English is a difficult language

Started by fauxlaw

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#1 β€’β€’β€’

According to many people I have met around the world, having been in about 30 countries, exposed to many other languages, in my 76 years, the English language, either as the original [and for many, their only language], or as a second [or more], is a very difficulty language to learn. The faults, so I've been told, are several, beginning with the fact that English is burdened with more words [well over a million] than almost any other modern or ancient language. Most English speakers have a vocabulary of 20,000 words; a full college education may double that, and daily expected language to be considered literate is 10,000-to-15,000 words. However, daily common use, college or not, is limited to about 4,000 words.


Another problem is grammar; ours is one of the most violated grammars of many, not so much reading, but speaking. We are terrible at slurring words, which makes it difficult for foreigners to learn the language. Further, our grammar rules are legitimately broken even by following such texts as the Chicago Manual of Style, which many professional writers of fiction and non-fiction use as a standard, yet violate it all the time, mostly because even though I feel like my formative education in Los Angeles was a good one, and I was a dedicated student, I never encountered the manual of Style until I was in college. Associated with grammar is spelling [not an issue with speech], which is inconsistent in spite of rules and pronunciation.


My point is that there is a need to cut foreigners some slack while they try to learn English; their knowledge of use of their language probably exceeds our use of ours, and positively our use of theirs. Native Europeans, Slavs, Asians, and Africans have an excellent second language learning of English, much better than our efforts in their language. Our American education seems to have drifted to makes sure we understand how people feel, and not so much on what the know. As long as our students feel good, that's more important than brain training. That's no way to run an education system.

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We tell God what to do and then blame Him for our errors.

- Dr. Pet Dragon of Sorbonne University

#2 β€’β€’β€’

Blame William the Conqueror for inserting so much French into English. Extra complexity.

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#3 β€’β€’β€’
@Shoresy

Also known as or oftentimes referred to as William the Bastard too as well in addition besides...Mais oui mon petit pois.


Not to mention the Angles and the Saxons and every other bastard bunch of marauding bastards from continental Europe


They came they saw and they conquered as Caesar reputedly said in Latin previously.


And later on Adolph Hitler was keen...Thanks Godwin.


Interestingly Harald was Godwins Son...Heil Seig mein kleiner Erbse


Though Harald got one in the eye, whereas Adolph got one in the bunker.

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#4 β€’β€’β€’
@Shoresy
Blame Will Conquerer


Nope, I am of French ancestry, not English, so, I welcome Will's conquest as improving English. It was Will's conquest that landed my family history in Scotland, and, 400 years later, to America, so, the French influence is a benefit in my book, since I am also fluent in French, living there for a while to appreciate the heritage.

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We tell God what to do and then blame Him for our errors.

- Dr. Pet Dragon of Sorbonne University

#5 β€’β€’β€’
@fauxlaw

I'm always impressed when someone knows a second language.

I sure don't.


German has a lot of compound words I hear.

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#6 β€’β€’β€’
@fauxlaw

Well what is France and what was France...Just like the UK yet another Nation that eventually emerged from the Fiefdoms of western Europe and beyond...Scotland similarly...So bypassing the rest of Britain in your fanciful progress to the Rocky Mountains is something of a few pages short of a complete book... Notwithstanding that the journey started far earlier and somewhere else altogether...Your book also needs a prequel Faux.


I'm guessing that my ancestral story is pretty much the same as yours...The difference being that you are a native of the USA and I of the British Isles.

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#7 β€’β€’β€’
@Leaning

Yes, German is likely the king of compound words, which are called [in English] agglutinated words. Here is, I think, the ultimate example in German: Vierhundertvierundvierzigtausendvierhundertvierundvierzig.


Spoiler alert: this is not a word, per se, but a number: four hundred forty-four thousand four hundred forty-four, spelled rather than presented in numbers: 444,444. But, since it is acceptable to spell numbers, and it is agglutinated, it is grammatically legit in German.




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We tell God what to do and then blame Him for our errors.

- Dr. Pet Dragon of Sorbonne University

#8 β€’β€’β€’

As a non native English speaker, I have the impression that learning English is like learning a programming language, it's not difficult at all. Besides, English is a very useful language because it is direct, clean and efficient, just like a programming language. Lol.


Yeah, I like the fact that you don't need so many words to say anything in English, I mean you avoid using many words, like for example, instead of saying 'the wife of your neighbor', you just use 'your neighbor's wife', it's 2 words less. The same with your verbs, you don't need to learn many useless verbs to express yourself because you have phrasal verbs, so a verb can have many meanings by just adding a preposition. Take for example the verb 'fuck', you can have many verbs with many meanings using the same verb 'fuck', like 'fuck up', 'fuck around', 'fuck down', fuck away', 'fuck off', 'fuck aside', .. you see, it's a very clever solution. So, while English can have many words, you don't need to learn it all.


