• Welcome to Smashboards, the world's largest Super Smash Brothers community! Over 250,000 Smash Bros. fans from around the world have come to discuss these great games in over 19 million posts!

    You are currently viewing our boards as a visitor. Click here to sign up right now and start on your path in the Smash community!

Social Social Thread - Talk About Anything (You Are Allowed to Talk About)!

Blue Yoshi

Blue Yoshi

Smash Master
Joined
Mar 3, 2008
Messages
4,410
Location
Jake is definitely dropping Yoshi
English spelling has so many rules, and every rule has too many exceptions. Take the word "sure" for example. Find someone who does not know how to spell it, and ask them to try to spell it. 99% of the time, they'll spell it wrong. There are many other words like this...

One of the downsides to english (though once you know how to spell these words, it's not all that bad anymore).
 
The Star King

The Star King

Smash Hero
Joined
Nov 6, 2007
Messages
9,681
Pronunciation based on spelling is the only thing difficult about English, or so my parents say (who don't speak native English).

Exhibit A:Dough, tough, cough, through, and trout all use ou in the middle, yet they ALL have different pronunciations for the vowel.

Exhibit B: Boot, through, true, and brew all use different vowel combinations, but have the same vowel sound.
 
Terywj [태리]

Terywj [태리]

Charismatic Maknae~
Joined
Aug 23, 2007
Messages
30,536
Location
香港 & 서울
English spelling rules can be pretty ridiculous, too, as 85% of the time there is a word that breaks each respective rule. Like the whole "I before E except after C" rule. Then the word "feint" existed.
 
walsh

walsh

Smash Cadet
Joined
Feb 18, 2010
Messages
67
ballin4life said:
You say all this like it's a bad thing... it allows for better expression of meaning and more subtlety. Also how would you say all those things in other languages? Would it take a lot more words to explain?

Big reasons to complain about English as a language (off the top of my head):
1) Ridiculous numbers of irregular verbs (on the other hand, fewer conjugations makes this not AS bad)
2) Some words are very hard to spell
Click to expand...
This is a good thing unless you are learning how to speak English. Fortunately it is my native tongue!

@Nixxxon, I grew up in Texas (lived there for 18 years!), and "Spanglish" is only spoken inside Mexican households where some members of the family speak Spanish and others speak English. I wouldn't call it an independent language commonly used for communication between 2 random people on the street. For the most part down here you either speak Spanish or you speak English, or both, but not at the same time.
 
The Star King

The Star King

Smash Hero
Joined
Nov 6, 2007
Messages
9,681
Terywj said:
English spelling rules can be pretty ridiculous, too, as 85% of the time there is a word that breaks each respective rule. Like the whole "I before E except after C" rule. Then the word "feint" existed.
Click to expand...
The "I before E except after C" rule only applies to words that are pronounced with the "ee" sound, for example "piece" and "ceiling".

@Walsh why is it a good thing?
 
walsh

walsh

Smash Cadet
Joined
Feb 18, 2010
Messages
67
ShootingStar said:
The "I before E except after C" rule only applies to words that are pronounced with the "ee" sound, for example "piece" and "ceiling".

@Walsh why is it a good thing?
Click to expand...
"it" refers to the sublte nuances of the English language discussed in an earlier post that allow the same sentence said with different emphasis on words to have many different meanings. Ballin noted that this was one of the things that made English such a beautiful and complex language.

I heartily agreed that the presence of "it" was a good thing, unless English is not your first language. Then "it" suddenly becomes your nightmare because you have no idea exactly what you are saying when you are stating something, unless you are very familiar with utilizing these subtle nuances.


This becomes more prevalent in spoken English than in written English, but still applies here.
 
The Star King

The Star King

Smash Hero
Joined
Nov 6, 2007
Messages
9,681
Lmao most languages can put emphasis on different words in the sentence to change the meaning. You think languages other than English speak in a monotone? GTFO.
 
walsh

walsh

Smash Cadet
Joined
Feb 18, 2010
Messages
67
ShootingStar said:
Lmao most languages can put emphasis on different words in the sentence to change the meaning. You think languages other than English speak in a monotone? GTFO.
Click to expand...
Give me an example of another language that can deduce over 15 different meanings from the same 6 word sentence like English does.

I asserted that English was one of the most difficult languages because emphasis plays a larger part in English than other languages AND I provided evidence to back it up. I never once said that I "think languages other than English speak in a monotone."

Your counter argument basically accounts to "Well, here's some random obvious tidbit of information, I won't provide any evidence or anything substantial but I'll throw in a condescending question so I sound smart!"

I laugh at you.

The onus of proof lies upon you if you want me to believe that other languages are more complicated than English in this respect. Based upon my research, currently this is not the case.
 
