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English most difficult for children | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5867 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 1 of 16 04 May 2010 at 9:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Here is an interesting article that states children have more difficulty learning to read English than children learning to read other languages. The reason given is the irregularity between the sound and the spelling of English words. Dutch was claimed to be much easier than English and Finnish the easiest (amongst the languages studied). The article claims that Dutch children learn to read in one year what English children take three years to learn.
Article in English: http://www.unimaas.nl/researchmagaZINE/default.asp?id=216&th ema=5&template=thema.html&taal=en Same Article in Dutch: http://www.unimaas.nl/researchmagaZINE/default.asp?id=216&th ema=5&template=thema.html&taal=nl If these assertions are true, then something similar must occur for second-language learners. Probably the increased difficulty with English is masked by the many other things that make English easier, mainly its availability everywhere. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5404 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 2 of 16 04 May 2010 at 9:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The easiest language to learn to write is Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian/Montenegrin, with it's 100% match between sound and writing. Even despite some of them using two alphabets.
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| PaulLambeth Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5374 days ago 244 posts - 315 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic, Hindi, Irish | Message 3 of 16 04 May 2010 at 9:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The English alphabetical system is very inconsistent, but our grammar rules being considerably simple has been ignored in the article it seems. I found it amusing that one example they used (rose/rows) took me a while to comprehend as I instinctly read rows as the plural of row (argument), even as a native speaker.
With regards to Finnish, having only studied it for a few days I can't input much, but it seems to be rather simple grammatically, very phonetic (diphthongs don't create different sounds and each letter stands for an individual sound, with the addition of long vowels and consonants), and with strict suffixes to words that always denote particular things. What's causing the most trouble at the moment for my reading is identifying parts of "words", which would be of no trouble at all if not for my previous 19 years of reading English and related languages that don't tend to group nouns and suffixes. So I'm inclined to agree with this article. I edited the post to emphasize the phonetic nature of Finnish, which I believe the article hinting at most. Edited by PaulLambeth on 04 May 2010 at 9:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kounotori Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5345 days ago 136 posts - 264 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 4 of 16 04 May 2010 at 10:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
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While I wouldn't say that Finnish is simple grammatically, our phonetics is simple, maybe even deceptively so (I'm referring to the fact that Finnish has the glottal stop, the /ç/ (voiceless palatal fricative) sound and that the the Finnish v is actually a /ʋ/, not a "normal" /v/).
But yes, Finnish spelling is really straightforward. There are a few cases where spelling and pronunciation don't match (jogurtti, pronounced "jugurtti"; onpa, pronounced "ompa"; ruoan, pronounced "ruuan"), but otherwise what you hear is what you get: the words are spelled phonetically in 99.98% of all cases. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Danac Diglot Senior Member Denmark Joined 5349 days ago 162 posts - 257 votes Speaks: Danish*, English Studies: German, Serbo-Croatian, French, Russian, Esperanto | Message 5 of 16 04 May 2010 at 11:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
I can personally say that people struggle with the correct pronunciation of the letters c,ć,č,š,ž,đ and dž. The problem is distinguishing between the different letters. These are mostly beginner's problems, but I could imagine that it might be difficult or confusing at first. It's just to say: It's not necessarily that easy :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Javi Senior Member Spain Joined 5982 days ago 419 posts - 548 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 6 of 16 05 May 2010 at 12:15am | IP Logged | |||||
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I guess that not only affects children, but also adults. In Spanish you can get to know
and use a very high register of the language just through reading. No lectures, radio or TV, just tons of books. I wonder if that would be possible in English, or rather if that was possible before the digital era we're living in, with things like text-to-speech software. As for ESL learners, there are very good pronouncing dictionaries out there, which is great, but that forces you to read on the computer screen. I imagine Spanish learners lying in the sofa with a paperback and not worrying about how the words sound, lucky them. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Smart Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5340 days ago 352 posts - 398 votes Speaks: Spanish, English*, Latin, French Studies: German | Message 7 of 16 05 May 2010 at 12:24am | IP Logged | |||||
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This article sparks my interest in Finnish even more :)
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| Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5404 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 8 of 16 05 May 2010 at 12:26am | IP Logged | |||||
Yes for foreigners. Not for children in Ex-Yu. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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