Don Lashier
New member
Dierk, I studied German for four years, two in high school (from a chalk throwing spinster - "du vill listen to vat I say!") and then two more years in college. About the only thing I've retained from this was the remarkable observation that if presented with written German, I could verbalize it quite correctly even if most of the words were unfamiliar to me. Later skirmishes with Spanish were similar. English otoh is such an amalgam of languages that you have not a clue in a similar situation. Perhaps the inverse (spelling from sound) is not so clean, but again the European languages seem thankfully mostly free of homophones (eg rein, reign, rain; too, to, two) and the spelling rules don't contain nearly so many "buts". The standard joke is "i before e except after c, except, except, except...".
Being a mathematician I appreciate consistency and one-to-one mappings and english fails miserably in these regards. The only place where english has a leg up is in gender simplication.
- DL
Being a mathematician I appreciate consistency and one-to-one mappings and english fails miserably in these regards. The only place where english has a leg up is in gender simplication.
- DL
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