Below are sentences which I believe make the English language too hard to understand. If you don't understand from the first time of reading them, the concept is simple. The same word written the same way but it has different meanings with different pronunciations. Here are what I could think of in the past week.
Add on to the list or comment your thoughts below.
EDIT: Adding peoples sentences onto the list to make easier for others
The bandage was wound around the wound.
The farm used to produce produce.
The dump was so full we had to refuse the refuse.
We must polish the Polish furniture.
He could lead if he could get the lead out of his feet.
The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
I do not object to the object.
The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
They were too close to the door to close it.
A seamstress and a sewer fell down the sewer line.
To help him with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
After a number of injections, my jaw got number.
Upon seeing the tear in the painting, I shed a tear.
I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
How can i intimate this to my most intimate friend.
There are a bunch of reason that English is hard to understand.
Mainly, English spelling makes no sense at all.
Seriously, have you ever thought for a while about the concept of silent letters? Letters are supposed to represent sounds, but some of them represent nothing. If that's the case, why have them at all?
Or could you ever imagine having to teach how to read 'ough' to somebody and making sense of it? Dough, rough, through, cough, bough... none of them sound anything a like.
Cadren: There are a bunch of reason that English is hard to understand.
Mainly, English spelling makes no sense at all.
Seriously, have you ever thought for a while about the concept of silent letters? Letters are supposed to represent sounds, but some of them represent nothing. If that's the case, why have them at all?
Or could you ever imagine having to teach how to read 'ough' to somebody and making sense of it? Dough, rough, through, cough, bough... none of them sound anything a like.
That would be one reason I love German. Every word is spelled exactly how it sounds. :D
Charlie-two-zero: All languages have this, at least the germanic and romantic languages do. I don't know anything about eastern languages.
Yes. Spanish in particular has a few I could name.
Qué and que are pronounced almost with infinitessimal difference, but the first one is "what" and the second one is "that" in the case of not being an "this or that" issue (e.g.remember when we went to that play?" Using "this" in that sentence would not work, so you would use "que")
Also, caro and carro. expensive and car, in order.
Chad and Shad both sat an English test. One of the questions was regarding the usage of "had" versus "had had". Chad, where Shad had had "had", had had "had had". "Had had" had had the approval of the teacher. It's grammatically correct, as far as I know. Now try saying it out loud, without the benefit of quotation marks.
Graustein: Chad and Shad both sat an English test. One of the questions was regarding the usage of "had" versus "had had". Chad, where Shad had had "had", had had "had had". "Had had" had had the approval of the teacher.
Graustein: Chad and Shad both sat an English test. One of the questions was regarding the usage of "had" versus "had had". Chad, where Shad had had "had", had had "had had". "Had had" had had the approval of the teacher. It's grammatically correct, as far as I know. Now try saying it out loud, without the benefit of quotation marks.
It's quite simple. The rules of the English language (which are only applied on a "when we feel like it" basis anyway) were specifically designed to confuse and annoy Johnny Foreigner.
This is why I utterly fail at speaking English. It was hard enough to learn to write and read it, but speaking and understanding spoken English is demonically hard!
The advantages with English is that there are SO MANY foreigners in England, if you speak the language really badly it's accepted as normal, and in fact many people who speak correct English are shunned and considered posh.
French is ridiculous though. Some of the words are basically identical, but if you mispronounce a hundredth of a syllable the French have no idea what your talking about. In English you can mispronounce something and due to the wide range of accents it makes sense. In France if you mispronounce something they'll all 'WTF' you until you feel bad
Beetlejooce: The advantages with English is that there are SO MANY foreigners in England, if you speak the language really badly it's accepted as normal, and in fact many people who speak correct English are shunned and considered posh.
French is ridiculous though. Some of the words are basically identical, but if you mispronounce a hundredth of a syllable the French have no idea what your talking about. In English you can mispronounce something and due to the wide range of accents it makes sense. In France if you mispronounce something they'll all 'WTF' you until you feel bad
The only french i know is retard which means late. guess why i learnt that? :p
Japanese, for instance, not content with having no less than four complete alphabets, each of which is used for different types of words (one of them, handily, is the standard Roman alphabet), even has two different readings for each character in one of them, depending on whether they appear on their own or next to another character of the same alphabet.
Or Mandarin, where the tone of voice used when saying a word alters it's meaning.
Beetlejooce: The advantages with English is that there are SO MANY foreignerschavs in England, if you speak the language really badly it's accepted as normal, and in fact many people who speak correct English are shunned and considered posh.
Beetlejooce: The advantages with English is that there are SO MANY foreigners in England, if you speak the language really badly it's accepted as normal, and in fact many people who speak correct English are shunned and considered posh.
French is ridiculous though. Some of the words are basically identical, but if you mispronounce a hundredth of a syllable the French have no idea what your talking about. In English you can mispronounce something and due to the wide range of accents it makes sense. In France if you mispronounce something they'll all 'WTF' you until you feel bad
The only french i know is retard which means late. guess why i learnt that? :p
Beetlejooce: The advantages with English is that there are SO MANY foreigners in England, if you speak the language really badly it's accepted as normal, and in fact many people who speak correct English are shunned and considered posh.
