Apparently this reminder is needed.

It is a meme.

      • lugal@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I hope you are joking because that’s not at all how it works. There is a certain age when you are capable of learning a language easily. This time window closes naturally. It has nothing to do with the problematic school system

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Google for a poem called “The Chaos”. It starts with “Dearest creature in creation”. Read it out loud without errors.

        • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          As a non-native speaker, it took me a quite few trials to get things right. And it contained a shitload of surprizes.

          There is a reason this poem is called “The Chaos”.

      • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        And, have you read it aloud? ;-)

        But it is good that you provided the link instead of the text, as the link contains a load of additional information about the poem and its author.

      • uid0gid0@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        When tweetle beetles fight, it’s called a tweetle beetle battle.

        And when they battle in a puddle, it’s a tweetle beetle puddle battle.

        AND, when tweetle beetles battle with paddles in a puddle, they call it a tweetle beetle puddle paddle battle.

        AND, when beetles battle beetles in a puddle paddle battle and the beetle battle puddle is a puddle in a bottle they call it a tweetle beetle bottle puddle paddle battle muddle.

      • steventhedev@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        If the set of definitions contains the word set, does the English language implode in a recursive cascade of paradoxes?

        • bort@feddit.de
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          11 months ago

          A set can totally contain itself. A better question would be: Consider a set, that contains all sets, that do not contain themself. Would that set contain itself?

          • hglman@lemmy.ml
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            11 months ago

            Yes, just relax the axiom of comprehension, allow U ∈ U and move on with proving things for fun and profit. No one said that you have to pick axioms that seem natural or intuitive.

        • phorq@lemmy.ml
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          11 months ago

          Define “the” without using the word “the”… Take that logic! Set and match!

  • anar@lemmy.ml
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    11 months ago

    English is only “hard” because it is shit. There ain’t no rules for nothing. All the “rules” have exceptions, which have exceptions, which have have exceptions.

  • NotSpez@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    Damn. I keep being surprised by how many people take stuff online way too seriously. Good meme, you get my seal of approval

  • FishFace@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    English is easy. The hardest part about it, which some other languages also feature, is a poor correspondence between the written and spoken language.

    • RadicalEagle@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      That feels intuitively correct to me, but I’m not sure if I’d say any language is particularly “easy”. Language is complex, complicated and only makes sense in the context of understanding human communication. Although language is also more intuitive than we give it credit for.

      I think spoken Japanese is possibly “easier” than spoken English, but written Japanese (outside of digital media) is essentially impossible for me because I don’t have Kanji memorized.

      • FishFace@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I mean yes it’s a bit under-nuanced to describe any language as “easy” or “hard”. The single biggest influence is whether you’re already familiar with a similar language. English is going to be much easier if you already know German; Japanese will be much easier if you already know Okinawan. And as you say, written and spoke language can be quite different.

        That said, I don’t think it is the case that all of the different factors trade off against one another perfectly. I would expect them to trade off against one another to an extent though, because I would imagine there are forces which cause overly complex languages to become simpler, and more simple languages to become more complex. (One aspect of complexity comes through redundancy, such as requiring agreement between inflections of words when the inflection only conveys information already imparted from the rest of the sentence. But extra redundancy can aid in understanding because the listener generally doesn’t hear everything perfectly)

        But yeah, some languages just have incredibly complicated and picky grammar, whilst others have relatively simple grammar. As an English speaker, Japanese grammar has lots of unfamiliar features but could still be simpler than Finnish, which also has lots of unfamiliar grammar but which is very complex.

    • BestBouclettes@jlai.lu
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      11 months ago

      I feel like English is fairly easy to get into and have a correct conversation level. But that it’s insanely hard to master.

      • FishFace@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I have no reference for the relative difficulty of languages to master, except that I know that all languages are incredibly hard to master to the level of a native speaker.

  • MrJameGumb@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Come on, you can’t count Seal the musician… That’s not a common name in English speaking countries. I’ve never heard of anyone else named Seal

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      11 months ago

      But an acronym that was intentionally made to be the name of the animal, so it’s just a duplicate, like all three of the non-singer seals, which just mean to lock something in or out. There are only 2 meanings of seal here, plus a singer who named himself after one of them.