lot when talking with friends and find it harder to speak only English. Only Finnish is a bit easier for me, as it's my native language, but easiest is to mix both of them on the fly.
English-thai bilingual here, me too
In my experience this ease is a consequence of lacking vocabulary in one of the two, might just be a language purist though idk
@@neecogwheelsword3627 Not in all cases.
@@neecogwheelsword3627 sometimes yes but sometimes it's just that one language has an amazing way of describing a situation that the other doesn't. Maybe it's shorter, maybe it's all condensed in a single word while it's a full sentence on the other, maybe it's just more accurate.
I speak French-English-Japanese and with some other trilinguals we often end up with sentences that are full of words from the 2 other languages.
"As a language speaker" omg me too
i also speak languages, what a coincidence!
@@matteomagurno3068 No way!
I speak languages too
Ok this is a miracle... I speak languages too
I don't speak languages :'(
@@varunsathya1912 well you see, I believe you are typing in something called ‘English’ which is classified as a language, so you do speak languages :D
- Have you ever heard about that band?
- Which band?
- *Absolute Direction*
HahahAhhhHhahaha
- Have you ever heard about that band?
- Which band?
- Absolute Direction
*Absolute funny*
hahhaaaahshshssh
*badam tsss*
"Call me an ambulance!"
"Ok, you're an ambulance"
"Noooo, call an ambulance, and get them to come."
- Hello, it's ambulance? What are you wearing rn?
I'm SORRY
“hi ambulance, im dad”
Call an ambulance!
*draws gun*
BUT NOT FOR ME!
Hi ambulance, I'm dad.
I personally don't use it when typing, but in Spanish you have to start every interrogative question with ¿
This helps out a lot when reading a text and having questions that are super long.
so true! same with exclamation marks ! I'm a big reader and sometimes a character will say something but you don't realise until after the sentance that they were meant to be shouting the whole time. Then I go back and read the sentence again to get the full effect.
@@joannas322 double reading!
It's actually kind of a shame we don't have that in other languages (like Catalan or English)
i sometimes use the ¿ in English too
My favorite thing about this is that it doesn’t necessarily draw attention to the complete sentence, rather focusing purely on the interrogative portion.
The following sentence is a grammatically correct question in English:
_Dad, what is that?_
In Spanish, this is what you would write to express the same question:
_Papá, ¿que es eso?_
It may not look like much, but for long sentences with multiple commas and only one phrase that is actually doing the “questioning,” this makes reading Spanish exponentially easier.
@@alahiri2002I disagree with it being exponentially easier, as English uses reverse word order, which together with interrogative words like “what” or “how” and questions being separated by one of .,:; makes it quite clear what is a question and what is not.
OP even admits to it being left out of a lot of typing, can you imagine how little people would use it in English, especially considering the amount of weird contractions English uses?
“No, dum-dum, your OTHER North!”
Lmao
"Make sure you keep west when driving"
This would get confusing in space
Maybe have orientation with the sun and the body that you are orbiting
As an adult person who can't quickly distinguish left from right and tell time under pressure, I'm certain I would be told that anyway
"No, dum-dum your OTHER North!"
it's, 'No, dummy, your OTHER North"
a dummy may exhibit temporal situational disorientation including xy and z & t or inappropriate or inordinate responses socially for myriad reasons.
A dum dum...
about inclusivity - there's soviet joke about some party official who during his speech makes an optimistic prediction: "In year 2000 we will live much better". One of his listeners, an ordinary worker, replies "I get it, what about us?"
Why did I read this in a Russian accsent
@@samo_di8420 because I typed it with a russian accent!
Yes, there are 3 types of exclusivity for "we" and people usually only focus on two. It's me+you, me+them, me+you+them (where them is any number of people). - Your suggestion of an "everyone" pronoun isn't bad either. But -we- everyone already got "everyone".
but isnt Russian "we" is the same as Eglish "we"? I mean it can mean (you/me) or (me/them) or (all of us)
Who are you, Comrade Question? :P
Hawai'ian; Apart from only having 13 letters there are two words. Mauka for toward the mountains, inland (away from the ocean) and Makai for toward the ocean. On the islands these are important directions and commonly used by everyone. English also gives us the windward and leeward sides of the island.
To be proper, it should be either ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi or Hawaiian. The English word Hawaiian doesn't have an ʻokina in it.
Kind of like in downtown New Orleans. North south east and west don’t work because of the geography of the river’s curve.
You get uptown (or upstream), downtown, towards the river and towards the lake.
It’s even more hopeless using compass directions, as South Carrollton and South Claiborne are two streets that intersect, at 90 degrees no less.
i love languages and this was a super fascinating video, but it’s a crime no one is talking about tom using the one direction font for *_absolute direction_*
right! I was wondering if anyone noticed this too 😂
I can't even picture what font that is, but that's very funny to hear. Am gonna go back through the video to learn what that font looks like!
"We've just won the lottery, but you haven't" has the same energy as "Call an ambulance! But not for me"
i thought of "but mr krabs, we don't deliver!" "WE don't deliver, but YOU do"
Ey kenma
1:23 is when you've won the lottery but there's this one aunt/uncle that you have a restraining order against
Thought the exact same thing
This made me exhale from my nose
Maybe these features will be added in the next update
I hope they also patch the political class
Actually, we are abandonware.
Buy the DLC for 29,99 for two different words you'll never ever use.
Im evil
I changed your likes from 699 to 700 😈
Shronk Donk then why tf you making a big deal out of it then?
I’d love it if more languages had "Oui", "Si", "Non" so it doesn’t get confusing when someone asks a negative question.
- Don't you know them?
- Si, I know them.
I think this isn’t much of a problem in English but in Czech we get really weird situations because we have no idea what people mean when they plainly answer "yes" or "no" to negative questions.
when someone replies negative to a negative question it logically means the answer given is positive, but that is not general, so sometimes answer that way implies otherwise.
I've wondered that too. When someone asks me "Don't you hate it when ____" and I say yes, they don't know if i'm saying yes as in hate I hate it or yes as in I don't hate it
cope
seethe harder
German has this feature too! ("Doch")
In indonesia, the word for the inclusive we is "kita", and the exclusive we is "kami". The funny thing is, some indonesians just use "kita", be it inclusive or exclusive.
Example: "we broke up" in indonesia is "kita putus" for inclusive, and "kami putus" for exclusive. And sometimes, indonesians use "kita putus" when the listener is not the speaker's lover.
