Is English A Difficult Language?

[Annamariah]

Pretty much every language is bound to have some of its odds.
I could write a bunch of examples similar to ones brought up earlier for English or Finnish some of my native languages (the one coming on my mind now is what we used to joke with as children back when I lived in Croatia - gore gore gore gore means "worse hills are burning up there , because "gore" can me up, then "gore" can be plural of "gora" which means hill, then "gore" can be 3rd person plural of the verb "gorjeti" which means "to burn", and "gore" can be comparative of "loše", which means "bad"...), and so could pretty much any person on here write about theirs, so we could all nicely stare at it, fascinated, and flatter to ourselves how smart we are for speaking such complicated languages.

(...)

And Merry Christmas to all.

That is very true I think pretty much any language is both hard and difficult and deciding which is the hardest or easiest one to learn isn't possible. One can only say which one was easiest or hardest to oneself. Maybe I would have found English more difficult if I didn't hear as much of it as I do. (As I've said before, almost all the tv-shows and movies are spoken in English here and we just read the Finnish subtitles, and most of the music is sung in English, too.)

And Merry Christmas to you, too, and to everyone else as well

[Etienne]

Haha... the everlasting everything-is-equal-just-different bandwagon!

[aabbcc]

Haha... the everlasting everything-is-equal-just-different bandwagon!

... is what we are stuck with, for we do not have enough knowledge to make statements that would concern the problem in absolute.
A lot of us here may be polyglots, but none of us can speak each and every single language to make absolute claims. What we can is simply speak out of personal experience, and not be arrogant enough to transcend that personal experience into absolute claim.

I am not being "politically correct", Etienne, nor am I promoting an artificial equality. I just do not know enough to make a statement "English is a hard language" (which would in my formulation more likely be "English is an easy language"), despite speaking English relatively decently (have mercy here, it is my third or fourth language after all, not my native one), and despite having studied various topics of linguistics in school in the past four years which supposedly provided me with some at least rudimentary knowledge on how language functions. It is simply a claim you cannot make.

You can argue that English morphology is easy (and use its predominately analytic features as an argument), you can argue that its syntax is complex (and connect that with other features of English which make it be less free than in many other languages), you can argue that its vocabulary offers a potential discount for speakers of Romance languages (because most of it is Latin-based, via French), and thus you can dissect the language and study its various parts; but you can hardly, ever, in absolute make a claim "English is a hard language". The same, for that reasons, goes for pretty much any natural language.
That was my point, not political correctness of any kind.

[amanda_isabel]

English comes easy for me since it is my first language. I think any language can come easy for you as a second language if it is practiced enough and if you're willing to learn. But lots of people say English is the trickiest because "there are as many exemptions as there are rules" in grammar and spelling and everything.

English may also come easier, i believe, if you happen to be proficient in one or more of the languages that a lot of English is deprived from, such as Greek, Latin, etcetera.

[Etienne]

... is what we are stuck with, for we do not have enough knowledge to make statements that would concern the problem in absolute.
A lot of us here may be polyglots, but none of us can speak each and every single language to make absolute claims. What we can is simply speak out of personal experience, and not be arrogant enough to transcend that personal experience into absolute claim.

Yes, yes, in that we completely agree, but I'm not basing myself to only my own testimony (which would be a rather weak one) but of others from all around the world, be it Israelis, Dutch, Germans, South Americans and Spaniards, etc.

I am not being "politically correct", Etienne, nor am I promoting an artificial equality. I just do not know enough to make a statement "English is a hard language" (which would in my formulation more likely be "English is an easy language"), despite speaking English relatively decently (have mercy here, it is my third or fourth language after all, not my native one), and despite having studied various topics of linguistics in school in the past four years which supposedly provided me with some at least rudimentary knowledge on how language functions. It is simply a claim you cannot make.

Yes, we agree then.

You can argue that English morphology is easy (and use its predominately analytic features as an argument), you can argue that its syntax is complex (and connect that with other features of English which make it be less free than in many other languages), you can argue that its vocabulary offers a potential discount for speakers of Romance languages (because most of it is Latin-based, via French), and thus you can dissect the language and study its various parts; but you can hardly, ever, in absolute make a claim "English is a hard language". The same, for that reasons, goes for pretty much any natural language.
That was my point, not political correctness of any kind.

And still we agree!

[Dorian Gray]

English = easiest language ever.

[Etienne]

English = easier language ever.

Oh! The irony!

[Dorian Gray]

haha. That is funny. Evil typo.

[Nossa]

Isn't it Arabic, Nossa? How is it???

Yup it's Arabic
And for starters, here's your nickname in Arabic محسن

[blazeofglory]

English is indeed very difficult and not a scientific language. Despite it is used massively and now growingly internationally it is not a developed and easy language.

I am a Nepali and am of course compelled to learn to come across larger audiences across the world. Or else I do not like it.

[Goodfella]

English = easiest language ever.

And how...???

[Etienne]

English is indeed very difficult and not a scientific language. Despite it is used massively and now growingly internationally it is not a developed and easy language.

What is that? Not a scientific language? What do you mean by that, what is a scientific language? Logical language? And how is english "not a developped language"?

[muhsin]

Yup it's Arabic
And for starters, here's your nickname in Arabic محسن

Ahhh... thats indeed nice Nossa.

[Dorian Gray]

And how...???

Feeling a bit violent, are we?

[muhsin]

Feeling a bit violent, are we?

Ahh...see nothing like that Gray. Common...and don't think negetively.