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

[runnernda]

The language is growing (read: has been bastardized) all the time. We use nouns as verbs ("let's party) and the American education system apparently doesn't put a whole lot of emphasis on when to use the proper forms of you're and your, who's and whose, their, there and they're...so I can totally understand why someone who isn't a native speaker could have a problem with it. Heck, I can't understand what my brothers are saying half the time.

 

[tehroc]

It doesn't help that we further bastardize our vocabulary with words like ginormous (see Firefox didn't even flag it for spell check wtf english?!?)

 

[darth gditch]

Because none of our rules are really followed all the time. In Latin, and Latin based languages, there are relatively few exceptions for grammatical rules. Few irregular verbs, ect. In English, most verbs are irregular, and sentence construction is difficult, because English syntax is determined far more by the position of the work in a sentence rather than the word ending, as is the case in Romance languages.

I think Russian and the Slavic languages are probably harder though.

 

[Mattismen]

Three witches watches three swatch watch switches. wich witch watches wich swatch watch switch?

 

[Assassin Xaero]

complexity of vocabulary and tenses, phonetics

That's exactly why it's hard..

That combined with the fact that half our "rules" are only right half the time, if that. I'm looking at you "i before e except after c".

 

[mkg]

complexity of vocabulary and tenses, phonetics

That's exactly why it's hard..

Compared to Latin based languages(Portuguese, French, Spanish, Italian) English is really simple. I studied Portuguese(as main language), French and English in school and English was the easiest class of the three.

What's your original language? Because you're crazy, the "romance" languages are some of the easiest to pick up on, especially if you've already achieved at least the ability to hold a loose conversation in one.

 

[Kragg]

Where did this come from? i saw it in the "J in Japan" topic and i have heard it here so many times, but i can't find any evidence of it at all.

I have seen diffferent trains of thought on how too look at it, complexity of vocabulary and tenses, speaking as a native, phonetics, but none of these put english as the hardest.

Where did this come from? help !

say what??

english is the EASIEST language to learn! i learned it without even trying!

i wasn't saying it was or wasn't
in case you were english native, lame joke

 

[Abedeus]

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.

I see your French (hahaha) and I raise you Polish.

Tell me, can you understand the difference between Ó and U? They both read as oo in "boom" or "doom" read fast.

Or H and CH. There are some rules, but in the middle of a word, you can only learn every single word. Or RZ and SZ after consonants - sound the same, most of the time it's RZ after some letters (p, b, d and some more), sometimes there are exceptions... and exceptions to exceptions. Or RZ and Ż. Even harder. The only Polish letter that doesn't have a second obnoxious version is CH (like H in "horn").

Oh, and don't forget that every single noun is male, female or... "it". Plurals are half of the time different from English's "add S, ES or IES and sometimes cut off Y". And there are words who have two different plural forms depending on the context. For instance, "ear" is in Polish "ucho", and plural is "uszy". Wanna get weirder? Ears can also mean the handles in grocery bags and the likes, and it's "ucha" in plural. Oh, and we have 7 grammatical cases, each with different uses and nouns change their structure too.

Objectively, as someone who studied 4 languages total in his life so far, I'll say that from the most difficult to learn to the easiest one it would go like this:

Polish -> German -> Spanish -> English.

I can definitely see why English is very difficult to learn. It makes no sense most of the time.
But you know what language is ridiculously difficult or those who don't already know a Slavic language?
Polish.
17 DIFFERENT FORMS OF THE NUMBER 'TWO'.
Ó IS PRONOUNCED THE SAME AS U.
WTF POLISH.
WTF.

Wait, what? 17 forms of the number "two"?

Dwa.

...Where are the other 16? Unless you mean related words, like dwie, dwaj, dwoje, obaj, obie, oboje, obydwaj, obydwie, obydwoje and so on.

Three witches watches three swatch watch switches. wich witch watches wich swatch watch switch?

Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz spotkał stół z powyłamywanymi nogami i koralami koloru koralowego i był tym rozentuzjazmowaniem usatysfakcjonowany.

Even people who are in their 30s can't say it without pausing once or twice. Oh and don't try to read it in English, you have greater chances of getting a throat cancer or reading something written by Cthulhu than pronouncing anything right.