In Cebuano (Philippines), we also use kami and kita but we never use kita for kami and vice versa in any circumstance. We also shorten them to "mi" and "ta" if it's not at the beginning of the sentence.
In marathi (India) ,inclusive we is 'Apla'
and exclusive we is 'Amcha'
In serbo-croatian language kita is word for penis
In Michif (Canadian indigenous language) kiyanaan is inclusive we and niyanaan is exclusive we. And then if you want to say a simple verb that ‘we’ did, you say ki-‘verb’-inaan or ni-‘verb’-inaan.
in the language of KrÂsïnrse, the inclusive "we" is "dasÿm" and the exclusive is "onësn"
also, there's a "we" for when it's just two people - "tySt" (the capital S makes part of it)
"We're lost! what do we do?"
Don't worry I'll use my special technique. *Absolute Direction*
Wow that sounds like it came straight from an anime studio that heard the isekai is popular and just made another of the RPG type game based animes. How did you do that?
Just figure out which one of your hands is your north hand, and you can know the way
Seems like something out of highschool dxd
That can't save you if I use the ability of my
*Time Independence*
You will find yourself in space but can you find yourself, *IN TIIIIIIIME*
I was horribly easy to disorient as a kid and had to train myself in what to pay attention to later so as not to be always driving the wrong way. People from languages with absolute direction always freaking know their orientation. They don't get lost unless you drug them and fly them to a different continent.
We need a word for “my left your right” and “my right your left”
That falls under the absolute directions. If you say "west" west is always the same direction.
you can always tell someone to mirror you
Shane Salinas not if the two people are facing the same direction and the object is between them.
And so, the request for this word remains unanswered...
we have that in the south is called Over Yonder
What about just "my left/right"
I wish English had at least two ways of saying "love". In Spanish, querer and amar can both mean to love, but querer is used specially for friends and amar is used specially for a s/o.
I rarely say "I love you" because I always thought of it as a romantic thing.
Isn't querer "want"? I'm dumb so idk
@@DE3P_BeatsIt can also be used that way
Love can be applicable to both platonic and romantic relationships.
I guess "like" is a little different to both.
To varying degrees... adore, admire, love, like, even worship (...to ellivate that person to another heavenly realm)
Well, I have been considering writing a science fiction novel. One of the characters comes from a civilization that has had faster than light travel capability for upwards of 40,000 years. Given that they have had to deal with problems caused by various different sorts of hyper-drive malfunctions they have come up with a "temporal Imperfect" tense. That describes an action which has either occurred in the past, is occurring now, or will occur in the future. But you don't know which. 🙂
faster than light travel is completely impossible
@@trappedcosmos Recall that he says he is writing a book
@@trappedcosmos that's crazy I didn't know that I guess that's why it's a fiction book and it's not real
@@trappedcosmos I fear you missed the point
*Science* fiction, its not fantasy, scientifically it's impossible
I'm studying Swedish at the moment and I am rather taken with the fact that the words for grandmother/grandfather, uncle, and aunt tell you which side of your family they belong to. Morbror, for example, is your mother's brother. Farfar is your father's father. Morfar? Your mother's father.
I have today learned that that also applied to chinese.
We have that in Bulgarian as well, but only for aunts and uncles, not for grandparents. (Vuicho and vuina are maternal uncle and aunt, chicho and lelia are paternal uncle and aunt respectively.)
This is an interesting dilemma when designing languages. Do we go for precise vocabulary to convey information efficiently or do we go for generic and vague vocabulary to keep it easier to learn.
As a native swede I’ve always found it a little weird that this isn’t the case in every language. “My grandmother on the maternal side”... or just mormor? Much easier. Good luck learning Swedish, Josh! I’ve heard it’s tricky. May I ask why you want to do it? It’s such a small language (though useful in three countries which is neat!).
@@FilippaSkog no
It drives me crazy that in English there is no determination with, say, "brother/sister-in-law". It could mean your spouse's sibling or the spouse of your own sibling.
Ukrainian/Russian speaker here, and trust me, you're BLESSED to have this system. See, we have a separate name for almost every member of the family; there are so many complicated names that almost no one knows every one of them, and when someone does and mentions it everyone will be like 'wtf is that? Do you mean your spouse's sibling?' (and, of course, all the terms are separate for the two genders) There even are competitions at knowing all of these, if I'm not mistaken. I'm fascinated with how plain and simple it is in English.
But in Urdu we do have different names for these relations.
@@MohsinExperiments oh cool! And do you, like, actually know all of them??
@@dariialysiuk8787 Yes
@@magicpenguin9988 I was just about the say the same thing. Step sister and sister in law are bother the same word in French.
Bengali speaker here. In our language we have 3 separate words for 'you' ( আপনি, তুমি, তুই - Aapni, Tumi, Tui), and you have to use either of them by judging multiple factors, such as age of the listener, age gap between you and the listener, his/her social position, your intimacy with him/her etc. We Bengali speakers know how to use them by default, but I guess others who come to know our language finds it a bit hard.
Not just bengali - a lot of other north indian languages too, and maybe even some south indian ones. Hindi, for example, has "aap", "tum", and "tu".
Tbh i too find it hard to use as a native bengali. When i try to address someone younger than me but also a stranger i don't know if i should use "aapni"(used for strangers) or "tumi"(which can be used for people younger than you)
There's a similar thing in russian too. We have ты and вы. Ты is used when you're talking to singular person you're comfortable/familiar with. Вы is used either for plural you (talking to multiple people at once) or as a respectful way to refer to singular person who's higher in social hierarchy (and also respectful way to adress a stranger)
@@eldreyte so Вы is the same as 'vous' in French?
In german we also have two forms of you. You would say "you" to your friends, family, vlose ones, or younger persons, while you would use "Sie" for business partners, strangers or any kind of person who is at least at the same level in social hierarchy and you aren't very close to.
I really like the Japanese feature of a different 'there' if it's close to the listener or far away. Like これ 'kore' is here, close to speaker それ 'sore' is there, close to listener, あれ 'are' is over there, close to neither of them.
in italian it’s “questo”, “codesto”, “quello”
spanish has same feature too!
My native Cebuano has it too!
Kiri - This (closer to speaker than listener)
Kari - This (equally near to speaker and listener)
Karâ - That (closer to listener than speaker)
Katu - That (far from both speaker and listener)
korean has that as well!
