What makes English so difficult to learn?
>>How many folks from some English-speaking country go overseas to live, and are unable to pick up the local language at all? If you learn English first, its sheer simplicity spoils you, and you'll have a tough time learning anything else afterward, unless you have a real knack for languages<<
You seem to be a silly troll, repeatedly claiming that being a native English speakers 'spoils' you. You have a point that it will probably be harder to learn a foreign language at first as you will have to become accustomed to unfamiliar concepts, but to imply that English speakers are somehow incapable of learning other languages is stupid.
My personal experience of learning German was this. At the very beginning I thought it was easy due to much of the vocab being familiar. Then I thought it was a bit of a nightmare when I realised I had to understand the declension system (although even here, if I'd been taught English grammar properly and understood the cases used in English pronouns, it might have been easier). Then I recognised that all this 'complicated' grammar actually followed a logical pattern (it first started to sink in after I realised that English also had some case usage), and after that learning German became quite manageable. Not easy of course, no language is, but I doubt any more difficult than for a German speaker learning English at the same level. When I went to live in Germany, I was speaking it reasonably fluently after two or three months.
<<Don't all languages have lots of unwritten and bizzare little conventions that you need to follow to sound like a native?>>
I doubt that most are as illogal, irregular, and idiomatic, as english.
<<Can anyone name a language (other than a Pidgin or artificial language) that's simpler to learn at a basic level than English? >>
The other similar languages in the same family (i.e dutch, frisian, afrikkans, ect), and almost any other weakly inflected language, would be roughly equivalent, in that respect.
* please forgive the typos in the above post.
"How many folks from some English-speaking country go overseas to live, and are unable to pick up the local language at all? If you learn English first, its sheer simplicity spoils you, and you'll have a tough time learning anything else afterward, unless you have a real knack for languages."
It's true that many English speakers go overseas and never learn the language, but I don't think this is related to how "easy" English is. In the case of Americans, they may feel that learning the local language is not necessary because of the perception of English as "the" or "an" international language. It also depends on the reason the English speaker is overseas. Diplomatic personnel may have resources that an army recruit doesn't have. A physician or nurse going to Saudi Arabia may live in a compound surrounded by other English speakers. A peace corps volunteer will probably learn SOME of the language.
I don't know about "picking" up languages. I've actually never met anyone personally who simply picked up an ENTIRE language. I pick up bits of language from native speakers, but I still have to do some study on my own. I know the story about the Spanish speaker who picked up Hebrew. If true, the Spanish speaker was SURROUNDED by Hebrew speakers. Most Americans don't hang out with the locals to the degree that they can do this. Maybe a foreign exchange student could, but even he or she would study the language formally.
'Guest' : « The phrase "English is not difficult for the purposes of communication, but it is exceedingly difficult to learn it " has 2 parts. The 2nd part is true for all languages, ie that all languages are exceedingly difficult to learn well" [...] ».
Jusqu'ici tout va bien.
'Guest' : « [...] but the first part IS NOT! You can't communicate in Russian half as well as in English just by putting randomw words in the right order because there is no right order. »
Mais ce n'est pas ce qui est écrit dans la première partie de la phrase. Il n'est pas écrit : *« You can't communicate in Russian half as well as in English just by putting randomw words in the right order because there is no right order. ». Voici ce qui est écrit : « English is not difficult for the purposes of communication ». C'est pareil pour toutes les langues car elles sont toutes faites pour *communiquer*.
Because English is very ugly and people don't feel stimulated enough to learn such an ugly language.
Greg:
It's funny how much of your French I can understand without ever having formally studied it. I don't understand it all of course, and often resort to Babelfish, but usually then I find I have definitely got the gist of it. So I'm thinking French must be pretty easy. Sure it's got its elaborate verb forms, but that doesn't hinder understanding much, does it?
Do you think I should try to learn it? I have learnt German, so understand grammar pretty well. I kind of find Romance languages boring with their elaborate verb systems, but lack of any real declension system, it's like they lack the balance of a language like German. Somehow it's more interesting if the grammatical complexity of a language is based around its nouns along with a fairly complex verb system, as opposed to a language with loads of verb forms but little noun morphology. Or maybe it's just French, it just seems to be add 's' or 'es' or 'ees' with an accent on one 'e' a bit too much, it just all seems a bit redundant, unlike German which fits into a nice interesting pattern.
<<Do you think I should try to learn it? I have learnt German,>>
If you were able to learn German, either French or Spanish should be a snap in comparison.
Be thankful that the noun declension in French and especially Spanish isn't worse than English, although they do have that pesky concept of gramattical gender. :)
<< Sure it's got its elaborate verb forms [french] >>
Not really.
French is simpler than it looks written; especially with regard to verb forms, which when spoken, are not elaborate, nor numerous.
<<But what if you were talking about him running up the stairs. 'He ran quickly up the stairs' is fine, but 'He ran fast up the stairs' is totally wrong.>>
It's not wrong at all, in fact it's even more complex than if it were wrong. It actually has a completely different nuance.
The reason you notice all these people coming to English speaking countries who don't ever learn the language well is because there are lots of them and are a lot more noticeable. It's got nothing to do with the difficulty of languages. The same would be true for any language. It's just that an American going to teach in a Chinese university is much more likely to be going there to teach English than to teach Chemistry, so will presumably be more likely to know Chinese. So the only foreigners (to whom the locals are exposed) are likely to be more dedicated language learners with more impressive skills.
Think the English native people's fame of not being able to learn (speak without a heavy accent) other languages is already spread out, being it real or not.
This is also true for Asian, Spaniards, Italian and French.
I would agree that these are fairly common stereotypes. There is always some social pressure to be part of the group. If you learn another language freely (not forced to do so in school or for business), you indicate that you are open to other people and their culture. There are some people who will learn just for the intellectual stimulation, but they probably aren't good speakers.
Even though I like languages, I resist studying some languages as intensely as others because I am not as crazy about aspects of the target language's associated culture.
If you think about it- a French or other European businessman without a real gift for language, will probably learn the language to the level that best suits his business needs. He may not work on his accent as long as he is understood.
<<I resist studying some languages as intensely as others because I am not as crazy about aspects of the target language's associated culture. >>
Which? Which? Please tell, I want to know if your a human or robot.
I'm surprised to see K.T. admit that there are aspects of some cultures which he doesn't like. I wouldn't have expected it from such a PC person...