How is the word "Portuguese" stressed? As a noun, as an adjective?
https://rudhar.com/fonetics/strsprtg.htm

Is English a simple language? No, it's quite complicated, and hard for
many learners.
--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com

Den 05.04.2023 kl. 13.24 skrev Ruud Harmsen:

> Is English a simple language? No, it's quite complicated, and hard for
> many learners.

I have seen more than one discussion about languages and difficulties.
Sometimes people proudly declares that their native languge is very
difficult.

Such a statement makes no sense. English is difficult because you have
to learn many different pronunciations of the same sequence of letters,
and because you need to know many idioms.

German is difficult bacsue you have to learn many grammar rules by heart
and you have to have a wide grammatical span to be able to make sense of
long sentences.

Danish is difficult because we have a bit of the same anarchistic
spelling that English has and because we pronounce it very lazily.

And even those statements are incomplete. English is relatively easy to
learn for Danes because of the close connection between the peoples and
the languages. Other European people also have the advantage of knowing
a lot of the common European words and many common grammatical traits.

Chinese is difficult ...

And so on.

--
Bertel, Denmark

Den 05.04.2023 kl. 14.18 skrev Bertel Lund Hansen:

> I have seen more than one discussion about languages and difficulties.
> Sometimes people proudly declares that their native languge is very
> difficult.

The spelling certainly is ...

--
Bertel

On Wed, 5 Apr 2023 14:18:11 +0200, Bertel Lund Hansen
<gadekryds@lundhansen.dk> wrote:

>Den 05.04.2023 kl. 13.24 skrev Ruud Harmsen:
>
>> Is English a simple language? No, it's quite complicated, and hard for
>> many learners.
>
>I have seen more than one discussion about languages and difficulties.
>Sometimes people proudly declares that their native languge is very
>difficult.
>
>Such a statement makes no sense. English is difficult because you have
>to learn many different pronunciations of the same sequence of letters,
>and because you need to know many idioms.
>
>German is difficult bacsue you have to learn many grammar rules by heart
>and you have to have a wide grammatical span to be able to make sense of
>long sentences.
>
>Danish is difficult because we have a bit of the same anarchistic
>spelling that English has and because we pronounce it very lazily.
>
>And even those statements are incomplete. English is relatively easy to
>learn for Danes because of the close connection between the peoples and
>the languages. Other European people also have the advantage of knowing
>a lot of the common European words and many common grammatical traits.
>
>Chinese is difficult ...
>
>And so on.

Two points, as far as I'm concerned:

1.No language is more difficult for a child as his first language. You
don't see children in some countries leaning their native language
more quickly or more easily than children in other countries.

2. Some languages are more difficult for an adult to learn as a second
language. Which languages? Those that are most different from your
first language.

On 2023-04-05 05:24, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
> How is the word "Portuguese" stressed? As a noun, as an adjective?
> https://rudhar.com/fonetics/strsprtg.htm
>
> Is English a simple language? No, it's quite complicated, and hard for
> many learners.

If you want to stress a Portuguese, just tell him you think he sounds
like a Russian speaking Spanish.

--
A man's best friend is his dogma.

Wed, 5 Apr 2023 09:52:01 -0600: lar3ryca <larry@invalid.ca> scribeva:

>On 2023-04-05 05:24, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
>> How is the word "Portuguese" stressed? As a noun, as an adjective?
>> https://rudhar.com/fonetics/strsprtg.htm
>>
>> Is English a simple language? No, it's quite complicated, and hard for
>> many learners.
>
>If you want to stress a Portuguese, just tell him you think he sounds
>like a Russian speaking Spanish.

Yes, the title is ambiguous, I know. Not my intention, but first I had
"Stressing p-words", because I already knew I also wanted to mention
"processor" in three languages.
Then I'd have had to add a disclaimer it has nothing to do with the
n-word, which then of course would become a pink elephant in the room.

So then I took what I have now instead.
--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com

On 06/04/23 01:06, Ken Blake wrote:

> 1.No language is more difficult for a child as his first language. You
> don't see children in some countries leaning their native language
> more quickly or more easily than children in other countries.

