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What makes English difficult? | ||
Tags: Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4624 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 1 of 45 16 December 2012 at 1:36am | IP Logged | |||||
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When people talk about learning languages, you often hear the claim that English is the "easiest" language to learn. People also say the same thing about Spanish. Can it be any coincidence that these are the two most widely-studied languages due to their huge base of native speakers and inter-continental (and hence business) appeal? This generates motivation to learn them.
I've even heard some north Europeans say that they learned English without any effort. Really? It all just happened by magic? Nothing to do with the huge amount of exposure to English since early childhood coupled with the vigorous promotion of the language in education circles and society in general? Obviously English is a highly-accessible language if you already happen to speak a Romance or Germanic language as your native tongue, but you could make similar arguments for other languages. But do Japanese and Arab learners find English a breeze? I guess the initial learning curve is flattened somewhat due to the fact that English has no genders and doesn't go crazy with cases. Plurals are easy to form and there is only one way of saying "you" But I've never really bought into the concept of easy and hard languages. Give a speaker of language X tuition in language Y and there will be things he/she finds difficult and others that others that aren't too bad. Russian is often labelled as a fiendishly difficult tongue because of the all the various declensions but it basically only has 3 tenses. It was widely mastered in the minor republics of the old USSR, despite the native tongues in many of these areas being non-slavic. Armenians seemed to find Russian "easy" enough. I believe that things even themselves out over the piece. This thread is to point out things about English that could be problematic for learners. I'll start with a few: 1) The spelling system is bizarre. Combinations of vowels and consonants can produce many different sounds. You can't just look at a strange word and be confident about predicting the pronunication like you can in many other languages. 2) English doesn't have a complex case system but the myriad tenses can't be easy to master. "I work", "I am working" and "I do work" don't necessarily mean the same thing. German covers all three situations with Ich arbeite. Michel Thomas says that in Italian there is no is-ing, are-ing or am-ing. 3) English is stuffed with question tags, which must be learned individually. He's your brother, isn't he? I was there last yere, wasn't I? I drove all night, didn't I? In some languages you have just one question tag. German just slaps "oder" on to the end of the sentence. 4) English requires helping words to create questions in the present. German just reverses verb and pronoun. Russian simply uses a statement with a different voice tone. 5) English has various past tenses. I rode the horse I have ridden the horse I did ride the horse I was riding the horse I had ridden the horse This can be condensed to one or two versions in some languages. 6) To form the compartive on an English adjective you usually add -er, but some words require the use of the word "more". Some languages have a universal rule. English - It is more interesting German - Es ist interessanter 7) The English past tense is horribly irregular. So is German's, but in Russian it is far more uniform (can't say uniformer). Edited by beano on 16 December 2012 at 1:58am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| justonelanguage Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4464 days ago 98 posts - 128 votes Speaks: English, Spanish | Message 2 of 45 16 December 2012 at 2:35am | IP Logged | |||||
I think that English is on the level of difficulty of most romance languages due to its latin roots. Also, what you said about it having Germanic ties makes it accessible for Germans and other europeans. Since it is not very phonetic, I don't understand how it would be that much "easier" than other languages. FYI, I believe that English is the number one learned foreign language, followed by French, then German or Spanish....Spanish is definitely not number two in the world! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Avid Learner Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4664 days ago 100 posts - 156 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: German | Message 3 of 45 16 December 2012 at 2:40am | IP Logged | |||||
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I did not find English easy to learn. I really improved when my interests led me to watch TV and read more because I couldn't find the same information any other way.
I was perhaps A2 in writing and low B1 in understanding when I started improving more quickly. Of course, from that point, I wasn't actively attempting to improve my English, I simply wanted to get the information I was interested in, so perhaps that's where the "without effort" idea comes from. And before that, I had to study hard in school. It took me some time to be able to isolate the words when listening. I was astounded to find out I could pretty much do it already the very first time I watched a TV show in German. Yes, the verb tenses were not intuitive for me. Another thing that only came with a lot of exposure were the verbs "suffixes" (I don't know how they are called, I don't remember having had any lesson about them, can anyone tell me?). For example: bring up, bring in, come in... To me, simply "bring" or "come" seemed enough. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| aspiringplyglot Triglot Groupie United Kingdom aspiringpolyglot.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4579 days ago 40 posts - 62 votes Speaks: English*, GermanB2, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Esperanto, Polish, Scottish Gaelic, French | Message 4 of 45 16 December 2012 at 2:49am | IP Logged | |||||
Phrasal verbs? 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5132 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 5 of 45 16 December 2012 at 2:51am | IP Logged | |||||
Did he really say that? Because that's an incredibly ignorant thing to say. Present progressive exists and is used often in Italian. Or is the quote being used out of context?
With the exception of the emphatic "did ride", all of these have equivalents in romance languages. I don't see how learning them would be difficult for a Western European, at least. Edited by hrhenry on 16 December 2012 at 2:52am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4624 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 6 of 45 16 December 2012 at 2:55am | IP Logged | |||||
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There's also the "I was going to...." tense which can baffle some learners (although I believe it exists in French)
Another English minefield is expressions like put up, put down, put in, put out, put on, put off....they all mean something different. Just goes to show that this "easy" language has a lot of surprises in store. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5768 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 7 of 45 16 December 2012 at 3:20am | IP Logged | |||||
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* heterogenous vocabulary
The worst part about that is that often enough related concepts have different roots within the same register. * lack of a system in the spelling * phrasal verbs Even for me as a German it's difficult, and we do have compound verbs that often translate directly to a phrasal verb in English * Tense and aspect They're a mess. Really. Especially when you come to emphatic use of verb forms that only work when you already know exactly how the verb form is supposed to be used, and what effect breaking the rule has on the overall statement. Irregular verb forms aren't a big problem, memorizing verb forms isn't either. Modal verbs probably are one for speakers of a non-Germanic language. I also assume that for a speaker of a language that uses morphology to mark arguments, getting used to the more fixed word order and perceived lack of markedness of English is rather difficult. Edited by Bao on 16 December 2012 at 3:21am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Avid Learner Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4664 days ago 100 posts - 156 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: German | Message 8 of 45 16 December 2012 at 3:56am | IP Logged | |||||
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Something else just came to mind, but it's not related to its construction. I thought it might be worth mentioning anyway: another reason that makes English difficult would be: having to learn it mainly by necessity. ;)
I've always wanted to know English because it was useful considering my geographical proximity with the English world, but I've never been very attracted to the language itself. Considering I have always enjoyed understanding how my native language worked, it's a little bit of a mystery that I found English so difficult. It's probably partly because of a difficult start (long story - it didn't take me long to dread English classes), but I have a feeling that if I had been very attracted to the language, it might have been more fun and would have come more easily.
That must be it, thanks! :) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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