What English does - but most languages can't 

In Japanese, wrist is 手首, which is literally "hand neck".

In Hebrew, there is a word for finger, but there's no differentiation between arm and hand. To say hand, you say "arm spoon" (Technically the word spoon comes from a more general word, so it's also used for palm fronds and other vaguely spoon-shaped things)

In Czech and Slovak toes are "fingers on the foot" or leg since it's usually called the same word. Hand and arm also are the same.

@@kyriljordanov2086 oh, we call it similarly on portuguese! We don't have a specific word for toes so we just call them "fingers of the foot/foot fingers" (dedos do pé, on portuguese)

​@@MirroMirro26 Similar of course to 足首, "leg/foot neck", or ankle...

Wait places exist outside Europe?

@@tibbygaycat Yeah, apparently there's this really weird place called Asia and its even larger

Whatever! Then don't say "English", say "Western European languages".

> “These concepts are rare outside of Western Europe.” So they used to be unknown in East Germany until the Wall fell?"

@@LuisAldamiz Because it's a gradient. The farther away you get from English geographically, the more of these features disappear.

I hope to Da Lord he caught that.

Having been brought up in Scotland this was a common joke- except it was 'Aye...right'. It is true that when you hear a Scot saying those words you know that in the next phrase he's going to explain why you are a blithering idiot.

bruh that's just how logic works 😂

​@@felixfourcolorwent over your head bro. "Yeah, right" is a double positive that means a negative

Technically that's more a matter of sarcasm than grammar, but it is quite clever.

Yep the redundancy is amazing, I can say like, I like your shirt, or your shirt is of the most divine style, or I can just say, yo fire shirt

And you can just omit words outright and... it still works. Like your "but in English you just the vocabulary from another language" has a single, clear meaning despite missing the "take from" words before the "the vocabulary". Don't omit _too_ many that the primary idea is lost but here you quite accidentally did a great job at proving that redundancy.

So true. And French is rather inconsistent at being consistent.

Jeff H I think Indo-European languages are generally pretty good at that!

@SandboxArrow No, not really. Due to it's history, English is rather inconsistent in some areas. Spelling, pronunciation (not pronounciation such as in pronounce, pronouncing or pronounced) and in some areas even constructions are sketchy. It makes for beautiful poetry and literature as the same thing can be said at least a half-dozen ways, but it makes English hard to learn due to lack of solid rules.

English is fairly consistent in writing but definitely not in pronunciation.

@SandboxArrow English is not consistent.

Similar in Korean. We say "Cigarette exists?"(담배 있어?) or "You cigarette exists?"(너 담배 있어?).

In English English we say may I have a cigarette. Do you have a cigarette is not a request, it is merely asking if you are in possession of something. It's the same with "can I get?" In English English this is considered gauche and clumsy. It is asking a stranger to reveal something about yourself. People from the UK say, "may I have?". This is asking the person in possession of what you if they are willing to give you something.

@@AndyJarman "People from the UK" almost never act as one, though you are right about the general case.

"Does your cigarette exist?" "Well it did but it broke the basic laws of space time and stopped existing."

In Hebrew, "I have a cigarette" is "יש לי סיגריה", which literally translates as "there-is to-me cigarette".

Yeah. I speak Spanish and when I started learning English, I learned the definitive article the. The explanation: the is used for all nouns. Me: really? Is that it? How easy

@@hah-vj7hc Is it easy to learn at a basic level? I can't speak to that, it's my first language, but I always assumed it'd be troublesome all the way through. Nothing in the language seems all that consistent or intuitive compared to the two I'm currently learning.

@@juniperrodley9843 Think about all the people you have met that spoke broken English and realize you understood them. It’s inconsistent but very forgiving with out of order and missing words not screwing up the emssgae

That’s interesting,in my native language, we don’t have the/a/an or even the plural form of nouns. So having to learn to use it in english is confusing 😂

@@badart3204 Damn wait that's a very good point. Well, pretty good; there are people whose English has very much been too broken for me to understand, but I get your point.

That makes no sense

English has very simple rules, a lot simpler than most European languages.

@@MikeYm98875 ”the bombing in Gaza is a tragedy to the Palestinian people” “Bombing in Gaza bad” Both get the point across

@@johnc8643Hay the ated horses… 🤷‍♂️

good point, but does not mean intensity, and in that regard, it's kind bad (purposelly mispel)@@ultimatestuff7111

Same in Czech, and probably other slavic languages

人１：俺の足が傷つける！ 人２：どの足 人１：はい

It's the same in Irish, "cos" can be either foot or leg depending on the context

Sort of the same in Burmese. There’s a root word chì that could mean anything below the hips. We just add another word to specify

@@Yy_3514 Probably not but who cares, it was just an excuse to flex my limited japanese ability lol

Korean is better tbh

English: wrist, ankle Japanese: hand-neck, foot-neck.

@Kevin Pope is it a joke ? Right

@Kevin Pope is it a joke ? Right

Finger: toe-hand or finger-hand (ngón tay) Toe: toe-foot or finger-foot (ngón chân) Tay: hand , Chân: leg (foot) Ngón is hard to translate, it could be toe or finger

Most people I encounter in the United States hardly use English perfectly, much less from "end to end."