Mahie

Mahie

Smash Lord
Joined
Aug 18, 2007
Messages
1,067
Location
Lille, France
English lacks genders, in my opinion. It also lack a casual you and a polite you, a singular you and a plural you. Just saying.
 
walsh

walsh

Smash Cadet
Joined
Feb 18, 2010
Messages
67
Mahie said:
English lacks genders, in my opinion.
Click to expand...
If you are talking about the assigning of a gender to nouns in a nonsensical fashion, then yes English does lack this. Informally, for some illogical reason, people sometimes refer to their vehicles, especially boats but also cars, as having a female gender. It's actually an attempt to personify the vehicle! Does this happen in French or whatever other languages you might speak?




It also lack a casual you and a polite you, a singular you and a plural you. Just saying.
Click to expand...
Are you saying that English lacks differentiation between a casual you and a polite you, a singular you and a plural you? This is correct in a way, but us southerners have figured a way out around the second part.

We simply use "you" as our singular you and use "y'all" as our plural you.

If there ain't a word for it, we make one up. Lol. Granted Y'all was originally "You All" but has since become its own word.

Northerners and Canadians have to toss another word in there to make this distinction. "You people" or "You guys" is commonly used in this situation.
 
Mahie

Mahie

Smash Lord
Joined
Aug 18, 2007
Messages
1,067
Location
Lille, France
I was talking about nouns genders, I don't care about people humanizing their car or whatever.
Y'all for 2 persons seems weird. So does it if you need to be polite, like adressing a bunch of higher-ups or whatever.
 
dch111

dch111

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Jun 12, 2009
Messages
472
Learning German, I always found the noun genders really irritating. There were hardly any patterns as to why something was feminine, masculine, or neutral. If it were up to me, almost everything would be neutral lol.
 
NixxxoN

NixxxoN

Smash Master
Joined
Jun 16, 2008
Messages
3,726
Location
Barcelona
Every language has it's pros and cons, no language is superior to the rest. Although I think german beats them all in being difficult =O
 
Sangoku

Sangoku

Smash Master
Joined
Apr 25, 2010
Messages
3,931
Location
Geneva, Switzerland
Chinese? I find it's not that hard. I mean the grammar is really simple. It might be hard because of the pronunciation (especially the tones) but once you get that, it's not so hard.

Well, I don't really know actually, cause I only speak a little...

Oh and I was referring to mandarin, dunno about other dialects.
 
The Star King

The Star King

Smash Hero
Joined
Nov 6, 2007
Messages
9,681
According to the Foreign Service Institute:

1. Arabic
2. Cantonese
3. Mandarin Chinese
4. Japanese
5. Korean
 
hamburglar

hamburglar

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Dec 10, 2007
Messages
435
Location
Binghamton, Ny
Japanese harder than Korean? I always thought Japanese was the easiest of the east asian languages. I guess it is because Korean is only a phonetic vernacular.
 
D

dandan

Smash Lord
Joined
Feb 11, 2009
Messages
1,373
arabic is not hard to learn, but maybe that is because i know hebrew, the problem is that you have multiple dialects.
 
NixxxoN

NixxxoN

Smash Master
Joined
Jun 16, 2008
Messages
3,726
Location
Barcelona
I think for people who talk a language that uses the european alphabet, any other language that doeesnt use this alphabet is hard to learn for them
 
D

dandan

Smash Lord
Joined
Feb 11, 2009
Messages
1,373
the arabic i learnt was written arabic which was pretty simple to me, but i never learnt it to a full extent though. still i am guessing knowing hebrew has helped me.
 
Battlecow

Battlecow

Play to Win
Joined
May 19, 2009
Messages
8,740
Location
Chicago
So what kind of music/what bands do you guys like? Someone mentioned Primus the other day.

I'm a Bob Dylan man myself.
 
sharksquail

sharksquail

Smash Ace
Joined
Jan 10, 2009
Messages
515
Location
ATL ITP
Man i listen to all kinds of stuff. recently i've been listening to a lot of black thrash metal (skeletonwitch, vektor, destroyer 666) Rock operas about mega man (the Protomen) danish rock (Mew) Punk (the dead boys)
The new big boi album (gotta happen being from Atlanta and all) Japanese rock (guitar wolf, noodles, the pillows, GoGo7188!)
 
ciaza

ciaza

Smash Prodigy
Premium
Joined
Aug 12, 2009
Messages
2,759
Location
Australia
The only thing close to normal music I like is the genre Ska.

Otherwise I prefer Vocaloid music, classing me as a freak amongst friends at school. Thanks again, aa :p

N.B: I don't mind being classified as different or a freak, everyone wants to be different in some way ^^
 
ciaza

ciaza

Smash Prodigy
Premium
Joined
Aug 12, 2009
Messages
2,759
Location
Australia
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom