English is over rated

[lightcrystal]

As a native speaker of English I feel limited by English.

One, sometimes English does not have the grammar needed for some expressions. At best it is awkward. I learnt Mandarin Chinese at high school. The teacher [not a native Chinese person] had to explain the state of being fashionable in English by saying tongue in cheek it's "fashionabilicality". I find it as well. I have to make up things. The novel is "academicy" in its college setting.

Two, English has a terrible absence of esoteric words or psychological state words. For instance I have a need to be nowhere near alcohol. If you put any bottle of alcohol in my home I will take it, go outside and empty it. Not a moral thing in any way. Rather, something that I do without thinking. Alcohol phobia? No word for that in any way. Whereas Russian has some words for mental or spiritual states that English does not; there's a Russian word for a feeling of existential nothingness while looking out a window.

I would even go as far as to say that English handicaps my ability to understand the world and people. I don't think that English has become one of the dominant languages [not most dominant, last time I looked more people speak Hindi and maybe Mandarin Chinese] because English is "better" than other languages.

[annise]

The thing I think English needs is another word than it to use when I want to say he did something or she did something but do not know whether the reader is a he or a she.

Anne

[lightcrystal]

Agree. He/she and They have proven to be clumsy attempts.

[GettingTooOld]

"We" who knows what that means, if it includes or excludes the listener, you never can tell for Eng.

[KevinS]

"We" who knows what that means, if it includes or excludes the listener, you never can tell for Eng.

Haha. If you are the king or queen of Great Britain or the Pope, 'we' means 'I.' (Well, it used to.)

[KevinS]

The thing I think English needs is another word than it to use when I want to say he did something or she did something but do not know whether the reader is a he or a she.

Anne

I've heard people refer to an as-yet-unborn child as 'it.' (I find that kind of weird.)

[TriciaG]

I don't think that English has become one of the dominant languages . . . because English is "better" than other languages.

You're right; almost certainly that's not the reason. What on earth DOES become dominant because it's better/best? There's almost always another reason, such as (for products) marketing, availability, etc.

I think English has become dominant because England was dominant as a world power in the 1700s-1800s. "The sun never set on the English empire" and all that. And after that, the USA became a/the world power after WWI/WWII, especially economically. If one couldn't do business in English with the USA, one was at a big disadvantage.

I wouldn't want Chinese to become the dominant world language. As hard as English is to learn, Chinese, with inflections causing a change in meaning, must be worse.

the state of being fashionable in English by saying tongue in cheek it's "fashionabilicality".

I can't figure out what this is supposed to mean. Does every concept need a one-word term for it? Perhaps a phrase is better - unless you have long-running words built like building blocks, like they do in German.

[lightcrystal]

You are right; Chinese is very difficult. Especially for someone who comes from a language such as English that is not tonal. There is a student exercise that is quite funny. You are given an essay that has one word in all of. That word is shi which can depending on tone be many things such as "ten" and "lion". All you have to make it clear is the tones!

By the way while we here the language learning breakdown here in Australia is interesting. I did high school Chinese in the early 90's. Since then the number of students taking up Chinese has fallen a lot. The reasons may be a bit political so I won't go into them. Japanese is the other Asian language that is sometimes offered. At my high school French and Chinese were the ones offered. My sister at her school was offered German or Indonesian. It varies! If I had to say an order without digging up statistics, I'd say:

Chinese or Japanese most common.
Then French
German
Indonesian.
various others. About 30 languages are offered. Some of them you would have to apply to do as a high school student. One person in a whole state is doing Latin!

[DACSoft]

The thing I think English needs is another word than it to use when I want to say he did something or she did something but do not know whether the reader is a he or a she.

Anne

From my experience, "(s)he" seems to work well in most cases. It's even more difficult when there are ... what ... 58 or more different gender pronouns in English use today.

[TriciaG]

The thing I think English needs is another word than it to use when I want to say he did something or she did something but do not know whether the reader is a he or a she.

