That's true. I now got it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Goodfella
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That's true. I now got it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Goodfella
I make spelling mistakes beacuse of the way i talk, i have a cockney accent, i suppose. Well at least it's my excuse :D
I'm a native English speaker, and thus it is my mother tongue, but I was also brought up speaking French as a second language. One thing I have learned about both tongues is that there are millions of exceptions to the grammatical rules of both languages! And, the exceptions have exceptions! haha
Wow. You guys are crazy. As an American who has spoken English all my life, and speaks it better than most people I know, I can't believe you all say it's an easy language. In my opinion, it is an INCREDIBLY difficult language to learn. And why? Because it is one of the most complex languages there is. I took some spanish in high school and have had exposure to Italian due to my ancestory and those languages are easy because the rules are straight forward and simple. But English has an incredible amount of rules and stipulations and the language doesn't even always follow those rules; there are an enormous number of exceptions. All these rules like i before e excpet after c and yet, look at words like science, policies, consciece, etc. Boatloads of similar, often misused words like affet/effect, between/among, lie/lay, etc. I saw a Gallagher skit once where he compared a bunch of words and how they sound and are spelled. Look at words like comb, tomb, bomb. All spelled the same except for the root letter, all sound different. Comb, home, roam. All sound the same, all spelled different. It seems easy to those who have spoken it all our lives, but I don't buy the notion for one second that this as an easy language. It is, in fact, one of the hardest.
:lol: I can't believe you used that as an example.Quote:
Originally Posted by metal134
You Americans are sometimes really unbelievable...Your language is the most difficult, your literature is the best, your culture is the greatest etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by metal134
You think Spanish or any other language is easy? Ask Cervantes what does he think about your Spanish...I think(and my friends and my teacher and some tourists:D ) that my English is very good, but when I had a discussion with Mono, I needed dictionary, every third or fourth word he used was totally unknown to me! So I guess it's not that good.
Every language has many exceptions, if you don't know them; that doesn't mean they do not exist.
I cannot offer but an answer based on personal experience, which might differ slightly or greatly from the experiences of other individuals; the question in itself, of course, cannot be answered objectively.
To me, English was the easiest foreign language to learn. That can be due to many factors - the fact that I started to study English at the age of four, and thus grew up with it; the fact that, because of its international role, English has been very present around and I have had constant exposure to it through the media; or the fact that I have been using it myself a lot since I was a child as my preferred language for reading, personal correspondence, etc. In fact, I do not recall "studying" English - my command of it grew through the years, and I always somehow "knew" it; English was probably not easy due to its structure, but due to exposure and usage - I mastered it as my own language and it is hard for me to view it as "foreign" language.
However, if I were asked to compare the structure of English with the structure of other languages I have studied, there would be a couple of points worth considering.
To start with, morphology - or lack thereof. Compared to any other language I can speak - especially compared to my native Slavic ones or to classical ones - English is a language with practically no morphology to speak of; its words cannot be altered and thus their meanings nuanced in the way Russian language permits it, nor do its verbs have large number of possible forms with multiple endings that must be learnt, as in the case of Ancient Greek; due to its certain lack of complex morphology, English relies to syntax a lot - which, to speak frankly, limits the possibilities of poetic expression quite a bit.
Secondly, the question of vocabulary. English is, without a doubt, rich in vocabulary - but how much of that vocabulary is Anglo-Saxon in origin? Roughly 70% [the source is vague in my head, but I have actually read it somewhere] of the modern English vocabulary is Latin-based and acquired via French, with smaller percentages of words from other languages, and thus is modern English vocabulary - for a language which considers itself to be Germanic - one huge mess, and a great discount for learners whose native languages are the Romance ones, especially when one is past the basics [the very basic everyday words in English tend to be of Germanic origin]. Therefore, I would say that English is only moderately difficult in terms of vocabulary for a learner whose objective is not to read authors such as Milton or Shakespeare.
The orthography is, perhaps, the only area in which I would dare to say that English is difficult, because its illogical spelling is the hardest out of all the languages I can speak. Speaking honestly, though, one gets used to all the oddities of the languages one studies, and even though the spelling is messy, its difficulty is still, in my humble opinion, overrated, especially in times like this, when English is everywhere and when it is easier than ever for one to visually get used to the English orthography.
From the acoustic point of view, English is relatively easy to pronounce, its pronunciation is not as "clear" in some languages, but it is not difficult to copy as the sounds English employs are to be found in other languages as well and for the speakers of European languages, it can have a couple of unknown sounds.
