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Why English is hard to learn | ||
Tags: Difficulty | English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5303 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes  | Message 73 of 84 21 June 2012 at 10:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
Any monolingual will experience this sharpened feeling for his native language after having acquired a second language to a high degree of proficiency. Has nothing to do with English, Spanish or whatever specific language, sorry ... Edited by lingoleng on 21 June 2012 at 10:42pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| fiziwig Senior Member United States Joined 4870 days ago 297 posts - 618 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 74 of 84 22 June 2012 at 4:57am | IP Logged | |||||
That's an interesting point. I'll keep it in mind as my proficiency in Spanish improves. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hertz Pro Member United States Joined 4518 days ago 47 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 75 of 84 25 July 2012 at 7:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I am an avid reader of history, and I believe English is not particularly hard. Because England was overrun by a series of civilizations (the Celts, the Angles, the Saxons, the Romans, the Jutes, the Vikings and finally the Normans) a great many rough edges were worn off of the language. Such simplification might be a natural result of linguistic turmoil: every two or three generations, another language comes rolling through.
For perhaps a thousand years, you would be speaking the common language badly, to somebody else who understood it badly, because your first language was Welsh and his was Old Norse. You would learn the English rules from each other. After a while, nobody can agree what gender an object is -- is a fork masculine or feminine? -- so grammatical gender is mostly discarded. Some of the languages are declined and others not, so cases and declensions fall into disuse. Few people can remember all of the proper conjugations (wait, is stem + e first person or third person singular?) so eventually, verb conjugation simplifies to just the stems (I do, you do, he does, we do, you do, they do). Spelling was optional. Nouns were indistinguishable from verbs, because there were no more cases or conjugations. The main things which remain to make English difficult are the nightmare of orthography and the multitude of irregular plurals. Neither of these is unique to English, of course, nor is England alone in having been a center for successive invasions. I'm curious if there are any other locations with a similar history (invasions at a crossroads of multiple language families) that show similar simplifications (Persian, perhaps?). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5061 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 76 of 84 25 July 2012 at 7:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
Not every two generations, actually. There are few irregular plurals in English. man-men, woman-women, child-children, mouse-mice, sheep-sheep, dear-dear, swine-swine, goose-geese, foot-feet, tooth-teeth, ox-oxen maybe something else. There are a lot of irregular verbs however. They are the only difficulty of the English morphology. The difficulties of the syntax are articles, verbal tenses and constructions (especially the Perfect aspect), the usage of prepositions (is true for other languages as well), some other small things. The phonetics, especially vowels, is tough. Of course the main problem is learning words and expressions as in all the languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hertz Pro Member United States Joined 4518 days ago 47 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 77 of 84 25 July 2012 at 8:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
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You're right; I do exaggerate. England was not completely conquered every 60 years between 500 BC and 1066 AD. It was, however, subject to frequent invasion by cultures with unrelated languages, as well as extensive sea trade and regular coastal raiding, all of which influenced England's common tongue over time. That Wales, Scotland and Ireland remained independent for so long also contributed.
Irregular plurals are, to my mind, much harder to master, because English borrows so many foreign nouns and often (but not always!) preserves their native plurals. Person/people, house/houses but mouse/mice, child/children but wild/wilds, cow/cattle but bow/bows, goose/geese but moose/moose, analysis/analyses, knife/knives but fife/fifes, datum/data, radius/radii, hoof/hooves but roof/roofs, cherub/cherubim, cactus/cacti but bus/buses (or busses), criterion/criteria, antenna/antennae, handful/handsful, paparazzo/paparazzi, and so on. Almost nobody gets octopus/octopodes correct in English. The altered spelling of party/parties, quiz/quizzes, and bass/basses, plus the apostrophe-s possessive endings, are just additional confusion. English does have irregular verbs too, but as other languages have their own, I didn't think it was worth special mention. My thesis is that English is simpler in many ways than many langugaes, and only harder in a few. Edited by Hertz on 25 July 2012 at 8:46pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4777 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 78 of 84 25 July 2012 at 8:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hertz Pro Member United States Joined 4518 days ago 47 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 79 of 84 25 July 2012 at 8:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Languages with incompatible features, then. :)
Unless you wish to count the Phoenicians... Edited by Hertz on 25 July 2012 at 8:53pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kman543210 Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4669 days ago 26 posts - 73 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, German | Message 80 of 84 26 July 2012 at 2:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm a bit confused by your initial assertion of "the Celts, the Angles, the Saxons, the Romans, the Jutes, the Vikings and finally the Normans" overrunning England. As far as I know, only the Normans were able to conquer the English-speaking population in England, and of course the Vikings invaded several times (especially in the northeast of England). The Celtic speakers were the ones who were driven out by the Anglo-Saxons arriving around the 5th Century. The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes were the Germanic tribes that made up the speakers of the Germanic dialects that were to be called Anglo-Saxon. The Normans arriving in 1066 is what started the most changes in English. As far as plurals go, they are pretty regular with some irregulars from Old English and some borrowed words. But I do have to say that some of the plurals you listed are not used and have, for the most parts been regularized. The fact that "nobody gets octopus/octopodes correct in English" tells me that octopodes may not be considered correct anymore (others such as datum/data and antenna/antennae as well), and I've never heard the word paparazzo used in English. The common plural for cow is cows, cattle deriving from the Old French term meaning property.
I hope you were just joking about the Phoenicians overrunning or having any direct influence on the language spoken in England. Edited by kman543210 on 26 July 2012 at 3:11pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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