I hate this “three languages in a trenchcoat” analogy. English is very much a Germanic language with some vocabulary from French. And it’s not unique in that regard either.
Comment on Are separable verbs a thing in ENG?
kkj@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week agoCompared to English, which is three languages in a trenchcoat, or Mandarin, which is tonal and has ~100k characters, ~3k of which is considered the minimum to know for fluency, or Japanese, which has three different writing systems, one of which even high-schoolers aren’t expected to know well?
cattywampas@lemmy.world 1 week ago
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 1 week ago
Compared to English: yes, definitely. English doesn’t really have case markings outside of pronouns, nor adjectival declensions, not even grammatical gender.
Compared to Mandarin: probably German is easier, I agree on that.
Compared to Japanese: I don’t know enough about Japanese to know for sure, but by the standards by which it has “three writing systems”, the Latin (and Cyrillic and Greek) alphabet also has two (uppercase and lowercase). :P