I before E exept after C rule exeptions.

[Demodeus]

OK let's face it English is the most complex language to learn.

Bwahahaha. No, it isnt

English actually is one of the easiest languages. Try learning german/russian/hungarian/japanese, any of those are much much harder with a lot more exceptions than english.

 

[Sandernista]

As far as spoken language, English is one of the harder languages to learn fluently. Eastern languages are easy because they generally (yes, there are exceptions) do not have tense. Mostly contextual.

According to the CIA the only language that's as hard as English to learn is Mandarin Chinese.

 

[Sandernista]

Here's a lovely scientific one for you: phenolphthalein. Have fun pronouncing it!

Feeeee-nulll-fay-leeen

 

[Edorf]

There is a certain name (I dont know if it's an English name... or a scandinavic one...) but if you try to pronounce it in german it will be " " since the german language has different rules which will in turn end up making all the letters in the name silent.

 

[MiketheBassMan]

Here's a lovely scientific one for you: phenolphthalein. Have fun pronouncing it!

Feeeee-nullf-thay-leeen

Fixed.

 

[Staskala]

Try Japanese. ***** is hard as hell.

I find japanese to be easy to speak. Writing is an entirely different thing, however.

I wouldn't call Kanji "difficult", it just takes so fucking long to remember all that shit.
Hiragana and Katakana are ridiculously easy though.
Personally, I think Chinese is way harder because of the heavy focus on pronunciation, despite its easy grammar and simplified Hanzi. I would even call it unlearnable for a native English speaker, but that's mostly due to my personal experience with Britains and Americans trying to speak any other language besides their own.

 

[Sandernista]

Here's a lovely scientific one for you: phenolphthalein. Have fun pronouncing it!

Feeeee-nullf-thay-leeen

Fixed.

I've always pronounced it my way, but always had doubts.

Thanks for the correction

 

[Gardenia]

OK let's face it English is the most complex language to learn.

Bwahahaha. No, it isnt

Isn't isn't spelled isn't?

Indeed it is, corrected.

 

[Adecristo]

English is the most complex language to learn.

Polish. Seriously. Try that. Try to speak it as fluently (which isn't anywhere near perfect, but hey - it's not that bad) as I do English while being a Polish guy.

 

[Keava]

Protein.

Best I could come up with on short notice.

Here's a lovely scientific one for you: phenolphthalein. Have fun pronouncing it!

Both of those aren't really core English words. Protein and all similar come from Greek, there is also bunch of words based on Latin (and thus also French, since French is bastardized Latin).
There is also the fact that the whole "I before E, except after C" thing is more of a mnemonic rather than rule, there is a difference.

 

[deadguynotyetburied]

There's also the fact that the OP shortened the mnemonic. I before E except after C, or in long sounding A as in neighbor or weigh. Half of the exceptions listed were covered by the second half. How weird is that?

 

[DuplicateValue]

OK let's face it English is the most complex language to learn.

Bwahahaha. No, it isn't.

Yes, it is.

Other languages at least follow some logical pattern, but English has so many irregularities and exceptions, that it's extremely hard to both teach effectively (to a non-English speaker), and to learn.

It has a nasty habit of hiding what's actually being said.
For example, "I like reading" is actually the verb in it's infinitive form, but slightly disguised. It's the same as saying "I like to read".

And that's just one little example.

 

[Staskala]

OK let's face it English is the most complex language to learn.

Bwahahaha. No, it isn't.

Yes, it is.

Other languages at least follow some logical pattern, but English has so many irregularities and exceptions, that it's extremely hard to both teach effectively (to a non-English speaker), and to learn.

It has a nasty habit of hiding what's actually being said.
For example, "I like reading" is actually the verb in it's infinitive form, but slightly disguised. It's the same as saying "I like to read".

And that's just one little example.

No, it really isn't.
Try a language with genders, you will never get the logic behind the table being masculine or the girl being of neutral gender instead of female.
Then add all the various conjugations and declinations for all the various genders, times, cases and whatnot, and you got a language with actual grammar.
And then come the exceptions to the rule.

English has a few illogical rules and exceptions, but that's something every language has. The only thing I would actually call difficult in English are the tenses, but that's the same with most other languages which also have them.

