Hello, Friends

[deelaundry]

Hi. I feel the need to mention something tonight, because I'm afraid some on my f-list might get hurt if I don't 'fess up.

I find out-of-character writing and certain misuse of the English language very, very funny. I love house_mst; I love the funny parts of the original MST show; I belong to wrongworddammit and summary_fail.

The intent is never to laugh at a person; it's merely the words on a page or screen that are amusing. My own mistakes in writing are funny; my friends' mistakes in writing are funny.

People who are trying to learn the English language as teens or adults, and trying to sincerely communicate -- their mistakes are generally not funny. ... Well, unless they are. The tour guide in Amsterdam who mentioned the need to combat "smugglery" got a warm laugh from the Americans in the boat. English language is hard, dude. If one crime is burglary, why wouldn't the other be smugglery? Given how hard learning a second language is, though, merely not being in perfect command of English is certainly understandable and won't provoke a second thought in me.

Some stuff is just funny, though. If I ever hurt you or a friend by laughing, please email me or comment, and let me know. I don't want to hurt you; I don't want to be mean.

It's more fun to laugh together. XD XD

Comments

[hannahrorlove.livejournal.com]

The English Language: carefully cobbled together by three blind dudes with a German dictionary. (http://www.topatoco.com/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=TO&Product_Code=SHEL-ENGLISH&Category_Code=SHEL)

[deelaundry.livejournal.com]

Exactly!

[blackmare.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

That's all, really.

[deelaundry.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

[nightdog-barks.livejournal.com]

ARE YOU LAUGHING AT ME? ARE YOU LAUGHING AT ME? WELL, THERE'S NOBODY ELSE --

... oh, wait. I'm misquoting this entirely.

;-D

[deelaundry.livejournal.com]

I do believe you are misquoting it. XD

*hugs*

[bell]

Learning English is fucking *hard*-- I'm friends with people who are learning, and I *teach* it, and I've seen the struggles. My heart goes out to them, because I know just how frustrating it is not to be able to communicate in another language (...in English, too, because sometimes even a first language can fail you!).

And there have been some... mistakes that my students have made that I love and treasure because I think it illustrates English in a new way I'd have never otherwise considered. "Today is Freeday," a student earnestly said today; another told me that "The bookstore was on sale." And while not a mistake, I still remember this phrase a student wrote over a year ago: "The police were armed with a bad mood." I wish I'd thought of that.

....None of this is related to the above, but it reminded me of these thoughts that have been floating in my head.

[deelaundry.livejournal.com]

Learning a second language at all is hard, and English is particularly ridiculous. Hannah linked to a site above that linked to a comic that hit the nail on the head.

[bell]

The classes I've been taking in linguistics teaches us that no language is harder than another to learn-- they all come with their own set of difficulties/challenges. The proof they give, which I'm inclined to go with though I admit it's not rigorously scientific, is that children the world all over learn their first language at more or less the same rate.

(Children learning multiple languages are a little more complex, but iirc they learn at least a first, if not two+ simultaneously, at about the same rate.)

As for English having been cobbled together from various other ones... which language *isn't* like that? :D

*HALF-INFORMED INFO DUMP* *LANGUAGE NERD*

[deelaundry.livejournal.com]

A little knowledge by me is a dangerous thing, but what I've read is that typical adult brains learn second languages very differently from typical children's brains. Children learn organically and "whole language"; adults learn systematically. So for adults, a language that has very consistent rules is "easier" than one with many exceptions to learn; whereas for children, they're all about the same.

YAY, LANGUAGE NERDISM!

[bell]

Yes, that! But my classes also explain that even for adults a language can take forever to "master," since all of them come with their challenges. If English, for example, has a far simpler conjugation system than romance languages (*GLARES AT ALL ROMANCE LANGUAGE CONJUGATION TABLES*), it ~makes up~ for that easiness by having some of the exceptions that have been complained about in other comments.

Japanese, too, people think must be incredibly difficult;. Admittedly, there's the additional barrier for many people because it's not a "close" language to many others so you have to really memorize more vocabulary (whereas if you're going from English to German, there's a lot of familiar words). But the Japanese language is wonderful simply at first-- v. simple conjugation, straightforward sentence syntax, etc. Where the challenge came in, for me, in spoken language were the levels of politeness. I fuck that right up! (Written language is a whole other deal that I won't even pretend to know enough about to compare relative difficulties.)

Portuguese, too, man. My history with it is complicated; I technically became fluent in it as a child and have been speaking it ever since, but I still regularly get corrected on little and big things. And by "regularly" I mean "every goddamn day." (One of my students gleefully got her vengeance when I literally asked if I should "spill her some coffee," because I'd somehow gotten it into my head that that was how you offered to pour drinks. And yesterday my university colleagues laughed at how I'd totally misunderstood a magazine cover because I'd misinterpreted the expression it was using.)

In conclusion, I really don't know of any language that's systematic/logical enough that'd make it relatively easier to the others. Languages all have their weird bits, since it changes with time and rules *never* stick. What definitely does happen is that a language will be harder or easier to learn depending on what you already know and speak-- a Korean speaker will probably have more ease with Japanese than English, for example, whereas a French speaker will probably be able to pick up English faster than Hindi.

