English is Difficult...

[pwaring]

Originally posted here by 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?

I don't *expect* everyone to speak a little bit of English, but it would help them to do so because it's the internationally recognised language. Of course, some people will speak/write/read more English than others, because it's their first language (as is the case for me). I don't mean to force anyone to learn English.

I can't see how Americans can complain about people not bothering to speak English, because they have corrupted parts of the language anyway by leaving out letters such as the "u" in colour, which really annoys me because I have to learn all these mistakes in order to create proper HTML - in English it would be bgcolour="#ffffff", but because America started the internet I have to use bgcolor="#ffffff", which is not correct!

If I go to France, I would expect them to expect me to speak some French in order to communicate, after all it's only polite to speak to people in the language to which they are accustomed if you are a tourist. BTW though, if you go to Gibraltar and speak to them in Spanish they would probably be offended - they're the most patriotic British people I know of!

[Negative]

Originally posted by Mr. Waring
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.

Most jokes in any language don't make sense if translated to other languages. I see your point if you talk about homonyms (although I think you're referring to homophones, and not homonyms... "its" and "it's" is a homophone btw...), but metaphors? Let's go through this from a historical point of view: you mentioned that English is based on Latin. May come as a surprise, but most European languages are also based on/strongly influenced by Latin. You guys say "Paul has many irons in the fire"; most European languages have the exact same expressions.
Then there's a lot of metaphores based on body parts; the same metaphores are used both in English and most European languages (the neck of a bottle, the teeth of a saw, the head of department,...).
A lot of computer-terms are metaphores: mouse, virus, window, web,... Same in Europe, Mr. Waring

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

Hmmm, that aren't exceptions. There's a rule for that (and a pretty easy one): words ending in "s" don't take 's but just '. Its and it's are two different cases: "it's" is just an abbreviation for "it is", and its is the genitive of "it" I was talking about. In German, you would have something like <dramatization> its, i'ts, it's, 'its, and its'</dramatization>, depending on the case. Of course there are exceptions to the basic rules in English, but this wasn't one of them... This was just a homophone.

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...

The point is not whether it's a good idea or not, or whether it makes a difference or not. It's easier to not differentiate, right? And more difficult to differentiate, right?

Although sometimes it's practical to actually differentiate: if Debwalin says something about her (oh look, a differentiation... would be stupid to say 'his', wouldn't it? To all of us, this sounds obvious; to (most) French people differentiating between masculin, feminin and neutral nouns is obvious as well...) little one when referring to her child, you wouldn't know whether she has a boy or a girl. European languages save you the hassle of having to ask whether it's a boy or a girl.

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).

"Nous avons" was correct...

French and Spanish waiters speaking English? Guess you got lucky then, since most Spanish and French people refuse to speak English... or if they do, it's English with hair on it (oh looky, I just translated a Dutch metaphoric expression to English... don't know if it'll make sense).

If you're talking about the diffulty of a language, you shouldn't be talking about particular cases (which every language has). Those particular cases are something you'll only learn by speaking to the people, by researching the culture, by thinking like someone who's language you're interested in... That's what differentiates the people who speak English from the native-English speakers and they who master English. I, for example, make up everything I want to say in Dutch first, then translate it to English, taking in account my vocabulary... Non-native English speakers who master English, don't have to translate everything first. They THINK in English, I don't...

[pwaring]

Originally posted here by Negative

"Nous avons" was correct...

I haven't lost all my French knowledge then...

French and Spanish waiters speaking English? Guess you got lucky then, since most Spanish and French people refuse to speak English... or if they do, it's English with hair on it (oh looky, I just translated a Dutch metaphoric expression to English... don't know if it'll make sense).

Most French people I've spoken to speak some degree of English, although it's been a while since I last visited France.

English with hair on it??? No, it doesn't make sense!

If you're talking about the diffulty of a language, you shouldn't be talking about particular cases (which every language has). Those particular cases are something you'll only learn by speaking to the people, by researching the culture, by thinking like someone who's language you're interested in... That's what differentiates the people who speak English from the native-English speakers and they who master English. I, for example, make up everything I want to say in Dutch first, then translate it to English, taking in account my vocabulary... Non-native English speakers who master English, don't have to translate everything first. They THINK in English, I don't...

Fair point, I'm native English so it comes naturally to me, although some things don't always make perfect sense. You write good English for someone who doesn't come from my country, as do a lot of people on AO. Undoubtably your Dutch would be far better than mine, in fact I don't really know any Dutch...

[Negative]

in fact I don't really know any Dutch...