Yep. I think English is the only language on earth where you could come up with a sentence like "I came in and nope'd right out of there" lmao.

I think English is the only language with interwords as well. Un-freaking-believable, as an example

"are* wrong" looks like the broken part is working though.

@@TaIathar Fixed. I wrote it late at night as I remember.

To posit that English is an exception in having numerous exceptions is exceptionally naive.

Idiotic. You shouldn’t break them if you want to speak clearly and advance professionally.

@@stephenpowstinger733 Bruh, I meant rules like i before e except after C that gets conveniently trashed. Lighten up, it was a JOKE

Danish: 7 + (-(1/2)+5) x 20

😂😂😂😂😂

Mandarin: 9 x 10 + 7

Yang Kong That’s the same as in English and probably most other languages.

@@birdsplaybs1234 just like arabic too

in german the english do is "tun" , there is nothing in english you cant say even better in german! you can express even much more things but sometimes it gets to difficult and foreign german language learners have a hard time. It was easy for me to learn english because anglo saxions are an old german tribe so german and english vocabulary are very similar. Sadly the middle Europe german tribes made their grammar very precise and complicated after the anglo saxions went to England. Maybe to much influence from the slavic south european and islamic world, idk! Everything said in this vidio you could also say about german(deutsch). With one difference, German is the most precise Language and even more complicated than english. One examle?, the english "the" is "der die das" in german: Der Mann(the man) mostly masculine or singular or things with a name, die Frau(the woman) mostly female or plural or things without using the name, das Haus (the house). When you use the name of things it gets complicated and is mostly allways the gender article der or die and very rare the article das, mostly used for houses with a name like "das Weisse Haus"(the white house)!!!! And sometimes it doesnt make a lot of sense, "the PC the Car the Saw": (Der PC, Das Auto, Die Säge). Why is the car neutral, the PC male and the saw female? idk and i am a native german speaker, it makes no sense at all and should be removed! Das Auto(the car) mostly things without a name. One example: Das Schiff, das Auto, die Titanic(the ship, the car, the titanic), very complicated for german learners and maybe not really nessesary. Cars like "der BMW, der Ford Mustang" are male, ships like "die Titanic, die USS Missouri" are female and i really dont know why? male and female for things??? Even worse is: the axe= die Axt female, the hammer=der Hammer malel. WTF almost identical tools with different articels instead the english The Sometimes i dream that linguist from enlish and german sit at a round table and made a language (R)evelution with new similar grammar as an advancement. And all new things like Smartphones (Handy in german) should have the same name in all countries. By the way, the vietnamese People did a very good job by switching to latin letters, the chinese india and japanes and some other country people should do the same to give their children easier learning in school!! No need to learn 11000 japanese letters when 26 letters are fare better and 100 times easier and even more precise!

I am learning Welsh and was surprised to discover that some of the features you note are also found in Welsh, even though it belongs to the Celtic language family, is gendered, uses VSO word order and has no word for "have". For example, the perfect tense is common, although differently expressed: "I am after going". Welsh, like English, makes extensive use of auxiliary verbs such as "be" and "do". I had assumed that this was copied from English, but I recently watched a video suggesting that this useful feature may have been acquired by the Anglo-Saxon invaders from the Romano-British population as they intermarried.

@ryandylan6946 It's a little ironic you're bragging about your language with such terrible grammar and punctuation.

I know Japanese has "shimasu".

Italian has "fare". I think most languages have some such all-purpose verb. At least, that's my impression from the precious few languages I've come across.

@@hah-vj7hc There, there, don’t mind them. It’s easy to get “there”, “they’re”, and “their” all mixed up as they’re all pronounced the same. They’re fine. (the above line aside, it really is easy to get them mixed up. but half of the U.S.A? i have no words)

@@fluffytail5000 It depends where you live and what your accent is. I'm from Scotland where we pronounce "their" differently from "there" and "they're". As for getting things mixed up when writing, sometimes it is the dreaded autocorrect that takes over.

🫡

Yeah we only care if you're a commie!😤😡🤬

@@hah-vj7hc To be fair, it's and its is kinda confusing, since its is the only possessive form of a noun/pronoun in the English language that doesn't have an apostrophe. It's just a really weird exception to the rule of adding ' or 's to the end of a word.

Some nouns have genders. Waitress and waiter, widow and widower, and actor and actress to name a few. Edit: Since so many people are still replying to this comment correcting me, I'm just going to leave this here. Yes, I am well aware that other languages have non-living objects that have "genders" whereas English does not. I understand now that that is what the original commenter was talking about. I misunderstood the original comment because it said, "English nouns do not have genders" which IS technically false, but now I realize they (even though it was not specified) were referring only to inanimate nouns having no gender in English.

@@FirstNameLastName-oz5ij well yes, but in other languages nouns like "ball", or "water" also have genders.

S Y These are not inanimate objects, though. These are gender markers based on the actual gender of the person. This is not the same as saying that a table is feminine and a shoe is masculine.

