this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
51 points (89.2% liked)
Asklemmy
49574 readers
251 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
A lot, to be honest. Spend enough time around non-native English speakers and you realise how little sense English makes. Their 'mistakes' have their own internal consistency and in a lot of cases make more sense than English does.
There are so many examples for this. Some that come to mind:
Apart from that, try explaining to a learner why “Read” (present) and “Read” (past) is spelled the same but pronounced differently.
Or plural (or do I capitalize that here? 🤔) inconsistencies: one “mouse,” two “mice”; but one “house,” two “houses.” To be fair, other languages do that stuff too.
The use of 'in' and 'on' for various vehicles in English is one that I always find interesting. Like you're on a motorbike, or a boat, or a bus, but you're in a car. Aeroplanes I think are kind of interchangeable.
Also the order of descriptive words for things is one I really find odd. "I'm on a big red old-fashioned London bus" = coherent sentence. "I'm in a red London big old-fashioned bus" = nonsense.
Also how something like the word 'jam' can mean a fruit preserve, a door that's stuck, traffic that's not moving, playing music or cramming something into a hole lol.
Not an expert by any means, but I'd guess that has to do with the distinction between being on top of something, and having boarded something. You are on top of a (small) boat or motorcycle, but within a car. These examples refer to position. You can be both in or on a bus, plane, or yacht, because you have boarded the bus, plane, or yacht, and thus are "on" it, but are located physically within the vehicle and so are also "in" it (in the case of a yacht, that may depend on whether you're inside it or on top of it). These examples refer to both position and state of existence.
This is totally conjecture so I'd be very curious to hear from an actual expert.
In German that question is: Wie nennt man das?
Or literally: How does one call that?