On Monday, 2 May 2016 at 19:09:41 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote:
> For every rule, there are 101 exceptions. :-)
>
> http://shirah-goes-again.blogspot.de/2011/01/entire-english-language-is-big.html

As an educated native English speaker, I must say that poem is horrifying.

Clearly, spelling reform is urgently needed:
    http://www.ashvital.freeservers.com/ze_dream.htm

On Mon, 2 May 2016 21:09:41 +0200
Iain Buclaw via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:

> On 2 May 2016 at 14:55, Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, 2016-05-02 at 12:18 +0000, Claude via Digitalmars-d wrote: […]
> >>
> >> In french, there are 2 specials cases about gender. "orgue"
> >> (organ) and "amour" (love) are masculine on singular, and
> >> feminine on plural.
> >
> > Oh FFS. And they say English is a difficult language.
> >
>
> For every rule, there are 101 exceptions. :-)
>
> http://shirah-goes-again.blogspot.de/2011/01/entire-english-language-is-big.html

LoL. That's hilarious - a tad long to read though, especially since it's practically just a long list of words.

- Jonathan M Davis

On 5/2/2016 12:09 PM, Iain Buclaw via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> For every rule, there are 101 exceptions. :-)
>
> http://shirah-goes-again.blogspot.de/2011/01/entire-english-language-is-big.html

What's the problem? :-)

On 3 May 2016 at 05:15, Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:
> On 5/2/2016 12:09 PM, Iain Buclaw via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>>
>> For every rule, there are 101 exceptions. :-)
>>
>>
>> http://shirah-goes-again.blogspot.de/2011/01/entire-english-language-is-big.html
>
>
> What's the problem? :-)
>

You can colour me impressed if you were able to read it out loud without stuttering to sound out a word. :-P

The last list had my partner (native Italian) throw her pen down and give up for the day on many occasions, consider the following rhyming couplets or same sounds.

(bough, bow), (cough, quaff), (dough, doe), (enough, stuff), (hough,
shock), (lough, lock), (plough, vow), (sough, brow), (though, know),
(through, threw), (thorough, morrow)

Though I've really noticed the difference since we first lived together - such as nowadays she says biscuit to rhyme with kit, rather than quit. :-)

Then again, I discovered a few years ago that I was a retroflex speaker of English.  Which when you are non-native, I've been frequently told is very difficult to understand, if compared to your typical North American (rhotic) or Oxford-English (non-rhotic) speakers that you get on news channels.  My old neighbour and friend when I lived in the UK found that out the hard way when after three months of talking with me on a near daily basis, thought they could understand native English very well (they considered me a challenge). They discovered otherwise a few weeks later trying to communicate with locals on holiday in Norfolk. ;-)

> LOL. Well, every language has its quirks - especially with the commonly used words (they probably get munged the most over time, because they get used the most), but I've found that French is far more consistent than English - especially when get a grammar book that actually explains things rather than just telling you what to do. English suffers from having a lot of different sources for its various words. It's consistent in a lot of ways, but it's a huge mess in others - ...

Several years ago, I read "Frankenstein" of Mary Shelley (in english), and I was surprised to see that the english used in that novel had a lot of french sounding words (like "to continue", "to traverse", "to detest", "the commencement" etc), which are now seldom used even in litterature. There was very few verb constructions like "get up", "come on", "carry out" etc...

> ... though I for one think that the fact that English has no gender like languages such as French and German is a huge win.

Yes, I think the difficulty in english is mostly pronunciation, and irregular verbs (which actually many languages enjoy: french, german, spanish...).

On Monday, 2 May 2016 at 01:13:50 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:

> [...]
>
> Actually, in just about every language that makes gender distinctions
> the choice of gender for any given noun is basically arbitrary. Even
> languages with a common ancestor may assign different genders to the
> same ancestral noun (IIRC in Portuguese vs. Spanish, though I can't
> recall the specific example off the top of my head).

In Galician and Portuguese the word for `message` is feminine while it is masculine in Spanish (and French I guess).

a mensaxe (Gal.)
a mensagem (Pt.)
el mensaje (Sp.)

which applies to all words ending in -axe/-aje I think.

