Languages and Linguistics

[Rugi]

Something cool happened yesterday. I was asking some Chinese friends about pronunciation and their explanations of Chinese phonetics had made me realise I was pronouncing Japanese all wrong as well! They went over the difference between sh and x in pinyin and it connected in my head that the Japanese し has the same pronunciation as the Chinese x. I had been pronouncing it all this time as the English (sh). I was still finding it hard to hear the difference though, so I opened audacity and recorded myself saying my native "sh" and trying to approximate the one in Japanese and Chinese.

Here is me saying "sha shi shu sho" first pass with the English consonant and second one trying to pronounce it the Japanese/Chinese way
http://vocaroo.com/i/s0hWJNKu9Lay

I think paying careful attention to phonetics is an important part of learning a language. I challenge all of you to compare the phonetics of the languages you are learning to the your native language find sounds you might be messing up. A little bit of paying attention to your pronunciation will go a long way to fluency.

 

[Cresselia~~]

Something cool happened yesterday. I was asking some Chinese friends about pronunciation and their explanations of Chinese phonetics had made me realise I was pronouncing Japanese all wrong as well! They went over the difference between sh and x in pinyin and it connected in my head that the Japanese し has the same pronunciation as the Chinese x. I had been pronouncing it all this time as the English (sh). I was still finding it hard to hear the difference though, so I opened audacity and recorded myself saying my native "sh" and trying to approximate the one in Japanese and Chinese.

Here is me saying "sha shi shu sho" first pass with the English consonant and second one trying to pronounce it the Japanese/Chinese way
http://vocaroo.com/i/s0hWJNKu9Lay

I think paying careful attention to phonetics is an important part of learning a language. I challenge all of you to compare the phonetics of the languages you are learning to the your native language find sounds you might be messing up. A little bit of paying attention to your pronunciation will go a long way to fluency.

Huh? There's a difference between x and English sh?? I didn't know that!

 

[Martin]

Something cool happened yesterday. I was asking some Chinese friends about pronunciation and their explanations of Chinese phonetics had made me realise I was pronouncing Japanese all wrong as well! They went over the difference between sh and x in pinyin and it connected in my head that the Japanese し has the same pronunciation as the Chinese x. I had been pronouncing it all this time as the English (sh). I was still finding it hard to hear the difference though, so I opened audacity and recorded myself saying my native "sh" and trying to approximate the one in Japanese and Chinese.

Here is me saying "sha shi shu sho" first pass with the English consonant and second one trying to pronounce it the Japanese/Chinese way
http://vocaroo.com/i/s0hWJNKu9Lay

I think paying careful attention to phonetics is an important part of learning a language. I challenge all of you to compare the phonetics of the languages you are learning to the your native language find sounds you might be messing up. A little bit of paying attention to your pronunciation will go a long way to fluency.

Having a native speaker for a teacher definitely goes a long way with this as they force you to get everything right and force the habit before you can start corrupting the sounds. Things like ふ (the "f" should be somewhere between a "f" and a "h" sound, for lack of a better way to put it without descending into the phonetic alphabet) are the obvious ones, but other things like し/しゃ/しゅ/しょ, つ,* ば/び/ぶ/べ/ぼ etc. are things which I've noticed when talking to people who are being taught by non-native speakers pronouncing slightly wrong. In particular, with ふ and し I've noticed that people lack the same sort of "airyness" to the start of the sound that they are meant to have and it is a common mistake.

*non-native speakers I've talked to always seem to pronounce this as す, and this is both among people who are using it in the context of Japanese and Japanese words have been directly transcribed into English words (e.g. つなみ (directly transcribed into English as "tsunami") is constantly being pronounced as sunami by both English speakers and people who are learning Japanese from non-native teachers despite the tsu sound being distinct from the su sound). Does anyone else notice this at all, or have I just been super unlucky with the people I've been talking to?

 

[Cresselia~~]

Having a native speaker for a teacher definitely goes a long way with this as they force you to get everything right and force the habit before you can start corrupting the sounds. Things like ふ (the "f" should be somewhere between a "f" and a "h" sound, for lack of a better way to put it without descending into the phonetic alphabet) are the obvious ones, but other things like し/しゃ/しゅ/しょ, つ,* ば/び/ぶ/べ/ぼ etc. are things which I've noticed when talking to people who are being taught by non-native speakers pronouncing slightly wrong. In particular, with ふ and し I've noticed that people lack the same sort of "airyness" to the start of the sound that they are meant to have and it is a common mistake.