Overall, it all depends on what was one's native language, how exposed one is to English, at what age one has started to study it, and how motivated one is at all to learn it. English was not close to my native languages, but I had all the other elements filled - therefore, English was a piece of cake to me, and easier to acquire than languages stereotypically viewed to be "easy", such as Italian [which I started to study at somewhat older age].
I'm Italian and study English, German and Spanish. In my opinion English is not that simple if compared to the other languages I study, I mean, its rules (especially those concerning tenses) are not as specific and strict as the German ones and I still have some difficulties.
To be honest, I'm better at English than I am at German and Spanish, probably because it's the language I like the most, but my classmates find it much harder....
Now, being italian, I tend to have the classical Italian accent while speaking, so I can say that pronunciation is my great problem, but despite this fact, I like speaking in front of people in English (with my teacher, at MUN sessions, when I travel abroad..) and believe this is one of the most important ways to improve one's skills.
It keeps one on one's toes.Quote:
Originally Posted by srpbritlit
Exactly. I'm not saying that english is hard to boost my culture's ego (I do not think America has the best music, movies, or literature (although Faulkner and Steinbeck make a strong tandum)). But having studied Spanish and a little Italian, I have seen how simple the rules are, how few of them there are and how strictly the language adheres to those rules. English has many ruloes, many of which don't even make sense and there are so many deviations from the rule that it can be confusing as hell. Having spoken to people who speak English as a second language, or have mastered a foriegn language, they all tell me that languages like Spanish and Italian easy to learn when compared to english. All of my foriegn language and forigen culture teachers have been universal in the sentiment that English is one of the hardest languages to learn next to Chinese.Quote:
Originally Posted by Silvia
Chinese? Yeah, I do think so, they have so many words when all they have to say is "I think I'm good at this" and it takes so long for them to speak it out. English isn't hard to understand. If you don't want to learn nit, it will be hard to understand, but if you want to, everything comes in handy. :p
I agree with what you say about English, but, to be honest, I don't find both Italian and Spanish simple languages.In my opinion, the rules are not that simple, the verbs have LOTS of irregularities, and one of the things I love about Italian is that it is a very "free" language, for example you can change the order of a sentence so many times and the meaning will still be the same.Spanish has a lot of similarities with Italian (even though they differ a lot from each other), and I think that's why I find it so hard to learn.....Quote:
Posted by meta134
Exactly. I'm not saying that english is hard to boost my culture's ego (I do not think America has the best music, movies, or literature (although Faulkner and Steinbeck make a strong tandum)). But having studied Spanish and a little Italian, I have seen how simple the rules are, how few of them there are and how strictly the language adheres to those rules. English has many ruloes, many of which don't even make sense and there are so many deviations from the rule that it can be confusing as hell. Having spoken to people who speak English as a second language, or have mastered a foriegn language, they all tell me that languages like Spanish and Italian easy to learn when compared to english. All of my foriegn language and forigen culture teachers have been universal in the sentiment that English is one of the hardest languages to learn next to Chinese.
I agree Silvia, i also speak Italian and even though it wasn't so difficult to learn, the language has certain impediments when it comes to verb conjugation.
English has many rules indeed but because we are surrounded by music, movies, ads, all in english it became somehow easier and more familiar than any other language. I studyed english grammar in univeristy and it was very difficult but still it was a language that i managed to learn fast and easy enough.
English is a very simple language grammatically. In fact, as far as languages go in the world, to my knowledge, only Chinese has a simpler grammaratical structure, so learning grammar in English is easy, same with Chinese. There may be a lot of irregularities in English, but that comes with any language (except Chinese, which I understand has nearly no exceptions. Japanese is similiar). If you want to see real exceptions to rules, look at Arabic. English grammar has no complexity and an extreme amount of regularity when compared with Arabic.
The truth is, there is no 'easiest' language in the world to learn. You saw me mention Chinese is an easy language to learn grammatically, and it is, but understanding it is much more difficult to a Westerner because the tonal and cultural structures of the language are so radically different form our own. Take Japanese as an example, it is another extremely simple language, but tough for a Westerner to learn for syntactical and cultural reasons, but to a Korean Japanese is a lot easier to learn, ridiculously easy, in fact, just as Spanish is easy for a Frenchman to learn, but may be nearly incomprehensible and extraordinarily difficult for, say, an Arab or an African.
Language learning doesn't depend on 'how hard' a language is, but rather what other language(s) you know and how you personally think and organize information on your own. Some languages are easy for one person, but ineffibly difficult for another, it all depends.
