Is English A Difficult Language?

Yes, probably if you know your own language and its rules and things, and it's quite an elaborate one, then you'll probably find English a breeze. If you're English and you are taught the few rules there are (which is already not a given these days apparently), you'll probably find any other language very difficult.

That said, I think English is often only mistaken for being easy. The trap to me is in the surface. The surface is very easy, learners can express themselves adequately and rightly fairly quickly and so they think they know 'English'. Not so in French or German (that's the ones I know). Apart from the tenses and maybe when to use 'will' and 'going to' for the future, there is not much to remember. Everything comes fairly naturally. And no-one even seems to mind you are using the present perfect with 'yesterday'. Yesterday, I have gone to the shop. Do that in any other language and you'll drop down a level in the eyes of your audience...
But the deeper you go in English, the worse it gets. You've got remnants of inversion, you've got incredible amounts of phrasal verbs, you've got subjunctive, preposition at the end or not (it seems to be mainly a question of register), not to mention the vast amounts of vocab which will express exactly down to a tee what you actually want to say... And all these things they never teach, because there are no real rules for those.
And then if you know these things, for everything to sound absolutely natural, you'll just need feeling.

So you can have a situation where you can have a perfect conversation in a shop, read the newspaper, no problem and then you'll try and do something out of that level, and boom, you know nothing.

Hmm, maybe not difficult then, but treacherous. :D

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Originally Posted by lichtrausch

I don't know if this has already been said, but the greatest determinant of the difficulty of other languages is your native language. If your native language is Cantonese, you will find Mandarin relatively easy to learn. If your native language is Kurdish, you will find Persian relatively easy to learn. And so on.

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I agree that it is very difficult to stop thinking in your native language. We learn much easier things that are similar to ones we already know.

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Originally Posted by kiki1982

Yes, probably if you know your own language and its rules and things, and it's quite an elaborate one, then you'll probably find English a breeze. If you're English and you are taught the few rules there are (which is already not a given these days apparently), you'll probably find any other language very difficult.

That said, I think English is often only mistaken for being easy. The trap to me is in the surface. The surface is very easy, learners can express themselves adequately and rightly fairly quickly and so they think they know 'English'. Not so in French or German (that's the ones I know). Apart from the tenses and maybe when to use 'will' and 'going to' for the future, there is not much to remember. Everything comes fairly naturally. And no-one even seems to mind you are using the present perfect with 'yesterday'. Yesterday, I have gone to the shop. Do that in any other language and you'll drop down a level in the eyes of your audience...
But the deeper you go in English, the worse it gets. You've got remnants of inversion, you've got incredible amounts of phrasal verbs, you've got subjunctive, preposition at the end or not (it seems to be mainly a question of register), not to mention the vast amounts of vocab which will express exactly down to a tee what you actually want to say... And all these things they never teach, because there are no real rules for those.
And then if you know these things, for everything to sound absolutely natural, you'll just need feeling.

So you can have a situation where you can have a perfect conversation in a shop, read the newspaper, no problem and then you'll try and do something out of that level, and boom, you know nothing.

Hmm, maybe not difficult then, but treacherous. :D

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I have already gone into subjunctive, unreal tenses and so on and I have to admit that despite the fact that such things don`t exist in Polish, it wasn`t such adifficult things I thought earlier. I am sure that I still will commit mistakes, maybe not so big ones but I`ll.

But thanks to very funny, a little bit strange differences between constructions and forms, english is very interesting language.

OK, English grammer is technically easier than many as it has less alterations of word endings.

But how do you work out the subtle differences between I walk, I am walking, I do walk, all versions of the present tense, which as far as I know will only be in one form in other languages?

And how do you know when the use the Latinate form or a word (altitude) and the Germanic (height)?

And the different nuances of beautiful, pretty, handsome and good looking?

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But how do you work out the subtle differences between I walk, I am walking, I do walk, all versions of the present tense, which as far as I know will only be in one form in other languages?

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Such differences are always explained in English textbooks. :)

Background: half chinese half english, living in hk. My first languages are English and Cantonese, and I also know Mandarin. I've been learning Spanish for 6 years, French for 1.