 

[Amphoteric]

weigh, seize, surfeit, heifer, weird, deity, science, fallacies, frequencies, vacancies, beige, cleidoic, codeine, conscience, deify,deign, dreidel, eider, eight, either, feign, feint, feisty, foreign, forfeit, freight, gleization, gneiss, greige,greisen, heifer, heigh-ho, height, heinous, heir, heist,leitmotiv, neigh, neighbor, neither, peignoir, prescient,rein, science, seiche, seidel, seine, seismic, seize, sheik,society, sovereign, surfeit, teiid, veil, vein, weight, weir.

There is a lot.

 

[Scabadus]

OK let's face it English is the most complex language to learn.

Try Japanese. ***** is hard as hell.

OT: The whole rule is "I before E except after C and G" but people don't remember that G part because it feels tacked on.

"Weird" is an Ironic example of this.

Calumon: I thought rules were made to be broken.

I thought the rule was "I before E except after C and before G"? What happens if it's after a C and before a G at the same time I don't know, the world ends or something.

 

[Dango]

OK let's face it English is the most complex language to learn.

Try Japanese. ***** is hard as hell.

Trust me, English is much harder (and I think Japanese is rather simple, actually). English is an extremely inconsistent language and things that are correct may just sound downright stupid, take the sentences "I had had a pet dog" or "I think that that idea is good" for example, very simple sentences, but they just sound so... annoying. Who ever invented the English language must have been running out of stuff to work with when he came up with those.

OT: I can ever only think of the words "protein" and "weird" when it comes to this, I never really mined it or anything though. Like most of English it's just memorization of things that don't really fit the standard.

 

[DragonsAteMyMarbles]

Protein.

Best I could come up with on short notice.

Here's a lovely scientific one for you: phenolphthalein. Have fun pronouncing it!

Both of those aren't really core English words. Protein and all similar come from Greek, there is also bunch of words based on Latin (and thus also French, since French is bastardized Latin).
There is also the fact that the whole "I before E, except after C" thing is more of a mnemonic rather than rule, there is a difference.

Good point. Sounds like the difference between a "rule" and a "law" in science - a law is something near-enough impossible to circumvent, while a rule can have exceptions.

 

[Lord Legion]

English is one of the hardest actually, but not because of the rules...because of the words.

It was mentioned that we stole alot of words from other languages, and that many words have both phonetic and literal translations that can mean both at the same time. Like prey and pray, they could be used at the same time in a literary work for extra symbolism.

Another aspect of this is how MANY words we have, this coupled with double word usage, and the hyphen system (putting two words together to make a completely new meaning, ie: righteous-bastard) You can learn how to read and write it sure, but you could die of old age before you could understand it all.

The only other language that mirrors this system closely is arabic. That is why many of the greatest pieces of poetry are arabic and english (my professor argues at least)

 

[DuplicateValue]

Yes, it is.

Other languages at least follow some logical pattern, but English has so many irregularities and exceptions, that it's extremely hard to both teach effectively (to a non-English speaker), and to learn.

It has a nasty habit of hiding what's actually being said.
For example, "I like reading" is actually the verb in it's infinitive form, but slightly disguised. It's the same as saying "I like to read".

And that's just one little example.

No, it really isn't.
Try a language with genders, you will never get the logic behind the table being masculine or the girl being of neutral gender instead of female.
Then add all the various conjugations and declinations for all the various genders, times, cases and whatnot, and you got a language with actual grammar.
And then come the exceptions to the rule.

English has a few illogical rules and exceptions, but that's something every language has. The only thing I would actually call difficult in English are the tenses, but that's the same with most other languages which also have them.

I have learned languages with genders, and most of the time you should be able to intuitively tell whether an object is masculine or feminine by sound.
But even if you can't, it's not very often that getting the gender wrong is a crucial mistake (except in the few cases where it changes the meaning of the word).

And I think you've sort of proved my point up there - "and you've got a language with actual grammar"
That's what makes English so hard - it's grammar is messy and nonsensical a lot of the time. Give me a language with a good grammar structure and I'll happily learn away to my heart's content. I can learn off how to conjugate most tenses of an irregular verb in a few minutes, provided I already know the basics of that tense.

 

[Cpt_Oblivious]

being

That doesn't count because it's the present something-person something of the verb "To Be"