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  • If I ever meet a kid sprinkling garlic powder on me .... I'll make sure to scream in pain, roll around on the ground for a second or two and run away like a mad man without explanation.

  • SURREPTITIOUSLY

    What the fuck, English?

    sur-rep-ti-tious-ly.

    secretly would've been just fine as well

    • Nah secretly is different

      Surreptitiously is closer to sneakily, really

      Also, the diversity of words English speakers have at their disposal is probably English's main selling point. Lots of languages do lots of things better than English does, but English does manage to convey a lot of nuance and meaning through careful word selection.

      • English does have some very good bits:

        • easiest adjective declension rules of any language, ie. none.
        • verb conjugation rules can be scribbled down in their essence on the back of a napkin and there's not that many exceptions; probably the easiest of any Indo-European language.
        • no "grammatical" gender; only pronouns are changed for gender and they're mostly as expected from biology
        • no polite vs. informal forms of "you" and rules to remember
        • loads of words, for subtle nuance and meaning

        ...and some less good bits:

        • loads of words, to confuse learners.
        • the spelling rules are the fever dream of a madman. Many words are distinguished by stress, which is not marked. Want to learn the language by reading it? Ha ha no. Also, loads and loads of vowel sounds compared to most languages.
        • massive reliance of "phrasal verbs", where the meaning can't be guessed from the parts. A "hang up" and a "hang over" have nothing to do with hanging and nothing to do with each other, despite up and over describing similar concepts
        • grammatical concepts that don't exist in other languages, like "do support" for forming questions or negating a statement. Mood and tense of a sentence might be difficult to parse for some learners as that's indicated by "trigger words" rather than anything more concrete
        • the native speakers do like to come out with some nonsense, too.
    • Alas no. Sur-rip-tish-yis-ly. Apparently you can blame Latin for sub + rapere = "secret snatch".

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