Another proper England rant...

[Sniper]

Even though it sounds like the speaker is always trying to cough something up?

If you can't understand it, yes. But have you ever heard someone speak fluent Bushman? Now thats a langauge that stresses the brain. Not as easy as 'Xau makes out on, "The Gods Must Be Crazy"

[Phurrball]

English has its idiosyncrasies but I dispute that it's "difficult" or hard to learn. We all seem to have managed quite well on that score, mother's knee and all that.

At least it doesn't have masculine and feminine nouns and all that shit that German involves.

Absence of genders is good - otherwise English strikes me as darstardly to learn. Of course, one only appreciates this as a native speaker when one learns another language. I would suggest that you can't really appreciate your own language properly until you've at least part-learned (learnt??) another one... see my deranged ranting elsewhere...

[yungatart]

Not to mention, site and sight.
If you really want to understand English, may I recommend the learning of Latin. It is very easy and helps to develop the understanding of, not only English, but many other languages too.

[Posh Tourer :P]

I prefer "mongrel" to "bastard", which is of course, what gives it's peculiar vigour. I whole-heartedly agree with your comments regarding the teaching of English though, I hadn't heard of the past imperfect tense until I started learning French!

True, neither had I until I read a Spanish verb handbook.... There are some fascinating aspects to English - like the idea that we have beef from cattle and mutton from sheep because the French-speaking aristocracy ate the stuff and the Anglo-Saxon growers of the beasts

[Mooch]

Speaking of which I'm a bit confused about your user name. Should it be Master or Ms TRS or Miss Tar or Mr T Arse. Could you please explain it in the Queens best English.

[Posh Tourer :P]

Even though it sounds like the speaker is always trying to cough something up?

Like in "Hoek van Holland"??

[yungatart]

Speaking of which I'm a bit confused about your user name. Should it be Master or Ms TRS or Miss Tar or Mr T Arse. Could you please explain it in the Queens best English.

It is Mistress- as in that upon which he showers love, affection, admiring glances and money.

[Phurrball]

Furball/Phurrball

Um, yes, that too...

[MisterD]

True, neither had I until I read a Spanish verb handbook.... There are some fascinating aspects to English - like the idea that we have beef from cattle and mutton from sheep because the French-speaking aristocracy ate the stuff and the Anglo-Saxon growers of the beasts

Time for a useless factoid methinks: There are more Indian words in the English language than there are Celtic.

[Posh Tourer :P]

Absense of genders is good - otherwise English strikes me as darstardly to learn. Of course, one only appreciates this as a native speaker when one learns another language. I would suggest that you can't really appreciate your own language properly until you've at least part-learned (learnt??) another one... see my deranged ranting elsewhere...

That is probably true.

However I don´t think that English sentence structure is that dastardly. When it comes to reading or spelling it though, I´d rather have Spanish....

[Posh Tourer :P]

Time for a useless factoid methinks: There are more Indian words in the English language than there are Celtic.

Quite believable seeing as the Aryan people (including the Indians) overran the Celtic cultures as they came in. To look at language anaylsis, the group of people known as Aryans includes Asian Indians, Germanic language speakers and Romance language speakers, but not Celts.

[MSTRS:Me]

Speaking of which I'm a bit confused about your user name. Should it be Master or Ms TRS or Miss Tar or Mr T Arse. Could you please explain it in the Queens best English.

Explained.....?

[Phurrball]

That is probably true.

However I don´t think that English sentence structure is that dastardly. When it comes to reading or spelling it though, I´d rather have Spanish....

Indeed, the English sentence structure isn't too bad - German works well for me on a spelling and pronounciation front - apart from their bastard, bastard 854 letter long compound words! WHY?!

[MisterD]

Quite believable seeing as the Aryan people (including the Indians) overran the Celtic cultures as they came in. To look at language anaylsis, the group of people known as Aryans includes Asian Indians, Germanic language speakers and Romance language speakers, but not Celts.

As I understand it, they are mostly words absorbed over the time of the Raj. The best example I can come up with at the moment is "bungalow" which interestingly has slightly divergent meanings in NZ and UK...:spudbn:

[Keystone19]

Absense of genders is good - otherwise English strikes me as darstardly to learn. Of course, one only appreciates this as a native speaker when one learns another language. I would suggest that you can't really appreciate your own language properly until you've at least part-learned (learnt??) another one... see my deranged ranting elsewhere...

Should that not be 'absence of genders'?

Yes I agree with the language learning. Having learnt a couple of, shall we say, 'interesting' languages in my time (Finnish and Russian among them) it is not until one has partaken in the privilege of learning another language that one truly learns the subtle nuances of ones own.