No wonder English is such a hard language to learn.

[Ps2Huang]

I found out English alphabetics and grammar were originated from Hebrew culture long time ago, then modified by Greek and Latin as time passed by. Why did they have to borrow stuffs from Hebrew in ancient world? No wonder English has such an idiotic grammar which I feel hard to learn and use. Also the words are combined in theyr means, that makes English vocabulary hard to memorzie.

[pgrmdave]

English borrows a lot from many different languages. We borrow a lot of our more common words from German, and a lot of our less common words from Latin. However, because of the constant influence of many, many different cultures on english speaking people, from invasions of Britain, to colonial expansion, to the technological expansion today, English has become a melting pot of many different languages, with, if I'm not mistaken, many more words in it than most other languages. I believe (I'll confirm this later, if I can find it) that english has something like 2 million words, while French, for comparison, has around 600,000.

[Ps2Huang]

English borrows a lot from many different languages. We borrow a lot of our more common words from German, and a lot of our less common words from Latin. However, because of the constant influence of many, many different cultures on english speaking people, from invasions of Britain, to colonial expansion, to the technological expansion today, English has become a melting pot of many different languages, with, if I'm not mistaken, many more words in it than most other languages. I believe (I'll confirm this later, if I can find it) that english has something like 2 million words, while French, for comparison, has around 600,000.

So you mean English history has not many to do with Hebrew history? Those a,b,c alphabetics were originated from Hebrew, were they?

[Ps2Huang]

and by the way, are you trying to say nowadays English has less to do with Latin?

[pgrmdave]

Most of the common words that we use, along with a lot of the grammer, are more germanic than romantic, I think.

[Ps2Huang]

Germanic is fine, I lvoe German. But I am concerned that English alphabetics were from Hebrew?

[Buffy]

Germanic is fine, I lvoe German. But I am concerned that English alphabetics were from Hebrew?

Um, why does it "concern" you that its from Hebrew?

 

Chauvinistically concerned,

Buffy

[Ps2Huang]

As a matter of fact, I had obstacles to communicate with Hebrews, plus they are mean. So that makes me hard to learn English.

[Buffy]

... I had obstacles to communicate with Hebrews, plus they are mean.....

Ah, I see...

 

Faint praise,

Buffy

[Qfwfq]

Not all Jews are mean, I am quite against certain things myself but there are also positive things in Jewish culture. Just like in any ethinc group, there may be bad and good people. Please remember the rules concerning racism or derogatory posts.

 

The same goes for other European alphabets as for the English. The Greek and Latin alphabets were derived from the Semitic alephbets, not so specifically from the Hebrew. Anyway that shouldn't make English more difficult to learn and grammer has nothing to do with the origin of the alphabet.

 

The Semitic alephbets, including the Arabic, came in turn from use of a few of the Egyptian heiroglyphs to denote the initial consonantal sound of the corresponding word. The letter d was indicated with the heiroglyph for door, that began with the same d sound. Greek had much more need to indicate vowels and no need for some consonantal sounds such as 'h' or a glottal stop, so the Greek scribes used a few symbols for vowels.

 

For instance 'a' is from the Greek alpha, in turn from the Semitic Aleph which originally indicated a glottal stop. In Arabic it is still a vertical line and derived from the heiroglyph for 'rejoice', hallel, which presumably didn't have the initial h sound but a glottal stop. The heiroglyph was a guy with arms straight up.

 

The Semitic he became the Greek epsilon from whence the Latin e, but soon a letter h also crept into Latin writing.

 

The Semitic vau originally represented the consonantal sounds of v and w as pronounced in English, the current name of the letter is something like "waw" in Arabic and "vav" in Persian, but it also gave birth to the vowels o and u, as well as being behind the history of the letter f.

[C1ay]

As a matter of fact, I had obstacles to communicate with Hebrews, plus they are mean. So that makes me hard to learn English.

Are you saying that you are prejudiced?

[Dark Mind]

I don't think that's exactly what he means...

[Dark Mind]

Uhhh, why isn't this in the Social Sciences Forum yet?

[Buffy]

I don't think that's exactly what he means...

Well, he may not want to admit that that's what he means...

 

Diplomatically,

Buffy

[Dark Mind]

As a matter of fact, I had obstacles to communicate with Hebrews, =Language difficult to learn... self explanatory.

 

plus they are mean. =Probably met a few Jews who discrminated against him for being Asian :shrug:. Since Japan was on Hitlers' side in the war they might have thought that he also discriminated against Jews ;). Or maybe they just got frustrated with him because holding a conversation in English was a difficult task:shrug:.

 

So that makes me hard to learn English.=Doesn't enjoy learning English due to above presumed experience(s).

 

Just what I think may have happened ;).

 

As you can tell from all the shrugging going on, I really don't know anything concerning this matter... So I'm in the same boat as all of you ;). I just thought I'd try to put a positive spin on what was being interpreted as a racist/prejudiced comment ;).

[Ps2Huang]

I am not a racism. But I don't know why, Jewish people tend to treat their own people nicely; but to others, they make us as their enemies. I am easily to get along with British, French, German, and Swedish. Plus, I had been to Europe, I love the castles built in Germany and Italy.

[C1ay]

I am not a racism. But I don't know why, Jewish people tend to treat their own people nicely; but to others, they make us as their enemies. I am easily to get along with British, French, German, and Swedish. Plus, I had been to Europe, I love the castles built in Germany and Italy.

Who said anything about racism? Judaism is a religious belief, not a race. Further, there are jews in Britain, France, Germany, Sweden and across the rest of Europe. Are you saying that you can easily get along with those jews? Just which nationality of jews is it you have trouble with? Like other groupings of people, there are members at both ends of the spectrum, some mean and some kind. To claim all members of the group are mean because of your experience with the few is simply a stereotype.