French is ridiculous though. Some of the words are basically identical, but if you mispronounce a hundredth of a syllable the French have no idea what your talking about. In English you can mispronounce something and due to the wide range of accents it makes sense. In France if you mispronounce something they'll all 'WTF' you until you feel bad
The only french i know is retard which means late. guess why i learnt that? :p
We take words from all over, English is a bastard language. It is not a phonetic language at all,but look at french they have words where you don't even pronounce what would be the last syllable.
Charlie-two-zero: All languages have this, at least the germanic and romantic languages do. I don't know anything about eastern languages.
Yes. Spanish in particular has a few I could name.
Qué and que are pronounced almost with infinitessimal difference, but the first one is "what" and the second one is "that" in the case of not being an "this or that" issue (e.g.remember when we went to that play?" Using "this" in that sentence would not work, so you would use "que")
Also, caro and carro. expensive and car, in order.
Pero and Perro and Porque and Por Que.
In English: I found a tear in my shirt and shed a tear.
English is hard because of homophones? My students don't really have much trouble with those, to be honest. The greatest single diffculty seems to be the great deal of idioms you need to know just to understand basic speech.
wilsonscrazybed: English is hard because of homophones? My students don't really have much trouble with those, to be honest. The greatest single diffculty seems to be the great deal of idioms you need to know just to understand basic speech.
Well said Wilson. I believe that may be the root to the English languages problems. /endsuckup
Cadren: There are a bunch of reason that English is hard to understand.
Mainly, English spelling makes no sense at all.
Seriously, have you ever thought for a while about the concept of silent letters? Letters are supposed to represent sounds, but some of them represent nothing. If that's the case, why have them at all?
Or could you ever imagine having to teach how to read 'ough' to somebody and making sense of it? Dough, rough, through, cough, bough... none of them sound anything a like.
That would be one reason I love German. Every word is spelled exactly how it sounds. :D
I beg to differ. Of course it might seem that way because you are the most familiar with your native language, but just read some common words aloud and look at how they are written. Basically most single letters can be articulated in more than one way. 'R' for example can be pronounced in three different ways. Take for example Brot and Erde, read them aloud and pay close attention on how your tongue is moving. If you really pronounced everything in the way it is written, it'd be a real pain in the ass to listen to you. :>
Man, linguistics really were the only interesting thing when I was studying German... Good thing I quit before being bored to death by literatury studies. ;)
But unlike English we at least haven't a preposterous amount of homonyms.
I have no idea how they would measure such a thing but apparently proffessors of linguistics believe the English language to be 600 times more versatile than any other.
Probably because it's the bastardisation of about 599 other languages.
JaguarWong: I have no idea how they would measure such a thing but apparently proffessors of linguistics believe the English language to be 600 times more versatile than any other.
Probably because it's the bastardisation of about 599 other languages.
Well, English people love to engineer things, so it follows that we would come up with a reverse engineered modular language with muliple uses for single words. It's an Engineer's way of thinking, nothing is simple if it doesn't need to be!
JaguarWong: I have no idea how they would measure such a thing but apparently proffessors of linguistics believe the English language to be 600 times more versatile than any other.
Probably because it's the bastardisation of about 599 other languages.
English is the kind of language that sneaks up behind other languages in dark alleys, bashes them on the head and rifles their pockets for spare vocabulary
Those sentences aren't hard to understand. And even if they were, they certainly aren't TOO hard, which would imply that those sentences justifies not bothering to learn the language.
Graustein: Chad, where Shad had had "had", had had "had had".
I think this sentence might be grammatically incorrect because both the subordinate and main verb are in the pluperfect. Normally a plupefect is used to indicate that one action in the past occurred before another, also in the past (which is normally put in the perfect).
In any case, it is a good example of how confusing English can be. If I hadn't studied another language I know I'd be lost. I believe grammar should be taught at schools more. In Australia at least. I don't know about other countries.
Beetlejooce: The advantages with English is that there are SO MANY foreigners in England, if you speak the language really badly it's accepted as normal, and in fact many people who speak correct English are shunned and considered posh.
French is ridiculous though. Some of the words are basically identical, but if you mispronounce a hundredth of a syllable the French have no idea what your talking about. In English you can mispronounce something and due to the wide range of accents it makes sense. In France if you mispronounce something they'll all 'WTF' you until you feel bad
The only french i know is retard which means late. guess why i learnt that? :p
Below are sentences which I believe make the English language too hard to understand. If you don't understand from the first time of reading them, the concept is simple. The same word written the same way but it has different meanings with different pronunciations. Here are what I could think of in the past week.
Add on to the list or comment your thoughts below.
EDIT: Adding peoples sentences onto the list to make easier for others
The bandage was wound around the wound.
The farm used to produce produce.
The dump was so full we had to refuse the refuse.
We must polish the Polish furniture.
He could lead if he could get the lead out of his feet.
The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
I do not object to the object.
The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
They were too close to the door to close it.
A seamstress and a sewer fell down the sewer line.
To help him with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
After a number of injections, my jaw got number.
Upon seeing the tear in the painting, I shed a tear.
I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
How can i intimate this to my most intimate friend.
I will murder that murder of crows.
I already read that book, but i'll read it again.
I saw him saw the see-saw with his saw.