That's for the spoken language. But I've heard Chinese people say that
they were still learning to write when at a fairly advanced high school
level.

In contrast, I'd say that I had good handwriting and spelling (in
English) by about grade 3.

--
Peter Moylan Newcastle, NSW http://www.pmoylan.org

Den 05.04.2023 kl. 17.06 skrev Ken Blake:

> 1.No language is more difficult for a child as his first language. You
> don't see children in some countries leaning their native language
> more quickly or more easily than children in other countries.

This article - unfortunately in Danish - disagrees.

https://videnskab.dk/kultur-samfund/babyer-har-svaert-ved-at-laere-dansk/

Udlændinge beklager sig ofte over, at dansk er et frygteligt
svært sprog at lære. Nu viser ny forskning, at danske småbørn
også kæmper en brav kamp for at mestre modersmålet.

Vi skal ikke længere væk end til Sverige, før at børnene har det
meget lettere, når de skal lære at tale. Når de er 15 måneder
gamle, har et dansk barn et ordforråd på 80 ord, et svensk barn
har et ordforråd på 130 ord, og helt i toppen finder vi de
kroatiske børn, som har næsten 200 ord at gøre godt med, når de
skal gøre sig forståelige.

My translation:

Foreigners often complain that Danish is a terribly difficult
language to learn. Now new research shows that Danish
small-children also are having a hard struggle to master the
language.

We need only to go to Sweden to see that the children have a
much easier task when learning to speak. At 15 months a Danish
child has a vocabulary of 80 words, a Swedish child has a
vocabulary of 130 words, and at the very top we find Croatic
children who have almost 200 words to use when they want to
be understood.

The article then explains some reasons: Danish is the language in the
world with most vowels, and some of our consonants are realized as
half-vowels. And we speak in a way that makes it very difficult to know
where one word stops and another begins.

--
Bertel, Denmark

On 2023-04-05, Ken Blake <Ken@invalid.news.com> wrote:

> 1.No language is more difficult for a child as his first language.
>
> 2. Some languages are more difficult for an adult to learn as a second
> language. Which languages? Those that are most different from your
> first language.

For practical purposes, there is a third point that is rarely
articulated: What level of proficiency do you want to reach?

Much foreign language learning takes the form of serving time in
mandatory language classes where the goal is to achieve a good or
at least a passing grade, but there is little expectation to acquire
usable skills in the language. Producing a simple sentence like
"Colin has a blue pencil" is easier in English than in, say, Russian,
and if you expect your language learning to stop there, then English
_is_ easier.

While rarely made explicit, such tacit assumptions are widespread.
I have been very outspoken for decades that it makes no sense to
teach Shakespeare to students who are barely able to order a beer
in English. From time to time, people disagree, pointing out that
such an icon of literature is more important than being able to use
the language, which is not achievable anyway. Or, years ago, the
guy over on a German newsgroup who judged himself to possess good
English skills but considered it self-evident that he couldn't watch
a movie in English, because that's a level reserved for native
speakers. Etc.

So it comes as no surprise that most talk about the difficulty of
this or that language is entirely focused on beginner's problems,
because that is all most people will ever encounter. And so a
beginner's problem like dealing with basic inflection--something
that I dare say is trivial in hindsight when acquiring functional
language skills--well, that problem is elevated to _the_ difficulty
of learning the language.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de

On Wednesday, April 5, 2023 at 9:45:50 PM UTC-4, Peter Moylan wrote:
> On 06/04/23 01:06, Ken Blake wrote:

> > 1.No language is more difficult for a child as his first language. You
> > don't see children in some countries leaning their native language
> > more quickly or more easily than children in other countries.
>
> That's for the spoken language. But I've heard Chinese people say that
> they were still learning to write when at a fairly advanced high school
> level.
>
> In contrast, I'd say that I had good handwriting and spelling (in
> English) by about grade 3.

There's no "critical age" for learning to read -- adult illiterates can do it
with no more difficulty than first-graders. Adding new characters is like
adding new vocabulary words -- as you need them, you add them to your
repertoire.

