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Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Conflicting Rules of Languages

There's plenty of variety among various languages. In some ways, the rules of two languages might not seem too different from each other. Other times, what occurs in one tongue is a totally foreign concept in another.
Personify the languages, imagine them having linguistics-related debates, and you get... today's blog post. Enjoy the insane ramblings of my brain.

Trying to explain "y'all'd've" (colloquial English) to Korean exchange student

Western languages:  So these are all of the letters that make up our words.
German:  ß
Western languages:  What.

Languages:  So some of us are fairly phonetic, and don't use many silent letters, or even have none at all!
French:  What if we made, like, half the letters silent?
Languages:  No.

English:  So these are the rules for the letter 'W'. It's fairly simple. Just don't put it somewhere odd, like here, or over here, for example.
Welsh:  Put 'W' there? Okay!
English:  No! I said, don't put it there! What... what are you doing? That's a completely illogical place to... This word you created doesn't even have a vowel! Get back here!
Welsh:  (runs away giggling)

English:  So, the consonant combo 'NG' can appear at the end of words, or in the middle.
Celtic tongues:  What if we started words with 'NG'?
English:  Are you even listening to me.

English:  This is the alphabet.
Spanish:  Pfft, look at all these single characters. You should spice things up a bit. Make letters with two characters, like 'LL' and 'RR'.
English:  Make... two letters... a single letter...
Welsh:  Yes! The alphabet should go like this: A, B, C, CH, D, DD...
English:  I honestly don't know what to do with you guys sometimes.

Languages:  Okay, we've passed out most of the letters, and we have some things left over.
Polish:  I'll take them!
Languages:  What use are you going to find for all of these random consonants?
Polish:  You'll see! I'll find a place for them!
Languages:  You're just going to put them everywhere and confuse the rest of us, aren't you.
Polish:  Maybe...

English:  What sound does this 'LL' of yours make?
Welsh:  Well, I know you don't use that phoneme, but surely you have a name for it over in the 'technical jargon' section somewhere.
English:  Let me check. Oh, here it is. It's called a... voiceless alveolar lateral fricative.
Welsh:  Wow, not complicated at all. Your linguists really know how to keep things simple.
English:  No, it's not that difficult to understand! It's just, uh, well...
English:  ...You know, it's times like this when I really hate myself.

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