Aardvark, Apartheid... there you go. Dutch ain't that difficult

"English with hair on it...". You know when you don't clean your kitchen and there are some left-overs laying around and you go on a holiday for a couple of weeks and you don't have a cat to eat all the left-overs and your mom doesn't come over to take care of your kitchen... hmm, well, you get the idea... Hair all over what's left over from your left-overs... Now make the analogy with English, and you'll get my idea

[garathjax]

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

I'd have to disagree with you there cause I'm fairly sure Mandarin is the most wide spread language in the world, with Spanish coming in a distant second and then English in third.

So instead of learning English should we all run out and learn Chinese?

P.s. Asian languages are not that difficult, I've only been learning Japanese 3 months and I can already count up to ten (at least most of the time) in it!!!

P.p.s I'd have to say that Celtic languages are the easiest to learn, but then I didn't learn English until I was 5 and started school (I used to (and still do) speak Irish at home with my family)

[Negative]

itch nie san sji go rok sich hatsj kou tsjou... Hrmmm, pretty close, no?

You both have a point, garathjax and Pwaring: Mandarin is spoken by over a billion of people, and therefore the most-spoken language, followed by Spanish indeed. Too bad those Mandarin Chinese peeps aren't exactly wide-spread, and so isn't their language... The English language though IS widespread (no wonder, with the States in the West, England in the middle, and Australia in the East...There's no escape, I'm telling you! Mandarin Chinese, beware!).

[sun7dots]

I would agree with Negative. I'm from Czech Republic so english isn't my first language. And I've studied german and english -IMO I can see some differences between this languages.

First of all english isn't hard to study - of course to speak/write without mistakes and with advanced english is really hard but it's in every language. In english after about month of studying you are able to ask for a lunch or something like that and make only a few mistakes in that sentece. But german or mainly czech are MUCH harder then english. And I mean just to speak (even with mistakes).

For example in german - every word such as auto, haus etc has also its specific article (don't know how to call it right in english) - there is no just haus, hund - its DAS haus, DAS auto, DER hund... this articles are later used when building a sentence...

Other thig is how to say something. In english (correct me if I'm wrong) when you want to say that some apple is little, red and rounded you say little red rounded apple. In czech we could say malé kulaté jablko (translation from english), or malinké kulaÂ�ouèké jablko(a little bit nicer), or just jablÃ*èko(something a little bit different but I can't describe the difference)

Next thing is that english isn't hard to pronounce - of course native speakers would hear the difference but IMO english isn't hard to pronounce - you have no special letters that has no other language. Czech language has (I talking about czech language because I know it and I'm showing the differences on it but there are many other hard languages) - ì,Å¡,è,ø,ž,ý,á,Ã*,é...

And the last thing - in english you have still the same i/y in the words (the i/y is not depended on sentence order). In czech we don't - Sometimes the sentence is right in this form - Chlapci behali. The boys were running. Sometimes this - DÃ*vky bìhaly. Girls were running... Many mature czechs has sometimes problem decide how to write something right - so it is probably an horror for others to do it. So thats my opinion And sorry for my english mistakes

Thanx for your time

[Geric]

El gato es muy feo! (and I probibly spelled something wrong) That's about all I can say after 4 years of spanish. English and bad english... that's all I know.

[Specter6]

English may present difficulties with context, but I have to say that German was by far the hardest language for me to learn. I took Spanish and French also, but frankly found German more challenging.

There's like 4 or 5 different ways you can conjugate verbs, then there's like a casual form of speaking and then a more formal manner of speaking. So many choices.

But what really got me was the difference in dialects, which I discovered when stationed at Hohenfels. The dialect can actually change the sound of a word so much (to me) that some folks were very difficult to understand. (Which may be equivalent to somebody who speaks English as a second language trying to understand a person who was born and lived in the deep south all their life vs somebody who has lived in NY all their life.)

But I have to agree about Mandarin-Chinese. While in the Army, I was offered a chance to become an interrogator-linguist (97EL for you Army pukes :-)), I wanted to continue with German as I had already studied the language for 4 years, the Army wanted me to go to school for 55 weeks to learn Mandarin-Chinese! 55 weeks was a little longer than I wanted to spend in school, so I declined. But did learn the school is that long as Mandarin-Chinese is considered by many language professionals to be one of the most difficult languages to master.

[dspeidel]

Originally posted here by garathjax


I'd have to disagree with you there cause I'm fairly sure Mandarin is the most wide spread language in the world, with Spanish coming in a distant second and then English in third.

I think from the fact that there are more Mandarin speaking Chinese then any other demographic Madarin is the most spoken language in the World -but how many of them speak English and might that tip the scales in favor of English?