こそあど言葉 in general is really cool
"We've just won the lottery, but YOU haven't"
I felt that
*Influencers on Instagram:*
*WE* felt that!
*COMMUNISM INTENSIFIES*
🥰
fantastic features that we dont have in the english language
1. rules that are actually consistant
*Consistent.
Their ahh know rewlz ... roolz? Ruze?
@@Randy.Bobandy If "consistent", therefore "resistent"? 🤔
like pro *noun* ce but pro *nun* ciation
I before e except after c unless sounding like A like neighbor or weigh or when the English language is being weird, such as either or height. Speaking of height, why do height and weight sound different? They're incredibly similar words when it comes to spelling, but they're both pronounced differently. Leisure and foreign are ei words that have also gone rogue from this spelling rule. And then there's science, glacier and species, which definitely is breaking the rules. Heirloom, atheist, forfeit, and seismic follow this trend as well. So in conclusion, English sucks.
Edit: Wow, I didn’t know a lot of these English rules. Thanks for telling me.
I like how Spanish (and probably other romance languages) has the difference between ser and estar. My classmates hate it, but I love it. I can finally say, "I'm tired," without having someone say, "Hi, tired. I'm ___."
I'm still working through saber and conocer though.
Other romance languages do have both words, but none uses it as extensively as Spanish. "Stare" in Italian is used much less frequently than "essere", for instance.
Re: "I'm tired", I've always found it interesting that in Spanish they differentiate between being tired due to physical exhaustion ("estoy cansado") and being tired as in being sleepy ("tengo sueño").
@@joavim You can do that in italian too, although not everybody does. You can say "Sono esausto/sfinito/distrutto" (physical exhaustion) or "Ho sonno" (being sleepy). "Sono stanco" can mean both things.
@@youtubeviewerxx has nothing to do with the usage of "stare" though
Same here with portuguese and I love it!
I don't know if it's different in Spanish but in Portuguese "saber" means knowing something or having deep knowledge about a topic, wheras "conhecer" means being aquaintanced with a person/recognising them or recognising a word or a city for example. "conhecer" is not about knowledge/understanding, it's just about recognising something/someone. Again, could be different in Spanish!
@@marion.saturn its the same in spanish, but instead of conhecer its conocer
Surgeon: "Quickly!! Stitch the lying patient's West foot!"
Nurse: *having a panic attack trying to think which is the west foot of a person who is lying down*
This is why the people who prepare patients for surgery use special marking pens.
Imagine this happening;
"Hey! We won the lottery But you haven't"
Then suddenly miss your south kidney
Southwest*
You had me🤣🤣🤣🤣
South kidney, seriously?
Body part are supposed to be left and right, I wonder how the people who use cardinal directions are used to describe it.
I'm slightly more concerned with how such people could communicate online or over the phone, or to those who are blind, where which direction you're facing isn't entirely obvious. Sure, you have a north foot and a south foot, but are you facing west or are you facing east? How does the listener know if they can't see you? You know your south kidney is missing, but if you tell your friend online who just recently stole an east kidney, would they know if they stole your kidney or someone else's?
@@himura-miki Maybe they just ask each other which way they're facing?
I'm slightly ashamed it took me a minute or so to remember what the hell you meant by south kidney
Having no left or right might complicate surgery: "Mr. Jenkins, we have to remove your South kidney".
@Aridalways the subject's left or right, obviously. :-\
Good point, because the orientantion of your body matters at the moment of the statement.
On the other hand: this is exactly why in most hospital i know writing something like "This leg off -->" on the leg in question, is already normal.
Can i just say that in medical terminology they use the ventral/dorsal/posterior/anterior/etc. system for locating certain body parts and it is a definitive way that all doctors understand ... they don’t use right and left because your right wouldn’t be the patients right and that’s just confusing
@@darknut1223 Right and left might not be used in other languages, but that has no bearing to parts of your body for doctors to care about. If you're talking about a patient's left kidney, it is the patient's left kidney. Not the "kidney on the left" either the doctors left or the patients left. If I said you left hand, you wouldn't ask "Do you mean my left, or your left?" We're talking about YOUR hand. Your left hand will always be your left hand, whether I'm talking about, or you're talking about it.
@@nyangret I scrolled down to see if someone mentioned this cause Im taking Medical terminology right now 😄
Something every language should have: A lack of irregular verbs.
Well I mean, Japanese only has 5 so close enough
@@stratonikisporcia8630 How important are those verbs? Like, are they thinks like “to be” and “to do”, or are they other obscure verbs?
@@austinross4093 They're the most used ones. The most irregular is "da" = "to be", then you have the medium irregular ones: "suru" = "to do" and "kuru" = "to come", finally two are only slightly irregular: "iku" = "to go" (participial form "itt-" instead of expected ["iit-"]) and "aru" = "to be" (yes another one, it's kinda similar to the ser / estar situation in Spanish) that just doesn't have a connective form.
Well, there are some other irregular verbs, such as "masu" or "irassharu" but these ones are either auxiliaries or expressions, so you won't have to conjugate them.
In Turkish we just put
-tı -ti -dı -di
or
-mış -miş
(Adds Uncertainty)
At the end of the Verbs to make them past tense.
@@Eren______ Japanese:
*-ta*
I speak Russian, English, and am familiar with Korean, what strikes me in them is the conventions for the order of words in sentences. In English, you have to go with Subject-Predicate, in Korean, you always put the Predicate at the very end (with lots of honorifics!). But Russian is very easy on that. In most cases, you can shuffle sentence parts without losing their meaning, you could lose parts of the sentence entirely ("Something." is a totally valid sentence of formal speech"). How to turn a sentence in the question? Just put a question mark at the end, no need for order change and all that stuff.
Poor teachers of English language have a hard time restricting Russian kids to using particular order and putting all those grammatical words in sentences 😑
So Russian is just “put whatever, wherever, and it’ll still make sense?”
@@NStripleseven that's true thanks to the case system
so there is no need to put the words in a certain order
Yes, it makes it easier, but sometimes we have to emphasize words in sentences instead of swap them, and to accentuate intonation.
You need strict rules for word order in English because English does not have cases apart from the genitive. If you have cases, word order becomes less important, you almost always know what is the subject and what is the object, regardless of word order.
As a native english speaker, and someone still relatively new to learning russian, I've been told I speak "very english" russian.
