What do you like most and hate most about your mother tongue?

[Hotteok]

I think this can be an interesting topic to discuss...

I like it that Korean is extremely subtle and delicate (though it can be subjective)

what I hate most about  Korean is that there are two ways of speaking according to hierarchy, similar to Japanese but even more severe. 

 

[well]

4 hours ago, Tryin'SoHardToBeSpiritual said:

I think this can be an interesting topic to discuss...

I like it that Korean is extremely subtle and delicate (though it can be subjective)

what I hate most about  Korean is that there are two ways of speaking according to hierarchy, similar to Japanese but even more severe. 

 

So with K Drama everywhere, I learnt about sarange, sarangeyo... Few days ago, a sister sent videos made by Korean friends and they said Sarang hamnida... 

 

[AH173]

I almost thought it was asking why I hate my mother's tongue! Ha!😀

[coony77]

I love my mother tongue, because Greek gives you so many possibilities to express yourself, such a rich vocabulary....many expressions simply can't be translated  - I have to describe them because there is no equivalent in other languages. 

 

What I hate about greek is its complicated orthography. 

[Old]

I have no problem with my mother tongue which is American (A strange form of English), except for the ridiculous way the written words are spelled, an example the word 'through,' a seven leter word wen for leters wood sufis.  

[boodles]

I wish English had a distinct plural you, not just 'you guys' or 'you all'. 

[Todd komaniak]

In Pittsburghes that would be yinz. I may have forgotten to put this out there but I'm originally from Pittsburgh PA. not Sarasota Florida

Edited April 8, 2020 by Todd komaniak

[Todd komaniak]

Written language is considered more formal and should follow the rules of the English language. Spoken language is generally less formal, and the rules are less important. Slang, an informal language understood only by certain groups, is acceptable in spoken language but not in written language........ I also thought this might help in this thread

[Dages]

I like the distinct sound and music of the French language.

I hate the dumb rules and tons of exceptions that make French so difficult to learn and teach.

[AH173]

3 hours ago, Todd komaniak said:

yinz

My mother in law used to say "yo-oons"

 

Different culture thing.

[Katty]

7 hours ago, boodles said:

I wish English had a distinct plural you, not just 'you guys' or 'you all'. 

My very English fiance picked up "y'all " from me and uses it over there, due to a lack of plural you. I often joke that we originally got "y'all" from the English anyway a couple hundred years ago, so we're giving it back
 

[Katty]

I like the fact that the English language is so large. I read somewhere that the British Empire has, at one time or another, conquered 24% of the entire land space on planet Earth. The English speaking world has spread pretty much everywhere, and everywhere they went, they picked up words along the way. In addition to its Anglo-Saxon, Old French, and Latin core, it has words borrowed from pretty much all European languages, Hindi, Indigenous and Native American languages, Arabic, Japanese, and so many other languages. It does create a lot of inconsistency, but there are very few, if any ideas that can't be, in some way, conveyed by the English language, because if such a word exists, the English speaking world looks at it and say "you're mine now, my sweet." I'm thinking of words like sonder, that might still get corrected by spellcheckers, but many people know the meaning of, anyway, thanks to the internet.  Also, what's cool about English is that it contains nested languages. There's this thing called "Anglish" in which people only use English words of Anglo Saxon descent. This is a kinda fun essay, called "Uncleft Beholding" discussing Atomic theory in entirely Anglish English.
Also, a side note, if you're English or know an English person, it's a fairly good chance that you or that person are direct descendents of the Anglo Saxon invaders from the middle ages. The Anglo Saxons seem to have always been the dominant ethnicity of England and didn't intermarry too much.

 

On the downside. English is a Frankenstein language. Nothing about it is consistent. It's just pieces stitched together to convey a commonly understood meaning. Though, rough, trough, and dough should all rhyme, but they don't. You have weird plurals like goose and geese, passerby and passersby, radius radii, but octopus octopuses (because two different etymologies) You have criterion criteria, datum data. In short, I think it helps to learn languages like Latin, French, Danish, German and Frisian before English if you're a non English speaker, because it kind of helps to get the general idea of the various word roots of the varied words in English.
Also, I'm kind of jealous of languages that have gendered nouns. It's kind of cool. I learned Latin, which has 3 genders, and French,which has 2 genders in school, and since school, learned some conversational Spanish, which also has two genders. English seems to be pretty unique in its lack of genders. I also find it interesting how Japanese syllables correlate with numbers, at least with the tiny bit of Japanese I had learned on duolingo. This makes me want to get back to duolingo actually.

