English is Difficult...

[System_Overload]

Sometimes I just don't understand the English language....

Take a look...

The bandage was wound around the wound.

The farm was used to produce produce.

The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse

We must polish the Polish furniture.

He could lead if he would get the lead out.

The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.

A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

I did not object to the object.

The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

They were too close to the door to close it.

The buck does funny things when the does are present.

A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

After a number of injections my jaw got number.

Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?


Im glade I don't have to teach english.... *lol*


System_0verload

[Kezil]

just the word run has 26+ possible meanings...I wonder if any other language has packed so much into something so small?

[darthmaul]

Very George Carlinesque! No wonder people don't communicate nowadays.

[KorpDeath]

It's all about context.

[draziw]

No wonder English is considered the world's most difficult language... though frankly verb conjugation in others seems a lot worse (probably something having to due with the fact that I'm a native English speaker, only having pursued others as early as the high school time frame).

[dspeidel]

I always thought that if you spoke a gender enabled language (Spanish, Italian, French, German) it would be easy to learn verb conjugation. I worked for 5 months in German and spoke with Germans and other nationalities and discovered that this is not the case. Several, much to my surprise, said that English was easier then other languages spoken on the continent. If recently, decided that they all through tricks at you. I've only ever tried Spanish and German and I had different difficulties with both.

Cheers,
-D

[intruder]

good one system... english is really funny...

[Negative]

Originally posted by Draziw
No wonder English is considered the world's most difficult language... though frankly verb conjugation in others seems a lot worse (probably something having to due with the fact that I'm a native English speaker, only having pursued others as early as the high school time frame).

Since I find this part of the thread more interesting than the original post, I'll react to this one...

I don't think English is considered the world's most difficult language (I'm even sure about it...)...

Regular verbs, conjugation: in English, there are only two forms of the present time: I,you,we, you, they (I work, you work, we work, you work, they work) and he/she/it (works). Most languages have at least three... (Je travaille, tu travailles, il travaille, nous travaillons, vouz travaillez, ils travaillent). In English, you only have the regular verbs and the irregular verbs. All regular verbs are conjugated the same. Languages like French have regular verbs, separated in about 5 categories (all conjugated differently), and irregular verbs.

Irregular verbs, conjugation: the list of irregular English verbs isn't that long.... People who had to study the French irregular verbs once, know what I'm talking about.

Nouns: in English, the only case left is the genitive. Languages like German still use all four cases. As mentioned before, most European languages are gender enabled. (LE garçon/LA fille <--> THE boy/THE girl). In English, you don't have to know whether a noun is masculin, feminin or neutral. In French, it's crucial...

Vocabulary: the English vocabulary isn't even half as extended as most European languages'.

Culture: language is culture; to fully master a language, you have to understand it's culture (Nooo, I'm not going to say that English-speaking people have no culture). It's easier for foreigners to master the English/American culture than it is for English/Americans to master European cultures: European culture is full of American influences (love it or leave it...), the opposite isn't true...

Just some points... the list is much longer than this... and I haven't even mentioned Chinese or Japanese... try mastering that as a foreigner.

[pwaring]

Originally posted here by Negative



I don't think English is considered the world's most difficult language (I'm even sure about it...)...

Have to disagree with you there Negative , English is renowned as the most difficult language for foreigners to learn, mainly because there are so many similies, metaphors, hononyms etc, which makes it really easy for us to come up with jokes involving puns that just wouldn't make any sense if translated into another language.

There are often lots of exceptions to the rules in English, e.g. Paul's, Robert's but *Charles'*, its and it's etc.

What surprises me is that, even though English may or may not be the most difficult language for foreigners to learn, it is still the most widespread and accepted language in the world, and I believe it is also the offical language for requesting landing permissions at airports. This is probably because we went round colonising the world 2 - 3 hundred years ago and left our language behind!

English is probably easy to learn, but difficult to master. However, if you want anyone to blame for this, it's probably the ancient Romans, since they came over here in 44BC and gave us Latin, on which English is strongly based.

Of course, English is more simple than European languages in that we don't distinguish the gender of objects, but then I think that's a good idea because how do you define or even remember whether an object is masculine or feminine, and what real difference does it make? We couldn't do this anyway in English because we're too politically correct so we'd have to divide everything 50/50 to be fair...

I must admit that I *hated* having to learn an EU language (French) for my GCSEs, because it was so different to English and the grammer seemed to follow various different rules! You could get marked down just for saying "nous avons" instead of "nous avais", or something like that (I apologise if any of my French is incorrect, although I managed to get an 'A' in the subject I have forgotten most of it now, which shows what a waste of time it was learning it).

However difficult English is to learn, it would be a good idea for everyone to pick a little bit up if at all possible, because it *is* the international language for communication - the majority of sites on the internet use it and practically every country in the world has a significant number of people who speak English (if you go abroad to Spain or France, most waiters, shop assistants etc. will speak English in addition to their native language). In fact, English is probably as wide-spread as Coca Cola .

What I have said is probably somewhat biased since I'm a patriotic Englishman.

[debwalin]

Hmmm, IMO, isn't expecting everyone to know a little bit of English a little rude. I mean one of the most common complaints in America is that people come here and don't bother to know English. Wouldn't going to another country and expecting them to speak English to accomodate us be the same thing?

Deb