@@Maki-00 *based on the sex of the person

@@omp199 ? She was correct

Toenails: nails of the fingers of the feet... 🤦🏻‍♂️

in Romanian you would say: the fingers from feet (degetele de la picior)

The same in Czech. A term for "toes" exist in medicine, but colloquially it's "legs fingers"

I love Angelique Dedo del pie = finger of the foot = toe.

Portuguese too

Also "limb," "extremity," "thigh," "lower leg." I wonder if some languages have no distinct name for what we call "thumb."

​@@hah-vj7hcThose phrases aren't really more descriptive, just specific. What he's referring to are the number of unique words used for available objects and concepts. "Extremity" and "limb" can both be referring to a body part. Or limb can refer to a tree. Extremity can refer to a quantity or degree of something "the extremity of the heat wad unbearable."

@@hah-vj7hc everyone knows what you were trying to say, we were just telling you that you missed the point of the original comment. it's a valid point, but not in response to the above, because english having more specificity in terms of verbs (see the 'cool' vs 'tepid' comment) and german nouns being self-explanatory are completely different concepts

@@somethingforsenro German kinda cheats by slapping 40 words together to form one immense word, their point was that English has the most unique and non-conjoined words that mean different things, take “small” and “finger” as two separate words that come together to make “pinky” in German, for most cases, a word that is conjoined in German is a singular word in english

violently seeking out other languages to pillage for lexicon helped

The palm of your hand is a different world than hand

I am in favor of adopting "foot fingers." This is objectively better than toes.

That sounds awesome, I’m gonna learn polish after I learn german

In Russian, it's the same

Foot fingers is also used in Italian and Spanish. It's only logical...

A lot of languages have a plural form of "one" or "a(n)".

@@fernandobanda5734 unos, uns

romanian also has a plural for one, also a masculine and feminine. unul/una, unii/unele

Because each individual thing is one.

Haha, that does seem strange. I'm fairly sure that 'one' as a number and 'one' as an indefinite pronoun are distinct senses though, so they can have different behaviour; surface forms don't equal underlying forms! You could also say 'one' as a regular noun, in the sense of 'a symbol that represents one', so you can talk about the 'ones' on the page.

What ever language you spoke originaallly

lmao

If you watch British TV, you'll find you're not alone. Estuary English is second only to Chinglish for sheer impenetrability.

@@casualposters what if English is my original language

@@casualposters I think that's the joke

Probably has more to do with the Norman invasion of England and several Romance words entering the language because of it.

I believe french once being the lingua franca and the language spoken by many medieval English aristocrats also has something to do with that

You should include here English in the Germanic languages. Namely those home grown words from England: about, mind, round, entropy, .... There is not always a choice. Sometimes native English is needed. Reading an Encyclopedia will familiarise you to many abstract words but if you want to speak plainly Germanic is the way; Tolkien, Orwell, King James Bible, The Sun, ...

Plenty of other languages have that, korean and japanese for example have native and chinese words for the same thing.

Or that a lot of Latin based words aren’t really used these days. Because there is comedienne but I rarely hear it anymore.

soooo true tho

I wish NativLang the best of luck making a system out of Danish. I'm sure there is an answer, a system, a law. But it has eluded my glorious people for a at least a thousand years.

Wher do you think English got its flair from

Roeaghgdgroeaogaugh maed floaede

Specifically the English channel. They're coming over and won't leave for a few centuries.

The problem with a wordy language is it can take a long time to say what you want to actually say and convey your point.

Indeed, I speak portuguese and I can translate well most of the time; but sometimes it gets kinda broken due to me translating wrong due to a false cognate (push, that sounds like "puxe", which means pull, is a common one), messing with the word order due to the difference in sentence structure (like, for example, on portuguese the adjective usually comes after the substantive, but you can put it before and still maintaining the meaning and not being wrong, it's just odd and not usual or common) or not having a precise word for translating what I mean (as an example of this, I present you the word "guerrear", which can be translated as battling or fighting but none of these are precise translations, since "guerrear" derives from "guerra", war; the word actually mean a type of battling specific and exclusive to war, and it also includes other acts related to war such as battle strategy and such; and english doesn't have a word with this exact meaning =/)

The thing thats good though to me, is that an English speaker can still understand whats being said despite it being broken even heavily broken English... from what ive gathered it doesnt quite work that way in reverse (ie an English speaker using heavily broken speech in some other langauge).

@@NZBigfoot well yeah, I've seen english speakers trying to speak portuguese before, they mess the gender of the words, the verb tense, the substantive, the order of words (many things use a different order, like adjectives being after the substantive); if it's too broken it's near impossible to understand what precisely they mean =/

I love listening to broken English. People feel ashamed of their mistakes, but I don't hear mistakes, I hear poetry.

What I love, as a native English speaker, about German is the consistency of pronunciation. Even if I don’t know what a word means, I can still say it. Also the creativity of stringing small words together into a long one.

