Why English is so difficult to learn...

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Trajanus
How the hell do you know it's the largest language.. there's about 5000 languages...

Go read, The Story of English. Our language freely borrows words from every language, it's always growing, unlike certain European languages that legislate out "contaminating" foreign words. We are also constantly evolving our language. No other language comes close to the number of words the English.

Granted, most of us will never know all the words in English, and many words are words with multiple meanings, I'm sure. Heck, most of are limited to a vocabulary of a mere 500 words, an only use about 200 regularly.

German is the best language for philosophy.

[Saint Marcus]

in kentucky, "jeet" is apparantly an english sentence.

[Nubclear]

I actually found English to be a very easy language to learn.

[Comrade Chris]

go learn finnish, we rule at strange grammar

[Nubclear]

Originally posted by Comrade Chris
we rule

True.

[Provost Harrison]

Well I remember someone telling me an interesting one that there is a town in the south called 'Brough' and it is pronounced 'Broom' or something. Us northerners are more sensible. We have a town near here called 'Brough' and it is pronounced 'Bruff' which is somewhat more obvious...

And a question? How do you pronounce the Cambridgeshire village of Godmanchester?

[Paul Hanson]

Actually, I think Spanish has more words than English.

[FrustratedPoet]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison

And a question? How do you pronounce the Cambridgeshire village of Godmanchester?

hmmmmm ...... Gomster?

And on behalf of all the people who do their shopping in Oxford during the summer I would like to appeal to all foreign tourists to please turn their maps the right way up and find their own way to Magdalen Bridge.
It's very easy to find and very hard to pronounce so asking for directions there makes you look doubly silly.

[Provost Harrison]

Bear in mind that Magdalen Bridge isn't far from Bicester

[FrustratedPoet]

was Gomster right?

[Ari Rahikkala]

English doesn't have a tenth of the amount of words that Finnish has... if you count all the conjugations, that is .

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Paul Hanson
Actually, I think Spanish has more words than English.

Spanish only has 200,000 words, 40% of English.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Ari Rahikkala
English doesn't have a tenth of the amount of words that Finnish has... if you count all the conjugations, that is .

Conjugations don't count.

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by FrustratedPoet
was Gomster right?

I am not sure, it is either that or godmanster...but whatever it is, it is silly.

[Immortal Wombat]

Why does the Oxford college Magdalene possess an extra e to it's Cambridge equivalent, Magdalen?