In Irish, there are words that have different genders in different dialects which is due to the fact that Irish used to have three genders masculine, feminine and neuter. Neuter died out and the words had to "choose" which gender they wanted to belong to. Hence the "gender difference" between dialects. There are even some words that change gender when in a different case:

talamh (m, Nominative singular) `land`
na talún (f, Genitive singular) `of the land`, `the land's`

although `tailimh` (m, Genitive singular exists too).

In Bavarian some words have a different gender than in Standard German, e.g:

der Butter (standard: die Butter)
der Radio (standard: das Radio)

On Tuesday, 3 May 2016 at 08:53:49 UTC, Claude wrote:
>> LOL. Well, every language has its quirks - especially with the commonly used words (they probably get munged the most over time, because they get used the most), but I've found that French is far more consistent than English - especially when get a grammar book that actually explains things rather than just telling you what to do. English suffers from having a lot of different sources for its various words. It's consistent in a lot of ways, but it's a huge mess in others - ...
>
> Several years ago, I read "Frankenstein" of Mary Shelley (in english), and I was surprised to see that the english used in that novel had a lot of french sounding words (like "to continue", "to traverse", "to detest", "the commencement" etc), which are now seldom used even in litterature. There was very few verb constructions like "get up", "come on", "carry out"

http://isteve.blogspot.de/2012/07/norman-v-saxon-after-946-years.html?m=1

The reverberations of 1066 have not yet extinguished themselves...  We are in a mass democratic age and the language reflects that.

Chris,

If you happen to be at dconf, it would be great to have a chat about NLP and D.

Sorry to post to forum, but I don't have your email.


Laeeth

On Wednesday, 4 May 2016 at 17:26:10 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
> Chris,
>
> If you happen to be at dconf, it would be great to have a chat about NLP and D.
>
> Sorry to post to forum, but I don't have your email.
>
>
> Laeeth

Laeeth, I'm not at DConf, unfortunately. I couldn't go, cos DConf overlapped with something else.

On Monday, 2 May 2016 at 21:49:21 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
>
> However, various recent attempts to reform English spelling have for the most part failed, mostly due to inertia and the presence of a substantial (and very fast growing!) body of literature in current spelling, which would require a monumental effort to respell. It's difficult to convince the myriad writers and publishers to adopt a new spelling system when the current one has been ingrained for so many centuries.  But hey, if Chinese could simplify the original characters (at much protest, I must say), and if the Russians could pull it off in 1917, who's to say we can't do it in English too?
>
>
> T

There was a spelling reform in Germany in the 1990ies. Portuguese spelling has been reformed several times (and there are two major spelling systems Brazilian and Portuguese Portuguese)[1], and in Spanish it has also been a to and fro (Latin America vs. Spain). All these languages have produced a vast body of literature too and still spelling reforms have been pushed successfully. So quantity is not an argument. First, most people don't have problems reading texts in older spellings, and second, it only takes one or only half a generation of school children to make the new spelling feel "natural".

The main reason why English spelling has not been reformed is the nasty class system that is still prevalent in GB and, albeit better concealed, in the USA, or in fact in any English speaking country. The mastering of English spelling has always been a social shibboleth (and continues to be), and any serious attempts at simplifying it are met with fierce opposition in educated circles. Even the few simplifications that have been introduced into American English, like color (instead of colour), program (instead of programme), or thru (instead of through) etc. are frowned upon and belittled by European (native) English speakers. The conservative spelling preserves the etymology of the word, they claim. This means you have to know Latin, French and some basic Greek to master English spelling. This clearly shows their bias. It is the educated elites that could bring about a reform of English spelling, but since they're not willing to give in an inch an lose some of their (imagined) superiority, this ain't gonna happen.

People often adopt the elites' views and oppose to spelling reforms, because they feel they'll "lose" what they've learned ("it was all in vain"), and of course, what they are used to. But hey, it's just a coding convention. We shouldn't be too attached to spellings, especially if reforms make it easier to spell (i.e. to spell out a word as you hear it in your head) and parse text. It's a code to communicate, not a religion.

PS If you think that discussions about D language features on this forum are sometimes mad and nit-picky, you should attend a meeting of a spelling committee!

[1] https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ortografia_da_l%C3%ADngua_portuguesa#Cronologia_das_reformas_ortogr.C3.A1ficas_na_l.C3.ADngua_portuguesa