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Why is English so easy? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| novemberain Triglot Groupie Russian Federation Joined 5843 days ago 59 posts - 87 votes  Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC1, Italian Studies: Spanish, Portuguese | Message 49 of 78 04 January 2010 at 1:42am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
That message wasn't supposed to be taken seriously ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Envinyatar Diglot Senior Member Guatemala Joined 5535 days ago 147 posts - 240 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 50 of 78 04 January 2010 at 2:30am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I propose Quenya, the ancient language of the Elves of Noldor (those good-looking Elves from Lord of the Rings like Arwen, Galadriel or for our female audience, Legolas). Quenya is politically neutral (unless you're an Orc) and has all that positive stuff Esperantists proclaim about Zamenhof language plus it's very euphonic, it has a very cool writing system and there's already a Quenya course! Now on a more serious note, in my very humble experience there's no such thing as easy or difficult languages, just languages that people are really motivated to learn and those who don't. If someone is forced to learn a language (in this case English) or hates its culture that person will find it very hard indeed and keep a thick accent forever. On the contrary, when someone truly loves his/her target language difficulties vanish, no matter the language! Some time ago I read about a study where they found out that Zionism (i.e. deep love for Israel) helps getting rid of accent in Hebrew! I really like when scientists confirm my theories ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5923 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 51 of 78 04 January 2010 at 8:54am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I don't know whether English was easy for me to learn or not, it was simply the only language I had any exposure to as a child.
More to the point, there are different aspects of English which could be difficult for second language learners such as the frequent use of progressive tenses. For example, the most commonly used present tense would be "I am eating" a construction which is not found in Afrikaans or Swedish. "I eat" can be said in English but seems incomplete and may or may not imply actual action. Spanish does allow "Estoy comiendo" but only if I actually am eating right now, unlike in English where I could mean that I will eat in the next few minutes or that I have just finished eating. Another thing is the use of either "the" or "a/an", these may be easier for speakers of most Western European languages. But what about Finns and Russians? Neither the Russian language nor the Finnish language have words that correspond in any way to "the" or "a/an" so they often omit these words when speaking English, which can ocassionally result in sentences like, "Are you going to store now?" I know I've mentioned this before, but English spelling is ridiculously complicated and often unrelated to pronunciation. Even worse, many native speakers don't bother with correct English spelling, so how can we expect foreigners to spell it properly. EDIT: In the paragraph about progressive tenses, I originally included Dutch as a language that did not have them, but I was mistaken. Edited by mick33 on 05 January 2010 at 1:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6010 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 52 of 78 04 January 2010 at 8:33pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Yes, but it certainly highlights the danger that any central language policy is going to end up with a central educational policy too - the Ulpan system has a virtual monopoly on Hebrew teaching and really stifles competition and diversity of materials. If you believe in learning styles, having a monoculture means (at the extremes): * abandoning several types of learners for the benefit of only one types or * developing a course that is equally efficient for all learning styles, but optimally efficient for none. (Or any point between the two.) Even if you don't believe in learning styles, the idea of a centralised educational policy is scary because if they get it wrong, the damage done is pretty high. I notice that Russians have a particularly bad time with Ulpan. Could this be anything to do with definite and indefinite articles? Russian doesn't have one, so that must make the course all the harder to grasp -- if the course is being paced by speakers of English, German or Yiddish, they're going to be left behind. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Muz9 Diglot Groupie Netherlands Joined 5523 days ago 84 posts - 112 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Somali | Message 53 of 78 05 January 2010 at 12:25am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
You can say 'Ik ben aan het eten / werken / lachen' in Dutch which is roughly the same as 'I am eating / working / laughing' (present tense), so I don’t know if this is entirely true. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5923 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 54 of 78 05 January 2010 at 1:32am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Edited by mick33 on 05 January 2010 at 1:32am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5584 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 55 of 78 05 January 2010 at 5:11pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Except if you go on youtube there's close to 20,000 videos about Na'Vi and the language lol :D there's people studying daily and taking it to another level, I've never see people bite on "language" bait that hard!! It's pretty amazing I think... It's taking off like a plane. Do I intend to learn it? No, probably not, but I still find it to be a very cool Conlang :D 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5837 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 56 of 78 05 January 2010 at 6:54pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I don't know that the ulpan system has a monopoly? There are other courses too. The trouble for the Russian speakers is simply that there are so many of them that they don't learn because everyone else around them can also speak Russian. Obviously they are not going to start speakig Hebrew with other native Russian speakers. (The phenomenon of speaking a foreign languge to ones own countrymen happens only in Hollywood films.) Plus many don't particularly want to be in Israel and lack the motivation to make the necessary effort with Hebrew. I noticed with some people I met that it was more a case of that they wanted to get away from wherever they had been before, than any particularly strong wish to be in Israel. Some seemed to dream of moving onto Canada, US, Australia or South Africa. Modern Hebrew has borrowed a fair bit from Russian. I know a little bit of Hebrew and I've noticed that there are some funny "false friends" and plenty of similarities. But people who emigrate to Israel traditionally learn the language fast, and there is an amazing tradition of quickly teaching large groups of immigrants. As far as the ulpans go, I think they are just a nice and relatively efficient kind of language camp for adults. And I think they could teach Hebrew to a dead dog... almost. If any Israeli person is reading this, please let us know your view. Edited by cordelia0507 on 05 January 2010 at 7:06pm 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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