As someone who learned English in school, I can assure you that the word "yacht" is rather at the bottom of the list of troubles.
See: "The Chaos" (poem)
this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2025
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https://ncf.idallen.com/english.html
It's way longer than I remember. I think I only ever saw an abridged version or something.
Wow. That is a beast. Definitely showcases some of the finer points of our weird language.
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It's what it's
I dislike you
Bitch please:
Skildvagtslymfeknudeundersøgelse
Welcome to Danish.
Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän. Actual word for an actual job that existed until 1991. Welcome to German.
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Hottentottententententoonstelling in Dutch. It means hottentot tent exhibition
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Welcome to mandarin.
How many ways can you write the same sound?
The answer is yes.
« Shī Shì shí shī shǐ »
Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī.
Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī.
Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì.
Shì shí, shì Shī Shì shì shì.
Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shì shì.
Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shí shì.
Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shí shì.
Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī.
Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī shī, shí shí shí shī shī.
Shì shì shì shì.
《施氏食獅史》
石室詩士施氏，嗜獅，誓食十獅。
氏時時適市視獅。
十時，適十獅適市。
是時，適施氏適市。
氏視是十獅，恃矢勢，使是十獅逝世。
氏拾是十獅屍，適石室。
石室濕，氏使侍拭石室。
石室拭，氏始試食是十獅。
食時，始識是十獅屍，實十石獅屍。
試釋是事。
They are not all the same sound. And that is very important in Mandarin.
I mean, that's just because Europeans (and places Europeans colonized) are not used to tonal languages. I started leaning mandarin recently, and while the tones take some getting used to, they are quite clear to differentiate
That's because when you learn a foreign language correctly, you start with boat or ship and add subdivisions of those as your command of the language improves. You can fuck up a lot and still be understood too. People who are native English speakers have a tendency to get hung up on using languages correctly instead of just using them. The question "when you boat go water?" is the same as " when does your yacht set sail?" But much easier to say when you dont have a large vocabulary.
Also having a bunch of people who understand your native language doesn't incentivise you to learn. It's something I notice a lot with people who come over from Eastern and central Europe. Some of them will have almost no vocabulary and then a couple of months later can hold a conversation and are pretty fluent within the year. Whereas a Brit can live in Spain for a decade and stil only know a couple of sentences in Spanish.
Very true. I was born in Brazil and thus learned Portuguese as my first language. Then moved to the US when I was five. My parents sat me down in my grandparent's basement and taught me English, it had to be done quick as school was starting very soon. Many years later I would return to Brazil and spent three months there. Starting with crude vocabulary and building it up as I went, over hundreds of interactions. The best way to learn a language, is out of necessity. Whether it really does hinge on you being able to communicate with others or if self-imposed. I wish more people saw it as something that must be done. Unfortunately, Google Translate enables laziness.
The word for yacht is jacht in Dutch, so that one's easy.
What makes it slightly harder is that jacht can also mean hunt.
However, the hardest part of learning English when you're Dutch is trying not to sound like Mark Rutte.
Louis van Gaal has entered the chat.
I think people from places that use idiographic languages that have to be transliterated probably actually have an easier time with English orthography than people whose language uses a Roman script and is pronounced phonetically. People who are used to puzzling through the layer of abstraction/obfuscation that sometimes ambiguous transliterations will have can see that English orthography is almost always substantially different than its pronunciation.
TL;DR: it's easier for a Chinese person to learn to read English aloud than a person from Romania, but the European would have studied it in school either somewhat or a lot
As a Hungarian I can confirm. We mostly read words letter-by-letter. No weird shit like "rebel" and "rebel" sounding different because one is a noun, other is a verb 🤡
Or "queue", are you drunk, English? And the native speakers' favourite mixups, "there" and "their", "it's" and "its".
You can blame the French for "queue", it was like that when we got it.
Fuck censorship.
English is just Esperanto with no rules.
So.... No one in here has tried to learn Mandarin in here huh?
Let's talk about Hanji, heck worse let's talk about:
四是四，十是十，十四是十四，四十是四十；
谁把十四说“十适”，就打他十四；
谁把四十说“适十”，就打他四十
Which is pronounced like:
sì shì sì, shí shì shí, shísì shì shísì, sìshí shì sìshí;
shéi bǎ shísì shuō “shíshì”, jiù dǎ tā shísì,
shéi bǎ sìshí shuō “shìshí”, jiù dǎ tā sìshí.
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My favorite has to be "read" (to read a book) and "read" (previously read a book)
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Lol in Polish
Mandarin
50 000 characters used to live here
I remember when I was a kid and we started learning foreign languages in school. My class got divided into two halves, ones that study English and other that study German. Few month later I was walking down the street with my classmate and he went like:
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Oh, so you're studying English, huh? What does DUHR mean?
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What?
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DUHRR
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Oh, you mean door? It's spelled do-o.
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Bro, there's an R in there and two O's. DUHR. Even I know that, and I'm not even the one studying English. If door was do-o, then would you spell TOH DOH as "to do"?
Little did the bro know... I hope he at least got German well enough, AFAIK there's little bullshit like that
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