*non-native speakers I've talked to always seem to pronounce this as す, and this is both among people who are using it in the context of Japanese and Japanese words have been directly transcribed into English words (e.g. つなみ (directly transcribed into English as "tsunami") is constantly being pronounced as sunami by both English speakers and people who are learning Japanese from non-native teachers despite the tsu sound being distinct from the su sound). Does anyone else notice this at all, or have I just been super unlucky with the people I've been talking to?

Actually, thinking about it, I do pronounce English shi, Japanese し and Chinese Xi in 3 different ways.

I read somewhere that the Japanese h is actually linguistically different from h of other languages. It's neither Chinese h or English h.
That international phonetics alphabet suggests Japanese h is closer to a c than any other languages.

But I don't know if it's actually significant.
Like, I think the natives will still be able to understand you.

 

[qtrx]

Keep in mind that these subtle differences often stem from extremely narrow and strict prescribed standard pronunciations. Everyday and/or dialectal pronunciations usually form a fairly wide spectrum and I'm pretty sure the h variations from these languages overlap.

I'm a native Chinese speaker, but I'm surprised to learn that /r/ in Mandarin and English are actually different. I pronounce both the English way. As for the x in Mandarin, I always pronounce it with a slight dental component, and many around me do too. I don't know if this is exclusive to Shanghai but definitely non standard.

 

[gvmgvm40]

I read somewhere that the Japanese h is actually linguistically different from h of other languages. It's neither Chinese h or English h.
That international phonetics alphabet suggests Japanese h is closer to a c than any other languages.

But I don't know if it's actually significant.
Like, I think the natives will still be able to understand you.

Be careful though, depending on your native language, you're going to hear different sounds as identical unless you specifically train yourself to differentiate them. What you think of as one sound will almost certainly be realized differently in different locations. For example, English speakers will understand the first sounds of "car" ([k] in IPA) and "key" ([c] in IPA) as the same, even though they are pronounced quite distinctly to me. Substituting one for the other can change the meaning of a word in Turkish, but speakers of many other languages won't even hear a difference. I don't speak Japanese, but Wikipedia says "/h/ is [ç] before /i/ and /j/, and [ɸ] before /u/ (often romanized f), coarticulated with the labial compression of that vowel" so "Japanese h" is actually 3 different sounds in different locations, recognized as the same by native Japanese speakers.

 

[X5Dragon]

I'm trying to learn Japanese and aside from the various words I've learned, I'm learning Katakana and Hiragana (and pronunciation except for R I keep hearing it as a d/r-ish sound with l being how ladies/songs pronounce it) first before bothering to do any grammar, is that the right way? Also how important is knowing pitch accent in everyday conversation? For example Ame and aME, do people just get it from context or?

 

[Cresselia~~]

I'm trying to learn Japanese and aside from the various words I've learned, I'm learning Katakana and Hiragana (and pronunciation except for R I keep hearing it as a d/r-ish sound with l being how ladies/songs pronounce it) first before bothering to do any grammar, is that the right way? Also how important is knowing pitch accent in everyday conversation? For example Ame and aME, do people just get it from context or?

This is the correct way. Knowing the alphabet of a language is one of the basics.
Vocabulary comes next, and after vocab comes short phrases, then grammar.

Intonation in Japanese is not unified or standardized. Different prefectures in Japan can have very different intonations for words. So mostly, it doesn't really matter.
However, for some of the crucial ones like Ame and aME , it's something to be memorized.

 

[Rugi]

X5Dragon
eghhhhhh I'd say acknowledge that a pitch accent is there and try to emulate but dont stress too much. I never paid too much mind to it myself as I seemed to have naturally gotten the hang of pitch accent before anyone told me about but I hadn't realised the importance of it until two years ago where my school got a new teacher who spoke in Kansai-Ben.

Funnily enough I began noticing that newer students to the class as they learned Japanese began speaking in Kansai pitch rather than a standard one. This leads me to believe that pitch accent isn't something you need to consciously manage like Chinese tones as a lot of people seem to get the hang of it just by listening to it being there.

Besides I speak in standard Tokyo dialect as thats what gets taught in Australia 99% of the time but other than some really old regional accents and the barely-Japanese-dialects of the Ryukyu islands I can understand anything without too much trouble so I think that the same works in the opposite direction.

