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Discussion » Questions » Language » Is English a cumbersome language or is it not? Change the tense of just one word and you have to go back and rewrite the entire sentence ;(
O-uknow

Is English a cumbersome language or is it not? Change the tense of just one word and you have to go back and rewrite the entire sentence ;(

Posted - February 17, 2017
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  • English, by all accounts, is a difficult language for non-native speakers to learn. It may well be cumbersome. 

    I once travelled by train from Melbourne to Sydney with a man who was fluent in seven or eight languages. He said the most difficult to learn was Hebrew. (He had worked as a translator at the British Embassy in Tel Aviv.) I guess that we who were born to the language can be grateful that we learned it from the cradle. 
      February 17, 2017 9:20 PM MST
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  • I haven't tried Hebrew but I struggled with French.  Hell's teeth what sort of people can't think of a word for ninety?  You have to say four times twenty plus ten, I asked some of the French people I knew why somebody hadn't just made up a word and said this means ninety?  They thought I was a bit wacky.
      February 17, 2017 11:54 PM MST
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  • 5614
    Your post is wacky but I do enjoy :)
      February 17, 2017 11:57 PM MST
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  • I didn't know that. Just looked it up. That's really strange. But then, President Dubya did say that the French don't even have a word for entrepreneur. I assume he was joking, but who knows?
      February 18, 2017 1:10 AM MST
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  • 85
    Didge - Could it just have been a moment of inspiration when the president of Dubya came up with some kind of sarcasm since "entrepreneur" actually IS a French word?
      February 18, 2017 2:35 AM MST
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  • That's the point, Grasshopper. Everybody knows it's French but he apparently didn't. He wasn't very bright but surely he had to be joking. He certainly got bad press from it. 
      February 18, 2017 2:52 AM MST
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  • 85
    OK, but surely even "He who was prone to say and do foolish things" must have known where the word came from, so my vote goes to wisecrack rather than ignorance.
    Anyway, I am looking forward to the day when Dubya is demoted to second place in the list of most inept presidents!
      February 18, 2017 3:34 AM MST
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  • You won't have long to wait. :D
      February 18, 2017 3:41 AM MST
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  • 85

    Agreed, French was very difficult to learn.

    BTW, did you know that it’s not that the French haven’t invented a word for ninety, even eighty or seventy for that matter but it goes back to the vigesimal or base 20 numeral system which is based on twenty (in the same way in which the decimal numeral system is based on ten)?

    70 = soixante-dix = sixty ten .... 80 = quatre-vingt = four twenty .... 90 = quatre-vingt-dix

    However, that only applies to French spoken in France!

    The French speaking Belgians and Swiss have words for those numbers although they don't both use all and the same, just to keep everyone on their toes, I guess i.e. septante, octante or huitante and nonante.
      February 18, 2017 3:08 AM MST
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  • 85
    English is the forth language I learned and I found it was the easiest. However, I totally endorse the notion "English is easy to learn but difficult to master".
      February 18, 2017 2:28 AM MST
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