461

Pretty fly for a white guy (lemmy.nz)

submitted 5 months ago by PugJesus@piefed.social to c/historymemes@piefed.social

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[-] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 44 points 5 months ago

“fain” is new to me. This stupid language never ends.

[-] Hadriscus@jlai.lu 39 points 5 months ago

you'd never get invited for coffee and smokes

[-] addie@feddit.uk 20 points 5 months ago

Well, you take the rough with the smooth with English:

Smooth:

verb conjugation rules are straightforward
adjective declension is trivial - don't do it
easy to make most plurals, only a handful of exceptions to learn
no grammatical gender

Rough:

can't have too many words that mean almost-but-not-quite the same thing
spelling is the fever dream of a madman. In particular, eighteen or so vowel sounds represented by five letters, words transliterated from other languages that may or may not have their pronunciation changed, words that have had their pronunciation changed over the centuries but spelling hasn't been updated. Because fuck you, that's why.
putting two words together to make noun phrases that don't have the meaning of either word
a plethora, indeed a veritable abundance, of strange grammatical forms

You mostly take the rough, to be fair.

[-] Samskara@sh.itjust.works 4 points 5 months ago

English is simplified Germanic with French words, that never got a spelling reform.

Foul fowls of goose become geese
and yet moose are never meese
multiple mouse are mice
but house are never hice

[-] PugJesus@piefed.social 13 points 5 months ago

Fain is very archaic, it's not something that would be used anymore. Even back in 1906 it was archaic.

[-] jaaake@lemmy.world 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Genuinely thought it was an older spelling of "feign," but have learned that they are homophones that have opposite meanings. Like a contronym, but phonetically... a controphone.