Anne

From my experience, "(s)he" seems to work well in most cases. It's even more difficult when there are ... what ... 58 or more different gender pronouns in English use today.

That only works in print. How does one say that orally?

[DACSoft]

So true. But then, I write more than I talk.

[annise]

He or she sound more friendly - but if you get it wrong people insist on telling you when you really don't care in that particular sentence.

I don't know about too many other languages but I understood that a letter-based language is much quicker for people to learn to read than a character-based one. I can struggle my way to read many years of English writings with the alphabet I learnt when I was 5 or so but as I understand it this would not be the case in Chinese or Japanese and I can write it much as I learnt by about 7 years old.
(and I think the French believe that French should replace English and the Spanish that all America will be speaking Spanish in years to come )
I just think how lucky I am to be able to talk with so many people who are at least bilingual when I am not )

Anne

[lightcrystal]

Depending on what exactly is a language I guess that I have learnt these languages to some degree of competence at some point:

English [native]
Chinese Mandarin [second language, it is precise to say which Chinese because there are others e.g Cantonese, Hakka]
CB radio call sign language. Alpha, Bravo etc. I used to use it on school camps with that radio backpack and receiver.
Chess notation language: 3 languages, Algebraic, Descriptive [now defunct outside of historical chess books] and Forsyth for still positions.

If you defined languages that way I speak 6 languages.
Maybe that is a little facetious.

p.s add Yorkshire , that makes 7. Well, people in my family say water with the "a" as in "bat" when they are angry.

[GettingTooOld]

[..]Chinese is very difficult. Especially for someone who comes from a language such as English that is not tonal.

The easiest thing to do is avoid it 'for now'. {inserting an edit here, I mean leave the hard stuff for your second or third language so you are not demoralized up front} Not Mandarin, that's essential, but tonal languages. Just choose languages which are 'trade' or 'universal' languages. That makes it easy to learn. Rather than a language which is spoken in one country, like Japanese (which is easy anyhow) go for a language which is spoken across the planet, like Spanish or Arabic. Then listeners are accustomed to discerning what you are trying to say despite your ridiculous accent because that's what they do all the time. English is spoken in many places, and with an accent that is ok. Bahasa Indonesia is another one, 90% + of it's speakers speak it as a second language so they're simply happy that you are trying. French is probably good in a few places, none of which are France Somehow I think even if you have perfect pronunciation once they know you're not a local native they'll pout and get a headache. But it is spoken in a few countries.

Go with a trade or international communication language. Except Esperanto. well, maybe.

[lightcrystal]

[..]Chinese is very difficult. Especially for someone who comes from a language such as English that is not tonal.

The easiest thing to do is avoid it 'for now'. Not Mandarin, that's essential, but tonal languages. Just choose languages which are 'trade' or 'universal' languages. That makes it easy to learn. Rather than a language which is spoken in one country, like Japanese (which is easy anyhow) go for a language which is spoken across the planet, like Spanish or Arabic. Then listeners are accustomed to discerning what you are trying to say despite your ridiculous accent because that's what they do all the time. English is spoken in many places, and with an accent that is ok. Bahasa Indonesia is another one, 90% + of it's speakers speak it as a second language so they're simply happy that you are trying. French is probably good in a few places, none of which are France Somehow I think even if you have perfect pronunciation once they know you're not a local native they'll pout and get a headache. But it is spoken in a few countries.

Go with a trade or international communication language. Except Esperanto. well, maybe.

Not sure what to think of avoiding languages. I learnt Mandarin Chinese at school in the early 90's. It was a time of "any westerner can learn Chinese" . There were travelers Chinese books, written for the American market, by the boatload. They were very phonetic and not grammatically correct; I showed one to my Chinese teachers and they almost threw a pink fit! You are going to use THAT! That is wrong! They ended every phonetic line with the letter 'r'. The joke with that is "it's the Yale version of Chinese".

By the way the weirdest experience I had was being taught Mandarin Chinese by a Scotsman with a thick Scottish accent. That got interesting