I’m curious how it is for other languages, but I find that in English I can usually understand someone trying to explain something using incorrect words and bad grammar if we go at it long enough
Tonal languages are probably harder to make sense.
When you say “Ma” in Mandarin you could mean 4 different things.
So if I was trying to say “I like my horse” or “I like my mother” you’d say “I like my ma”. Unless you had context you wouldn’t know what I was trying to say if I didn’t use the correct tone.
English tones give extra information.
“I LIKE my horse” or “I like MY horse”.
One you could like your horse, other you might really LIKE your horse.
“I go store” vs “I am going to go to the store now”. The meaning isn’t really lost.
English is hard because speaking it well is complex. There are dozens of way to say “walked”
Did the man stroll down the street? Strut, marched, trudged, shuffled, stumbled, hobbled, or etc.
Someone that doesn’t know English well would understand that the man hobbling down the street means that the man went down the street. But hobbling has the idea that the man is injured. If they were trying to describe the man limping down the road they would be thrown off thinking about how they could describe it as hobbled. “The man walked with a limp down the street” or “The man limped as he walked down the street”
Then there’s things like “The man hobbled down Bourbon Street” now you get the idea that he is hobbling because of being intoxicated rather than injured.
But getting the general idea is pretty simple. “Man go road”
I think English is very context driven where I find other languages much more specific and precise. The word “cool” for instance can probably have a dozen different meanings depending on context so perversely IMO simple English can be sorted out by feel more easily where other languages are less tolerant of that.
I’m curious how it is for other languages, but I find that in English I can usually understand someone trying to explain something using incorrect words and bad grammar if we go at it long enough
Tonal languages are probably harder to make sense.
When you say “Ma” in Mandarin you could mean 4 different things.
So if I was trying to say “I like my horse” or “I like my mother” you’d say “I like my ma”. Unless you had context you wouldn’t know what I was trying to say if I didn’t use the correct tone.
English tones give extra information.
“I LIKE my horse” or “I like MY horse”.
One you could like your horse, other you might really LIKE your horse.
“I go store” vs “I am going to go to the store now”. The meaning isn’t really lost.
English is hard because speaking it well is complex. There are dozens of way to say “walked”
Did the man stroll down the street? Strut, marched, trudged, shuffled, stumbled, hobbled, or etc.
Someone that doesn’t know English well would understand that the man hobbling down the street means that the man went down the street. But hobbling has the idea that the man is injured. If they were trying to describe the man limping down the road they would be thrown off thinking about how they could describe it as hobbled. “The man walked with a limp down the street” or “The man limped as he walked down the street”
Then there’s things like “The man hobbled down Bourbon Street” now you get the idea that he is hobbling because of being intoxicated rather than injured.
But getting the general idea is pretty simple. “Man go road”
I think English is very context driven where I find other languages much more specific and precise. The word “cool” for instance can probably have a dozen different meanings depending on context so perversely IMO simple English can be sorted out by feel more easily where other languages are less tolerant of that.