OH GOD MY NERDISM CAN'T STOP, HELP, HELP (:D)

I'M JUST GOING TO KEEP USING THIS GIF

[spoopy.livejournal.com]

Re: I'M JUST GOING TO KEEP USING THIS GIF

[deelaundry.livejournal.com]

And that GIF is funny. I keep waiting for the humor to die down, but nope, every time it makes me chuckle.

And another one I can think of more than a few people to aim this towards

[spoopy.livejournal.com]

[taiga13.livejournal.com]

I so hear you! I've personally written the best typo I've ever seen anywhere, and am proud of it.
I've heard that before, that English is very hard to learn. That makes sense because it's cobbled together from different languages. I was a literacy tutor for a while and tutored a Cambodian woman, she wanted to be able to read the newspaper. I remember reading one newspaper article with her and having to confess that I couldn't understand it either!

[deelaundry.livejournal.com]

Oh, I've written some humdingers. XD

English doesn't make any sense, really. It's had to think of any "rule" for the language that doesn't have exceptions. Go back to the very basic basics and just look at the letters we form into words. Why do all the vowels have so many different pronunciations? Why do the consonants? And not only do some of the consonants have more than one pronunciation, the same pronunciation could be more than one letter! C & S, G & J, C & K etc. etc. Goofy.

[taiga13.livejournal.com]

ESPANITO!

[bammel.livejournal.com]

Why do all the vowels have so many different pronunciations?

LOL I KNOW YOU PROBS DIDN'T WANT A REAL REASON BUT I'M BUTTING IN TO GIVE YOU ONE (LOL SO HELPFUL AMIRITE)

This (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift) and this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_vowels) are why-ish. ♥

I JUST ENJOY SPREADING THE GOOD WORD ABOUT THE GREAT VOWEL SHIFT~

"GTFO BAMMEL I HATE YOU FOREVER"

[deelaundry.livejournal.com]

GTFO, BAMMEL, QUIT CUTTING YOURSELF DOWN. I adore learning about language, and I get PURE GLEE from seeing the adoration that specialists have for their topic.

♥ ♥ ♥

[chippers87.livejournal.com]

Considering the damage I'm doing the Italian language at the moment (over the past two years, I've certainly "gifted" it with a few new words), I'm willing to take the mutilation of the English language with a quite a few good-natured laughs.

On the other hand, I take grammar/spelling murder in facebook status updates very seriously. Just say no to words like "occupela." I dare you to guess what my "friend" actually tried to say.

[deelaundry.livejournal.com]

"Occupela" ... hm, "a capella"? I loved the a capella groups at my college, so that's what makes me think of that.

:D

[deelaundry.livejournal.com]

We should all laugh more. It releases stress.

♥ ♥ ♥

[purridot.livejournal.com]

*hug* My students, bless 'em, hand in translations with some serious oddities. But in fact I find them more charming than anything, because I can usually *see* where they are getting their (misguided) inspiration... their struggle with the language is transparent. But it's part of the learning process <3

[deelaundry.livejournal.com]

"Charming" is the perfect word for well-meant mistakes with language. And "delightful" is the perfect word for you! *hugs*

[ignazwisdom.livejournal.com]

I don't know what this is about but I'm nosy.

[deelaundry.livejournal.com]

Aren't we all?

[jonne17.livejournal.com]

Posting in a different language is seriously nerve wrecking sometimes because I care about spelling and grammar so much. I hate making mistakes in my own language, and know that I do so many things wrong in this weird one called English. When I comment on a fic I delete every sentence three times, read them out loud, change them again, close my eyes and press Post. Then, when they are posted I hate every word, most of the time.
Still, I never had the impression anybody laughed at me. How can that be?

[deelaundry.livejournal.com]

I wish it wasn't so stressful for you to comment. *hugs* Now that I know how much effort you put into it, I'll appreciate every comment from you that much more!

I've never heard anyone laugh at your English; it's hard to imagine it even happening because you take such great care with what you say. In this post, I just wanted to reassure some of the commenters in my journal who have apologized for English not being their first language that their honest effort won't be mocked.

[jonne17.livejournal.com]

See, this is what I mean, LOL. I knew what you meant and now in my comment it seems like I didn't.
I love all my friends on LJ and know they would never mock me, just in jest. I do enough of that myself.

[deelaundry.livejournal.com]

LOL Forget a second language -- getting meaning across in any language is a challenge! I certainly have to struggle to be clear. How about this for unambiguous:

You are awesome! *hug hug hug* ♥

[chewy-101.livejournal.com]

I think the MSTing, generally, is not aimed at people battling the language barrier, but people battling the terrible writing barrier.

[deelaundry.livejournal.com]

True -- except I see MST as aimed at the product of people battling the terrible writing barrier, not the people themselves. That's the message I'm trying to get across in the post.

[moose-mcmoose.livejournal.com]

I'm English. I have an BA in English Language yet I still make some truly awful mistakes. English is stupidly hard in many ways and I have such great respect for writers who don't write in their native language.

cryptictac's GIFs have it exactly right.

[hibernia1.livejournal.com]

But Dee, Dee Dee Dee, NO ONE will ever think you're going to laugh at them. You're way too nice a person!! *HUGS*

[courtberger.livejournal.com]

I laugh at myself on a daily basis and encourage others to laugh with me *grins* It's either that or cry....joking! I kid, I kid, I love to laugh and there's nothing funnier than when I do something dorky or stupid *laughs*

So I say laugh with me, besides, life is much more fun when you can take things with a bit of lightheartedness *grins*

*edited because of my bad punctuation skills (facepalm)*