SheykAbdullah, I think you are a linguistic, are you not? I see you above talking of English, first, then Chineese, Japaneese, at al.
I think the English grammar is ridicolously easy... simple verb conjugation, simple way to form plurals, no plural form of adjectives... etc. However, it's difficult to master the little nuances perfectly. But I don't think this is the reason why it's easy to spot non-natives (as was asked in the first post) ...it's simply because most of us are not exposed to English enough in our daily lives (well I live in the UK now but before that my only contact with English was on forums. (and music of course). It would be the same for any language.Quote:
Originally Posted by Silvia
(as for Spanish and Italian, I have never studied Spanish but it seems so easy, if they speak slowly I can understand and I can make myself understood if needed... if only I wasn't too lazy to take a serious look at the grammar... :sick: )
Muhsin, yes I am a linguist. Just out of curiosity, what is your native language(s)?Quote:
Originally Posted by muhsin
Oh sorry, linguist. Not as I wrote it.:thumbs_up :bawling:Quote:
Originally Posted by SheykAbdullah
And my native language is an African language, which I can flatly say one of the most spoken language nowadays in West African continent.Its called Hausa. But I again undersatand very few Arabic words or rather expressions/sentences. This I learned from my religious studies. And also English,as you can figure.
I'm and Egyptian girl, who studied English her entire life, and still studying English and American Literature in university now. For me, English is not that hard, I mean compared to Arabic, for example, English is a piece of cake. And ever compared to French, English is WAY easier than French. I don't agree that English is complex,not at all, it's very simple and more practical that many languages. I mean, look at the French grammar and the English grammar and you'll know what I'm talking about.
For me, English is difficult, but not as much as German, or Russian.
But still, there are few things that make it really hard for me to learn it:
1. spelling and pronunciation - when you see English word, you can neve be 100% sure how to pronounce it and vice versa.
2. strange syntax. Which is why my written English is so poor. I try to think in English, but if the subject is more difficult and complicated (e.g. literature :)) it's impossible. So I write my Slovak sentences in English... and only when I read it afterwards, I see how unnaturaly it sounds. Somehow, it's easier for me to speak in English, than write.
3. morphology - in Slovak, words have suffixes which make the meaning absolutely clear. In English, words are just standing next to each other and sometimes it's really difficult to guess the meaning of whole sentence (especially in professional or business texts).
4. grammar - things like future perfect continuous! It's almost impossible to remember all those tenses and when different situations where they must, can or can't be used.
So... now I look at it... it's almost everything... Oh well. I can only hope my English will improve one day. :D
Hey, if you had written "I can only hope my English will HAVE improved one day" you would have captured "future present continuous" :D
But honestly, all those extra-complicated tenses don't matter a whole lot as long as you have your vocabulary worked out.
English is pretty easy COMPARED TO Chinese or even Russian, as people said. Considering the fact verbs and adjectives don't modify themselves according to plural or gender, or the fact you don't have to stress certain parts of the word to make it intelligible, AND the fact it's the most popular TV language and internet language... I'd say that it's pretty easy to acquire.
Since the basic tenses are so simple (and even pronunciation IMO), English is less about grammar-focus and much more about vocabulary at the end.
I agree, English isn't very difficult, the grammar is quite simple. Yet English can describe very many feelings and things in general, you can say things in very many ways in English.
But maybe I just think English is easy because I read English books and watch a lot of English films and series.
Is English a difficult language? Let's take the word ROUGH...pronounced...RUFF...Now take the word...Rough...and put a TH in front of it...THROUGH...And a simple word like SAW has two different meanings...I think you get my point...
I'm a native English speaker and I'm currently learning the indigenous language of my country (Maori) so I guess I'm finally finding out what it's like to have the shoe on the other foot, and be speaking in a language I'm unsure of.
In my country, one of our main problems with education and language is that we are a very multicultural country and therefore we have a lot of immigrants who don't speak English or are just beginning to learn. This is not the problem though.
The problem is, that a lot of these immigrants think that English is the only useful language, so they choose to speak to their children only in English and don't teach them their native tongue. Often, the English of the parents is not very good, so instead of their children being able to speak good Samoan (or Hindi or Cantonese or Arabic etc etc), they wind up having NO language with which they speak confidently enough to express themselves in. This in turn makes it incredibly hard for them to learn any other languages in the future.
I think that the most important thing in learning any language, is to first have a "native" language (whether it is the language of your ancestors or not) that you are really truly fluent in. Only then will you have the ability to be able to express yourself clearly in any other languages.
