this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
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sure, how complex is: their, there, they’re. sure, they sound the same but there is no reason they’re difficult to use in their intended purpose.
English grammar is alright as far as languages are concerned. There is some bs but nothing exceptional.
Pronounciation in the English language on the other hand is absolute insanity. If there are any rules besides grouped up exceptions then let me know.
And reusing the same word to mean a plethora of completely unrelated things lol.
EG:
Jam = a fruit preserve, to play music, stopped traffic, a door that's held open, to cram something into something else
Set = a collection of something, to change an option on a device, when something gelatinous becomes more solid, when the sun goes down, a stage or movie background, a list of songs at a concert, to put something down, and about 50 other things
Run = to move quickly, to enter a contest (ie run for President), to have something turned on (is that computer running, running a tap), to be a certain length (this films run time is 90 minutes), to be behind (this bus is running late), to be in charge of something (I'm running this place), a hand in poker, to be liquid (this egg is runny), a tear in a pair of tights
German also does this. I think a good 20% of all verbs are just variations of "ziehen" (to pull).
Umziehen - to change clothes, to move to a new home
aufziehen - to tease or ridicule someone, to wind up a clockwork, to raise kids
abziehen - to leave, to scam someone, to pull something off something else
herziehen - to gossip about someone
Anziehen - to attract something, to put on clothes
Yeah there are some of these for ziehen. You might be on to something. But for many generic verbs there are many variants with vastly different meanings. Like Machen - to make, or tun - to do, gehen - to go.
This is not unique to English.
The real kicker is phrasal verbs. You can have alright conversational English without needing most of these "advanced" grammatical features, which is a big part of why English has a reputation of being easier to learn in school than other European languages like German or Dutch.
It's when you're faced with a vocabulary list like "get up", "get on"/"get off", "get in"/"get out", "get through", "get on"/"get along", "get by", "get across", "get away with", "get back", and a myriad of other which in your native language each get a dedicated verb that you realize that English is not simpler, the complexity is just further up the road.
Also fun fact, if your native language is French, you can cheat and never use most of those, while accidentally using a much more formal/elevated register, because English has a habit of stealing French words when it wants to sound fancy.
"Get in" = enter (entrer), "Get through" = traverse (traverser), "Get by" = survive (survivre), "get across" ~ communicate (communiquer), "get back" = return (retourner).
A lot of the problem is that we use Middle English spellings for a lot of words, but the pronunciation continued to change after the spellings were standardized.
I wonder how much of that is due to french and how much from german/saxon dialects. French love mute consonants and wildly different vowel sounds.
It's all of the above and then some. A good read on the subject is John McWhorter's "Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue." It's intended for a non-technical/popular audience and doesn't get too deep into the weeds so you don't need a degree in linguistics to follow it.
As far as I know the only rule is, that I (German) pronounce it always wrong.
I have the same rule for Gaelic.