this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2025
464 points (98.9% liked)
General Memes & Private Chuckle
381 readers
984 users here now
Welcome to General Memes
Memes for the masses, chuckles for the chosen.
Rule 1: Be Civil, Not Cruel
We’re here for laughs, not fights.
- No harassment, dogpiling, or brigading
- No bigotry (transphobia, racism, sexism, etc.)
- Keep it light — argue in the comments, not with insults
Rule 2: No Forbidden Formats
Not every image deserves immortality on the memmlefield. That means:
- No spam or scams
- No porn or sexually explicit content
- No illegal content (seriously, don’t ruin the fun)
- NSFW memes must be properly tagged
If you see a post that breaks the rules, report it so the mods can take care of it.
Otherwise consider this your call to duty. Get posting or laughing. Up to you
founded 1 month ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I've always said that English isn't a language, it's three languages in a trench coat stabbing and robbing other languages in a seedy back alley, rifling through their pockets for words and loose grammar.
English is the British Museum of languages
The artefacts in the British Museum invaded Britain and forced themselves onto them? Crazy, I always thought they stole them.
I know it's not what you meant and you're talking about the Anglo-Saxon, Norman, and Norse invasions, but this could come off more like xenophobic BNP / Reform UK type rhetoric
Saying the British museum stole its artefacts is a xenophobic BNP / Reform UK talking point?
No, but Britain being invaded by non-English speaking foreigners who are forcing their way of life onto proper Brits is. Again, I understand the point you were making, but I think others interpreted it differently and as something xenophobic because it mirrors that rhetoric, just while describing lesser discussed actual historical invasions rather than more topical current events. Hopefully that makes some sense, rather than just making everything mor confusing.
Bruh
Bruh.
English the language is the result of multiple invasions into England. It’s literally the opposite example of the British Museum.
What language doesn't match this description? People keep saying this like english is more built out of other languages than the others and, like, how do you think other languages are made? Do you expect someone to just suddenly come up with "anireslurp" for "table" and everyone in the country just uses it?
While loanwords are probably a thing in any language, there are definitely languages that seem to be a bit stricter with grammar, I think? I'd say German is an example.
Japanese is crazy with loanwords though. They steal them and if that's not enough they put the japanizing bean on it, so air conditioning becomes エアコン (romanization of that word again is eakon)
German has more rules with cases and whatnot but a lot of that is ignored in day to day speech, especially in certain sociolects. Similarly the syntax of German sometimes gets slightly altered in spoken German.
It's not that loanwords are a thing in all languages, it's that they are everything. A non-loanword would be a word without a historical etymology. There are some in physics, and everyone is laughing at them "quarks"
Some languages or populations may be stricter with their grammars, but I guarantee you they stole that grammar. A few things changed over time of course, but it's going to be very similar to how they talked before, mixed with how other people around them talked. You can't just make up new grammar and hope people will understand it (see attached Lojban)
I love how Japan just uses the first two or three syllables and stops there with loanwords. "First Kitchen" becoming "Fakkin" has got to be my favorite.
You'll have to define what you mean by "stricter with grammar" here - speakers of all languages make grammaticality judgments equally easily. What about German grammar makes it "stricter" than English?
I'm not really sure. It feels stricter, or maybe more precise because there are more grammatical rules like the four cases for Nomen and such.
The Japanese word for television is television.
I think it's テレビ(terebi) but that's probably what you meant.
There are lots of languages like this tbh
English speakers just say this because it's the main language they're familiar with
I don't think English is interested in adding additional grammar.
You can mar all the gram you want in English.
I just cringe that this comment is always the one being made whenever monolingual native English speakers gather together to talk about their language.
Not sure why you're being downvoted here. This absolutely is the go-to quote for monolingual English-speaking laypeople who think that English is "exceptional" in some way - whether that be "bad" or "good" - when in reality English is a pretty unremarkable language overall.
It does have a few mildly interesting idiosyncrasies, but "polysemy" and "having loanwords" (even "having a large percentage of loanwords") are not really among them.