@@gstlbYeah, Indonesian is also completely phonetic. Try reading “Aku makan jeruk” our loud - there is a 90% chance you read it correctly, without knowing what that means (I eat an orange). Whereas English, every word can have a different pronunciation (not phonetically consistent)

Das kann ich gut verstanden. Ich denke auch in mehrere Sprachen, und ich wähle die Wörter, die am besten im Kontext passen, wenn ich etwas sagen möchte.

I'm highly dyslexic but never struggle to read only write. When reading I basically predict the next word based on context and look for a recognisable letter for confirmation. I had to read that centance 3 times to do that.

That's a stupid line, just because those words look similar shouldn't confuse anyone since they are used so differently. Just learn how to use context and suddenly English not only stops being hard but actually very easy.

brett fluhr Not stupid at all. If a person, who just started learning English, saw that sentence, they'd have no idea that "ough" is pronounced five different ways! That's the point, not how the words are used!

That was really good to me!

Like, "whether the weather is hot or whether the weather is not, we weather the weather, whatever the weather, whether it's hot or it's not". A little rime I learned in school in the Netherlands 35 years ago. Never forgot.

It's a nightmare for translators.

I've said this before although I just say "It's a flexible language" cuz you can bastardize our language and still derive some meaning from it...probably. Most languages seem to have this weird property where one wrong part of a word makes you go from talking about the fish at home to how a pencil got stuck in your toaster.

@@TheGreatBackUpVIDEOS English has that problem as well. It's very important that any instructions one gives are absolutely clear. This makes sure nothing gets stuck where it doesn't belong, e.g., the toaster or ceiling fan.

@@SouthernersSax Instructions unclear, got dick stuck in ceiling fan.

Sentencing strangely is rather enjoyable.

You don't need to be too precise with your verbs; you just use adverbial phrases for that precision. "The cat is twenty feet up the tree". Or you can be more-or-less precise: "The cat is about twenty feet up the tree".

@@BudgieJane Or relative, "The cat is halfway up the tree".

This is interesting, because I've been learning Japanese lately and one thing I started thinking about is how difficult it is to actually express yourself in English by comparison. On the other hand, also how difficult it is to write stories from the third person in Japanese. This would explain why. English is hyper specific, unwieldy and unpersonable, but it also makes for good third person storytelling. Japanese, being a primarily spoken language until relatively recently, is extremely good for self-expression and much less unwieldy, but also not as specific and struggles with third person storytelling. TLDR, english feels better to write, japanese feels better to speak, who would've known languages have their own strengths and weaknesses based on their origin

LMAO this makes me wonder if there are any stories out there written only using the passive voice. Now that would make for an interesting read.

This joke is being stolen by me

I love it when you say that your sealing that joke about the passive voice WHILE SPEAKING IN THE PASSIVE VOICE... ERM... WHILE THE PASSIVE VOICE WAS BEING SPOKEN IN! *ahem* I can't claim credit for the joke. Though sometimes I do like to take things I hear and have fun creating a sort of "Passive Voice Theatre" in my mind.

This hurts me because it reads like something I would've written when I was trying to sound sophisticated in middle school.

Shouldn't it be: "A bar was walked into by a sentence. In the passive voice, "Ouch!" was said."

Oh no. It's far more languages than that. Celtic, French, Danish, German, and its orthography was fixed by Latinphiles who decided that we couldn't simply use f for phi, we needed to use ph because reasons.

@@jkfecke quite a bit of Greek and even some Asian words as well such as tsunami, sushi, etc..

@@jkfecke "German" is actually quite misleading. That makes people think of the more recent southern dialect "high German" and the similar "standard German" they typically hear in movies. The language mainly related to English (as well as to Scandinavian) was the language of the Hansa leauge, called Low German or plattdeutsch, etc. Basically another language (and closer to Proto Germanic than what the sound changed and latinized high German is). These two kinds of "German" are as distant as Dutch and standard German, and grammatically *almost* (a little stretch) as different as Swedish and English.

That is a very clever comment.

Herr Friberger well actually standard german originates from north germany, not south germany. High german dialects are not really close to standard german, biggest one for example would be bavarian. Standard german originates in north germany.

I have enjoyed two years of Russian at school, and one thing many seem to find difficult is that there is no "to be". "I am Marcus" becomes "I - Marcus" "ya - Marcus", where the dash is only written, never spoken. "You are good" becomes "you - good". Once you get accustomed to it it's absolutely clear. Why does one even need such a basic word as "to be" when it is quite clear from the rest of the words what is meant? It makes such a lot of sense. It's the same with "to have" "u menya masslo" is quite clear, no need for the fancy word. It seems that English is a good first candidate for "I've got the most unneccessary words" 😂

in italian “avere” (have) has pretty much the same role

@@carloalberto17 yes English and italian are closely related

this is called do-insertion, either emphatic or for questions.

In many Balkan and Slavic languages you have "Czy"(Polish) or "Dali"(Macedonian and Bulgarian) or "Jel"(Serbian, Bosnian, Montenegrin, Croatian) or "A"(Albanian) which have the same role as "Do"

Esperanto has it for some reason. Makes it easy for english speakers to learn, kinda defeats the point of making it the easiest second language.