[Hotteok]

Didn't English have 'thee,thou' to indicate a singular 'you'? 

Why were they removed?  

Maybe they had pejorative connotations? 

Edited April 9, 2020 by Tryin'SoHardToBeSpiritual

[Dages]

4 hours ago, Katty said:

I also find it interesting how Japanese syllables correlate with numbers

What do you mean?

[Katty]

11 hours ago, Tryin'SoHardToBeSpiritual said:

Didn't English have 'thee,thou' to indicate a singular 'you'? 

Why were they removed?  

Maybe they had pejorative connotations? 

Yes, it's because English had a specific letter that made the "th" sound, but the person who invented the printing press was a German, and the Germans didn't have that particular letter, so the English used a y, since the way "y" was formatted, looked like that letter. That's why you see ye olde curiosity shop sometimes in English speaking places. It wasn't meant to be a 'ye'. It's just that the y looked like the th letter. I should dig up that youtube video that discusses that. Interesting stuff.

[Katty]

8 hours ago, Dages said:

What do you mean?

It's like how the word shi, which means 4 also means death. I think in Chinese and Japanese, isn't it?
I hope someone more fluent in Japanese is on here. I just learned a little bit and found when you learned ichi, ni, san, shi, etc. which mean 1, 2, 3, 4, if I remember correctly, they were also used as words or syllables that made up words.
 

[Dages]

21 minutes ago, Katty said:

It's like how the word shi, which means 4 also means death. I think in Chinese and Japanese, isn't it?
I hope someone more fluent in Japanese is on here. I just learned a little bit and found when you learned ichi, ni, san, shi, etc. which mean 1, 2, 3, 4, if I remember correctly, they were also used as words or syllables that made up words.
 

Ha, I understand, like when people used to write : 4649 yoroshiku.
It's funny. I was in Japan 4 years. It's a lovely country.

Edited April 9, 2020 by Dages

[boodles]

19 hours ago, Tryin'SoHardToBeSpiritual said:

Didn't English have 'thee,thou' to indicate a singular 'you'? 

Why were they removed?  

Maybe they had pejorative connotations? 

Thou was singular, informal

You was/is singular formal and also plural.

 

[Cushi]

For me it’s more with the written language... “silent” letters. It’s the dumbest thing ever. No pun intended.

[Hotteok]

1 hour ago, Brother Jack said:

For me it’s more with the written language... “silent” letters. It’s the dumbest thing ever. No pun intended.

Is it English you are referring to?

I've read that English words used to be read exactly the way they were spelt. 

But later there was a great change in how people pronounce words (due to some unknown linguistic cause) 

And yet the spelling system didn't change, hence the great confusion. 

[Cushi]

8 minutes ago, Tryin'SoHardToBeSpiritual said:

Is it English you are referring to?

I've read that English words used to be read exactly the way they were spelt. 

But later there was a great change in how people pronounce words (due to some unknown linguistic cause) 

And yet the spelling system didn't change, hence the great confusion. 

Yes, I meant English.

[Hotteok]

Great Vowel Shift 

[Bard]

English is my second language and sometimes I find it funny and confusing like the first time I heard someone complaining: "I can't stand sitting down!". I almost responded with: Why, of course, how can you?

[Bard]

You literally need faith to be able to speak the word "faith" in my mother tongue (Tagalog, one of the languages or dialects, if you will, in the Philippines). For example: faith in Spanish is Fe; Fede in Italian but in Tagalog it is "PANANAMPALATAYA"

[EccentricM]

I appreciate that my accent seems to be popular around the world 😄

 

Also, my language is spoken in many places in the world, I've not had to learn a second language to be able to communicate with people from all over (typical British laziness isn't it? We can't be bothered to learn new languages so we just colonised the world instead 😂).

 

But yeah, the odd ways of spelling things can be something, using letters that don't even produce sound in a word has always been a funny one. (They say "spell words as they sound" in school, worst advice "ever", both because of the point on words are ""not" all spelled how they literally sound, and also, regional accent can really dictate how you'll write something down with that method, I know all too well with my mother and her mother who came from Brum, lol.)

Edited April 14, 2020 by EccentricM