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Posted by Condorfan on 02-10-2008 at 16:13:
Pet Peeves
Reading in another thread about spelling reminded me how much I hate words being misspelled. I don't count emails and board replies--this is supposed to be fun after all! Lord knows I've made enough typing errors but what really rubs me the wrong way is in newspapers and on TV how they make up words that don't exist like "Cheesier" or speak to someone in person as if they are texting them. 
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Old age is a high price to pay for maturity.
Posted by Barrdwing on 02-10-2008 at 17:21:
It's annoying, all right. What bugs me about it is that elementary-school kids seem to have enough trouble learning to spell as it is. Kids mimic what they see. I can remember a spelling test that I did quite badly on because I was using the British spellings of words. I didn't know that I could get marked wrong for putting down answers like "colour" instead of "color". I'd read several books that used the British spellings; therefore, both spellings were equally valid in my mind. I was really mad when I got my test score back, and it was hard for me to understand why I'd been wrong when, as far as I knew, I wasn't wrong. (Now, of course, I can agree that I was wrong, but only on this side of the Atlantic, and south of the Great Lakes. 
)
English is a confusing enough language (witness the constant mixing of "you're" and "your", or even "too", "two", and "to") without throwing in phonetic shorthand versions of words and cutesy deliberate misspellings. And since texting is considered "hip" and "young", kids are going to gravitate towards it already. I feel like an old fuddy-duddy sometimes, but I really do think that in public sources like television and newspapers, it's important to avoid misspellings. Languages shift with time and circumstance, and that's fine, but being able to spell correctly is important.
And again, I'm not including typos in my grumble. Those happen. Likewise, on a private board like this one, spelling honestly doesn't matter. It's a private board and we're all here to chat and have fun. And for folks who have English as a second language, again, spelling isn't that important: I'm just tickled to be able to talk to someone from a different culture and upbringing! 
It's only the young kids that I worry about : they need to be able to spell, and they don't need to be confused by having "official" sources using misspellings or text abbreviations.
Posted by Ladygalactor777 on 02-10-2008 at 18:34:
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Don't complaint about the english, you don't know what I go trough every day with my spanish...spanish is worst & more complex than english, I like english language because is more simple than spanish or any other language.
German is worst!
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Posted by Transmute Jun on 02-10-2008 at 18:59:
I will agree that German has some interesting complexities. I guess growing up speaking English, I'm still confused as the the need for genders for all nouns... and German has three genders! The third one is for Katse... 
Not to mention, in German you regularly come across 26+ letter words... ouch! The good thing though is that German is very phoentic. It's very difficult to mispronounce a word you read, as long as you know how the Germans pronounce their letters. No complications like the 'ough' sound in English (where through, though and thought all have different pronunciations).
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Posted by lborgia88 on 02-10-2008 at 21:21:
Three possible genders (one for Katse
) plus four possible "cases" for German nouns!
Still, I'm sure English grammar is no picnic for people trying to learn it as a second language...
If I recall, grade 7 English class, in my junior high school, consisted almost entirely of having all the rules of grammar flogged into you -it was boring and it was tedious and I hated it, but most of what I was taught stuck with me in the years that followed (most, not all).
However, in grade 7 Science class, we had to memorize the periodic table of elements (or at least all the symbols) and I've forgotten most of those!
Posted by Barrdwing on 03-10-2008 at 04:50:
You're right, ladygalactor, Spanish is a real bear! I took three years of it in school and frankly can't speak it worth a darn. The verb tenses drove me straight up the wall. I don't know anything about German, but if it's as complicated as Spanish or worse, I doubt I'd be able to handle it.
That said, I still think English is something of a mess as languages go. 
Posted by Tengu on 03-10-2008 at 07:09:
Finnish is worse.
My pet peeve is when you are doing bottling (canning for those of you in the new world who dont realise a can is made of metal and not glass) and `one` bottle doesnt seal, so you have to reheat it
its always the biggest jar which need the main oven; they are too big for the top oven.
__________________
"If you think I am a Condor, you may keep that opinion;
Though I am no Condor, my Skylines rusty enough."
Posted by saturn on 03-10-2008 at 10:21:
I have ever read in a survey somewhere that Russian language is the most difficult language to learn, followed by Chinese/ Japanese. They put Chinese/Japanese in the same position because Japanese language (especially Kanji characters) was actually derived from Chinese Characters.
