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Why English is hard to learn | ||
Tags: Difficulty | English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| blas blas Newbie Italy Joined 4670 days ago 14 posts - 29 votes Studies: English | Message 65 of 84 19 June 2012 at 8:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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To Fizwig:
>>The English "...I have trespassed into his home, the way he slithered into mine last year, hissing threats..." was translated "...he entrado en su casa igual que él entró en la mía el año pasado para amenazarme...". "trespassed into" becomes "entered", just as "slithered into" becomes "entered". "hissing threats" becomes "to threaten me", loosing the whole serpent reference introduced with "slithered". "He slithered into my house hissing threats..." is a whole lot more evocative than "He entered my house to threaten me...". ------------------------ Couldn't it be a simple case of bad translation? In fact, I can think of a pretty precise Italian version of those lines, just off the top of my head: "mi sono insinuato in casa sua proprio come lui strisciò nella mia l'anno scorso, sibilando minacce" (note the "Sibilando" part, which I think conveys precisely the English "hiSSing"). So is the Italian language more precise than the Spanish one? I don't think so, just a bad translator at work. Edited by blas blas on 19 June 2012 at 9:45pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| lecavaleur Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4778 days ago 146 posts - 295 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish | Message 66 of 84 19 June 2012 at 8:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
Maybe they think more highly of their English skills than do native speakers. As an example, I've highlighted two fundamental errors in your comment to prove a point (please don't take offence). It sounds incredulous to say that any natural language is "easy". No foreign language is easy. They all take an enormous amount of effort to speak correctly. I naturally know innumerable second-language speakers of English. I can't say that I know a great many that speak it very well without having spent a significant time in immersion, just like with any other language. Edited by lecavaleur on 19 June 2012 at 9:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4623 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 67 of 84 20 June 2012 at 2:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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People only say English is "easy" because they have had the motivation to learn it and the language was most probably taught to them from a very early age.
English dominates popular media and culture and it is hard to ignore the sheer overwhelming presence of the language. If another language had become the global lingua frana, no doubt the masses would also claim this one to be the "easiest" Edited by beano on 20 June 2012 at 2:30pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4669 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 68 of 84 20 June 2012 at 3:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Test your vocabulary and say if it's easy or not
http://testyourvocab.com/ I got 17,300: http://testyourvocab.com/?r=1907922 , which is like an American junior high student, but much lower than the average of an adult native speaker .. which is. 30,000 words, or more: http://testyourvocab.com/blog.php Edited by Medulin on 20 June 2012 at 4:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4623 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 69 of 84 20 June 2012 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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When people don't have an appetite for a language, it is amazing how it suddenly becomes very "difficult"
In Ireland, all children are taught Irish throughout their school years but there is widespread indifference and even resentment towards the language among the general population. Read through any Irish language thread on politics.ie and you will see many comments about Irish being "not easy to learn", "a very difficult language" and "more complex than the likes of French" etc. Funnily enough, you don't hear people being thankful for the fact that Irish has just 7 irregular verbs! Edited by beano on 20 June 2012 at 5:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4700 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes Speaks: Czech* | Message 70 of 84 20 June 2012 at 9:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
14000... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Pisces Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4623 days ago 143 posts - 284 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish*, French, SwedishC1, Esperanto Studies: German, Spanish, Russian | Message 71 of 84 21 June 2012 at 2:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
IMHO the English sentence is an example of a badly overblown style. A lot of foreigners say English is easy, even though they make quite basic mistakes in English. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| fiziwig Senior Member United States Joined 4866 days ago 297 posts - 618 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 72 of 84 21 June 2012 at 7:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
The sentence was consistent with an ongoing theme throughout the book wherein this particular villain was likened to a snake and his serpent-like qualities highlighted and emphasized. "Overblown" is in the eye of the beholder. It could also be called "evocative", or "atmospheric". Whatever it might be called, it falls well within the norm for English prose. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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