To a first approximation(see note) all natural languages have similar complexity, it just comes out in different parts of the language. Languages with fewer moods make up for it with synonymous constructions that use more words.

(note) linguists argue about this just like they argue about everything else, but it is the safer assumption for non-linguists.

I wonder if anybody who’s learned English would be willing to share some bits they found unusual or unique?

A few things—articles in English (the, a) are subtle as hell and extremely difficult to use correctly if you're not a native speaker.

The way you can verb any noun is super interesting and productive.

And having to memorize the idiomatic different meanings of a billion verb + preposition combinations (take up, take down, take over, take in, take away, take on) is a real treat for learners.

The takeaway is: take down “take in.”

> articles in English (the, a) are subtle as hell and extremely difficult to use correctly if you're not a native speaker.

Found the Slavic speaker ;)

The/A construction is similar in most Latin languages.

Absolutely agree on the other two features though. It’s kinda crazy and I have no idea how I actually learned those things… they just “happened” into my head. (I’m not a native speaker)

Articles exist in Romance languages, that’s true, but they are subtly different. You usually wouldn’t say “the Tuesday” in English but you would often say “el martes” in Spanish; “tennis” vs “el tenis”; “I don’t have a car” vs “no tengo coche” and so on.

My Korean tutor said the same thing about “the”. I said “doesn't it just mean there is only one instance?" and he replied "the police".

For the benefit of other folks wanting to follow up the "take off" thing: it's called a "phrasal verb".

Turkish doesn't have article(s) and "the" is usually very confusing when you first start. But then I learned German too...

How does Turkish handle addressing something like ‘the police’ in sentence structure? (without using anything similar to ‘the’)

e.g. ‘The police force has expanded recently in this city.’

‘Police force has expanded recently in this city.’

Nothing. "Polis (police), son (latest) zamanlarda (times, at) bu (this) şehirde (city, within) faaliyetlerini (operations) arttırdı (increased)."

If I'm talking about a specific police officer, then I'd use "o", which means he/she/it/that.

O geldi -> he/she/it/that arrived.

O polis geldi -> that police arrived.

Ona polis geldi -> police arrived to him/her (his/her place).

polis geldi -> the police (has) arrived.

O bahsettiğin polis geldi -> The police officer you were talking about (has) arrived.

How do you differentiate between the abstract concept of police, the concept of police forces as an organizational unit, and the specific police force that exists within a specific city?

If I understood you correctly, you just name them. The default is the concept, and most of the time people do not feel the need to separate some specific police force, because it's apparent from the context. Some specific police force aren't likely to expand their operations in the city.

On the other hand, I think I may also be failing to explain this correctly because we are already at the limits of my English :)

Thanks, but you don’t need to explain how if you’re unsure.

If you can just write one example in Turkish, of each case, so three total, most readers can probably puzzle it out with enough time using translation tools.

Abstract Concept of Police (e.g., law enforcement in general):

> Polis, toplumun güvenliğini sağlamakla görevlidir.

> (Police are responsible for maintaining public safety.)

Police Force as an Organizational Unit:

> Bu şehirdeki polis teşkilatı faaliyetlerini arttırdı.

> (The police force in this city has expanded its operations.)

Specific Police Force Within a Specific City:

> İstanbul polisi son zamanlarda çok aktif.

> (The Istanbul police have been very active lately.)

> Bu şehirdeki polis teşkilatı faaliyetlerini arttırdı.

Interestingly the -ki suffix here was borrowed from Persian (another Indo-European language like English), and effectively highlights a unique instance - "the one which" - in a way that Turkish otherwise doesn't specifically do.

No, the Persian ki is the conjunction (Polis teşkilatı faaliyetlerini arttırdı ki, hırsızlık azalsın), not the possessive suffix (-ki).

Sources: Me being a native speaker and also: Turkish Grammar (Oxford 2nd ed. 2001), Geoffrey Lewis. Pages 69 and 211 (Just checked to be sure).

(Note: not a Turkish speaker, but the other language without the articles)

You don't need most of the time because it's evident from the context without any ambiguity.

You also need to know what English is quite lacking in the declension and inflection departments which do the heavy lifting in the other languages and often eliminate the need for a separate article words.

Ah, yes, many languages do not need to specifically distinguish between 'police' and 'police force'.

Turkish, in comparison to English, is a language that is less lexically dense. So in this instance; you don't really need to specify anything; but that also means a lot of sentences _get longer due to said lack of lexical density requiring more words to be used, for clarity's sake and / or heavier reliance on context_. Which follows the cultural lines quite well - Turkish culture is a _high context culture_ whereas English culture is not (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-context_and_low-context_c...).

The high-context culture would seem to be an adaption to the lower lexical density, if that’s the case?

e.g. to save on space, paper, writing effort, etc…, Turkish writers have to rely on the reader reading in-between the lines to a greater extent than a similar English writer would in a similar position.

And after many generations of writers competing, it simply became the default norm.

Hypothetically it could be; but it is anyone’s guess frankly.

Most likely it is multi variate in the end; as it is quite a broad thing.

Five different "the"s, three different "of"s, two different "from"s, six different "a"s.

I have an ESL colleague (who speaks fantastic English) and she has repeatedly ask me to spellcheck important documents because she is concerned she will "mess up the articles".

After she said it, I realized the incredible subtlety in communication that can be expressed by the position/omission of key articles.

I've always been taught that "the" is for when there's a single obvious instance you're talking about. There are many policemen and women, but if I say "the police" there's only really one likely candidate which I could be talking about.

"A man" is just some guy. If I say "The man" there's a specific guy I'm talking about and I expect you to know which one.

Did you know dutch has two words for "the"? One is generally for big or important things and the other for small or unimportant things. I'm sure people trying to learn Dutch love figuring out which you use when.

Not only all the phrasal verbs, but that there is no parallelism across usage. Take up, take down, take off versus break up, break down, break off. Knowing the meaning of some of those doesn't really shed light on the meaning of any others.

Pronunciation bears little relation to how words are written. For the longest time I thought I knew how to pronounce Greenwich, because I knew how to pronounce ‘green’ and ‘sandwich’. (Or things like advertising vs. advertisement, etc.) I saw a joke somewhere that western people think Chinese must be difficult because you have to memorize the pronunciation of so many symbols, but English is no different.

idlewords mentioned some good ones. While English doesn't have many moods, it still has relatively many verb forms (just take a look at past tenses: I ate, I've eaten, I had eaten, I was eating, I have been eating, I had been eating...). In most contexts, only one of them is idiomatic, and knowing which one takes a lot of studying. Also, English has a fixed order for adjectives [1]. AFAIK, this is unusual cross-linguistically - at least in my native language, "big red ball" and "red big ball" would both be idiomatic. If you're really curious, you can take a look at the contents of an English grammar for advanced learners. What gets a lot of chapters, probably trips up a lot of learners. [2]

[1] https://www.espressoenglish.net/order-of-adjectives-in-engli... [2] https://assets.cambridge.org/97811076/99892/frontmatter/9781...