I realize that it is still a hard thing to learn a second (or third or fourth) language. I find it hard every day. But I feel blessed that I can express myself in English, and hope for the day when I am just as fluent in Maori.
By the way, everyone on this forum seems to be very confident and understandable (even if the grammar isn't always 100%) so well done if it's not your first language!!! I know I sound really awful when I speak Maori.
I wonder if the problems I've described apply to any of your countries??
Aunty-lion
Yes, it's not a perfectly phonemic language, however compared to French... ooof.Quote:
Originally Posted by JackShea
As far as one word having different meanings....come on, that goes for every language. It's all about comparison, so whenever you think English is "rough", consider comparing it to other languages....
Yes... but that's exactly my problem - while I know teoretically when and how to use it and always get A on exam, in real life, when I don't know that I am tested in future perfect and I don't focus on it, I never remember it even exists. :D For me, it's natural that words are modified according to gender or plural. The fact that in English it's not so, is one of the reasons I think it's difficult. But I guess everyone considers his own language to be easy and other languages to be much more difficult.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fango
And I'm quite suspicious about "vocabulary without grammar". What's the point of knowing many words, if you don't know how they work together, how to put them into sentence. I tried to learn English without grammar and it was nonsense. I like learning grammar, although it's difficult.
But I must say, I only begin to like it when I came to university and we begin to study from normal grammar books (e.g. Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English). All those coursebooks, or grammar books like Murphy's Grammar are confusing, unsystematicall, never really explaining anything. Duiring all these years, I had been studying from about 20 different coursebooks and grammarbooks, and they were all completely same - nice pictures, maybe even interesting articles, but as for grammar, it was just mentioned, never properly explained.
I don't think English is a difficult language. I gradually learned English from cartoons, TV, and all that jazz, though that doesn't say much, because it's a proven fact that children pick up languages way faster than adults. In the past, I found it rather difficult to speak English, but as time passed, I grow more and more used to it, and now I can speak English quite well, sometimes even without a clear accent. :)
I have a feeling, though, that I've made a whole bunch of grammar mistakes in this post. Oh well, Murphy's Law, I guess.
Well, for the record I didn't say "vocabulary without grammar", just that not focusing on it seems to work miracles. I always say that if you got the basic tenses figured-out, you just need words, and the rest you can pick up naturally as you go along.
"future present continuous" is a hardly-used tense anyway in my experience. If you know it theoretically, you just need the opportune moment, and they rarely come for this tense. No worries though, you may surprise yourself sooner or later by using it out of the blue. That's how I happened to it. :)
That's not true. French has spelling rules, so a certain combination of letters gives the same sound in 99,9% of cases (exceptions exist). That doesn't happen in English, as it has been pointed out already.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fango
This is very interesting, I had no idea of that, I think most immigrants I know do speak their native language at home... we're only starting to have a second generation of immigrants in my country, we'll see what happens.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aunty-lion
To me, learning foreign languages is so much a part of my life that I find it as natural as reading the newspaper or any other activity you do at least once a week or so. Well I'm not really studying anymore but I think a lot about languages and try to pick up as much as I can... Unfortunately I'm only this comfortable in English, but with some difficulties and mistakes I can hold a conversation in other 2-3 languages... but I would like to be fluent in many more so I feel I'm only partially skilled...:crash:
Well, I have no doubt you're right but, and my apologies here, it wasn't really what I meant to say... more like that it (French) has nonsensical spelling rules EVEN compared to English. They just abused or misread the point of the Latin Alphabet or something. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Koa
Then you don't know Hungarian :lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by Fango
Well, point one, every language's spelling rules make sense if seen from the point of view of that language.
Point two, English can't make more sense simply because it practically has no spelling rules...
An argument between I and a friend reminded me of this almost 'dying' thread. Thus I feel like re-incarnating it by telling you how it happened some few days ago. And that's...
He said English is hedeosly & grisly difficult. Then I asked him what makes it so...He instantly said; its inconsistencies in written and how it pronounces. I laughed at his discovery and following my reaction he further stressed another point by adding; "It's inregularity also is another biggest problem." By so saying, I asked him to give me example (s), so he started: Present Perfect of the word 'read' is read and its Past Tense is read...etc. He so far so good gave me numerous examples of this nature.
Hmm...what can you say about his claim?
Thanks
Someone wiser than I is believed to have said once: "Everything's relative". I think the difficulty in learning English rests in many factors, including how different your native language is from English. As an Italian who has spent some time in England, I feel quite confortable with grammar and books but I have serious problems understanding spoken English. Of course I tend to use the words derived from Latin (I'll say "create the atmosphere", rather than "create the mood"). My main difficulties are with:
- spelling and pronunciation. I agree with whoever wrote you're never quite sure how to pronounce the English words you read and how to spell the ones you hear. In Italian, in most cases every vowel has always the same sound, even in different words: "a" (sounds like "a" in "accent"), "e" ("egg"), i ("sheet") "o" ("ball"), "u" ("hoover"). We don't have any sound like "i" as in "ship", so the gentlemen here can easily hear some rude Italian call them "son of a beach":yawnb:, or swear "sheet!". The most obstinate of us won't deal with the fact that "ea" in "meat" sounds different than in "pleasure", and will claim it's been "a pleesure" to meet you!
- prepositions. Nightmare! Italian words are very specific, expressions like "get in", "get out", "get off", "get up" are translated in Italian with different verbs with a very different morphology. That is a bit confusing for me!
- exceptions. I find English grammar quite easy (even though I apparently received little benefit from that!), especially after I had to study Ancient Greek (crazy!). But my grammar book had no expressions like "gotta go", "you liked it?" "ain't it?". Nevertheless, unlike Italian, English changes very fast as well, which I like a lot. But it's hard to keep myself updated.
- abbreviations and acronyms. g'n't, blt, nhs... Help! If you have no idea what they're talking about, you'll better ask or you'll get more and more lost.
- expressions. You really need to be surrounded by native speakers in order to learn. Morever, a language also shapes your way of thinking. My ex boyfriend, a Mancunian, used to complain that I used the expression "to be in love" too easily, which is very common in Italian. When I wanted to be romantic I hardly found suitable expressions for the things I wanted to say, so I had to learn English romance! For example, I wanted to inform my ex his lips were "carnose", an Italian adjective my online dictionary translates with "fleshy, meaty, pulpy", which don't sound very sexy to me. So I remembered Hardy's "Tess", and, forgetting that the book had been written very long ago, I went: "Your lips are bewitching!". He replied "What?!":blush: .
We have a German foreign exchange student and he speaks English rather well, at least compared to the Norwegian that came last year. Actually, come to think of it, he speaks a lot better than the Norwegian. When we tease him about his errors in speaking, he tells us to learn German for five years and go to Germany as a foreign exchange student. He tries to use big words that he learns in our English class and often complicates things (which is humorous, to say the least). For instance, yesterday he asked our chemistry teacher, "May I quench my thirst by utilizing the dihydrogen oxide fountain?" (In other words, "May I get a drink?"). Today I told him to ask our chem teacher, "May I quench my thirst by eliciting a contenting amount of dihydrogen oxide from the drinking fountain? I fear I might become rather vitriolic if I don't satisfy my internal dissatisfaction in this manner, for such is my altering temper that I am prone to commence many an altercation with whomever might refuse to satisfy my request." :D
He seems to grasp the language easier than most foreign exchange students.
lol Yeah, that is a common mistake for people whose native language, compared to English, is rather verbose. Have you ever watched "Love and Death on Long Island"? Everybody makes fun of the protagonist's posh English, whereas he was the only one I could fully understand! I felt silly.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dori
The hardest thing for me was to learn to pronounce English. In Finnish everything is pronounced exactly the same whay than it is written, so it was a shock to realise that in English you can never know for sure how a new word should be said until you hear someone to use it. I don't think that spelling is the difficult part in English, but that may be because when you study study a foreign language, you usually have most of the material written and you learn the spelling automatically.Quote:
Originally Posted by metal134
English is difficult to me .I think it is not my problem it is the problem everyone facing.I thought that reading English books.news papers and listen to English movie will help very much.are you agree with me?
Wholly agree with you dear. It really hepls...that's why I too depend heavily at this.Quote:
Originally Posted by sreeja
Every language has different ways of spelling letters or combinations of letters. You know what about -ed in english or -th, do you pronounce the letters as they are? No. English is not standard and there is no "standard" way of spelling latin letters, that's why we need a phonetic spelling.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fango
My native language is french, but I would say that mot of the difficulties in french is not the spelling, but the grammar rules, but we should say the grammar rules and their exceptions, as there is about the same amount of both :p But at least, we don't have declensions :D
Don't know or it's only me, as I don't know about in French, that I some times hear the pronounciation of it sound similar, in a bit way, with that English. Is that right?Quote:
Originally Posted by Etienne