Comment on It's amazing so many people are able to use English as a second language.
MxM111@kbin.social 6 months ago
That’s true for every language, and maybe even more so. English is dominating the world, so the chance of inglish words and idioms getting to other languages is higher than from other languages to English.
Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
While that’s possibly true now, English has been “three languages in a trenchcoat” from the beginning and survived on theft ever since. Every word entry in the dictionary lists what other language it was taken from, or who invented it, usually as a joke. (For instance one of the possible sources of OK or Okay is a joke-misspelling of All Correct.)
MxM111@kbin.social 6 months ago
Having English as second language, you don’t have to convince me that spoken language and spelling are only loosely related. While being dyslexic does not help either, something dies in me each time I am spelling “eye”, or “year” and struggle with the words like philosophy (fylosophy?).
yetAnotherUser@feddit.de 6 months ago
Smh just learn Ancient Greek:
philosophy <=> φιλοσοφία <=> Phi Iota Lambda Omicron Sigma Omicron Phi Iota Alpha
MxM111@kbin.social 6 months ago
So, phi should be a single letter, right? It is single letter in Greek and other languages.
dudinax@programming.dev 6 months ago
I wonder if English’s history has made it particularly good at adopting words?
JackFrostNCola@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Your saying those crafty englishmen colonised, raped & pillaged everything down to the very words from everyone they encountered?