For example, it's perfectly reasonable in russian to say "это я знаю уже" or "This, I know already." But easier for me to assemble the meaning of phrases like this when its formatted in an English-grammatical way, such as "я уже знаю это" or "I already know this."
I can imagine the rigid structure of english word order can be quite confusing for Russians learning english, but atleast for me, it applies both ways. The lack of word order confuses me.
Edit: Sidenote, the occassional omission of personal pronouns such as I, you, or we and instead just relying on the verb conjugation can also make it more difficult for me to immediately understand who is doing what.
Imagine having 16 forms of "the"
**angry german noice**
der die das dem den dessen....
@@kanalkucker14 deren
Der dir das, wieso weshalb warum, wer nicht fragt, bleibt dumm.
In English: The the the, why why why...
Imagine having 24 forms of "the"
*angry Attic Greek noises*
Imagine only having a single letter for the word "the". And for the word "and".
Fun fact: In Ethiopian grammar, they have a punctuation symbol used like a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark to indicate sarcasm.
We have an optional one in english that I use a lot: "/s".
technically we have one in english as well, although it's rarely used - the interobang (‽)
@@MaliciousOnion I thought the interrobang was like “?!” but a single punctuation mark.
In my language we use "(!)" if we're being sarcastic.
@Gray El entrenador Pokémon Never heard of (!), and i been speaking spanish for a while now, the more you know
In Finnish language we have a word called "jaksa", it can mean "I prefer not (to do something)", "I'm too tired (to do something)" or "I dont have enough strentgh (to do something)", I use that word a lot; English language unfortunatly dosen't have a translation for that word.
A feature of my language I really appreciate is having a separate derivative word for every familial relative you could have. You can accurately figure how two people are connected by a single unique pair of words.
Features in languages help gain insight into how the society functions and how language adapted to it.
yes (you agree)
no (you disagree)
mu (the quwestion is wrong)
we need MU
+TheRWS96
We really do. I have used mu many times, but I often have to explain the word. Mu is surprisingly useful.
+TheRWS96 I agree, and I've also used it.
+TheRWS96 Mu is a Greek letter. It is indicative of the prefix micro. For example, micrometers or micrograms. Our blood should always have less than five micrograms of lead per deciliter in it. This quantity would be written like this: μg/dl.
not really random as the word MU already existed in other languages so that is why MU instead of something else
Click this link for more information:
c2.com/cgi/wiki?MuAnswer
+TheRWS96 He was talking to 'Mark Streminsky', hence the "+Mark Streminsky' part, who was mentioning that the greek letter mu is used for micro, which is kind of random for this discussion. If it were to be added to say the English language, it would be written out 'mu', using the greek letter for it would be like, l33t speak.
Simple.
We (inclusive): still We.
We (exclusive): *me and the boys*
Exatly
That's not literally one word though. It works, but misses the point.
that would be "the boys and me" or "the boys and I"
This needs atleast 1k likes
This isn’t correct at all, English lacks that. For example if an African tribe language lacked the word for the month June and referred to it as “the 6th month” instead of having a word “June”, it’s primitive ish. English lacks the we inclusive/exclusive and needs to add more words to convey meaning that most languages have a word for
Weird fact: In Arabic, the word can have more letters if the speaker wants to show strong emotions like saying "اصبر" which means you have to “wait” and "اصطبر" which means that you have to “wait a long time!”
Not true in Egypt which is the only place i know to use that term
أصبر و أصطبر هما نفس الكلمة مش عارف أنت جبت الكلام ده منين.
Is it like "waaaaait"?
@@tourhet It definitely exists in modern standard Arabic but it's not used that much in modern dialects
@@m7mdisenm866 Some words in Standard Arabic have more than one pronunciation and writing, but they do not change the meaning or confirm it, and certainly not a rule for grammatical emphasis
@@tourhet Bro there is literally a whole thing called "صيغة المبالغة" in "نحو" Have you never heard of it?
As somebody who is relatively familiar with ASL (wouldn't call myself fluent but conversational), being able to use classifiers is super helpful. It's like having non-words that you can manipulate to describe the appearances of certain things. Like you can use a "3" handshape to show a car moving or a "4" to show stripes or patterning. It can help make things easier to identify and tbh I just think visual language is really helpful overall and something more people should learn. Also ASL is good about ensuring direction is always from the speaker whereas in English you have "wait my right or your right?" happening a lot.
yes! I took an asl class last semester and this would also help navigate the issues with the English "you" and "we" of not knowing who you're talking to because you just. include the people when you sign it? if that makes sense? and it's also great for pain? I have chronic pain issues and being able to do the sign for pain over just wherever you're hurting physically is so much more helpful than trying to describe it
Teacher: those are west handed scissors, you can't use them!
Me: *flips 180* sorry what was that
"Now they're east-handed scissors."
This is just speculation, but in those languages the hands might have special names, like "the strong hand" for right and "the smart hand" for left, or something like that. Or, they just do what the guy above said.
@Sir Thiccums I am south south west handed currently.
or they'd just be the 'dominant hand'
I'm west handed right now
Another feature English lacks is a spelling system that actually makes sense.
i ink we should revamp certain words:
cake, make, bake, take, lake, sake, fake are now kaek, maek, baek, taek, laek, saek, and faek.
latin/greek/french roots are calqued, if not regularised in english.
Photosynthesis is Lightmaking. Internationalisation is now Betweencountrymaking.
loanwords are always calqued.
At least English should have accent marks for spellings with multiple pronunciations. Rough, through, cough, etc. "ough" is pronounced in a completely different way. If I weren't a native English speaker, this would be maddening. I worked in a cafe near the UN in New York and it was amusing listening to all the foreigners try to pronounce "whole wheat" when asking for a bagel!
It sounds like something out of 1984
syockit
Not really.
/watch?v=GiVs05yq9-o It actually does make sense if you learn how the roots of words are made. You can even roughly figure out what a word means and is spelled you've never heard before just by identifying the roots in it as well as knowing what language the roots came from.
One thing I love about some languages (Japanese and Carrier are ones I've encountered) is that the verb is usually located at the end of the sentence so you have to listen to the speaker's whole sentence before responding, it makes exchanges feel more respectful and polite.
Gosh i hate that one. When translating you need to change the english start of a sentence depending on whether a japanese speaker adds a desu ka at the end of their sentence
One that is making a comeback is second person singular and plural pronouns. English used to have them but not for quite a while now. Australia has migrants from countries with languages that do have both pronouns and the need for them is seen by the use of a second person plural pronoun "youse" as in "youse guys". While this started in migrant communities, it has spread among young people and is now often heard. I probably won't use it myself but I have no problem with others using it. I doubt we will ever return to the singular "thou" but the new plural could easily become established.
