Timeline for Is there any evidence to support the claim that English grammar is unusually straightforward?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
14 events
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| Jul 12, 2022 at 6:22 | comment | added | No Name | I'd just like to point out that catercorner is Canadian English, American English is cat_ty_corner | |
| Sep 24, 2020 at 0:06 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | @Graham But the same is true of the vast majority of languages. Apart from a few edge cases (most either creoles or located in the UK), the vast majority of English dialects are actually extremely similar, particularly considering their enormous geographic spread. And most English-speakers do not deal with significantly different dialects very often. Americans rarely hear Glaswegians or Belfasters, and they often need subtitles when they do. Overall, English is one of the most homogenous languages in the world, relative to number of speakers and geographic spread. | |
| Sep 23, 2020 at 15:56 | history | edited | Graham | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 125 characters in body
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| Sep 23, 2020 at 15:53 | comment | added | Graham | @Barmar As I said, the reason English is different is that most speakers do regularly need to interact with people who speak a different dialect/accent, or do regularly consume media where people speak with different dialects/accents. And because of this, the tolerance for errors (whether in word choice, spelling or grammar) is generally higher because our "normal" range is wider to start with. This compares with a language such as French where there is literally a government organisation to standardise what French "should" be. | |
| Sep 23, 2020 at 15:44 | comment | added | Graham | @Barmar But it remains true as a feature of the language. Plurals, comparison, negation, superlatives - these are all grammatical constructs, and they have profound irregularities due to the differing roots of words. I've added a paragraph to make this clearer. | |
| Sep 23, 2020 at 15:42 | history | edited | Graham | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Sep 23, 2020 at 15:07 | comment | added | Barmar | And regarding all the different dialects, I think they mostly differ in lexicon, as your examples demonstrate. There are some grammar differences, but they're minimal. And I suspect Izzard wasn't really talking about all the dialects combined, but the British English that he's familiar with (most speakers of any language don't need to interact much with people who speak a different dialect). | |
| Sep 23, 2020 at 15:02 | comment | added | Barmar | Caxton's story is about the lexicon, not grammar. And the Great Vowel Shift mostly affected pronunciation, not grammar. And spelling complexity also doesn't affect grammar. | |
| Sep 23, 2020 at 14:45 | comment | added | Graham | @PeterMortensen Thanks for the tweaks! :) | |
| S Sep 23, 2020 at 14:44 | history | suggested | Peter Mortensen | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Copy edited.
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| Sep 23, 2020 at 14:34 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Sep 23, 2020 at 14:44 | |||||
| Sep 23, 2020 at 13:20 | history | edited | Graham | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Sep 23, 2020 at 13:18 | review | First posts | |||
| Sep 23, 2020 at 21:38 | |||||
| Sep 23, 2020 at 13:13 | history | answered | Graham | CC BY-SA 4.0 |