I didn't realise till recently that people had such an issue with English pronunciation. I can't comment on learning English as I mainly picked it up from reading books, watching tv, and speaking to my parents. I was always ahead of my local chinese classmates so I didn't pay attention when my teachers taught grammar.
I must say though, that Chinese is terribly difficult.
Imagine not having an alphabet, having to memorise a few thousand complicated characters. (We learn traditional, not simplified.chinese)
There are almost no clues as to how the word is pronounced.
Worse still, there are.two kinds of Chinese, formal and informal. Spoken Cantonese is significantly.different from written Chinese.
In the chinese language public exams, we.even have to do unseen comprehension test on ancient texts which make.no sense to modern readers whatsoever. You find chaucer hard? We have to read texts from more than 2000 years ago. And that's not even the literature paper, but just the compulsory chinese language paper. But at least the grammar is simple.
However, at the end of the day, I'm really glad that I have access to a wealth of Chinese literature. :)


Btw, I've always wondered: how does English sound to foreign ears?

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Originally Posted by seaofmilktea

Background: half chinese half english, living in hk. My first languages are English and Cantonese, and I also know Mandarin. I've been learning Spanish for 6 years, French for 1.

I didn't realise till recently that people had such an issue with English pronunciation. I can't comment on learning English as I mainly picked it up from reading books, watching tv, and speaking to my parents. I was always ahead of my local chinese classmates so I didn't pay attention when my teachers taught grammar.
I must say though, that Chinese is terribly difficult.
Imagine not having an alphabet, having to memorise a few thousand complicated characters. (We learn traditional, not simplified.chinese)
There are almost no clues as to how the word is pronounced.
Worse still, there are.two kinds of Chinese, formal and informal. Spoken Cantonese is significantly.different from written Chinese.
In the chinese language public exams, we.even have to do unseen comprehension test on ancient texts which make.no sense to modern readers whatsoever. You find chaucer hard? We have to read texts from more than 2000 years ago. And that's not even the literature paper, but just the compulsory chinese language paper. But at least the grammar is simple.
However, at the end of the day, I'm really glad that I have access to a wealth of Chinese literature. :)


Btw, I've always wondered: how does English sound to foreign ears?

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Chinese and Japanese are for me impossible to learn:) I mean, by me. One of my husband`s friends studies Chinese in China what is for me completely astonishing. First of all the alphabeth is very difficult. I heard that Chinese doesn`t distinguish nouns, verbs and so on. Is it true?

Haha, pronunciation, that's a good one :lol:.

I always say that if you want to pronounce English properly, you can't move your mouth at all. Being a Dutch speaker I do (I can imagine how difficult Germans find it). After about 13 years I have now mastered the shwa, and I feel I move my mouth differently, but still it's no good. Mind you, I can do it, if I put my mind to it, but it doesn't sound like me. I guess I'll have to read aloud a bit more, then it'll be alright (acquired a nice accent in French like that).

You can actually express many of the small nuances in English in other languages, but it's usually done with adverbs like really or something.
As to Latinate words, some are explained in text book, but only to a certain level. I mean altitude and height have a different meaning, but how can you explain to liberate and to free?

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Originally Posted by kiki1982

Haha, pronunciation, that's a good one :lol:.

I always say that if you want to pronounce English properly, you can't move your mouth at all. Being a Dutch speaker I do (I can imagine how difficult Germans find it). After about 13 years I have now mastered the shwa, and I feel I move my mouth differently, but still it's no good. Mind you, I can do it, if I put my mind to it, but it doesn't sound like me. I guess I'll have to read aloud a bit more, then it'll be alright (acquired a nice accent in French like that).

You can actually express many of the small nuances in English in other languages, but it's usually done with adverbs like really or something.
As to Latinate words, some are explained in text book, but only to a certain level. I mean altitude and height have a different meaning, but how can you explain to liberate and to free?

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Sometimes it seems to me that I won`t be able to learn hearing accent. I can learn by heart the rules but it`s all:)

I am a native Spanish speaker but I prefer English. English has more, what should I call them, "tools" to work with which help give freer rein to the imagination. I don't think English is difficult to learn but I learned it young. Any language can be difficult if you try to learn it when you are older and you didn't learn a second language when you were young. I studied French in college and didn't find it difficult perhaps because its structure is so similar to Spanish and there are so many cognitives in the three languages. I found the most difficult part of learning French to be understanding the run-on sound of the spoken language. If your native language has no cognitives with English and the grammatical structure is completely different then you will find English much more difficult. I noticed this when I tried to learn Japanese.

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Originally Posted by papillondemai

I am a native Spanish speaker but I prefer English. English has more, what should I call them, "tools" to work with which help give freer rein to the imagination. I don't think English is difficult to learn but I learned it young. Any language can be difficult if you try to learn it when you are older and you didn't learn a second language when you were young. I studied French in college and didn't find it difficult perhaps because its structure is so similar to Spanish and there are so many cognitives in the three languages. I found the most difficult part of learning French to be understanding the run-on sound of the spoken language. If your native language has no cognitives with English and the grammatical structure is completely different then you will find English much more difficult. I noticed this when I tried to learn Japanese.

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Despite English, I really love Spanish:) However few years ago I had a serious problem with subjuntivo. My native language is Polish and we don`t have such contruction. If yopu are interested, I can give you a link to my texts written in Spanish. I hope that I don`t make many mistakes.

Hannah:

Yes I'd like to read some of your Spanish work. I do not know anything about Polish except that it is a Slavic language. I have always thought of Slavic languages as being far removed from Spanish in regard to the elements necessary to learn it, i.e., grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation. Is there any similarity at all? How did you develop a love for Spanish? Were you a language major in college? I studied French primarily so I could read Rimbaud in French. Mistakes? I bet you write Spanish better than I do. Native Spanish speakers that grow up in the U.S. get most of the Spanish beat out of them unless they stay in a Spanish speaking community such as Miami. You can live in Miami now and never have to speak English.

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Originally Posted by papillondemai

Hannah:

Yes I'd like to read some of your Spanish work. I do not know anything about Polish except that it is a Slavic language. I have always thought of Slavic languages as being far removed from Spanish in regard to the elements necessary to learn it, i.e., grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation. Is there any similarity at all? How did you develop a love for Spanish? Were you a language major in college? I studied French primarily so I could read Rimbaud in French. Mistakes? I bet you write Spanish better than I do. Native Spanish speakers that grow up in the U.S. get most of the Spanish beat out of them unless they stay in a Spanish speaking community such as Miami. You can live in Miami now and never have to speak English.

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I am sending you link in a PM:) Slavic Languages are very remote from Spanish, French or English. We don`t have such construction as subjuntivo for example. There is only 1 verb meaning "to be". Conditional Clauses aren`t so complicated. However Polish has cases which is quite difficult.

I learned French at school (well I didn`t have then English). Then, at secondary school, I had German (still without English). I graduated from Polish Philology and now I am studying english Philology.

The issue of languages in USA is very interesting. In Poland you can only use Polish but there places inhabited by Germans, Lithuanians or Ucrainians.

Well sometimes words are specifically nouns or verbs etc, but sometimes the same word can be used as a noun or a.verb, especially in archaic chinese. It depends on context. Modern Chinese uses a lot of word compounds, for example 'butter' would be a two character compound: 'cow oil'. So the idea of a 'word' is a little different. I'm not a linguist so I don't know what the proper terms are used to describe the language!

We don't really have an alphabet. There is a Pinyin system for foreigners to know how to pronounce words, but actual written chinese has a unique way of writing each character, so unlike european languages, it is extremely difficult to guess how a word is pronounced by looking it. Most foreigners don't bother to learn how to read and write the language, which is perfectly understandable! Your husband's friend seems to be pretty amazing - even the Chinese find Chinese difficult. If he/she can learn Chinese, maybe I should try Russian? :D

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Originally Posted by seaofmilktea

Well sometimes words are specifically nouns or verbs etc, but sometimes the same word can be used as a noun or a.verb, especially in archaic chinese. It depends on context. Modern Chinese uses a lot of word compounds, for example 'butter' would be a two character compound: 'cow oil'. So the idea of a 'word' is a little different. I'm not a linguist so I don't know what the proper terms are used to describe the language!

We don't really have an alphabet. There is a Pinyin system for foreigners to know how to pronounce words, but actual written chinese has a unique way of writing each character, so unlike european languages, it is extremely difficult to guess how a word is pronounced by looking it. Most foreigners don't bother to learn how to read and write the language, which is perfectly understandable! Your husband's friend seems to be pretty amazing - even the Chinese find Chinese difficult. If he/she can learn Chinese, maybe I should try Russian? :D

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I have learnt Russian alphabeth:) It`s not so bad:D

I think that he can speak Chinese quite well. It is amazing the way Chinese use their language. I wouldn`t be able to learn it.