Besides even for word that are the same bar pitch accent most of them are different enough in context that you won't get mixed up. (If you say you want to buy かき in a fruit store nobody will think you're looking for oysters) and in writing its fine because the kanji will be different (柿 for the fruit vs 牡蛎 for the seafood)

As for pronunciation a few noises such as the n, g, h and r noises change slightly depending on where they are. R leans more towards being a d or an l noise after n せんろ(railroad) for example has its r sound articulated almost like an l whereas in べんり(convenient) the r sound closer to a d. Feminine speech in Japanese comes more from word choice rather than pronunciation so don't worry about that.

 

[Menshay]

That international phonetics alphabet suggests Japanese h is closer to a c than any other languages.

By "closer to a c" you mean the [ç] symbol? Be careful, because some of the characters used by the IPA have somewhat unobvious meanings, i.e. /j/ follows the usage of German and Scandinavian and Slavic languages and is used for the sound in "you", not like English J. In particular, [ç] has little to no relation to the sounds commonly corresponding to the actual letter C in English.

But I don't know if it's actually significant. Like, I think the natives will still be able to understand you.

As noted above, how much a sound can be mispronounced depends on whether the destination language treats the two sounds as distinct or not. For example, my native Italian (in its "standard" form, at least, I'm not sure about all the regional variants and even less about the actually very distinct regional languages) completely lacks the "dark L" which is apparently very common in English: using it is thus incorrect and recognized as a mark of a non-native speaker, but does not significantly hinder comprehension because the sound is still recognized as a variant ol /l/. On the other hand, Italian has a strong distinction between short and long consonants, unlike English (bar rare cases, mostly compunds like "penny"/"penknife"). An example of why this distinction is very important is "anno"/"ano": the former means "year", try to guess the latter considering it shares its etymology with its English equivalent.

Going back to languages that are not Chinese or Japanese, am I the only one who, despite not natively speaking English, gets annoyed upon seeing people mix up stuff like "your"/"you're" and "their"/"they're"? I mean, I understand that due to the horrors of English vowel reduction such pairs are pronounced exactly (?) the same, but I'd say the lack of apostrophes in the former ones should be a pretty clear signal that no, those are not compounds, they do not include a verb and thus cannot be used as such. "It's" at least has the excuse of looking like a genitive.

 

[Cresselia~~]

By "closer to a c" you mean the [ç] symbol? Be careful, because some of the characters used by the IPA have somewhat unobvious meanings, i.e. /j/ follows the usage of German and Scandinavian and Slavic languages and is used for the sound in "you", not like English J. In particular, [ç] has little to no relation to the sounds commonly corresponding to the actual letter C in English.

As noted above, how much a sound can be mispronounced depends on whether the destination language treats the two sounds as distinct or not. For example, my native Italian (in its "standard" form, at least, I'm not sure about all the regional variants and even less about the actually very distinct regional languages) completely lacks the "dark L" which is apparently very common in English: using it is thus incorrect and recognized as a mark of a non-native speaker, but does not significantly hinder comprehension because the sound is still recognized as a variant ol /l/. On the other hand, Italian has a strong distinction between short and long consonants, unlike English (bar rare cases, mostly compunds like "penny"/"penknife"). An example of why this distinction is very important is "anno"/"ano": the former means "year", try to guess the latter considering it shares its etymology with its English equivalent.

Going back to languages that are not Chinese or Japanese, am I the only one who, despite not natively speaking English, gets annoyed upon seeing people mix up stuff like "your"/"you're" and "their"/"they're"? I mean, I understand that due to the horrors of English vowel reduction such pairs are pronounced exactly (?) the same, but I'd say the lack of apostrophes in the former ones should be a pretty clear signal that no, those are not compounds, they do not include a verb and thus cannot be used as such. "It's" at least has the excuse of looking like a genitive.

I sometimes get annoyed. But more like, I don't understand why people would have difficulty with that.
Don't schools teach them properly, etc.
Makes me feel that the lack of homework in Western education is actually a bad thing.

 

[Martin]

I sometimes get annoyed. But more like, I don't understand why people would have difficulty with that.
Don't schools teach them properly, etc.
Makes me feel that the lack of homework in Western education is actually a bad thing.

Schools not teaching them properly is one of the big reasons why learning a language in school is such a pain in the ass. Like, idk about elsewhere in the world, but the attitude to language teaching/learning in the UK is fucking awful.