Being a Chinese, I have to agree that Chinese is a very complex language, with more than 50,000 characters to learn (in fact, I am still learning new characters until now, , and what makes Chinese language even more complicated is that, each character can have 4 different intonations, that if a character is pronounced with wrong intonation, it can result in the sentence to have completely different meanings, that's how complicated Chinese language is, 
I find that English is quite an easy language to learn, however, most of the people here at my place are very confused with English tenses, and of course, confusions with English words that are homophones, like "too","two" and "to", "know" and "no", etc.
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Posted by Ladygalactor777 on 03-10-2008 at 11:16:
See!!...so let's be grateful, that english is a blessing & most people speak it.
We can travel anywhere & always is going to be somebody who speaks english.
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Posted by Ladygalactor777 on 03-10-2008 at 11:21:
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Posted by Ladygalactor777 on 03-10-2008 at 11:25:
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Posted by Tengu on 03-10-2008 at 14:06:
Don Quixote is the funniest book ever written.
__________________
"If you think I am a Condor, you may keep that opinion;
Though I am no Condor, my Skylines rusty enough."
Posted by Transmute Jun on 03-10-2008 at 14:21:
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Really? I thought Gaelic was supposed to be the most difficult language.
Actually, when we were in Russia we discovered the secret for understanding some of the words we saw written about. We ignored the strange characters we saw (i.e. the ones that didn't looks like English letters) and tried to pronounce the words. It was similar to looking at English words without vowels.
Didn't always work, but it did often enough to figure out place names.
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Posted by Reboekah on 03-10-2008 at 18:05:
According to my significant other
Switzerland has four "official" languages - Italian, French, Romansch (same age as latin, but not related), and Switzer-deutsch. The last is similar to German, only spoken. If they want to communicate in "Swiss-German" they write in "High German"... and Romansch is also an unwritten language, with 20 or so dialects and only found in the little alpine valley villages. (Yes, he speaks all of these, plus English, and Italian - I get the Japanese and French and English combo.)
On the other hand - Indonesia presents challenges - wherein they are trying to standardize some 200 dialects over the island nation into one common use. And my father told us that Swahili was more difficult than Russian when he was required to take language training...
I suppose it all depends on what training you have in languages and how you learn them.
-Boeke
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-Boeke
Bird Scramble OE
155 issues - 36.5Years! - and flying high!
Posted by Ladygalactor777 on 03-10-2008 at 21:16:
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Well It sucks!
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Posted by Condorfan on 03-10-2008 at 23:28:
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I took Spanish in high school and the tenses are confusing to learn (for me anyway). But it looks like I am going to have to learn Spanish again as in Southern California we have a large Hispanic population which doesn't speak English and it is an advantage in getting a job to speak Spanish.
__________________
Old age is a high price to pay for maturity.
Posted by Ladygalactor777 on 04-10-2008 at 06:09:
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!Learn spanish with Galactor!
hahahahahh
aprenda español! ahora!...learn spanish now!
Show me what you know...if you need help, Galactor is here to assist you... hahahahahah!
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Posted by saturn on 04-10-2008 at 08:21:
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Don't worry, Reboekah. I live in Indonesia, and Indonesian language, regardless of the various dialects, is undoubtedly one of the easiest language to learn in the world,I swear,
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Posted by Ebonyswanne on 04-10-2008 at 10:16:
We get a mixture of American spelling and English in our newspapers...
Which is really bad because our kids learn the English was of spelling at school.
Especially words like Jail = goal... etc
I even get it mixed up at times... agghhhh... (and lets not get into grammar... not my strongest talent. Mmmm I think i can even insult the English language at times...but it forgives me...sigh!!!)
Spanish isn't really taught in schools in Aust..
From what I know its Chinese (mandarine, however you spell it...) and French.
The Asian languages are becoming more common, it makes sense since Asia is our nearest neighbour...
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Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up- Pablo Picasso.
Posted by Reboekah on 04-10-2008 at 12:58:
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Hey there Saturn!
I may have been suffering serious culture shock during my time there in 1997...
Spent months working on an application implementation, dealing with clients in Jakarta and Singapore, wrestling with the US vendor, and coordinating testing with international credit card organizations... didn't leave much time for learning the language as much as I would have wished... and then the financial markets tanked and we moved to another country and another project. But I still recall watching Sailor Moon Super S in Bahasa Indonesian and Shurato in Mandarin... :grin: I hope I get the opportunity to get back someday.
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-Boeke
Bird Scramble OE
155 issues - 36.5Years! - and flying high!
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