Its how we read it
- Thread starter Ken N Tx
- Start date
hollydolly
SF VIP
- Location
- London England
That's what makes the English language so hard to learn for foreigners...
mike4lorie
SF VIP
- Location
- Brockville, Ontario, Canada
So true, and now that I read that, how are we not confused?
hypochondriac
Senior Member
- Location
- Australia
After I read your post I was red faced......sorry don't worry, think I screwed up that joke
StarSong
Awkward is my Superpower
- Location
- Los Angeles Suburbs
Hmmm.... I can't read your post at all, Ken. I just see a very tiny box above the three flags.
Edited - I couldn't read it on Firefox browser but was able to do so on Chrome.
I remember trying to parse these kinds of words when I was first learning to read. Glad I've mostly got the language figured out by now!
Edited - I couldn't read it on Firefox browser but was able to do so on Chrome.
I remember trying to parse these kinds of words when I was first learning to read. Glad I've mostly got the language figured out by now!
Last edited:
Capt Lightning
Well-known Member
- Location
- Historic Buchan, Scotland
English appears to be too difficult for some British people to learn 
.
.
Knight
Well-known Member
English is difficult when words spelled the same have different meanings.
When 1st. married learning spanish had some funny instances. Like fingers having distinct differences. My wife stubbed her toe and told me she hurt her foot finger. I laughed at that. She explained that dedos translated to finger. And the distinction is mano is for the hand & pies is for the foot.
Spanish is so much easier to understand.
dedos de la mano
dedos de la pies
When 1st. married learning spanish had some funny instances. Like fingers having distinct differences. My wife stubbed her toe and told me she hurt her foot finger. I laughed at that. She explained that dedos translated to finger. And the distinction is mano is for the hand & pies is for the foot.
Spanish is so much easier to understand.
dedos de la mano
dedos de la pies
jujube
SF VIP
Look at how many ways "ough" is pronounced: through, though, cough, tough and more. I sure wouldn't want to be learning English from the ground up.
Capt Lightning
Well-known Member
- Location
- Historic Buchan, Scotland
Well, you wouldn't want to come to Scotland then. The 'gh', 'ch' etc.. can be a tad confusing for. example 'Burgh' is Burra (similar to the English 'Borough'). Not far from here is the remains of Gight castle, ancestral home of Lord Byron. Try pronouncing that!
And yet, when you read what Ken wrote, that was no confusion at least to English language speakers, as to what the same words meant in their context. We understand according to context. And it would the same for those learning the English language. And it's the same in other languages. It's not really that different in other languages. For instance, in the Chinese language, words can have different meanings according to the tonation (the rise and fall in pitch of the voice in speech) used when speaking them. Other languages also have idioms that need to be learned when studying those languages.
fuzzybuddy
SF VIP
- Location
- The Sticks, Northeast PA.
English spelling makes absolutely no sense. We "spell" a word in a certain way, because in 1264, some dyslexic monk got drunk and 'spellted' it that way.