Why do people think English is the hardest language to learn?

[Kragg]

I would suggest that the reason that you think that English is more difficult to learn is because you are a native speaker-- all arguments aside, I think it can be objectively shown that English is among the easiest languages to learn. Some non-native English speakers in this thread have claimed as much, because learning English is mostly about learning vocabulary and remembering those irregularities you mentioned.

i can see the other side too though, being a non-native english speaker. those might think it is easier than it really is, we do get bombarded with english from the age we turn on a TV though, cept those countries in the "western world" that still dub all their TV, again french and germans.

 

[subject_87]

Part of the problem is that pretty much every rule has at least one exception. For instance, every word has at least one vowel per syllable. Fair enough. But then comes the word 'rhythm'. Wha?... also, a lot of English is taken from other languages- 'coffee', 'tycoon' etc.
As another example, think of the words 'Tough' and 'Ghost'. 'Gh' appears in both, but in one it's pronounced as 'f', and in another, as 'g'.

But then there's Welsh, which looks like the alphabet just vomited. (No offense meant to any Welsh people, I'm sure it's a very nice language.)

 

[skitzo van]

It's because English is taught with rules that alot of the time don't apply.
"i" before "e" except after "c", for example, is wrong about half the time.
The double use of apostrophes, that "it's hot" - meaning "it is hot" and "it's bag" - implying the possesion "it" has of the bag.

English has rules that aren't consistent, that's one reason why it's hard to learn. I'm sure there are many more.

I don't know if my dictionary is wrong, but it only counts "it's" as declaring ownership, while "its" means "it is"
OT: Considering English takes words from all languages (Fick for instance) I can see why it is so complex, its basically the hobo who looks through everyone's trash

 

[Jack_Uzi]

The difficulty in learning a different language is only because it hasn't the same sort of structure of pronaunciation as your native language has. If your native language is somewhat related to the language you want to learn, it can be quite simple. But if you are not used to vocalise some letters or sounds because you don't use them in your own language, it could be difficult.

 

[LordOmnit]

Isn't Japanese like learning 4 at once?

One for talking to younger people.
One for talking to friends.
One for talking formally.
And one for talking to elders?

Or am I just making shit up?

Your not making shit up, but it's not four languages. It's hard to compare to English because you just speak in a more or less respectful/formal tone and use some different words whereas in Japanese it's all about different conjugations and words. Japanese has got a crazy number of conjunctive forms, but they all work exactly the same for their individual group of words (verbs ending in -eru/-iru, verbs ending in -*anything else*u, and the two truly irregular verbs in the entire language, and then like five verbs that act like the second when their form is -eru/-iru). Basically it requires a lot of form-learning, but you can acquire a goodly vocabulary and speak pretty much fine with anyone with about maybe six conjunctive forms; you may lack variety, but it isn't the English situation where if you don't know the proper form for each of the verbs it sounds really awkward.

 

[firedfns13]

English is among the easiest languages to learn, really, it's the reason it's considered the "international" language. Maybe it's "complicated", but it sure as hell is not "hard to learn" by any stretch.

I think it's the International language because of the influence the US and UK have/had on the world.

 

[cynikles]

BOLLOCKS.

It's all relative. European speakers will generally have an easier time with English than Asian speakers will, and then you have the individuals who just have a knack for language in between.

Look, I speak fluent Japanese and it took me a while, but I didn't ever find it 'difficult.' I've heard theories about Russian being the hardest to learn due to a complex grammar structure, but honestly, saying one language is harder to learn than another is just bollocks.

 

[DazBurger]

I'm surprised some people haven't heard this because its definitely true. I'm a native English speaker and sometimes I sit down and think "Wow. This shit is stupid."

Lets take for examples the word "Ones" as in "Those ones over there".

That is the plural form of a word which is by definition singular. What the fuck English. This is the kind of shit that confuses foreigners until their brains explode. Not to mention that most languages have a few irregular verbs, usually to be and a couple other common ones, but practically every verb in English is irregular in one way or another.

We think that a lot of Asian languages are hard just because they have different alphabets and a very different grammatical structure than us but they actually have rules that they usually stick to. English does not. Our language makes no sense.

This.

Theres also the fact there isn't any sort of consistent logic to it. Its just a couple thousand years of slang and words from other languages cobbled together.

Fixed that for ya.

Also that. For all native English speakers, you probably think English is easy because it is your native language. Nuff said.

Well, I found english the easyest language to learn by far.

Iv tried english, french and spanish, but english is the only one that ever stuck, even at a young age.


But that may be caused by english consisting partly by latin, germanian (no.. not german) and mostly... Old danish. (Aka. Danish tongue aka. whatever the vikings spoke at the time they invaded britain)


Its surprising how many words, danish and english have in common.

 

[tehroc]

complexity of vocabulary and tenses, phonetics

That's exactly why it's hard..

Compared to Latin based languages(Portuguese, French, Spanish, Italian) English is really simple. I studied Portuguese(as main language), French and English in school and English was the easiest class of the three.

