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.
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.....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.
In these days, old man, no one thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don't, so why should we? They talk of the people, the proletariat, and I talk of the mugs. It's the same thing. They have their five year plan and I have mine.-Harry Lime, The Third Man novella by Graham Greene
SheykAbdullah, I think you are a linguistic, are you not? I see you above talking of English, first, then Chineese, Japaneese, at al.
The source of any bad writing is the desire to be something more than a person of sense--the straining to be thought a genius. If people would say what they have to say in plain terms, how much eloquent they would be.
-S.T COLERIDGE
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.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...)
dead on the inside, i've got nothing to prove
keep me alive and give me something to lose
Muhsin, yes I am a linguist. Just out of curiosity, what is your native language(s)?
In these days, old man, no one thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don't, so why should we? They talk of the people, the proletariat, and I talk of the mugs. It's the same thing. They have their five year plan and I have mine.-Harry Lime, The Third Man novella by Graham Greene
Oh sorry, linguist. Not as I wrote it.
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.
Last edited by muhsin; 04-24-2007 at 08:25 AM.
The source of any bad writing is the desire to be something more than a person of sense--the straining to be thought a genius. If people would say what they have to say in plain terms, how much eloquent they would be.
-S.T COLERIDGE
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.
I'm the patron saint of the denial,
With an angel face and a taste for suicidal.
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.
Hey, if you had written "I can only hope my English will HAVE improved one day" you would have captured "future present continuous"
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...
Last edited by JackShea; 04-26-2007 at 12:40 PM. Reason: sp.
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
Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain
Yes, it's not a perfectly phonemic language, however compared to French... ooof.
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....
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
