Is English restrictive?

[RepresentingWrath]

Continuing different writing discussions. This time, the topic is mostly directed towards people for whom English is the second, non-native language.

The theme is self-explanatory from the title of the thread. Do you find English language restricting when you write? How often do you need to change whatever you wanted to write because there is no English translation for a word or an idiom?

Personally, my vocabulary is small when it comes to Englsih. So I understand that partialy restrictions stem from my own lack of knowledge. I have to use dictionaries a lot. However, even though I use more than one, sometimes I just can't find the translation or a synonym for a word. Moreover in my native language I like rare, hard to translate words, and I like to use them a lot. So I do feel that English restricts me a bit. What about you?

 

[AnonUnlimited]

I've read enough forum posts to know where this is going...

 

[RepresentingPride]

I first write my story in my native language and then translate it to english, while I don't have a lot of vocabulary when it come to english, my chapter lose 100/200 words each time at the end of the translation with an averrage of 1,5k words. I tend to use grammarly to help me find different word to use to not be repetitive but sometime I'm just lost cause some word are not often used nowaday and since I'm self taught english mostly by playing online or reading manga/novel, I'm short on those uncommon word.

 

[Deleted member 54065]

Already got used in communicating in English (writing), but if you guys would notice, I always use 'awkward'/'inappropriate' words to tell what I mean, simply because I lack deeper understanding of it, and it's not the common language of the Philippine streets.

Is it restrictive for me? Maybe yes? But to others, I often get misunderstood or corrected, especially those who knew their English well.

 

[TheEldritchGod]

First, English isn't a language.
English is three languages standing on top of each other, inside a giant trenchcoat PRETENDING to be a language. It is the Unix of languages. It was kludged from kludges and hacked from hacks. The upside of English is that there are so many different ways to say the exact same thing that when it comes to being creative, you don't need to use the same word twice if you really don't want to. The downside is that it makes no sense.

We park in driveways and drive on parkways.
The Sozzled Pettifogger started Skriling causing a brouhaha in the Hoosgow.

If you want to paint pictures of the mind, English is the way to go. If you want to communicate clearly... not so much.

 

[avaseofpeonies]

Dude, I'm a native English speaker (and English writing was my college major) and I feel constantly restricted by this stupid language. To be fair, it's more this stupid culture, which is then reflected in the language. Try keeping your smut scenes beautiful and romantic without getting too gross about anything - that is stupidly hard to do in English with our cultural shame about sex. There are clinical terms (from Latin) or vulgarities. Why have nice words for something you're not supposed to talk about anyway? All I can do is euphemize, then hope I'm not getting too flowery with the euphemizing.

So I definitely sympathize with those of you trying to translate different cultural ideas (about any aspect of life, the universe, and everything) into English, and a lot of respect for it too. I can't speak a second language fluently enough to write a novel in it. Y'all are amazing.

 

[RepresentingPride]

Dude, I'm a native English speaker (and English writing was my college major) and I feel constantly restricted by this stupid language. To be fair, it's more this stupid culture, which is then reflected in the language. Try keeping your smut scenes beautiful and romantic without getting too gross about anything - that is stupidly hard to do in English with our cultural shame about sex. There are clinical terms (from Latin) or vulgarities. Why have nice words for something you're not supposed to talk about anyway? All I can do is euphemize, then hope I'm not getting too flowery with the euphemizing.

So I definitely sympathize with those of you trying to translate different cultural ideas (about any aspect of life, the universe, and everything) into English, and a lot of respect for it too. I can't speak a second language fluently enough to write a novel in it. Y'all are amazing.

You said the word "trying"

 

[Sola-sama]

English is easier than other language that I've learnt (even easier than my native), but it is very restrictive.

In Arabic, there's a different word for standing, which is 'standing from sitting' and 'standing from sprawling' (idk if sprawling is the correct word, what I meant was from sleeping posture). Due to the age of the language, a lot of words (specifically, english) actually stemmed/derived/adopted from Arabic. For example, (قطة) which read as qita or qitun is Arabic for cat. As you can see, it sounded almost similar with the word kitten (edit: or maybe the other way around, idk i'm not a linguist). It is actually the hardest language that I came across.

German is a bit better compared to Arabic. You can slap two or three words together to make up a new word. For example, the word 'kindergarten' is actually kinder (child) and garten (garden). Another example is the 'Panzerschreck', you can tell immediately that it is an anti-tank weapon since it 'schreck' (fright) a 'panzer' (tank). Due to its high similarity in terms of grammar with my native, I have better time learning German than Arabic.

I won't say too deeply for chinese since I've barely mastered a few pinyin and no way good enough to converse, the same true for japanese since kanji is a bitch, however, these two languages are significantly better than english.

 

[Zinless]

For me, the problem I have with English is my lack of verbs ready to be pulled out of my head whenever I'm writing something.

