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Is French really easier than English? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| VityaCo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 7081 days ago 79 posts - 86 votes  1 sounds Speaks: Russian*, Ukrainian*, English Studies: Spanish, Japanese, French | Message 89 of 131 23 August 2011 at 2:32am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think, they are both very similar and it is hard to tell which one is harder, but I think English is harder and I vote for French be easier, but a small margin. I felt always that English is an European "Chinese" written in the Latin alphabet. Edited by VityaCo on 23 August 2011 at 2:40am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 6034 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 90 of 131 23 August 2011 at 12:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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French grammar is more sophisticated ( especially verb conjugations ) and there are many irregularities. But on the whole I find it rather logical, there is a consistent pattern in everything. By contrast, English consists entirely of exceptions and special cases. ^_^ I guess this is inevitable outcome of absorbing parts of half a dozen different languages.
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| deniz2 Groupie TurkeyRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5152 days ago 53 posts - 62 votes | Message 91 of 131 23 August 2011 at 8:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Reading in English is quiet regular and easy with few exceptions. One can easily guess. Just forget the grammars, even writing in French is much harder than reading in English. An adult French man can easily make many mistakes while writing but I don’t think a 10 year old primary school boy in UK or US would make any mistakes while reading. How long does it take a 7 year old boy in America to learn reading? But many French adults write ‘il connaitra’ instead of ‘il connaîtra’ or ‘il connaît’ instead of ‘il connait’. Many French people do mistakes like this. But I can’t imagine an American adult who doesn’t know the reading of any kind of word in a text. How many words are there in English and French? Let’s say 500-600 thousand words. Even just memorizing all the words with their genders in French (don’t mind the grammatical rules) far exceeds in difficulty than memorizing the reading of all words in English. I bet this can easily be proved by a scientific experiment. Just find someone who doesn’t know English and French. Let him take a course in English and French just one month. In one month he will understand the concept of reading in English but he won’t understand anything for guessing the gender of any words in French. Then just choose 100 words in English and French randomly. Read the English words once and say the genders of French words. Then ask him the reading of the English words from the beginning and the genders of the French words. I bet that he will remember almost all the English words but make more mistakes with the genders. Though there are 3 genders in German the words ending with –ung or –keit have the article –die. It is even easier to memorize the genders in German. This is not even grammar. What I say can very easily be proved by a scientific experiment. Sorry but this is objective, not SUBJECTIVE! There may be some difficulties in measurements of some things but this doesn’t mean that it is TOTALLY UNMEASUREABLE! YES, you can DO MEASURE the difficulty to some degree. Even an experiment is unnecessary. You can observe the time required for learning to read in primary schools in America and compare it with the time required for writing in primary schools in France. Here is a scientific study about the difficulty of reading in Arabic in http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100831102621.ht m. But no scientific study is really necessary to prove how easy reading in English is. The proxy can be the time required. As to grammars this is even more ridiculous. ))) In English only in simple past tense and past perfect tense there are exceptions in verb conjugations and they are very few (see, saw, seen). Also they are all the same for 6 persons (I saw, you saw…they saw). Sorry but do you really say that this is a grammar?)))) It can’t even be simpler. English doesn’t deserve to be called as grammar. If English wasn’t the most useful language I would never learn it. It is the simplest grammar by far, the most boring one. There is absolutely nothing interesting in grammar.
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| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5056 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 92 of 131 23 August 2011 at 9:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
This is complete nonsense. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| deniz2 Groupie TurkeyRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5152 days ago 53 posts - 62 votes | Message 93 of 131 23 August 2011 at 9:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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This is complete nonsense.[/QUOTE]
You are completely nonsense. There is nothing complicated about modalverbs in English, they are extraordinarily easy. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| floydak Tetraglot Groupie Slovakia Joined 4854 days ago 60 posts - 85 votes Speaks: Slovak*, English, German, Spanish Studies: French | Message 94 of 131 23 August 2011 at 9:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
You are completely nonsense. There is nothing complicated about modalverbs in English, they are extraordinarily easy.[/QUOTE] I would say, that the most difficult part in English are phrasal verbs. there are too much and it's quite boring to learn it. I think you are little exagerating about English regularity. in USA and in French they have their own spelling competitions and I would say this two languages are quite equaly difficult in spelling. english does not have "subjuntive" which is IMHO hardest part in french. (I'm not sure about it but if it's the same like in Spanish, then it is (at least for me)). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 95 of 131 23 August 2011 at 9:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
I would say, that the most difficult part in English are phrasal verbs. there are too much and it's quite boring to learn it. I think you are little exagerating about English regularity. in USA and in French they have their own spelling competitions and I would say this two languages are quite equaly difficult in spelling. english does not have "subjuntive" which is IMHO hardest part in french. (I'm not sure about it but if it's the same like in Spanish, then it is (at least for me)).[/QUOTE] It's important that you be aware that subjunctive exists in English too. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| floydak Tetraglot Groupie Slovakia Joined 4854 days ago 60 posts - 85 votes Speaks: Slovak*, English, German, Spanish Studies: French | Message 96 of 131 23 August 2011 at 9:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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all right I know, now I was little exagerating.. but it has minor importancy, whereas in
spanish it is used on a daily basis and even in past tenses and so on.. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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