It's spelled R. See the Bertie Wooster books. I suspect it stands for "Right"

@@rodschmidt8952 Crew Member: The canons be loaded Captain. Captain: ARE. The canons ARE loaded

Arrr ye matey

You all ought to know that The typical accent we associate with pirates was only introduced by an actor in the 40's. Robert Newton in his performance as Long John Silver in the 1950 film Treasure Island. He adopted that accent from the West country. Otherwise there's no special reason to think pirates would have that accent. Most of them probably had cockney London accents...

Good one!

true. if it wasn't the international language, it would be a lot harder. we all manage because it's everywhere

@@carb_8781 dude, what language is your native? English is one of the easiest.

@@SHIFTSRK I think they mean spelling and pronunciation which is all over the place in English.

@@SHIFTSRK there's no easiest language to learn, that isn't a thing.

@@albertacorralez2871 yeah that is definitely a thing lol

John McWhorter thinks that's something English picked up from the Celtic languages of the Britons.

That’s one I’ve heard my friends who have learned English as a foreign language talk about a lot. And mostly they love it! It’s so versatile. Many told me they wish they had it in their L1. I think it was definitely worth a mention

McWhorter will tell you himself that the Celtic hypothesis isn't his, it's just something that makes a whole lot more sense than anything else that has been proposed for the origin of do-support. Also, there's the whole "present tense" thing. We don't have one. The "verbs" that are rendered in what we might see as present tense aren't really verbs, they're more like state and relationship indicators. Anything else that looks like present tense is either habitual or in (for want of a better phrase) in "narrator mode". "She walks to the door" is either a stage direction, a description of what your player character is doing this turn, or a thing she does every time she hears the doorbell ring.

Can you give an example? I'm not sure I understand.

@@stanrogers5613 English only has past and non-past tenses linguistically. Everything else is due to centuries of people explaining English grammar as though it has to fit an ancient Latin grammar book.

Without any derivational suffixes, that is. The ability to turn nouns/names into verbs and adjectives is not limited to English, but I think the ability to do so without using derivational suffixes could be rather unique.

that's how English slang becomes enhanced

@@tiihtu2507 It's generally how isolating languages work, actually. When you don't have a lot of morphology telling you which word class any given word belongs to, you tend to just sort of throw them in wherever.

@@HeadsFullOfEyeballs Not "wherever." The words get put into specific word order patterns, and that's how the part of speech is made clear.

Sa Yu in the uk, if you say “you’re such a...” followed by an adjective it sounds like a plain insult. For example, my nan used to call me a “soppy date” if I ever did something stupid. Basically she was calling me a stupid/wet fruit... thanks nan

Germans super flexible though.

German’s way more flexible than English

Knowing a little bit of German and a some Chinesee as foreign languges I'm just keeping to *laught in russian*. In English pronunciation and spelling is a bitch, but I love English for it shortness, logic, and almost always one way to make a sentence. It's not flexible at all, even comparing with German where they have two possible word orders in a sentence instead of one (and comparing to Russian it is still nothing).

@@jeveuxmourir4370 how

@@Heretogasunu Declensions (which means there’s more ways to say the same thing) and compound nouns (which leads to a lot of more complicated/abstract vocabulary). You’d have to at least learn German grammar to know the pedantics of it, though.

....and some folk learning English feel awkward about showing the tip of their tongues when saying 'the'.

Full disclosure: my word nerd self had to read that twice before I got it

@@susanzoeckler4926 Full disclosure: I did not invent it myself. I heard something like it once and it stuck with me

@@carolmeindl8973 👩‍🏫 probably most such grammar goodies are borrowed -- still a great choice! Thanks

Or more eloquently rendered: "His experience had no impact on the result."

I don’t understand what This means after the second had lol

It is not that weird when you speak more than 1 language, trust me, you get used to switching the language, especially if you live in a bilingual area like I do.

@@itzelmontalvo6645 I'm Trilingual you know

@@itzelmontalvo6645 as a trilingual who also lives in a pretty bilingual area i second this

I get this feeling as a native English speaker as well. Sometimes I think about a sentence I just said and think “what a weird language. Why is that sentence structured like that?”

Exactly 😭

The English -r sound also exists in Brazilian Portuguese

In Portuguese we speak this sound quite often (whenever an R is between a vowel and a consonant, like in the word "alert": "alerta"), except on some of Brazil's states, where it can be replaced by an "h" sound, or by the "r" sound that you hear in spanish

I know, it's like a joke.

It appears in some form in rural Swedish dialects, especially in Finland.

They don't mean the r sound itself, more the quality of the vowels before the r sound at the end of words, which is unique to english and mandarin

Gendered suffixes can be found on some nouns, but they're typically optional.

This is my favorite thing about English. I would love to know if their is a historical linguistic reason for that.

I think this is a major positive attribute of English over its companion European languages; I’d appreciate it if I was learning it as a second language. Trying to comprehend that inanimate objects were considered male or female seemed pointless when I first studied French 50+ years ago. Stupid, in fact.

Persian has gone farther than that and eliminated gender 100%. The 3rd-person singular pronoun in Persian is "u" which means he/she/it.