Sure, I understand "Perplexed", "Crumble", etc. But using them while writing is rare since my brain immediately jumps to using simpler words like "Confused", "Fall", etc.

Also, I tend to repeat my sentence structure in the same paragraph, making my story "repetitive" to read.

And, last but not least, my grammar sucks.

 

[SRB]

I can say with confidence that yes, it feels like someone trapped me in a box. In most cases, I write my novel/fanfics in English from the get-go, but Russian thoughts and words still sound in my head. It's uncomfortable.

Sometimes, I want to put my soul into the description of some significant moment or character, but I just can't. There are simply not enough words in English to describe everything. Although I admit, maybe it's just that I know far too little.

The simplest example for this I can give with swearing. In English, there is simply no equivalent of "Troepizdnaya shalopendra", although there may be something and it may be close enough, but these words won't feel the same.

For me, the problem I have with English is my lack of verbs ready to be pulled out of my head whenever I'm writing something.

Sure, I understand "Perplexed", "Crumble", etc. But using them while writing is rare since my brain immediately jumps to using simpler words like "Confused", "Fall", etc.

Also, I tend to repeat my sentence structure in the same paragraph, making my story "repetitive" to read.

And, last but not least, my grammar sucks.

? Totaly agree.

 

[Sola-sama]

"Troepizdnaya shalopendra"

I thought russian swearing only consist of cyka and blyat, or its variation, cyka mudak dermovoi. I have much to learn.

 

[SRB]

I thought russian swearing only consist of cyka and blyat, or its variation, cyka mudak dermovoi. I have much to learn.

Oh, you have no idea.
We have so much slang for genetals, we could use it to write a new bible, and all of them are considered to be swear words.

 

[AverageMaidLover]

Just to take a slightly different viewpoint on this topic, writing in English opens your story up to the highest amount of potential readers, since English it the most common first or second language in the world, and I'm sure there are an even higher amount that have at least a basic understanding of it.

As for feeling restricted, I sometimes find myself struggling to describe certain things, but I've started searching for synonyms online and I feel like that's helped out a lot. It also makes me feel fancy when I use big words.

 

[RobBanks]

English is easy enough to write for me. It is somewhat restrictive, though, in the sense that it's much harder to say something meaningful with little words like in my mother language.
Verbs (or at least their conjugations) all sound the same for many pronouns, so you always have to put one in front to ensure people know who/what you're directing the phrase at.

There are no proper honorifics for anything, and since stuff like 'thou' and 'My lord' became obsolete long ago, people in formal and informal situations refer to each other in almost exactly the same way. It feels like you can't transmit a sense of 'closeness' to someone you care about at times when you talk to them just the same as you'd talk to your boss, or even a stranger like the clerk down the street. Even worse, singular 'You' and plural 'You' are exactly the same, so once again, you need to specify beforehand in many cases.


TL;DR: Is it hard to write in? No. Is it an unpleasant language to read? Of course not, I enjoy it.

But I'll always have a bias for the tongue I grew up with and that has so many untransliterable words and terms and in general feels much more concrete to use to me.

And P.S. to the guy who decided 'being somewhere' and 'being someone' should use the exact same verb, YOU ARE A JACKASS.

 

[Cipiteca396]

I keep getting annoyed by certain things in English. I'd love to sit down and draw up a table that has all of the words that English is missing, so we can just make up new words to fill in the blanks.

It's just such a daunting task, thinking about actually going through with it stresses me out.

 

[SRB]

It's just such a daunting task, thinking about actually going through with it stresses me out.

As my father used to tell me: don't think, it gives you a headache.

 

[georgelee5786]

no

 

[Corty]

Yes and no.

Yes, I feel like I can convey my thoughts in 6 ways in my native tongue but only 3 ways in English. So I always find myself repeating certain words or expressions and I end up looking up the net for synonyms for the next 20 minutes.

On the other hand, it makes it easy to write in it and it makes it easy for many others to consume books who are also not native English speakers.

So, I’m not complaining.

 

[AliceShiki]

Tbh, I feel more comfortable writing in English than in my native language.

I dunno, I just feel like the text flows better in English? My writing in my native language just felt clunky when I tried it.

So... Well, I prefer writing in English~

 

[Lodur]

I never tried to write my own fiction in English (so far... but it's also applicable to my native language, with an exception of couple of dozen of poems). But I made few translations into English. I can't say, that it's restrictive in any field imaginable. Yes, it lacks some specific means for word formation we have in Russian. But it almost always can be expressed in other ways. Yes, for some single English words we can have up to 5-10 different words in Russian, that are synonyms or partial synonyms. But the opposite is also true, and occurs with approximately the same frequency. Very rigid word order in English can make a lot of difficulties for people, whose native languages allow free (actually, in most cases pseudo-free) word order. But it simply requires training a habit, no more, no less.
What have I missed? If I'll recollect something else, I'll write later.