Thou art wrong, good sir. I'm starting a movement and invite thee to join.
*bogans have entered the chat*
Y’all
We use youse in Newcastle (UK) as well.
I’ve always just said “y’all,” at least in casual conversation.
the difference between "female friend" and "girlfriend".
In german it's the same word and it's often confusing if I'm talking about a female friend.
That's a problem in the US too.
This always confused me in English, in Portuguese (and romance languages as a whole) dating someone and being friends with them are two completely different concepts expressed with different words.
Female friend = Amiga
Girlfriend = Namorada
@@jliller And it's mostly generational. Anyone I can think of saying "girlfriend" for their platonic female friend is almost certainly over 45 years old at this point
@@darklibertario5001 i realise your coment is 7 months old, but something cool is that in portuguese "amigo/a" used to mean girlfriend/boyfriend but also friend.
Basicly it was like German or English with same word for both concepts causing mildly annoying confusion.
One example of this was the medieval songs known as "cantigas de amigo" meaning "songs to boyfriend".
In the 1300s people all over Portugal started using "amigo/a amado/a" or "amigo/a enamorada/o" to create diference to normal "amigos". Later the "e" was dropped turning the word into "namorado" which people started using as a noun instead of an adjective.
There is a writting by some academic medieval dude complaining about the younger generation using this new widespread term. Supposedly it is one of the oldest clearly recorded instances of complaits about how young people are speaking wrong and using slang.
@@miguelpimentel5623 That's some very interesting insight, I've studied about the troubadours and "cantigas de amigo" but never really connected the dots about the original use of the word, in a weird way I'm really glad that those two concepts were divided linguistically, I wish English had this.
I am from Hong Kong and in Chinese, we have a word for every position in a family tree. For example, 姑姐 means "dad's younger sisters" and 姨丈 means "dad's younger sister's husband"
In English, they are just simply uncles and aunts.
Not to mention the cousins and nephews. I get lost on that.
It's widely different in different part of china as well. I'm from northern china, dad's younger sister would be 姑妈/小姑子。 姨丈 would be 姑父. 姨 in our dialect means mom's relative. For example, 姨父 would be mom's brother or brother Iaw.
does it take a lot longer to write or type chinese than english (assuming somebody was equally fluent in both), i’ve always thought the characters must take a while to draw
Kayjp writing 100 Chinese characters definitely takes more time than writing 100 english words, but a 100-word passage in english can be translated into chinese with ~60 characters; in terms of typing there are many Chinese typing systems, eg. pinyin (type according to phonetics in english alphabets) and cangjie (breaking down each chinese characters into fragments represented by alphabets)
@@MrTyty527 ah that makes sense, your language is so descriptive. Thanks for the response😊
I once had an idea of a story which involved a fictional language. The language required a very precise pronunciation, making it difficult for most people to speak (who weren’t born doing so).
Its written version is made up of symbols that act as a guide for the exact pitches and fluctuations needed to pronounce every word.
IPA goes crazy, bro.
So, Vietnamese?
Yórùbá?
It's already been existing for a longgg time anon
I think this concept is referred to as a featural writing system
I would love a written way of indicating that something written is to explicitly NOT be taken literally. An indicator such that when someone writes something figuratively, rhetorically, or ironically this imagined written feature notifies people that what is written is NOT literally meant. So many misunderstandings and flame wars would be avoided.
The closest we have is a bit silly, BuT tYpinG LikE tHiS oFteN DoEs tHE tRIcK
i hate that idea/j
slash j works well
There should be a single word for "disappointed but not surprised".
pessimistic
Sad?
@@deltanedas but that's a state of being
pathetic
There should be a word for when you think theres a ghost but its actually just your ecoudorian friend in a hat
Do you get the joke?
A new language feature every language needs is a universal word for "sorry don't speak that"
Excellent idea. but probably hard to find a small word that is not already in use *somewhere* on earth xD
I don't think it would work 🤔 people are used to twisting their tongues in such unique ways that there can't be one word that is the same but also pronounced and interpreted the same. Just how it's difficult to understand what non natives are saying when they speak a foreign language. It's sometimes almost impossible because they cannot form certain words or sounds
Most have "English?". Best part is even if both parties only know a dozen English words, it's still the fastest way to communicate that you don't know what they're saying almost anywhere in the world.
I thought that's "huh?"
7LeopardStar ??? typical humans are capable of making the same sounds as everyone else. the word “help” can be pronounced by any typical person, regardless of their native language, it just wouldn’t be spelled help.
That time independence concept explains why Native Chinese speakers who aren’t accustomed to English say: “He *watch* movie” or “They *sing* song” no matter what the tense they’re referring to is.
The leading ¿ in Spanish I realized is handy when reading text aloud (since you know right when you start a sentence what sort of tone you should give it). Sorta wish English had that too.
Removing the letter C and having K and S take their plase konsistently.
What about that cheese
Sheese
Statusinator but that sounds like She’s
X and Q also, Q should take over the "ch" sound
X should take over "sh" sound
idk what C can do
German had entered the chat .
Different words for a mother's siblings and a father's siblings
We have that in Danish.
Moster, faster, farbror, morbror.
Mother's sister, father's sister, father's brother, mother's brother. The former are more used than the latter since the latter are not proper words. It's just father (far) or mother (mor) + brother (bror). A lot of people use uncle (onkel) instead because the others sound kind of dumb.
Hindi has that too
Vietnamese has that too.
The mother's older sister and brother are "bác"
The mother's younger sister is "dì"
The mother's younger brother is "cậu"
The father's older brother and sister are the same as the mother's
The father's younger sister is "cô"
The father's younger brother is "chú".
A lot of Asian languages have that
@@cuamanhong2719 And what about the spouses of those people? In English, your mother's brother and your mother's sister's husband are both "uncle". Are the spouses of your parents' siblings another whole set of words in Vietnamese?
From a Star Wars perspective, I chuckle at the fact that I know a language that C3PO cannot use to communicate with, despite being "fluent in 6 million forms of communications" even if it was exposed to him. American Sign Language is quite an interesting language that has its' own structure, rules, punctuation, grammar, and sentence order. It's also a language which cannot be written down. To answer your question you posted at the end of the video, gestures are what every language should have. (waving)
3:17 this blew me away when i took japanese. like saying a whole ass sentence and then saying "to omoi masu" at the end changed the entire idea of what i was saying
I'm guessing that little bit would mean something like "that's what [subject] think(s)"?