English has no grammatical gender. We have gendered pronouns for gendered objects (animals and people), but inanimate objects do not have gender (keys are not inherently male, cats are not inherently female)

In Russian, you only have fingers, and no thumbs. The thumb is called simply, 'big finger'

@??? sim, é de origem alemã. Se não me engano o original era ''Engelmann'', aí aportuguesaram para englemam.

English does have another word, "digit," which means "finger or toe." But it's much less commonly used. It was slightly mind-blowing when I first learned about "dedos" in Spanish too. I felt bad for the poor Spanish toes, not even getting their own name.

@@jpanosky I didn't know about ''digit''. Anyways, in Portuguese and Spanish we can specify ''dedos das mãos'' and ''dedos dos pés'' if we need to emphasize which part of our body we're talking about. But even so, not the same thing as having a unique word as English does!

same for romanian! the word toe is so funny to me. it's so useless and yet makes sentences shorter so it's not skshfj my poor toes will always be feet fingers in my head. always compared to the better fingers. what a sad life

@@carb_8781 Foot fingers 🤣🤣🤣🤣 That would be so weird lol

oh god

"uuh the handtips"

Bavarian person: I have hurt my foot. Doctor: top or bottom? Reason why our English teacher said: In English your foot starts at the ankle not the hip.

@gamer time it's a joke

@gamer time I bet you're fun at parties.....

It's better to explain "a" and "the" from a communicative perspective than by giving rules. What are you trying to communicate in a particular sentence in a particular conversation? Does the other person know what you're referring to? Are you introducing something new to the conversation? Example: "A dog bit me yesterday." [Beginning of conversation. Introduction of one dog. Use "a".] "Then it ran away." [Pronoun "it" used because the dog is "activated" in the conversation right now. The other person knows what you're referring to because it's what you're talking about.] "Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you that I bought some more dog food for Fido, my poodle." [Topic of conversation was changed briefly.] "Okay, so after the dog ran away, I went home." [Referring back to the dog at the beginning of the conversation. It is being re-introduced since the topic had shifted. The other person knows which dog you are referring to. Use "the".]

@@kathyh.1720 thanks, it is really helpful

@@mufazahd2782 Definite vs. indefinite is just that - the former is specific or assumed to be known, the latter is much more general - not necessarily about a specific object. To explain this, you could say as an opening to a conversation, one would state, "A dog bit my leg." Once the dog is introduced or "known," the definite article would be appropriate after, as in "I yelled, then the dog ran away." Besides articles, German does something vaguely similar with "there is/are." General statements use es gibt (There are penguins in Antartica); specific one use da ist (There is my coffee).

I've had a difficult time explaining past tense to people (I think they were Asian). I'd try to explain something that I did already, but they think I'm talking about the present moment.

You have to "present" your noun or its too direct and rude.

Yeah I can have a stroke in English too you're not that special

*Abkhazian and Ossetian freedom noises*

I think they make creams for that. Damn girl!

The first time I saw the Georgian alphabet I lowkey thought it was a fake alphabet created for a fictional language or something because it just looks so different to others, especially compared to other Eastern European countries

@@minihwas Look up the Glagolitic script. I'm Croatian and understand that it was used far in the past in the slavic region where croatia is now, and even further, though I don't know the details.

My mom: Seabugs. Haha

English: Dragon Finnish: Salmon snake

English: noun Mandarin: name word English: adjective Mandarin: describe word English: verb Mandarin: move word

English: computer Mandarin: e l e c t r i c b r a i n

@@bens5093 English: computer Finnish: knowledge machine

An unrolled R sound is uncommon too, I'd say

My German-born mother came to England as a teenage refugee and never in her over seventy years here got the hang of that fricative. Her written English was perfect and she devoured books in English but she never got the 'th' thing.

Never knew that was difficult before this video. Makes sense though. Reminds me of the "Tsu" sound in Japanese. That's Hella hard to pronounce correct apparently no matter how many times I think I do it right haha

@@KuroshiKun I don't know why it's difficult but it is. I've worked all over Europe and the majority of mainland Europeans have difficulty with it even if their English is very good. Swedish people, who generally speak English very well, struggle and the same is very true of native German speakers. Dutch people use 'th' to make a different sound entirely in their own language which creates a mental block. I have a Dutch friend who was taught to practice "This thick thing thinks that thing is thick" at school.

@@peterd788 if the sound doesn't exist in your native language it's difficult to reproduce despite hearing it. That was may issue with "Tsu". Like I'd pronounce "Tsunami" as "Sunami". I don't even know it well enough to spell it out phonetically how it's supposed to be said lol

Oh wow, I didn't know that! Sounds very interesting

A decent bulk of these are probably thanks to Germanic and Romance variants of the same concepts. Others are different parts of speech transmuted into adjectives and adverbs. "fascinating" -> present participle turned adjective of "to fascinate," from Latin "descriptive" -> adjectival suffix + "to describe," from Latin "insecure" -> negative prefix + "secure" from Latin; "secure" also has verb form "to secure" "absolutely" -> adverbal suffix + "absolute" from Middle French; also has noun form "an absolute" "loyal" -> from Middle French "spunky" -> adjectival suffix + "spunk," apparently fully Germanic "edgy" -> adjectival suffix + "edge," from Germanic "perturbative" -> adjectival suffix + "to perturb," from Old French Of these 7 adjectives, 3 are from verbs, and 2 are from nouns. The one adverb is derived from another adjective. There are even multiple different ways to transmute the same word's part of speech.

then how do you describe a fascinating thing?

