English grammar is not straightforward, from a Ukranian English teacher (opens in new tab)

As a native Polish speaker I prefer English in many ways. One of the complaints about English listed in TFA is that the words are shorter than in Slavic languages. That’s actually one of my favourite things about English: words evolve to be shorter the more they’re used. This makes the language as it’s used more lean, more practical.

In comparison, in Polish the most trivial things often have elaborate names. Ironically, one of the words that irks me in that department is borrowed from English (or French more likely): the plural form of “photographer”. In English the singular form is in my opinion on the verge between comfortable and uncomfortable to use when used a lot. In English however the plural form has the same number of syllables as the singular form, so it’s still relatively comfortable. In Polish on thr other hand the plural form adds two full syllables (fotograf (3) -> fotografowie (5)), which pushes it over the edge into the land of unwieldy when used frequently. In this case I think Polish should invent its own word that is more consistent with names for other artistic professions, is shorter and leaner: “fotarz” after “malarz” (painter), with cases and all other grammatical quirks made analogous to those of “malarz”. And then the plural form adds just 1 syllable (ending up with 3): “fotarze”.

The article thing really resonates as someone with a Russian SO. It's probably the thing I correct most in her English. First she just omitted them, now she'll use the wrong one about 10-30% of the time.

It's interesting to read such a well articulated explanation about how it requires accepting a new reality.

> no alveolar consonants at all in the Slavic languages

That is a very strong claim... It's only true if you squint at it just right. You'd have to consider velars not to be consonants, since all Slavic languages have [n] to my knowledge, or perhaps give undue weight to a language's allophones (which tend not to be semantically meaningful). And you'd have to consider "alveolar" to mean only "strictly alveolar in the standard dialect," excluding consonants that are palatal-alveolar or post-alveolar in the standard dialect and making no allowance for regional accents or idiolects.

A thing that no one told me until I was fluent in spoken English, is that while it has 5 vowel symbols, it has some 25 vowel sounds, and there is no good way to know from a written word to know how to pronounce it.

And then there's British English, where pronunciation of words like "margarine", "Greenwich", "Frome" or "Gloucester" makes no logical sense at all. I know the history behind the pronunciation, but it is silly to write it one way and pronounce it another.

I guess I am too Latin for this barbaric language.

I learned more about English grammar in two years (four semesters) of Russian in college than in my entire k-12 education.

French is a mess with some competlely useless form like gender for things, feelings...

The use of articles in English is an absolute horror.

Unlike, say, in French where articles are 100% required, in English they are usually required, but not always. It's this ambiguity that is infuriating, especially because not a single native speaker can quantify it. "It just sounds better without" tends to be the best they can do.

One thing that helps is that having more articles than needed seems to be less annoying to native speakers than having too few. So when in doubt just sprinkle the shit out of them and pray for the best.