@@madladdie7069 a direct comparison in English would be "but that's just an opinion of mine"
@@darkness74185 Oh. So it's less "that's what [SUB] thinks" and more "that's what I think"?
Weeb congregation
Did you fart it out because you were saying an ass sentence?
The fact that there's no word for 'the day after tommorow" or 'the day before yesterday'! It's so annoying.
BackSpace In chinese "the day after tmr" is 后天(hou tian) and "the day before ytd" is 前天(qian tian). Pretty sure there might be some other languages that can describe those too!
Russian and other Slavic languages have words for these too. ^_^
in italian we say "the other yesterday"
In Germany the day before yesterday is "Vorgestern" (It's basically the words "vor" (Before) and "gestern"(yesterday)stuck together... ) and the day after tommorrow is "Übermorgen"(Über = Above; Morgen = tomorrow)
The English word "overmorrow" has been forgotten, but it's plain enough that you could probably bring it back and start using it without having to explain what it means.
"I'm not saying Chinese doesn't have a tense system..."
*1 billion stressed Asians have entered the chat*
*will have had been going to entered
“All your base are belong to us.”
Wow, that sounds tense.
i don't get this someone explain
Since when are all Asians Chinese?
No means to insult btw
this reminds me of the movie Arrival (and the story it's based on), which is about how language changes perception. I wonder if people who speak languages with absolute direction and time-independence have an experience of the world slightly different from those who don't
Google Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.
Arrival? Who is the author?
Im learning Japanese and this language, while a mouthful sometimes, is so efficient its crazy. You dont need to worry about pronouns, gendered conjugations, or even saying "I" or "You." You can get across a large amount of information in a comparatively shorter time in Japanese.
On the other hand, if you have to use "I" or "you", you end up with 8421 pronouns to choose from and if you pick the wrong ones, you're likely to sound offensive :D
Japan is a VERY tidy and Efficient place.
Everything has to be on perfect and on time!
Yep, I love it, easiest is just not to use I or You, most ppl don't 😂
that's actually not true, japanese has a much slower information rate compared to a lot of european languages.
@@zahra9890 it's an extremely efficient language in terms of day to day use (and even more in places like the internet), but the formal use of the language can get extremely tedious and long
here's a vital feature: a singular short word that has about the meaning "look, i'm sorry but i really want to end this conversation right now" which is generally accepted and respected
Just say "goodbye."
"Hey dan remember the match last weekend-"
" *Goodbye* "
*Walks away without making eye contact or saying a word*
the entire english language politeness system works around saying a lot of words and being vague, so good luck trying to undo centuries of that.
Polish is an example of a language that goes the other way. In Polish it's polite to be short, direct, and with as few a words as possible.
@@danahanley888 As a response to "tja" you usually get a "Und sonst so?"
In the midwest US we say "Welp" and the other person says "Yep" and that's it.
@@DougAdamsSame in the Pacific Northwest, so maybe just an America in general thing.
@3:42
"Can you think of a new language feature?"
I have a suggestion. But English lacks the means to explain it.
Use a differrent language
@@artifex2.080 r/woooosh
A character for sarcasm
I'd use a symbol that isn't in my keyboard- question mark but facing left
@@davidgoldrock7264 I know portions of the internet use "/s" to mark it, though it's not universal enough. Sometimes I use caps to indicate emphasis on a word to make it more clear, but obviously that can just be confusing.
@@Gihntemos you know that's nice, but I'm talking bout somthing universal: somthing that you can see in a book or a newspaper
In English it might be weird just saying "I love you" because it is considered a big deal and mostly used for relationship love. You can say like "love ya" to friends to be more casual but it's still to the closer friends. I'm used to having words for different versions of love like to a friend, to family, etc. I'm convinced the lack of these words is part of the reason why English-speaking only places are more awkward to show affection and communicate
In my experience, in languages where you have varying degrees of "love", telling a partner a lesser form of "i love you" is interpreted as saying "I _don't_ love you", which pressures you into always using the highest form of the verb even if you don't actually mean it.
@@matroqueta6825 apple love vs orange love...
Interesting. To me, this clarifies why characters finally saying 'I love you' is a huge moment in TV shows many times.
@@matroqueta6825interestingly, this is the not the case in Japanese, where there are many varying ways to express your care and affection of another, the highest form of “I love you,” (愛してる) is sometimes said at the culmination of a fictional piece of work, and is saved for the special occasion precisely because of it’s strength and rarity. It’s rarely said in real life, as well as never being used for love confessions. The lowest and most common form actually is, (好きです) and the surrounding tensity, privacy, and tone indicate that someone is revealing their harbored romantic feelings. The slightly higher one 大好き is used when you want to express that you really like something! But when used to express feelings to another person is actually more shallow and welcomed among friends, and thus never perceived as a deep romantic confession.
Love confessions, in order to kickstart a relationship, is standard practice in Japan. What couples say to each once their mutual feelings are confirmed is probably personal and varies. Another note, replying “Me too.” in Japanese when told “I love you.” is not considered non-romantic or someone too afraid to say I love you back. It’s simply a pure confirmation that their love is the same 😁
1:52 i’m a simple person. i just FREAKED OUT when i saw the one direction reference. THANK YOU-
English literally has a word for sending a person or group of people a link to the song never gonna give you up and that’s kind of crazy to me
The word 'rickrolled' exists but a word for 'a day after tomorrow' doesn't. Oh hey, and the word
rickrolled is even in my Grammarly system since I typed 'rick rolled' however it auto corrected to 'rickroll'.
.____.
Miss Flower i think an archaic term for it is overmorrow
@@acookie7548 in my native language we have a word for the day after tomorrow, and it literally means over-tomorrow so that makes sense
@@evae9415 oh that's so cool! is that dutch?? or like hindi? those are the only two languages i know with a word for it asdfghjk
Miss Flower in german „a day after tomorrow“ is „übermorgen“ and a day before yesterday is „vorgestern“
"Thrice" needs to be a commonly used word.
As well as quice, qintice, sextice, septice, octice, novice (nine times) and decice.
@@unkreativity1596 uP
Thrice of them are sitting on a couch
@@hkwww ???