 

[David_G]

Well, English is my second language, not counting Serbian, Croatian or Bulgarian because they're so similar to our language. I think that it's rather easy because I learned it through practice, rather than theory. I learned it through movies, cartoons, video games, and lastly, internet forums.

Now, I'm in the process of learning the French language, which I'd say is even easier than English.

 

[George Palmer]

Because we can instantly make up any slang word on the spot or take any OTHER already existing word and make it mean something totally different.

"The woman who works at the grocery store has really nice melons."

 

[Booze Zombie]

Too many random exceptions to rules and such.

These tend to have meanings behind them, but people forget why, as they always do.

Because we can instantly make up any slang word on the spot or take any OTHER already existing word and make it mean something totally different.

"The woman who works at the grocery store has really nice melons."

So, the reason English is "hard" is because it's a bit more bendable than some other languages?
I can live with that.

 

[psycoturkey]

It's not definitively THE hardest, but it is comparatively difficult since we have no set in stone system for verb conjugation. In fact, if you ask a native English speaker to conjugate a verb, they would probably just look at you like "wut..." since English curricula do not call it "conjugation" when they teach verbs in schools. Also, pluralizing a noun (the walks) is the same thing as conjugating a verb in the third person (he walks), which can be a difficult concept for ESL students.

 

[Sharky200]

I'm not a native English speaker. Comparing it to my native languge (Spanish) I have to say its harder. but i suppose if your native language was English and you are learning Spanish you would say the same.
English has way to many crazy rules for me. Spanish for the most part sounds like its writen. Its easy. Try to pronounce English how it's writen and see how insane it is.

 

[MrShowerHead]

Meh. Finnish is harder than English.

Also, I remember reading about this one Finnish reporter who was just talking about English and how hard it is to learn it. He said, that the English language is so full of idioms, it makes it hard to learn.

I'm not having big problems learning English. At least I think I don't have any.

But seriously, try to learn Finnish. Even I have trouble sometimes speaking it.

 

[fenderstrat]

Where did this come from? i saw it in the "J in Japan" topic and i have heard it here so many times, but i can't find any evidence of it at all.

I have seen diffferent trains of thought on how too look at it, complexity of vocabulary and tenses, speaking as a native, phonetics, but none of these put english as the hardest.

Where did this come from? help !

say what??

english is the EASIEST language to learn! i learned it without even trying!

i wasn't saying it was or wasn't
in case you were english native, lame joke

im not. i wish i was though, it would stop people looking at me funny when im speaking. i hear my accent is very slight, but very strange sounding.

 

[Danzaivar]

Easy to learn, hard to master. I could probably throw out sentences that an American wouldn't have the foggiest reading, and they could likely do the same.

There's a scene in Austin Powers where they do that actually, I think it's Austin talking to his dad?

[Edit: That was easy to find, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgPH0tYXJrA lol]

 

[Arawn.Chernobog]

Hardest Language? I'm not a native English speaker... but I gotta say it's the EASIEST language out there

 

[fix-the-spade]

I suspect the internet has made it much easier to learn. Before you had to speak english to an English speaker to realise how far off the language you had learned was from the language as it was spoken/written.
Now between forums, games and voice chat there are literally billions of chances to start communicating and ironing out the errors. Although I guess that applies to any language really, it seems to apply more to English as so much business and entertainment is created in this language.

 

[DominicxD]

Meet Meat.

Their There They're.

Shit like that.

 

[Kortney]

BOLLOCKS.

It's all relative. European speakers will generally have an easier time with English than Asian speakers will, and then you have the individuals who just have a knack for language in between.

Look, I speak fluent Japanese and it took me a while, but I didn't ever find it 'difficult.' I've heard theories about Russian being the hardest to learn due to a complex grammar structure, but honestly, saying one language is harder to learn than another is just bollocks.

This.

Claiming a particular language is easier to learn than another is like saying physics is easier than chemistry. All languages are different and all people are different therefore results will differ. It depends on the individuals. My siblings found English extremely easy to pick up - in fact easier to learn than any other language they speak where as I didn't.