What do you dislike the most about the English language?

[Draconian Times]

Native and foreign speakers alive, what do you dislike the most about the English language?

Redundancy gets on my nerves. I display obsessive compulsive disorder symptoms as I hate repeating myself, expressing the same idea twice.

Here's what I mean:

Common Redundancies in the English Language

When editing our work, we should look out for redundancies so that we can rewrite them more concisely. Discover a list of 200 common redundancies.

www.thoughtco.com

A list of common redundancies in the English language.

What about you?

 

[PersonalityChimp]

How unintuitive word pronunciation is. It's much more straightforward in Italian. You read a word and you pretty much instantly know how to pronounce it.

 

[parzurnacs]

How unintuitive word pronunciation is.

^

 

[based_meme]

How unintuitive word pronunciation is.

This is my biggest gripe, followed by spelling conventions that are completely illogical and inconsistent, and then to top it off, plurals and prefixes, like goose/geese vs moose/moose and impossible instead of unpossible.

Nothing makes sense. You just do as you're told, like a good goy and don't question the English orthodoxy.

 

[Draconian Times]

How unintuitive word pronunciation is. It's much more straightforward in Italian. You read a word and you pretty much instantly know how to pronounce it.

True.

The word colonel as a case in point. The pronunciation of it is kûr′nəl. Why the hell does it have the letter L there then?

Or in the case of Arkansas and Illinois. The S is muted.

 

[FinnCel]

Not a native speaker but:

1. Spelling hasn't been updated for hundreds of years. This has caused words to be pronounced differently than they are written

2. Loss of conjugation and declination. English now needs more words than before to express the same ideas. Also the word order isn't as flexible as it used to be

3. Unnecessary amount of synonyms. It just makes it take longer to learn the otherwise simple language

 

[Friezacel]

Most words are very short and you can't express yourself as precisely as you can do it with e.g. German

 

[Draconian Times]

This is my biggest gripe, followed by spelling conventions that are completely illogical and inconsistent, and then to top it off, plurals and prefixes, like goose/geese vs moose/moose and impossible instead of unpossible.

The plural of mouse is, surprisingly, mice, not mouses, as I mistakenly wrote one time.

 

[FinnCel]

How unintuitive word pronunciation is. It's much more straightforward in Italian. You read a word and you pretty much instantly know how to pronounce it.

Finnish is exactly like this. We update our spelling often to make the written language match the sounds of the spoken language

 

[Tarquinius]

Nothing honestly. It can do basically everything that other languages can, you just need to be good at it.

 

[FinnCel]

Most words are very short and you can't express yourself as precisely as you can do it with e.g. German

I strongly agree.
Cases and verb conjugation help out so much

 

[Friezacel]

I strongly agree.
Cases and verb conjugation help out so much

I actually like it that English has only "the". German has 3 standard cases and a lot more depending on how the sentence is structured and this can be very hard to learn for foreigners.

 

[BornToLose]

The plural of mouse is, surprisingly, mice, not mouses, as I mistakenly wrote one time.

Mouses me.

 

[Draconian Times]

I actually like it that English has only "the". German has 3 standard cases and a lot more depending on how the sentence is structured and this can be very hard to learn for foreigners.

Same with French. So many genders to learn that it becomes exhausting. At least gender is neutral in the English language.

 

[Draconian Times]

Mouses me.

Brutal micepill.

 

[Friezacel]

Same with French. So many genders to learn that it becomes exhausting. At least gender is neutral in the English language.

France isn't an easy language but it only has le, la and l'

 

[Draconian Times]

France isn't an easy language but it only has le, la and l'

Les, too. I felt overwhelmed by it. I quit learning French, but I can insult someone in French, and that's good enough.

Sacrebleu! T'as une tête a faire sauter les plaques d'egouts!

 

[Friezacel]

Les, too. I felt overwhelmed by it. I quit learning French, but I can insult someone in French, and that's good enough.

Sacrebleu! T'as une tête a faire sauter les plaques d'egouts!

I forgot Les but yeah, i'd still say the cases are the easiest part. The hard part are accents, numbers and sentence structure

 

[FinnCel]

I actually like it that English has only "the". German has 3 standard cases and a lot more depending on how the sentence is structured and this can be very hard to learn for foreigners.

I found it pretty straightforward as Finnish has grammatical cases too (+other caselike inflections).

But definitely hard for speakers who don't have cases

The only thing that I found hard about difficult about German (and English) was when to use articles.
Finnish has no articles because we do everything with inflections.
We barely even have prepositions.
And often prepositions can be replaced with case endings

EDIT: also I find it funny that German doesn't inflect nouns but the articles. That's a really interesting approach

 

[Friezacel]

I found it pretty straightforward as Finnish has grammatical cases too (+other caselike inflections).

But definitely hard for speakers who don't have cases

The only thing that I found hard about difficult about German (and English) was when to use articles.
Finnish has no articles because we do everything with inflections.
We barely even have prepositions.
And often prepositions can be replaced with case endings

EDIT: also I find it funny that German doesn't inflect nouns but the articles. That's a really interesting approach

You don't think large and lower case in German are difficult ?
It can be prett tricky sometimes especially because under im certain cases you write a verb (which is usually written with lower cases) with large cases instead

 

[Cursed one]

I hate that there are so many short words that sound almost the same, like "age", "page", "cage" etc. That complicate listening comprehension.

 

[ADHD_cel]

How unintuitive word pronunciation is. It's much more straightforward in Italian. You read a word and you pretty much instantly know how to pronounce it.

Aye

 

[FinnCel]

You don't think large and lower case in German are difficult ?
It can be prett tricky sometimes especially because under im certain cases you write a verb (which is usually written with lower cases) with large cases instead

Not as difficult as English spelling.
But German is definitely harder than English

 

[CrackingYs]

When there's multiple definitions for same word as it is pronounced.

Brake / break -- there's at least 10 or 20 different possible meanings between these words and they both sound the same

 

[Friezacel]

Brake

Never heard that word in my life

 

[armis]

I hate English because it's too easy for non native speakers to learn. It needs to be harder to filter out third worlders and low IQ ESLs from shitting up the internet.

 

[andinocel]

Things that I dislike about English:

Redundancy (though French is worse in this regard, IMO)

Inconsistent pronunciation

No set rule for plural pronouns (i.e. some regions in the US say y'all, some older people in northeast US say youse, many people say you guys, etc)

Unpopular opinion: I wish English had a case system like German or even Russian. English can be vague, but I feel declension of nouns or at least the articles would make sentences clearer

 

[Swagpilled]

ebonics

 

[wei#3959]

I hate English because it's too easy for non native speakers to learn. It needs to be harder to filter out third worlders and low IQ ESLs from shitting up the internet.

No it’s good that English is the lingua franca of the world

 

[Repulsive123]

brutal