@@hkwww that’s a really bad of use of the word thrice, would you use “twice” instead of “two” in that sentence
Speaking with people from different cultural backgrounds, what I always find fascinating is the words for feelings. They seem to be very subtly different even in very similar languages (Dutch and German for example). And then there are words that just don't exist in certain languages.
An often-quoted one from Dutch is "gezellig", which doesn't really exist in English. It's a form of coziness or closeness, but without any intimacy. The word "gezel" means companion. In English, I would use the super-generic word "nice" instead. For example, a "gezellig feestje" would just be a "nice party". The English version doesn't convey at all that the reason why I'm enjoying the party is the company.
If you want to have fun with the subtle differences in meaning, look up a feeling in a thesaurus. You'll find many very similar, but subtly different, versions of that feeling. Now imagine a different language that doesn't have words for some of them, but has a set of completely different ones.
that's one of the reasons why languages are amazing. you learn a word that you can't convey well in english.
I love that you published the referenced books. I'll go look it up :)
I liked how the "Absolute Direction" font was the 1D font, nice touch.
I noticed that too
I don't get it. Anyone can Explain?
@@lucky_lol I think it's the One Direction band's font. Actually is a idea, to my sense
@@lucky_lol bc 1d is only 1 direction and it’s called direction
That’s 2D
The English language doesn't have a single word for one and a half, but it, obviously, has a word for throwing someone out of a window (Defenestration)
Don't blame us, we got it from the Romans. (:
You gotta have priorities mate
And what a fine word that is!
Just write threehalves without a space. Solved.
Kuba Borowiecki But it makes sense one and a half is simple, 1 & 1/2. Defenestration is also simple
De- (most often without, in this case off)
-Fenestra- (latin for window, proper word in latin would be fenestram)
Tion- it means its a verb
So its sort of throwing (if you strech the doing something part) off a window.
These features are only available in the premium version.
I can't wait for the English quality-of-life DLC, I hope it comes out soon. Super excited for clusivity, but evidentiality is my favourite DLC feature by far.
still waiting for it....
Well, the "we" in English may be confusing, but "you" can be even trickier.
There was a time, where English had second person singular. The word was "thou". And it was conjugated separately: with the ending "st". Like "Thou writest a comment." Like in German, second person plural was used a polite form for storagers or people of high rank (The person counts like many persons.) The English were so polite, that they began using this form for everyone. In German, the polite form is today third person plural. So, "Can you help me?" would literally mean "Can They help me?"
@Kanashimi Report THEM?
YES
My French friend cries because there isnt a super popular plural form of you
@@hostgrady yeeeesss, as a brazilian I never know what "you" they are using. In portuguese we have "você" for singular and "vocês" for plural, and is SOOO more easy. I think that every latin language have this feature
"Only one more step to defuse the bomb, lieutenant. Carefully cut the east wire."
So the right one if you're facing north
what if the bomb is along a north - south axis and every wire is on the east side
Your east, or mine?
@@natnuss98 If not you're dead
@@natnuss98 that would be easy IF you knew where you were facing.
And suppose after your efforts, you found out that you're facing the South West :)
Watching this 9 years later and enjoying it as if it was a new post. Love it.
Been thinking about clusivity a lot. Glad to know there's a word for it, and it's used somewhere in the world!
There are English words for language features that don't exist in English - that's kinda hilarious!
"We've just won the lottery!"
:D
"But not you!"
D:
Come on, write it in the same direction:
:ꓷ
YESSS!!!!
@@Liggliluff 101 /)(\
*pulls out glock*
@@Liggliluff hold up
Having a conversation with just two letters.
For example in Filipino...let me demonstrate by a conversation at an elevator.
Fil 1: Bababa ba?
Fil 2: Bababa
Which means in english...
Eng 1: Is this going to go down?
Eng 2: Yes, it's going to go down.
Yes, we are minions.
sakurafan771 lmaoo
"Going to go down?"
"Going to go down."
same thing with english
Banana warriors
Wu Chenglin no one talks like that
Isn’t that kind of like:
Q: This is going to go down?
A: This _is_ going to.
That's why I love ithkuil. It has all those features:
Aspect, referentials, absolute and relative directions as well as a special 3d system of directions, and validation, and much much more!
I’m still looking for a word or phrase in English to succinctly describe the difference between bimonthly (twice a month, each month) and bimonthly (every two months).
Similarly, I would like to clearly be able to describe the difference between “next Thursday” (the Thursday coming up this week in 2 days) and “next Thursday” (not this Thursday but Thursday next week).
I used to insist that "the Thursday coming up this week in 2 days" was the only correct one.
I just want people on the internet to be able to see the difference between your and you're
Also the that "should've" is not "should of"!
also _than_ is not _then_
"their" and "they're"
FaRo "their", "they're" and "there"
"then" and "than".
We need a word for “I need to pee”. We have “I am hungry” and “I am thirsty”. Why don’t we have “I am urinatey”.
Swedish has "Kissnödig" which means "pee needy"
"Jag är kissnödig, jag måste kissa"
"I am 'urinatey', I have to pee"
lindholmaren perfect. Sweden seems to be deluxe language.
"I'm busting." works quite well.
gotta piss works in Australia
There actually is one, but we never use it. "Micturient: Having a need to urinate."
I can’t imagine keeping track of absolute direction. I wonder how that concept impacted explorers who spoke that language and whether it was advantageous vs those who did not have that standard in their language.
I wish other languages had purpose in naming terms the same way Arabic does or even the same degree in flexibility when it comes to conjugating words. For example, the verb "kataba" means "wrote". From that word, "kitab" is the product from writing something. "Maktab" is a place where you write stuff. "Maktaba" is a library because that used to be a place where a tremendous amount of writing and copying occured. "kaataba" is to exchange writing (usually in the form of sending letters). The list goes on and on.
My point is that from a simple verb, you can transform it into many different words that are related to the meaning of the verb. That degree of freedom is something that I always wished was available in English because it helps make speech and writing more concise.
In Swedish we differentiate between grandparents on the mothers side and on the fathers side. The Swedish word for grandfather on the fathers side is "farfar" which roughly means father's father. Somewhat confusing sometimes when people talk about their grandfather in English and I'm like: "Which one?".
Simon Ulander yeah, we do that in Denmark aswell, but that makes sense since our languages are quite similar
Panda Danish is just Swedish with a speech impediment. ;)
Very interesting!