As to the broken grammar rules, come on, every language has broken rules becasue nothing is perfect. The only thing I find very annoying about English is the pronunciation which is oftently nonsensical. For example 'does' and 'shoes' are pronounced completely different eventhough they have the same structure. I mean, what the fuck.


Finally, I find very annoying the American accent, specially for the rhotic accent. I'm sorry but I hate it. That's why I use the brit accent, it might be because it feels more natural for a Spanish speaker like me.

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#9 β€’β€’β€’
@Misterio

So Senor, does your shoes fit thoroughly enough...There, their shoes and their toes they're roughly compatible, whereas your nose and your toes shows a marked ambiguity.. That said it made the staid maid, who stayed, wearing the ruff and was rough and ready throughout it ought to be said. And my daughter taught nought and naught and sought some sort of sum to teach on the beach beneath the beech...And do you read the newspaper and have you read the newspaper...No, I know now, the knowledge is near the knoll edge.

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#10 β€’β€’β€’
@SergeantLynch

Hey Victor, how is it going? Is this a sort of task for me to complete?


You remind me of a brit teacher, he was very knowledgable and taught me English very well. The only thing I didn't like about him is that he used to complain about his country all the time. He was living in Greece because according to him England is a very sad place. He moved to Greece to catch a bit of sun and not get depressed. Is the lack of sun really serious?


Well, at least you have Spain nearby, they are happy to welcome their old friends, the pirates. Lol.

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#11 β€’β€’β€’
@Misterio

Yes, vitamin D deficiency for sure...Especially if you spend most of the day in dark classrooms...Sad syndrome.


HaHa...And yes the Spanish want British tourist income and the British fruit, veg, wine and chorizo markets...But don't want British tourists and British consumers.


HaHa...They also want the rock of Gibraltar back, yet still want to hang on to Ceuta and Melilla.

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#12 β€’β€’β€’
@fauxlaw

I met a Korean here in states once, and he was going to learn English before coming here. His friend told him to learn German first, as has less words and structure same way as English, so that is what he did and also visited Germany first.


I didnt really understand what he meant by ..' german is structured just like English '... untill some years later I saw this black and white films of Hitler, Gorig and others giving speechs, and there were captions. Aha, then I could see what was meant by structured same as English.


...' I went to the store to buy bread,'... whereas in latin ergo spanish, the structure is differrent --and maybe in other languages like Korean--- where the reverse the older of some of the words, so instead in Latin/Spanish the may say... bread is at store I bought, or instead of the moon is blue, the latin is more like blue is the moon, etc type reversing of words in sentences if not who sentences.

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#13 β€’β€’β€’

As someone who learnt to speak English from video games, movies and Wikipedia, English doesn’t seem that hard.



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#14 β€’β€’β€’
@ebuc

I think there are way more differences between Latin and Spanish than there are similarities. Especially if you compare their grammar.


From what I remember Latin grammar is actually rather similar to modern German grammar, though even more complicated; no modern European language truly comes close to the complexity of Latin grammar. But Spanish grammar, I believe is fairly simple compared to Latin.

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#15 β€’β€’β€’
@Magoroth
But Spanish grammar, I believe is fairly simple compared to Latin.


Sure fine by me. Spanish/Spain etc has more basis in some aspects of Latin --reversing of the structure of how words follow each other-- more than the German ergo English, as the Korean person had told me, and the first time I learned anything about that.


I think I read once that Indo-European was a main branch of language epistomology{?}.


AI..Google.... ' Indo-European languages constitute the world's largest language family, spoken by over 40% of the population (roughly 3.2–3.5 billion people) across Europe, South Asia, and areas of European settlement. Originating roughly 6,000–6,500 years ago on the Eurasian Steppe (Yamnaya culture), these languages descend from a single ancestor, Proto-Indo-European '...


On a similar note, Bucky Fuller was first time I heard about how numbers 1{ vowel } 2 { consonant } --I later read this in some book about language-- and Fuller, who was big on historical sea-peoples culture history, stated that either there were angels who flew around the planet telling some portion of those European peoples to start number one with a vowel, and two a consonant, or,


..there was a sea-going peoples -- ex Phoenicians-- who traveled to many ports and the peoples adopted their vowel 1 and consonant 2 into their language.


If you not read B Fullers book 1979...Critical Path : Speculative Prehistory of Humanity,... I recommend it, tho of course Fuller is long winded, omni-comprehensive writer etc so it is not for most peoples liking. It was certainly and eye opener for me and wife when we bought it for ourselves in the 80's as wedding present to ourselves. :--) O (--:


A book recommended by Fuller in those days was by Guy Murchie, Seven Mysteries of Life and it took guy 13 years to write the book. It is of course sort of dated now, yet, it is still and incredible introduction to a large broad set of info about chemistry, color, olfactory etc.


Now days I dont read nearly as much as did 10 or more years ago. On the PC so much more and of course so many rarely take their eyes of the mobile phones. Exponential changes since invention of the digital age.

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#16 β€’β€’β€’

English is the easiest language to learn, you don’t have to be perfect to be understood.

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