 

[Rugi]

Schools not teaching them properly is one of the big reasons why learning a language in school is such a pain in the ass. Like, idk about elsewhere in the world, but the attitude to language teaching/learning in the UK is fucking awful.

lol England's attitude was clearly spread to its colonies because language education here sucks. That being said classes in another language are compulsory in primary school and first two years of secondary after which they become optional. It largely depends on the school and individual dedication of the student but most students that here that continue language studies into the last two years of High School tend to become somewhat fluent. I like to think that with the internet your school doesn't matter too much anymore as you can learn whatever you want but I'm getting off topic.

As someone who has studied English grammar formally both at school and at home I still make mistakes all the time and don't really give a shit. When I'm typing quickly I don't care and I know that I can speak and write fluently if I want to so meh. Even so, with Spanish and Japanese, I'm far more careful about mistakes and grammatical errors. As they're second languages their grammar isn't intrinsic to me and I had learn one partially from scratch and the other entirely so I'm always double checking and confirming what I write and that of course leads to that feeling of cringe when someone uses the wrong "to be" in Spanish or overuses the pronoun in Japanese even though a native speaker would just be confused/not care/ laugh it off

 

[Cresselia~~]

Schools not teaching them properly is one of the big reasons why learning a language in school is such a pain in the ass. Like, idk about elsewhere in the world, but the attitude to language teaching/learning in the UK is fucking awful.

I liked the classes in English as a foreign language when I was in the UK.
But then I decided to take the Engiish as a native GCSE exam, so I had mainstream English classes as well. I admit I was daydreaming about Pokemon most of the time.
British history was another thing I didn't like. I think every country should have a World history lesson AND an our own country's history lesson.
And then make world history compulsory.

No offense, but most foreigners simply won't be interested in a country's history when studying abroad.

 

[Martin]

Something I forgot to mention when saying what I look for when judging fluency that I only realised I pay attention to when watching a show about European train journeys on TV about 20 mins ago was how well the person's speech flows when they say stuff. If you have a gap between every word it is a very obvious sign that someone is not fluent unless it is used for effect in normal conversation, and depending on the confidence of the pronunciation it can also make it very difficult to interpret what someone is saying.

I just kinda notice stuff as I go along but yeah working out new things about the way foreigners speak my language is strangely really interesting and IDK why.

As for the whole foreign history thing I kinda disagree with that 'cause I personally find oriental Asian and oriental European history to be far more interesting to learn about than British history personally, but maybe that's just me.

 

[Rugi]

so I've been studying Chinese (mandarin) in my spare time over the past few weeks. I thought I'd be fun to make a little review of the language and things I find interesting difficult.

Grammar:
Wow Chinese grammar is easy. Verbs literally do not conjugate. You just add extra words for negating/wanting and time words if you need to specify a tense. the 的 particle is super versatile and easy to use letting you show the genitive attach adjectives and create clauses in a few simple sentences structures. All sentence orders are fairly familiar even with just English and the question particles are really easy to understand and have pretty much direct equivalents in Japanese. The only thing grammatically that has been troubling me is 了. This little bastard is annoying to understand and its used all the time. Also find it confusing how sometimes 要 means want and sometimes its used for marking future tense. I've heard that Chinese grammar gets harder so I wont rest yet but I think I'm good so far.

Writing:
Chinese writing is awesome. Each character has only one or two pronunciations. The legibility is amazing and its getting to the point that I can skim over sentences almost as fast as I read English whilst having no idea how to actually pronounce any of it. Also unlike Japanese a lot of the mnemonics for remembering characters still work in Chinese. I imagine it will take years until I get truly fluent in writing but ah well. I can push through it.

Pronunciation/Vocabulary
Aghhhhh why. The language gods decided that Chinese grammar was too easy so they had to make the pronunciation hard as all hell. minimal pairs in the form of x/sh and ch/q that even though I understand the difference and can pronounce both of them I still get messed up. Tones contours that YOU CANNOT GET WRONG OR YOU RISK SAYING A DIFFERENT WORD. Also I don't care what anyone says pinyin tells nothing but lies. Vowels change on a whim I swear that the "neutral tone" is different in every word and the "u" in "qù" is not pronounced the same as the "u" in "yīfú"
All this on top of the fact that tone contours seem to change based on surrounding tones means that despite the fact that I'm starting to be able to read and understand Chinese I don't actually speak it. I do something more akin to stuttering it. Not only that but the fact that Chinese has pretty much no loan words makes the job of learning vocabulary so much harder. I recognise a few things from Japanese but thats pretty much it.