I love how English just keeps on expanding really fast. My language also lacks most of these words and we have to use english ones instead.

​@@TooDeepForSleep wait actually? You just toss in an English word when you don't have a word for something? 😂

@@huntno My Maltese relatives would always be throwing in english words in conversation for things. (made it easier to fill in the gaps for me understanding them). I think it's because there were either often short snappy english words that didn't need to (relatively) complex construction to form it in, or was just more commonly used. Maybe it's like me trying to speak portuguese, and dropping into French when i get stuck.

That’s really fascinating to me too!! Have you seen the movie “Arrival”? It touches on that theme, it’s pretty cool :)

I remember watching a travel documentary where an Indian guy who ran a large tea plantation in Darjeeling, said that he actually thought in English. Being a typical Englishman myself and never really learning any other language- though I've tried, I always wondered how strange it seemed to think in a second language.

@@stephenmcdonagh2795 I'm gonna tell you, the human mind has capacities beyond the conventions of any language, but it is often specific language that facilitates the development of those capacities. One language may be more like geometry and another like music. If you know both languages and can "speak" them you know that your mind will accommodate the necessary mode of thinking based on the need of the circumstance and conventions of the language. New words are made then, when the language doesn't meet the need of the communicator. It probably occurs with all of us quite often and on different levels in circumstances that we wouldn't normally think would qualify. Languages are just systems for communicating ideas. I think it's more fascinating, nuanced, complex and simple, at the same time, than we can imagine.

@@rembeadgc That makes a lot of sense. The other week I was sleep talking to someone, unlike a dream which they say can last only a few seconds, I'd actually remembered sitting up and seemed like I was having a perfectly normal conversation with someone- though obviously there was no one there, it was quite strange. To my knowledge I've slept walked only two times, and both of these I'd put down to sleep deprivation. Now I hide my car keys, hoping I'll not remember where I'd put them if I was to wake up and tried to jump in the car. It seems a lot of knowledge you didn't know you had comes together whilst in REM sleep.

@@rembeadgc I think all languages have their geometry and their music. There are fascinating ways in which languages differ, but I think people often romanticize those differences too much. I've learned of very few features in other languages that would seriously change how I thought of anything, and they're all fairly arbitrary issues, nothing that has a big impact on ideas, decision-making, interests, or personality: non-decimal number systems, fewer or greater basic colors, and different spatial representations of time.

I love how we can sentence however we want

I realized that Danish is actually extremely similar to English. Makes sense though, they were both originally Germanic languages. English just has more French mixed in. And danish Vikings also conquered England and influence English

Unless you have watched this twice, once before becoming fluent, I'm not sure you can make that call

Quirke1337 haha, good point!

@@niclas3672 They ARE Germanic languages. They were both originally Proto-Germanic. Germanic is a language family, not to be confused with German the language. And yeah you're right, I speak some French and it has most of the "weird features" mentioned in the video. So do most other western European languages IIRC.

Ah, the late, great and sorely missed Victor Borge. "Inflationary Language" never ceases to amuse me. "You look twoderful threenight". The man was fantastic.

@@bikkies I'm going to add the other bit of the 'th' joke, for completeness: "My English teacher told me, 'Thpeak like thith for a month and get uthed to it onth and for all.' Tho I thpoke like thith for a month, and got uthed to it onth and for all. It worked very well -- ethept when I met other people who thpoke like thith. Or in crowded liftth."

@@JamesRedekop That is what the thpanish did with their language! It is totally different to thpanish everywhere elsth in the world.

Hahaha I can relate, I'm an English speaking Australian learning Danish!

@@Astrologist 0.o I now want to learn more about Danish

In Spanish the word we use literally means "aspirator"

German: Staubsauger "Staub" means dust, and "Sauger" means sucker. Germanic languages for the win!

In Czech we use *vysavač* . It means basicly sucker.

Russian: Пылесос (dustsucker)

Finnish: "imuri" meaning *sucker* or "pölynimuri" meaning *dustsucker*

I like to use the phrase, "In English, we can verb whatever we want."

Like Robert Bork has had his last name become a verb and adjective. "He was borked by the senior staff." "Don't tell them that or they will bork you."

@@billkeithchannel You can be litt up, too.

