Germans always sound angry.
Maybe they are angry.
Or maybe their language sucks.
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Baseball cap wearers at the gym. At 5.30am. On a treadmill, and itās pitch black outside stillā¦
Yet to see a punter wearing one whilst attempting an OHP.
Itās the little things.
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I mean, that would kind of mean ours did tooā¦
Ours?
You speak Chiricahua-Mescalero, too?
As an aside, I pick up languages easily and Iāve often wondered if it is because I grew up speaking two very different languages.
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This is spot-on.
Haha, sad but true. I read an article the other day that touched on this. More often than not in group discussions, the native English speakers are misunderstood ā not the non-natives. The English language has become very lazy.
Impressive. I started learning Russian ~1.5 years ago. Itāll take awhile, but I hope someday my Russian is on par with my German.
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Welp, if you grew up speaking English - even as one of two languages - then yup, ours.
And Iām sure thatās a factor. I really wish Iād learnt another language growing up. I used to work at a PT clinic with a lot of elderly Eastern Europeans and they all spoke 4-5 languages.
English can chain together five verbs and still be a grammatically correct sentence. For instance, āThe cabbage could have been being eatenā is totally legit.
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As a Brit I completely agree with this sentiment from the UK side:
Honestly when you hear non-English speakers talking about our language you realise you know so much less than them (as a broad generalisation) which seems like a failure of the school system, I studied it at A level (the level below a degree) and still havenāt got a clue.
My kids on the other hand even at primary school (age 5-11 education) are significantly more knowledgeable about it than I am, so it looks to be changing.
There is some research suggesting that the more languages one learns (at a young age), the easier it is to learn other languages.
It makes sense:
- Language are patterns and there are common patterns between languages so there are shortcuts
- learning languages is a skill, so learning more ā better skill. Also some cool neuroscience stuff about neuroplasticity
Side note (just speculating): Maybe the reason ppl w/ higher intelligence seem better at learning languages is pattern recognition
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English is the modern Lingua Franca and often there are conversations in English between non-native speakers with different native languages (and no native speakers present). This leads to situations where non-native speakers start to use English in ways that native speakers would consider incorrect or at least uncommon but the non-native speakers understand and consider correct or optimal. Native speakers need to put in the effort to learn how to use English when talking to non-native speakers and not just simply keep talking the way they would with their friends.
Whats this Chicken? Are you heading into Deep Water?
Oh no! Thatās why I am running away 
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This is something Iām curious about. As a native English speaker, I didnāt find Spanish or German too difficult to learn. (Note: I am not fluent in either.) Maybe thereās some common roots? English and Spanish are at least somewhat derived from Latin, arenāt they? I donāt know about German. It seems more different from the other two than they do from each other.
But, Iām also working on Lakota. Very different from any language that I have studied. I donāt feel like thereās any similarities or patterns that I can draw from, and Iām really not sure where the language comes from. Definitely not Europe. I have no idea what @thefourthruffianās tribal language is like, and no idea if Lakota and it have any common roots.
For example: water. Latin = aqua. German = wasser. Spanish = agua.
ā¦Lakota = mni.
Thatās helpful, haha. Languages are very cool though.
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English is technically a germanic language. When the french invaded, they brought in french, hence latin roots
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Okay yeah, that sounds familiar. Iām not great at keeping all this straight.
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Yup, English is Germanic, hence my half-joking comment to TFR about English sucking as a result of German sucking.
So one of the podcasts I actively listen to is History of English which explores this very subject ā¦ while English is considered a Germanic language it has deeper roots in an IndoEuropean language which is also a common ancestor to Latin, Sanskrit, Greek, et Al
Itās an interesting podcast if youāre into that sort of thing ā¦ not necessarily a podcast on linguistics but more about the evolution of English from that IndoEuropean language that spawned the aforementioned languagesā¦
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English, German, Spanish, and Latin are all part of the Indo-European language family and are all related to varying degrees. Spanish descends from Latin, and English from German, hence the similarities you observe between those two pairs.
Iāve no idea which language family Lakota is in; now Iām curious and will look it up 
ETA - languages are classified as āfamiliesā and conceptualized as trees, with the general family being the trunk and the various languages being branches. Some branches, like Latin, are larger and have several offshoots - Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, French. However, many languages havenāt yet been classified as belonging to a larger group. Basque is one example.
All languages evolve through time, due to both external forces like contact with other languages and internal mechanisms - we people naturally pronounce sounds differently throughout the centuries, causing unintentional language change.
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