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Why is English so easy? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5455 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 65 of 78 12 March 2011 at 10:06pm | IP Logged | ||
Everybody grows up capable of learning any language. English words may be shot at you, but there are lots of people in your own country, and elsewhere in the world, who don't speak English. That's a fact. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tornus Diglot GroupieRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5145 days ago 82 posts - 113 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Spanish, Swedish, Danish | Message 66 of 78 12 March 2011 at 10:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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i have read quickly the main arguments which have been raised on this topic and i wanted to let you know that you may have misunderstood the problem:
it's not about why people manage to be really good in English ( it's obvious that's it's due to necessity, exposure,...) it's about why people SEEM to learn more easily English than a native English speaker would do with any other language in the same amount of time. read again the last sentence: I feel pretty comfortable talking in Spanish, yet no where to the extent that a native Spanish speaker can learn English in the same timeframe. thus the topic is what are the features which make English easier (but tell me if i'm wrong) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| CS Groupie United States Joined 5130 days ago 49 posts - 74 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic, Latin, French | Message 67 of 78 12 March 2011 at 11:10pm | IP Logged | ||
Unless someone points me to peer-reviewed studies, I'm inclined to go with my prior beliefs here. English speakers, as a general rule, don't have a great deal of motivation to learn other languages. First-generation immigrants in the US from non-Anglophone countries don't seem to speak great English either, though their kids usually do. Why do people want to find some special inherent feature of English that makes its native speakers incompetent at learning other languages? Sure, it has its quirks compared, but so do all languages. Isn't a socio-linguistic reason more likely? Edited by CS on 12 March 2011 at 11:15pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tornus Diglot GroupieRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5145 days ago 82 posts - 113 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Spanish, Swedish, Danish | Message 68 of 78 12 March 2011 at 11:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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if you don't know what makes you fail, you can't improve, and some specific features in English make its native speaker incompentent to learn other language, but indeed the lack of motivation prevent them even more from learning.
besides, i think before starting a language, it's good to know what are your native language specific features ( including quirks, difficulties, things which make it easier) . it enables you to tackle your target language with a more neutral point of view. but you're right, it's a useless topic, but it annoyed me a lot to see again a perennial with over and over the same arguments and this is why i pointed this out Edited by tornus on 13 March 2011 at 12:04am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5455 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 69 of 78 13 March 2011 at 12:32am | IP Logged | ||
Yes, it is much more likely. Apart from English having no genders, I really wonder what inherent features of English there are that could make English-speakers less competent at learning foreign languages than speakers of Dutch, Danish, Swedish or Norwegian. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| CS Groupie United States Joined 5130 days ago 49 posts - 74 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic, Latin, French | Message 70 of 78 13 March 2011 at 1:25pm | IP Logged | ||
Yeah, it's just that this shows up again and again. On the one hand it looks like English speakers want to be modest by claiming that English is easy, but at the same time it gives them (myself included) a handy explanation for their own failure at language study - an explanation that conveniently ignores the very real economic, political, and social factors at work. Also, the difficulty of learning 2-3 grammatical genders is really exaggerated. I find phonology and intonation a lot more difficult and that's always going to be a problem for me at least for any language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| CS Groupie United States Joined 5130 days ago 49 posts - 74 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic, Latin, French | Message 71 of 78 13 March 2011 at 1:40pm | IP Logged | ||
English phonology is very different from French phonology, and that fact makes French tough for me, even though it too is often said to be an "easy" language (since it lacks inflection for nouns or whatever arbitrary criterion is being used at the time). I don't know that I would find it much easier to pronounce if I spoke German instead of English though. I'd probably have an easy time with the uvular R, and less of a tendency to dipthongize everything, but there would still be a tendency to aspirate voiceless stops, and to apply strong stress, and God knows what else. Once a learner gets away from very closely related languages, there's no free lunch, whatever their native language. The closely related languages probably present their own challenges. Edited by CS on 13 March 2011 at 1:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Matheus Senior Member Brazil Joined 5083 days ago 208 posts - 312 votes Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: English, French | Message 72 of 78 13 March 2011 at 3:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Believe me, English isn't so easy. You might think.. "Oh, those foreigners non-native speakers speak an English absolutely good.. It may be easy" But it's not. Those people non-native speakers who speak English at a near native level have practiced and were exposed to this language more than another languages. As this site says, you only need to go to the cinema, or turn on the tv, listen to the radio, to be exposed to the English language. Here in Brazil, the most listened radios (for teenagers) play 90% (maybe more) of their songs in English, a few songs in our mother tongue.
What is true? The English is one of the easiest. Its grammar is not that hard, but the spelling is confuse and every non-native who don't make mistakes, probably learned by heart, in another words, memorized the words, just like me. The most of people who end an English course in Brazil, can't communicate at an advanced level. Their ability lacks a lot in vocabulary, they hardly understand by the context or learn the most used phrasel verbs (which can be very tricky) and they still having problems with the listening comprehension. I, for instance, have some problems with the listening skills, but I've understood that, the more you read, the more you will listen. You can see taking me as an exemple, I'm in contact with the English language since 2003, and it still needing improvement. I can't see a diference when someone says "there, their" but I try to understand by the context. Let me give you an exemple to show why English is easy and hard at the same time: What is easier, French or Japanese? For an English native speaker, I think the answer is French. But now, is French easy? No. Not Even for those who have a Romance language as their mother tongue, like me. The same happens with English, it's easier than the most languages, but it doesn't mean that it's easy. For the ones who speak a Germanic language, I think English is easier than Romance, the Slavic and the Asian languages. For those who speak Portuguese, Spanish and Italian are easier to learn than English, but English still easier than French and perhaps, Romanian. And don't forget that English has a lot of words from another languages, that's why many people are benefited by vocabulary similarity. Portuguese, for exemple "Exemplo = Exemple, Problem = Problema, Vocabulário = Vocabulary, = Carro = Car, Simples - Simple..". If you speak a language like Japanese, Chinese or Korean, you will have many hard times to learn and memorize vocabulary, which is the most alien possible. That's why English isn't so easy. But it still not hard at all, unless if you're native speaker of an Asian language. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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