We do that a lot in scandinavia too. Hanging an -a at the end of a noun is often sufficient, makes the noun into a verb (text -> texta, boll -> bolla, lek -> leka, spel -> spela, skit -> skita, piss -> pissa, etc...)

you can do that on turkish too

var ile? (kalemim var)

Hungarian is similar. It’s kinda like: “There is a pencil of mine”

@@user-iz4un6tv5n yeah and var literally means to be existent/there to be

@@gergelygalvacsy2251 Basically the same in Turkish, I just chose to translate it that way. The Uralic and Turkic languages share several common features anyway. Agglutination, SOV, and vowel harmony FTW, my Hungarian comrade!

does "you don't have a pencil" = "a pencil does not exist for you!" ?

well, the rich vowel system is characteristic of the Germanic group whereas the interdental fricatives are kind of all over the place yet mostly rare in Europe. (By the way, doesn't Icelandic also have them still?)

Greek and Spanish also have both dental fricatives

@@Alex-fv2qs Arabic also has one dental fricative. I think the voiced dental fricative is a bit more common than the unvoiced one.

@@vytah Arabic has both a voiced & unvoiced dental fricative. The letter "ث" makes the unvoiced dental fricative sound whereas the letter "ذ" makes the voiced dental fricative sound. In fact, they use fairly standard notation to indicate this when transcribing them to the English alphabet; 'th' for thaa & 'dh' for dhaal.

@@dr.zoidberg8666 Ah true, I confused few things. I was thinking about pharyngealized dental fricatives. Arabic has both /θ/ and /ð/, but only /ðˤ/.

I commend your grammar, Sir.

I honestly love English and I fully agree with the idea that having so many synonyms and different sentence constructions lends itself to poetry and expression.

The English language was the most effective weapon the Irish had to use against the English.

Of course your German friend would think that. When I was learning German, our tutor said if I he sees the same word twice within 5 sentences, it is not good German. (Context: darum, deshalb, deswegen...) I know you are talking about different structures of conveying the same meaning but Germans really do like their variety :)

That's quite funny because German has some of the best poetry... And it can express things with words that English doesn't have

All of which can be properly pronounced with a mouth full of Lego.

Why did you puke all over me?! 😉

we have about 27 actually

@@Lobstrominous That must be a record! Did Danish just look at the IPA chart for vowels and decided: "I want them all!" 😁 EDIT: Or did you speak about English?

@@janvandergaag I'm referring to English

Yes, especially European languages to somewhere like Asia where the structure is completely different. For example the literally translation of バナナあります is "banana exists" however the intended meaning is "I have a banana"

Yes, translations are about interpretation which is why translations vary between translators.

banana, is it?

@@a-s-greig that would be バナナだ? Or バナナですか?

booty call and butt dial may sound similar to a foriegner because the words are synonms but what a diff. they can be.

laughs in hungarian where litteraly every single word can be used as a curse word and make a sentence with only insults.

@@Duck_Duck_Goose789 "make a sentence only with insults" yeah that's possible in English too

german can do this too because some words that are rude in english aren't in german

@@adsfornothing3146 can u make a insult in german where each individual word is not a curse, but only become one when they are together ? Like me calling you a great supine invertebrate jelly, or butter fingers

@@docinabox258 Jep you can do that

Spanish uses it that way too

French does it both ways

I prefer to use the more formal "fixin' to"

@@Big_Tex How about Finna

This is a load of barnacles “going to” saves me in spanish class since we don’t know future tense yet lamao

I’d like to think it’s because of the sc compound

Richard Stimmel Yes, that makes sense!

DJFlare84 it’s a WEIRD rule

receive, deceive, perceive, conceited, counterfeit, but believe, relieve, achieve, and... society Edit: society doesn't count as some people in this thread kindly pointed out

It's "i before e except after c when the two letters sound ee".

"Pardon my French" is a euphemism for acknowledging ruefully that you were swearing, and probably should not have.

When the french swear, do the say "pardonnez mon anglais?" Is there a joint bilateral treaty of linguistic banter?

@@karenvaughan8521I am probably being whooshed, but I thought "Pardon my French" was a reference to how 40% of the English Vocabulary comes from Latin mostly introduced by French

@@irgendwer3610 no

@@user-nf9xc7ww7mWhenever something is slightly unsavoury we call it French: French letter is a euphemism for a condom, French lessons is a euphemism a prostitute uses to advertise her services, French kiss is a kiss with tongues. And yes, the French return the insult:"Capote anglaise” is slang in French for condom

"it" is an implicit identifier. It (in this case "it" is the implicit identifier) generally refers to an obvious subject or a previously mentioned subject. i.e. I could say: The House is red. The Houses is amidst other houses. The house is two-story. or: The House is red. It is amidst other houses. It is two story. It is far less repetitive and time-consuming. (

@@whenthedustfallsaway Yeah but the distinction being made isn't that other languages say the house is two-story, it's that they say "two story" or "is two story"

@@DuhMasto what you're talking about, while true, has nothing to do with this comment chain and the OG comment.

I noticed this too when I started learning Spanish. Spanish just uses different verbs for weather! (e.g. llover, to rain; llueve, it’s raining)

@ Evan Andrews It has everything to do with it. In fact it was you who missed the point. "It" is highly overused in English, as most languages just state the subject or omit it entirely. For instance, Japanese natives find it annoying hearing English speakers using "sore wa/ga" ("it" as a subject or topic) all of the time. The subject is just omitted, or it is directly stated when introduced or for comparison.