That's why they all belong to the romance language family.

I speak Southern American which is pretty easy to learn to speak. Make up words that sound like contractions like yall.

 

[Tourette]

With the UK being the origin of the English language it is amazing that such a small island has so many accents, some of which are even hard to understand by others who live in the UK. Cross that with the amount of slang it can almost be complete gibberish to other English speaker from other parts of the world.
A perfect example would be an American going to the likes of Liverpool or Glasgow only to be confronted by the broad accents and be totally clueless as to what they are saying but they are still speaking the same language^^

 

[Mar451]

ITs because of slang, talk to any foreign exchange student, notice how proper they are talking? A person who is talking in proper english will sound completly alien and weird to the rest of us. Plus the rest of the world speaks in a diffrent way when it comes to verb and nouns and what not, while english does not, just an example on how much the english language has changed, does anyone know what pwned meant about a decade ago?

 

[quiet_samurai]

Pretty much agreeing with all the points perople are making about it being difficult. I know alot of people whom English is not their first language and they state how difficult it is constantly. Most of them gave many of the reason listed before my post.

Also, of course if you grow up speaking a language it's gong to be easy fo you.... durr.

 

[TheSkaAssassin]

English is the second hardest language to learn, just behind Mandarin.
Child versus Children.
Read(reed) versus Read(red).

 

[Verlander]

English is difficult due to it's poor grammar, it's individual sentence construction, it's amalgimation of different words from different languages, and the fact that we have so many words that mean the same (or similar) things! The urban myth that Eskimos have 30 words for snow or whatever is somewhat ironic as there are more words for it in English!

Latin based languages and Asian languages are easier to learn because they have a strict principle to them, and the sentence construction hasn't changed over the years. English sentence construction has changed a lot, and the fact that it is spread over so many countries/people just makes it prone to changing more rapidly in the future

For everyone who thinks that learning Japanese or whatever is difficult, that is because you are comparing it to your mother tongue which is different, as well as a lack of exposure to it. People in New Zealand learn Japanese in schools as easily as we learn French. Age also has a massive part to play in learning a language, the younger the better.

English is definitely the hardest/most ridiculously demanding language to learn from a foreign perspective.

 

[DarkHourPrince]

English is a hotpot of every the languages of everybody that at one point or another lived in britain: the saxons, the romans, the pagans/celts/picts (the original natives), the normans, vikings as well as many words stolen from other nearby countries (particularly france) in more recent times.

It's a hodpodge of every language, and is the point at which norse and latin languages have combined.

Since the US made it's own dialect, things have only gotten more complicated.

As a US English speaker I can vouch on how I'm glad I didn't have to go through the harrowing experience of learning English. I've studied French, Spanish, and Japanese and all three of them seem to abide by at least some system of structure and general rule that made picking them up easier. English has none of that. There really is no "system" to English so much as "jump in and flail until you swim."

 

[fenderstrat]

Where did this come from? i saw it in the "J in Japan" topic and i have heard it here so many times, but i can't find any evidence of it at all.

I have seen diffferent trains of thought on how too look at it, complexity of vocabulary and tenses, speaking as a native, phonetics, but none of these put english as the hardest.

Where did this come from? help !

say what??

english is the EASIEST language to learn! i learned it without even trying!

 

[pauloalbatross]

To emphasize the problem, Bernard Shaw once proposed the spelling ghoti for "fish", with the [gh] from "laugh", the [o] from "women" and the [ti] from "nation".

The other well known sentence being "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo", which actually is grammatically correct. (It means THE buffalo FROM Buffalo WHO ARE buffaloed BY buffalo FROM Buffalo, buffalo buffalo FROM Buffalo.)

English is a true bastard of a language. In the literal sense.

"The problem with defending the purity of the English Language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." -- James D. Nicoll

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

English is constructed out of every other language from Europe.

We had Latin from the Romans, Celtic, Gaelic, Old French, Middle French, Anglo-Saxony, even German and other assorted Nordic languages creeping in.

Basically it means that while many languages evolved from one source (for example, the Romantic languages, a series of languages which all emerged out of Latin; Japanese, Chinese) 'English' was never exactly a language. In its earliest stages it was akin to pidgin (a language constructed from words you understand that the locals use and words of your own language) in order for the various conquerors to communicate with the natives.

But, this is also why it quickly became one of the dominant languages once England stopped getting invaded and started doing the invading, back in the days of Old English and Middle English it would be quite possible for a Frenchman and an Englishman to talk to each other in their own language and understand large amounts of what was said (similar to how Portugese, Italian and Spanish speakers can usually understand each other with minimal effort) Its only when proto-Modern English starts cropping up that we started to take massive steps away from other languages.

So that's basically it, when you learn Modern English you aren't learning any one language, you're learning a whole cavalcade of languages with different syntactic incongruities (English has no male and female nouns for example).

 

[SextusMaximus]

There are millions of irregularities. If you've ever studied another language and thought learning the irregulars were hard, there are TONNES more in English.