The hardest part of studying Chinese is that a lot of Chinese movies and shows kind of suck so there isn't much media to consume. I've been watching some You are the One and enjoying it though so who knows?

All in all I give Chinese an 8/10 solid language

 

[Rugi]

Also of the two main people that are helping me learn Chinese one is from Urumqi and the other is from Taipei so I don't think I should be trying to imitate their accent.

 

[Cresselia~~]

so I've been studying Chinese (mandarin) in my spare time over the past few weeks. I thought I'd be fun to make a little review of the language and things I find interesting difficult.

Grammar:
Wow Chinese grammar is easy. Verbs literally do not conjugate. You just add extra words for negating/wanting and time words if you need to specify a tense. the 的 particle is super versatile and easy to use letting you show the genitive attach adjectives and create clauses in a few simple sentences structures. All sentence orders are fairly familiar even with just English and the question particles are really easy to understand and have pretty much direct equivalents in Japanese. The only thing grammatically that has been troubling me is 了. This little bastard is annoying to understand and its used all the time. Also find it confusing how sometimes 要 means want and sometimes its used for marking future tense. I've heard that Chinese grammar gets harder so I wont rest yet but I think I'm good so far.

Writing:
Chinese writing is awesome. Each character has only one or two pronunciations. The legibility is amazing and its getting to the point that I can skim over sentences almost as fast as I read English whilst having no idea how to actually pronounce any of it. Also unlike Japanese a lot of the mnemonics for remembering characters still work in Chinese. I imagine it will take years until I get truly fluent in writing but ah well. I can push through it.

Pronunciation/Vocabulary
Aghhhhh why. The language gods decided that Chinese grammar was too easy so they had to make it the pronunciation hard as all hell. minimal pairs in the form of x/sh and ch/q that even though I understand the difference and can pronounce both of them I still get messed up. Tones contours that YOU CANNOT GET WRONG OR YOUR RISK SAYING A DIFFERENT WORD. Also I don't care what anyone says pinyin tells nothing but lies. Vowels change on a whim I swear that the "neutral tone" is different in every word and the "u" in "qù" is not pronounced the same as the "u" in "yīfú"
All this on top of the fact that tone contours seem to change based on surrounding tones means that despite the fact that I'm starting to be able to read and understand Chinese I don't actually speak it. I do something more akin to stuttering it. Not only that but the fact that Chinese has pretty much no loan words makes the job of learning vocabulary so much harder. I recognise a few things from Japanese but thats pretty much it.

The hardest part of studying Chinese is that a lot of Chinese movies and shows kind of suck so there isn't much media to consume. I've been watching some You are the One and enjoying it though so who knows?

All in all I give Chinese an 8/10 solid language

Sure, if you have learnt Japanese before, you'll find Chinese really easy.

I can see why you are confused with 要.
But when it's used for I need to go somewhere, then it's more like need.
Maybe it's a thing that needs memorizing. I can't think of a good way.

 

[jireh the provider]

The fact that I'm taking a college course in English Language linguistics all the more makes this thread a good place for me to share various things.

As someone who grew bilingual in language, Filipino and English, I had this common mistake on the structure of writing Filipino. What is it then?

Usually, with English as my first language, I was taught that in syntactic structure that most sentences are structured with the Subject, the verb, and the other properties and forms of sentence and word structure. However, if one has to write or speak in Filipino (especially Tagalog), most of their sentences actually start with the verb then the noun. I had mixed the structures of the two languages incorrectly for some years in my life, especially tagalog being my secondary language when that should had been my mother tongue. Take these examples:

English: I am eating Pizza.

Filipino: Kumakain ako nang Pizza.

The "kumakain" is the Filipino denotative to eating were as "ako" is the denotation of either Me or I.

However, almost no one around my country gets to use the Baybayin Language as a form of writing which is based on the "Abakada" Phonemes of the old Filipino languages.

These are a few that I can share for now.

 

[MetnotstandImMärchenland]

I love this forum already for the eloquent off-topic discussions!

Guess the first post should be an introduction:

As an (male, despite the picture) Austrian, my first language is German. I have been in contact with the English language since I was 7 years old, but it took a while for me to write and communicate on a basic level. In hindsight, I just know realize how easy of a language English really is compared to Italian, for example, which I'm still not fluent in despite studying it for years now. I think my problem with Italian is not going to Italy often enough, which causes little usage of my knowledge.

