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

[Dexiro]

I would have thought it were pretty easier. Tons of people in other countries know english, but not many who learnt english first know anything else.

 

[UnkeptBiscuit]

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.

Actually, "it's" exclusively means "it is," "its" is the possessive adjective form of "it."

OT: Yeah, it's basically just all these little rules that don't apply half the time.

 

[frago roc]

English is hard to learn because of all the exeptions. Take the work "wind" for example. You can wind up a clock or say that the wind is blowing outside. Different definition, different pronunciation, but same spelling.

Also, take a look around you. How many people speak perfect English? Probably none. Lots of people still think that "alot" is a word and don't know when to use words like "neither."

That being said I make no claims at being perfect, but I still feel like people need to be more careful with their word choice.

 

[jultub]

I've heard that Icelandic is a pretty tough language to learn. And I'd say that people who speak english natively don't really have that much of a say in this, I learned english easily, then later I studied german for 4 years, and I can pretty much say: "You are the waiter. Cheese." in german nowadays.

 

[The Stonker]

Just compare it to Japanese, with its abundance of different signs, or French, with all the "le" and "la" you have to tell apart, and it won't feel as hard anymore. Tricky? I guess. Hardest in the world? Not by a long shot.

Personally I'm studying japanese and I think the language is quite easy well writing it is a different matter but actually talking on japanese that's pish tosh and constructing a japanese vocabulary isn't so tough.

But if you want a really tough language to learn then learn icelandic you bastards it's kinda like german in grammar except it makes german look like a walk in the park.

 

[KindOfnElf]

it isn't. but French is.

 

[GundamSentinel]

Well may native language is Dutch and I can ensure that Dutch is much harder then English. The Dutch language has tons of special exceptions.

Also I think that English is easier the German, because the of those damn grammatical cases.

"Wo ist meine Fahrrad?"

English is easy compared to Dutch because of those exceptions, but both languages aren't too difficult in terms of grammar.

Pronunciation however is a different matter. English is very difficult to pronounce correctly because it has a very rich phonology, especially the vowels cause a lot of problems. However, Dutch is even harder. Dutch is in that respect the hardest language in the world as it uses a huge number of vowels, some of which aren't used in any other major language.

 

[PureChaos]

i learned it without too much trouble!

 

[TG MLPDashie]

because we have more complex words and sentences than some other languages. like we have "which" and "witch", "jail" and "gaol" ect: and the thing is we have acronyms that peeve foreigners cause are confusing for them to learn. Like i learned french in 3 months while it took my french friendS over 2 years to learn english.

 

[Denamic]

Never heard that before.

I've only ever heard that Japanese is the hardest language to learn.

It's really not.
The language itself is fairly simple.
It's kanji, their written language that's a pain in the ass.
Scandinavian languages tend to be among the hardest.
Like Swedish.
I'm Swedish and still struggle with it.

 

[sgtshock]

Am I the only one who noticed that most of the people in this thread who think English is difficult are actual native English speakers, while most of the people who find it easy learned it as a second language? I find that interesting.

 

[megamanenm]

Difficulties in learning languages results from dissimilarities from your native language. Someone who speaks German is going to learn Dutch very easily because of similar vocabulary and phonetics, less word inflections, no cases and generally similar syntax while an English speaker would find Russian hard to learn because of the cases (whereas only the English nominative and genitive cases are productive nowadays), different alphabet, syntax, phonology and phonetics.

So there is no natural language that would be universally difficult to learn. If you want an example of what a TRUE difficult and logical language would look like, take a look at the constructed language Ilaksh, seriously just do it: http://www.ithkuil.net/ilaksh/Ilaksh_Intro.html .

 

[MikailCaboose]

Japanese is actually really easy. All the 'letters' only have a single sound. E.g. Ka is always pronaunced 'kah'. However a in English can be 'ah' as in cat, 'ay' as in cake etc.

The difficult problem with Japanese is the fact that all of the characters each have their own meaning, which when combined in a word can completely change the meaning of the character as opposed to it just remaining separate.

 

[Exocet]

Let me put this into perpective:
I'm a native French speaker and English have been my second language ever since I was 8 years old.To this day,I speak English almost flawlessly,while I still have some trouble with French,especially with the fucked up tenses and moronic grammar rules.

English is not a hard language to learn,not by a longshot.
However,it's not easy to master since it's moving alot.

 

[Blue Musician]

I've only ever heard that Japanese is the hardest language to learn.

This and Russian, but most of the languages in the world are very identical, we just need to start learning them.
There is one language in South America (I think) that doesn't has any vowels. Now THAT'S hard to learn.

 

[Jerious1154]

The hardest languages to learn for non-native speakers are definitely any language that's tonal, like Mandarin. From what I've heard, trying to match the exact tones to the words is extremely difficult to learn if you weren't brought up doing it.

 

[GuardianAnubite]

Because it's nonsensical. As has already been said, why does monkey not rhyme with donkey, for example. Combine that with those rules you learn in school that you later realize don't help at all, and confusing aspects that even some native English speakers don't get (whom/who, who's/whose), and I find it pretty easy to accept that English is a silly language that could be the hardest to learn. I had heard that English was the hardest (or was it one of the hardest?) languages to learn by a teacher or two while I was in high school.