[copying this to multipost to aue]

On Thursday, April 6, 2023 at 2:04:43 AM UTC-4, Bertel Lund Hansen wrote:
> Den 05.04.2023 kl. 17.06 skrev Ken Blake:

> > 1.No language is more difficult for a child as his first language. You
> > don't see children in some countries leaning their native language
> > more quickly or more easily than children in other countries.
> This article - unfortunately in Danish - disagrees.
>
> https://videnskab.dk/kultur-samfund/babyer-har-svaert-ved-at-laere-dansk/
>
> Udlændinge beklager sig ofte over, at dansk er et frygteligt
> svært sprog at lære. Nu viser ny forskning, at danske småbørn
> også kæmper en brav kamp for at mestre modersmålet.
>
> Vi skal ikke længere væk end til Sverige, før at børnene har det
> meget lettere, når de skal lære at tale. Når de er 15 måneder
> gamle, har et dansk barn et ordforråd på 80 ord, et svensk barn
> har et ordforråd på 130 ord, og helt i toppen finder vi de
> kroatiske børn, som har næsten 200 ord at gøre godt med, når de
> skal gøre sig forståelige.
>
> My translation:
>
> Foreigners often complain that Danish is a terribly difficult
> language to learn. Now new research shows that Danish
> small-children also are having a hard struggle to master the
> language.
>
> We need only to go to Sweden to see that the children have a
> much easier task when learning to speak. At 15 months a Danish
> child has a vocabulary of 80 words, a Swedish child has a
> vocabulary of 130 words, and at the very top we find Croatic
> children who have almost 200 words to use when they want to
> be understood.

Croatian.

> The article then explains some reasons: Danish is the language in the
> world with most vowels, and some of our consonants are realized as
> half-vowels. And we speak in a way that makes it very difficult to know
> where one word stops and another begins.

Those are factual nonsense and apply just as well to English.

I'd like to see the methodology of this study that contradicts a century
of study of language acquisition and bilingualism.

On Thursday, April 6, 2023 at 9:30:06 AM UTC-4, Christian Weisgerber wrote:
> On 2023-04-05, Ken Blake <K...@invalid.news.com> wrote:
> > 1.No language is more difficult for a child as his first language.
> > 2. Some languages are more difficult for an adult to learn as a second
> > language. Which languages? Those that are most different from your
> > first language.
>
> For practical purposes, there is a third point that is rarely
> articulated: What level of proficiency do you want to reach?
>
> Much foreign language learning takes the form of serving time in
> mandatory language classes where the goal is to achieve a good or
> at least a passing grade, but there is little expectation to acquire
> usable skills in the language. Producing a simple sentence like
> "Colin has a blue pencil" is easier in English than in, say, Russian,
> and if you expect your language learning to stop there, then English
> _is_ easier.
>
> While rarely made explicit, such tacit assumptions are widespread.
> I have been very outspoken for decades that it makes no sense to
> teach Shakespeare to students who are barely able to order a beer
> in English. From time to time, people disagree, pointing out that
> such an icon of literature is more important than being able to use
> the language, which is not achievable anyway. Or, years ago, the
> guy over on a German newsgroup who judged himself to possess good
> English skills but considered it self-evident that he couldn't watch
> a movie in English, because that's a level reserved for native
> speakers. Etc.
>
> So it comes as no surprise that most talk about the difficulty of
> this or that language is entirely focused on beginner's problems,
> because that is all most people will ever encounter. And so a
> beginner's problem like dealing with basic inflection--something
> that I dare say is trivial in hindsight when acquiring functional
> language skills--well, that problem is elevated to _the_ difficulty
> of learning the language.

On my few trips to Germany and Belgium (Antwerp, Cologne,
and Munich), and among the many European scholars I dealt
with every day in Chicago and at international meetings, I never
encountered anyone whose English was below a fine-communication
level. (Frustrating, since I still don't know how well, if at all, I can speak
German.)

The sole exception was the little old lady at the gift shop of the
Gutenberg Museum in Mainz. She had to call the manager to
explain why the price coming up on the cash register was about twice
the price on the tag. (The charge was based on the new wholesale
replacement cost rather than on what they'd paid for the item a while
back.)