I am particularly interested in the Evolution of languages, for example the similarities between some German and English words. It is also fascinating how often I see German words in English texts, for example zeitgeist, doppelgänger, leitmotif (hilariously misspelled) etc. In addition, a bunch of weird words have been created in the past (to heil).

There are a few things upsetting me about the English languages, for example the lack of articles showing something's gender. It is much easier to learn that way, but also rather unique in the linguistic landscape.

There are many languages I would be interested to learn in the future, but I think the most likely would be Spanish.

Greetings

 

[Martin]

English isn't easy whether you're native or not tbh. Not only can half of the English population not actually speak or write it properly (big hyperbole here, but even still I get a out of some of the... "creative" ways that English language is used by native speakers), but apparently it's also hell for non-native speakers to learn as well due to it not following any of its rules with any kind of consistency while lacking certain structural devices such as gendered vocabulary that can help with the learning process.

 

[Cresselia~~]

English isn't easy whether you're native or not tbh. Not only can half of the English population not actually speak or write it properly (big hyperbole here, but even still I get a out of some of the... "creative" ways that English language is used by native speakers), but apparently it's also hell for non-native speakers to learn as well due to it not following any of its rules with any kind of consistency while lacking certain structural devices such as gendered vocabulary that can help with the learning process.

It seems to me that most of the grammatical mistakes native speakers commit could be sorted by practicing (ie: doing repetitive homework)
I wouldn't say that English grammar is difficult, as there are many complex grammar Latin has that is not present in English. (gender, more verbs, etc)

However, I'd say English pronunciation can be very difficult to grasp for a non-native speaker.

 

[ant]

It seems to me that most of the grammatical mistakes native speakers commit could be sorted by practicing (ie: doing repetitive homework)
I wouldn't say that English grammar is difficult, as there are many complex grammar Latin has that is not present in English. (gender, more verbs, etc)

However, I'd say English pronunciation can be very difficult to grasp for a non-native speaker.

I definitely agree here. English grammar is a lot less complex than Spanish grammar for example. Just by saying that native-Spanish speakers still don't know how to conjugate certain verbs (even myself sometimes) is saying a lot

Take this sentence for example

My dog is green

In spanish it can be
Mi perro es verde (same as above)
Verde, mi perro es (Green, my dog is)
Mi perro verde es (My dog green is)

you can even ellide the verb

Mi verde perro / Mi perro verde (My green dog / My dog green)

but speaking of pronunciation and what not Spanish phonology is a lot more intuitive once you learn about accents (á, é, í, ó, ú), ñ, rolling r's, and other silly rules. English phonology is just impossible if you want to follow your intuition. I'm currently taking English phonology classes, and believe me, there's no single rule for words that are really similar

laugh tough dough through though cough ???

 

[Cresselia~~]

I definitely agree here. English grammar is a lot less complex than Spanish grammar for example. Just by saying that native-Spanish speakers still don't know how to conjugate certain verbs (even myself sometimes) is saying a lot

Take this sentence for example

My dog is green

In spanish it can be
Mi perro es verde (same as above)
Verde, mi perro es (Green, my dog is)
Mi perro verde es (My dog green is)

you can even ellide the verb

Mi verde perro / Mi perro verde (My green dog / My dog green)

but speaking of pronunciation and what not Spanish phonology is a lot more intuitive once you learn about accents (á, é, í, ó, ú), ñ, rolling r's, and other silly rules. English phonology is just impossible if you want to follow your intuition. I'm currently taking English phonology classes, and believe me, there's no single rule for words that are really similar

laugh tough dough through though cough ???

I really like how Spanish spelling and pronunciation is straightforward. I've never misspelled a Spanish word.
But I do have a problem-- I still can't pronounce the Spanish RR sound.
I just can't figure out how to do it.

I also like how there's more freedom in Spanish on how you can place the verbs and adjectives in different places.
This doesn't happen in English.

Thinking about it, English even has a set order for multiple adjectives.
For example, you can't say "Italian small green piano", you have to say "small green Italian piano" and everything else is supposed to be wrong.

Another thing is, although it's acceptable in American English to say "Me and my friends...", it's considered grammatically wrong in British English.
It should be "My friends and I".

 

[Mova]

English is weird like that; it doesn't follow any form of consistency, unlike many other human languages. I feel that American English is more flexible than British, since it's constantly evolving. That doesn't necessarily mean it has become a better language, though. It doesn't help that Merican English speakers write the way they speak, either.