Why? There’s plenty of strange things in English, inconsistent grammar rules, weird pronunciations, and pointless words for simple ideas.
Like there’s umpteen words to describe different kinds of meat, pork, beef, veal, mutton. In Chinese you can get away with saying just the animal + meat, 猪肉, 牛肉, 小牛肉, 羊肉 (pig meat, cow meat, young cow meat, goat meat).
English has stupid rules around pluralisation. There’s been arguments that the origin of the word should dictate how it’s pluralised, and other arguments that a “true English” pluralisation rule should apply, but then incorrect usage slips into common vernacular and suddenly it’s perfectly okay to pluralise a Greek word with a Latin plural suffix. Then you end up with the plural of octopus being octopodes, octopuses, and octopi!
The long and the short of it is that all languages have weird-ass quirks in them that don’t necessarily make any sense but feel natural to their native speakers. It’s a prime example of how intuitiveness isn’t actually real a thing.
Ja vi “fick” ju engelska på köpet kan man väl säga, sverige var world nr 1 i engelska i andraspråk för några tiotals år sen om jag inte missminner mej, men dom hänger i bra nuförtiden också. Stack -95 till Frankrike så va tvungen att lära mej franska, vansinnigt språk men fantastiskt kultur!
Tjosan! :)
Vi har ju haft det som kärnämne sedan 50-talet. Min mor är i 70-års åldern och är yngre än engelska som kärnämne. Så om vi inte var bra på engelska måste ju något ha gått fel någonstans.
Chinese, Arabic, and Russian speakers laugh at me when I say this.
Why? There’s plenty of strange things in English, inconsistent grammar rules, weird pronunciations, and pointless words for simple ideas.
Like there’s umpteen words to describe different kinds of meat, pork, beef, veal, mutton. In Chinese you can get away with saying just the animal + meat, 猪肉, 牛肉, 小牛肉, 羊肉 (pig meat, cow meat, young cow meat, goat meat).
English has stupid rules around pluralisation. There’s been arguments that the origin of the word should dictate how it’s pluralised, and other arguments that a “true English” pluralisation rule should apply, but then incorrect usage slips into common vernacular and suddenly it’s perfectly okay to pluralise a Greek word with a Latin plural suffix. Then you end up with the plural of octopus being octopodes, octopuses, and octopi!
The long and the short of it is that all languages have weird-ass quirks in them that don’t necessarily make any sense but feel natural to their native speakers. It’s a prime example of how intuitiveness isn’t actually real a thing.
You can get away with lots of things in English too! Just curious, do you speak another (than english) second language ?
I speak Japanese, and can still read German and understand most of it. German’s the secondary language I studied.
I’m a native Swedish speaker so technically English is my second language, and the others came after.
Tjena malena, en annan svenne på lemmy 💕 !
Ja vi “fick” ju engelska på köpet kan man väl säga, sverige var world nr 1 i engelska i andraspråk för några tiotals år sen om jag inte missminner mej, men dom hänger i bra nuförtiden också. Stack -95 till Frankrike så va tvungen att lära mej franska, vansinnigt språk men fantastiskt kultur!
Tjosan! :) Vi har ju haft det som kärnämne sedan 50-talet. Min mor är i 70-års åldern och är yngre än engelska som kärnämne. Så om vi inte var bra på engelska måste ju något ha gått fel någonstans.