Thu, 6 Apr 2023 07:43:24 -0700 (PDT): "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@verizon.net> scribeva:
>On my few trips to Germany and Belgium (Antwerp, Cologne,
>and Munich), and among the many European scholars I dealt
>with every day in Chicago and at international meetings, I never
>encountered anyone whose English was below a fine-communication
>level. (Frustrating, since I still don't know how well, if at all, I can speak
>German.)

Probier es hier mal aus! D.h. schreibend, niet sprechend/

>The sole exception was the little old lady at the gift shop of the
>Gutenberg Museum in Mainz. She had to call the manager to
>explain why the price coming up on the cash register was about twice
>the price on the tag. (The charge was based on the new wholesale
>replacement cost rather than on what they'd paid for the item a while
>back.)
>
>[multiposted from sci.langf]

--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com

On Thu, 6 Apr 2023 11:45:46 +1000, Peter Moylan
<peter@pmoylan.org.invalid> wrote:

>On 06/04/23 01:06, Ken Blake wrote:
>
>> 1.No language is more difficult for a child as his first language. You
>> don't see children in some countries leaning their native language
>> more quickly or more easily than children in other countries.
>
>That's for the spoken language. But I've heard Chinese people say that
>they were still learning to write when at a fairly advanced high school
>level.
>
>In contrast, I'd say that I had good handwriting and spelling (in
>English) by about grade 3.

I had good spelling in grade 1, but I've never had good handwriting.

Den 06.04.2023 kl. 21.01 skrev Ken Blake:

>> In contrast, I'd say that I had good handwriting and spelling (in
>> English) by about grade 3.
>
>
> I had good spelling in grade 1, but I've never had good handwriting.

I don't remember how I spelled, but I wasn't bad at it. Good handwriting
is many things. My handwriting doesn't make people fall in awe over the
beauty, but it's easily readable. I have seen beautiful handwriting that
was difficult to read.

--
Bertel, Denmark

On Fri, 7 Apr 2023 07:51:19 +0200, Bertel Lund Hansen
<gadekryds@lundhansen.dk> wrote:

>Den 06.04.2023 kl. 21.01 skrev Ken Blake:
>
>>> In contrast, I'd say that I had good handwriting and spelling (in
>>> English) by about grade 3.
>>
>>
>> I had good spelling in grade 1, but I've never had good handwriting.
>I don't remember how I spelled, but I wasn't bad at it.

I've always been very good at spelling. I rarely make a mistake. I
think that people who are bad at spelling remember the sound of words,
but not how they look. I've always remembered both.

Yes, if you look at my messaged in newgroups, you'll frequently see
words misspelled, but they are usually typos, not spelling errors..

>Good handwriting
>is many things. My handwriting doesn't make people fall in awe over the
>beauty, but it's easily readable. I have seen beautiful handwriting that
>was difficult to read.

I wasn't talking about beauty. I was talking about how easy it is to
read. I tend to write too fast, so what I write is hard to read.
Sometimes I can't even read it myself.

If I slow down and write very carefully, I can make it easy to read,
but I almost never do that.

On Wednesday, April 5, 2023 at 4:24:53 AM UTC-7, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
> How is the word "Portuguese" stressed? As a noun, as an adjective?
> https://rudhar.com/fonetics/strsprtg.htm
>
I fancy that I make it syllabically timed, not stress timed - [pO:r-tU-ge:s]
with a trilled r. I don't know whether that sounds stress timed to
anglophones.
>
> Is English a simple language? No, it's quite complicated, and hard for
> many learners.
> --
I found English hard when I was a learner.
Latin was used only in mottos but seemed simpler in some ways.
'Virtuis in arduis' was the motto of one of my schools.
'In hard work lies virtue' is 2 words longer.

Memoria falluntur, aliquando erro.
(The) memory deceives, (so I am) sometimes in error.
India's languages and Japanese are similar to Latin in the respect
that it is not necessary to include "The" or "so I am" in the sentence
if those are obvious from the context.
As a learner, it was irksome that such 'unnecessary' parts of a
sentence had to be included in English.

For this reason, I've tried to find a Latin based conlang.
I found Antiqua Latina mentioned but nothing seems to have been
translated to it.