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For non-natives who know English | ||
Tags: Difficulty | English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| adhoc Newbie United States Joined 5105 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes | Message 1 of 21 26 May 2010 at 6:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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What was the most difficult part of learning English being a non-native speaker?
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| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5144 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 2 of 21 26 May 2010 at 6:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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The only part I would call difficult was the -th sound. It took me a while and a lot of practice to get that one down. Words like birthday, through and truth were a real pain but now that I've mastered the sound words that use it are among my favourites. For some reason, I also had trouble with the words comfortable and under (and by extension 'understand' as well) and I still don't like saying them.
Apart from this, the spelling needs some getting used to but I wouldn't call it difficult. It only annoys me when I come across a new word and I have no idea how to pronounce it while I know the spelling or vice versa. EDIT: I just noticed this was your first post. Welcome to the forum! Edited by ReneeMona on 26 May 2010 at 6:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| chirel Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5119 days ago 125 posts - 159 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: French | Message 3 of 21 26 May 2010 at 6:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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Still the most difficult part is the spelling. There are some words and sounds where I always make mistakes (like
choosing between s/c or s/z or wh/w). I've noticed that I have some kind of visual memory for these though as I can often tell that I've written incorrectly because the word looks wrong. It still doesn't mean that I would know what the right form would be nor that I would find it through trial and error. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5262 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 4 of 21 26 May 2010 at 10:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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The answer probably depends on the native language of the learner.
I would say that spelling and pronunciation are equally difficult. Hardly any Scandinavian makes the correct distinction between the unvoiced /s/ and the voiced /z/ when speaking. It's also difficult to master prepositions and idioms. Sometimes it's difficult to know if the verb should be singular or plural. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Euphorion Hexaglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5149 days ago 106 posts - 147 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Czech, EnglishC2, GermanC1, SpanishC2, French | Message 5 of 21 26 May 2010 at 10:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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The number of tenses - present simple, present perfect, present continuous, present perfect continuous, past simple, past continuous, past perfect, past perfect continuous, present tenses for the future, future tenses.
In Slavic languages we do have a couple of tenses, but we usualy use just one for the past, one for the present and one for the future. Something simply WAS, something IS and something WILL BE. And if you want to know precisely what happened first and what second, there are other words or the CONTEXT which will tell you. ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6752 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 6 of 21 26 May 2010 at 10:15pm | IP Logged | ||
Vocabulary. I am not trying to be funny, it's among the biggest jobs with any language. I am not sure about the grammar. I learned the fundamentals of it in school, so I don't know what parts of it would've been hard when learning English on my own, with one exception. As a native speaker of a language without articles, I never fully got the hang of them and probably never will, unless I can find a few dozen (or hundreds) of pages of article drills for those with this Slavic handicap, assuming it is a curable disease. I never tried to work on the pronunciation, so I don't know what might have been possible. It didn't happen on its own, I still speak with a heavy Russian accent after many years of living in the US. Edited by frenkeld on 26 May 2010 at 10:40pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mrhenrik Triglot Moderator Norway Joined 5888 days ago 482 posts - 658 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, French Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 21 27 May 2010 at 12:30am | IP Logged | ||
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I remember constantly drilling the verb differences depending on who's "performing" the verb (I'm not great on grammatical terms) in primary school. Not fun.
I am You are He/she/it is We are You are They are x1000000 That rhyme still pops up in my head every time I think of primary school English. We don't have changing verbs like that in Norwegian: Jeg er Du er Hun/han/det er Vi er Dere er De er Currently, I tend to over-use the word "much" too much (hehehe), "there's much people here" etc. I also sometimes stumble with the difference between "who" and "which", although I blatantly know the difference there. Edited by mrhenrik on 27 May 2010 at 12:30am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| chucknorrisman Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5257 days ago 321 posts - 435 votes Speaks: Korean*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Lithuanian, French | Message 8 of 21 27 May 2010 at 5:05am | IP Logged | ||
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Pronunciation - the "r" sound of English was difficult for me at first, as I didn't quite know how it worked.
Grammar - I didn't find it too hard, except for the numerous exceptions. The mastery of those, however, came with time. Vocabulary - Not too hard, but the idiomatic expressions and the very irregular spellings were hard to learn. I especially struggled with the fact that English, when loaning words, takes other languages' Latin alphabet spellings as they are natively written instead of changing them to fit the English pronunciation. For example, why Czech Republic and not Check Republic? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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