Same in Turkish 👍🏽
If you're talking to a friend whose grandparents are unknown to you, does it really matter which ones they're talking about? Or do you just feel as if it should be differentiated because it's what you're used to in Swedish?
There were a lot of African students at my old university that used absolute direction, so they painted every North wall in every building orange.
Or the confused students could have just carried compasses with them.
They... Meaning the students or the university administration?
Source: trust me dude
Oh no... There’s a whole separate story of confusion about directions. Some compasses use red/orange arrow to direct North, but some other use red arrow to direct South. Which kinda makes sense: North should be blue, since it associates with cold, and South should be red, since it associates with warm.
@@jerrygreenest I suppose that depends on which hemisphere you are in.
Been learning Spanish. A nice feature it has is that you don’t need to constantly add in the subject. What I mean by that is words like ‘you’, ‘we’, ‘I’, etc. For example, in English:
“You go to the supermarket so you can buy milk for your mother.”
In there, the listener is referred to 3 times, though you can simplify the sentence so it becomes 2 times.
Meanwhile, in Spanish, you can just do this:
“Vas al supermercado para poder comprar leche tú madre.”
In this, the word ‘you’ is only used once. However, the listener knows we are addressing them because of the ‘vas’ at the beginning, since ‘vas’ is the you(familiar) conjugation of ‘ir’, which means ‘to go’.
Also, this means we don’t have the conjugate the ‘comprar’ (to buy) to ‘compras’ since we’ve already used ‘vas’.
While the whole conjugation in Spanish can be confusing, it does make the specific-ness of English very minimal.
Of course, I’m only learning Spanish, so this could be complete BS, but oh well.
Thanks for the great video! Noticed you used the One Direction font for absolute direction - bonus points.
This is a bit unrelated but I hate how "bomb" isn't pronounced like "womb" or "tomb" because if it would be pronounced as "boom"
It's more related than you think
This is genius and I'm now also frustrated it doesn't work like that
Don’t forget about the word comb.
It’s Not Rocket Science comb would be pronounced the same as cwm
@@ItsNotRocketScienceGD Oh god I'm combing
As a bilingual I think English needs a lot of things
As a trilingual I concur
I disagree about the last two points (Evidentiality and Absolute Direction).
English has the features and has the ability to opt-out. For example:
- I just saw. Versus: someone saw.
- It's the one on the left, it is facing south.
- Versus: The two objects sitting next to each other in a vortex (spin), yes, the one that is facing North East South West instead of the one facing East South West North. No, not that one!
...see its simple, but gives us more options to converse either more accurately or expressively.
The God Emperor of Mankind no it doesn't
The God Emperor of Mankind same here
I dont. It works fine
In Arabic, you have "lam of emphasis" (and many other ways of stressing) which helps a reader know some emotions of the writer (frustrated, angry, etc)
For sentences that use multiple stressors an english equivalent would be like saying, "I really really really mean it!!" *slams hand on table*
I like how "I'ma dance" made the list.
I very much like the Spanish inverted question and exclamation marks in the beginning of a sentence, so you know right away what kind of sentence it will be.
Questions are pretty clear in speech since the intonation shows it's a question. It's in writing they may be ambiguous: that's precisely why inverted marks exist.
Obviously I meant writing. A bit weird that I have specify the obvious thing that a punctuation symbol is only written and not spoken.
***** I meant they're clear in Spanish.
In Portuguese, we don't have the initial question mark. So We kinda have the problem. Reading aloud, a long sentence that happens to be a question, may make the reader look retarded. However we can mitigate this by postponing the changing of intonation to a point where it becomes clear it will be a question. Kinda "I've already seen the question mark with my peripheral vision"... Or by reading aloud with sufficient pause, to allow a quick sentence inspection. Or by using the grammar constructions in ways that clearly hint about the existence of a question.
But, today's people write fast, without much care for proper phrase construction, so I see the point of adding and inverted question mark.
It's not like the words "How, who, when, where, what, why" indicate that the sentence is a question
Fantastic Features & Where to Learn Them
What are you doing here?!
Linguistics, and you may learn where ever you want to, good luck
illiteration? Erm, we have that.
Do you know Clint Eastfoot?
WwwWario is this a Harry Potter reference ❤️
absolute direction being in one directions logo font made my day
I like your final point about preserving languages.
no word should be spelled the same but pronounced differently, and no word should be spelled differently but pronounced the same
No letter should have multiple sounds, and no sound should have multiple letters. Also we shouldn't have letters that change the sound of other letters like 'sh'. Chinese Pinyin does this very well, but it still has things like 'sh' and 'ch'
Pehz63 For Chinese, Zhuyin does better than Pinyin in this aspect. You need to deal with a bunch of new symbols though.
FYI, spelling isn't actually a language feature. When linguists discuss language features, the language is considered in the abstract, since the vast majority of languages have no written form at all. Since almost all human languages are spoken-only, that's what we look at. (Of course, in sign languages we look at signs instead.)
Pehz63 do you know how long our alphabet would be if we didn't have things like sh and ch
Why do you need so much consonants anyway?
We just need to fix “do you mind if I....” because if you say yes, a lot of people get confused if you mean yes I mind (don’t do it) or yes that’s fine (since the asker is usually asking if they can do something they want to)
I usually answer with sure go for it or ide rather u not
Valve, please fix
NobodyMiner whats bad with that
Jack Rhodes this is me on the daily I have no clue whether to say no or yes to answer those kinda questions because as you wrote could mean two things
That’s what yea and nay were meant to do, as being absolute yes or no. Do you mind if I do this? -Yea means go ahead, Do you mind if I do this? -Yes means I do mind
I would love it if language had a concept of time when referring to the self. Who "I am" is treated as static over time and universal in all contexts. We have to add things like "I didn't know what I was doing" or "that wasn't me" whereas instead we could just acknowledge implicitly that the me now is different than the me tomorrow. Other contextual information could be included to such as happy me or sad me.
Another neat feature of languages in the Philippines is that you can turn nearly any word into a verb by throwing on a conjugation.
For example instead of
-Should I get my shoes on?
-No, you can go barefoot.
Becomes
-Should I shoe?
-No, you can barefoot.
English also does this quite often.
English does that in some words but without applying any conjugation. The expression "to foot the bill" is an example of it.
"Sapatos?" "Paa nalang."
Edit: "[mag]paa [ka] nalang."
Mag-shoe
I only have experience with English and German but this happens frequently in both languages.