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

[Flee the Cities]

just a lil fyi, the complexity of english not only lies in the words themselves, but also the grammar that we utilize in the day to day. english frequently utilizes complex grammatical concepts such as the subjunctive and future perfect, features that are often simplified in the grammar of other languages. for example, english has kept the advanced grammar of the future perfect as part of its standard syntax, whereas it as often been abbreviated in local dialects, such as spanish. english is also complicated by the influence of other languages which english can immediately incorporate into our lexicon. this is an advantage, bc we can always have new words ( a far fuckin cry from the french, who had to have a cabinet meeting over whether "le t-shirt" was sufficiently french), but it also comes with some problems, as we have to adapt these new words into our semantic/syntactic structure. this often readily makes sense to native speakers, but can be fucking mind-boggling to people who are trying to learn the language.

ps: english is far harder to learn than mandarin, if thats what ur referring to by "chinese."

 

[theSovietConnection]

As far as I'm concerned, there is no full-blown hardest language to learn. Everyone has varying degrees of difficulty learning different languages. For example, being a native English speaker, I find the language quite easy to grasp and properly use (though my spelling at times may speak otherwise). However, I could not learn any of the Asian languages (such as Japanese or Chinese), no matter how hard you tried to teach them to me. At the end of the day, it's all about how easy you find each one to pick up.

 

[Flee the Cities]

at any rate, u should consider yourselves extremely lucky to know the new latin, lol

 

[crudus]

Where did this come from? help !

Here is a good example:
I before E except after C except when it sounds like an A like neighbor and weigh
what about Seizure and Leisure?

That happens all the time in English. There is a rule which has an exception and the exception has an exception which (sometimes) has an exception.

.. wut?

It's not. It's pretty much the easiest out there.

Korean is.

 

[joshuaayt]

Other languages have some sort of consistent logic to them- that is, in circumstance X, Y will be true.
English, however, often will have Y true in circumstance X (Except for these couple words), occasionally in circumstance Z and also sometimes just anywhere.
Our language was mostly taken away from other areas, but constructed by idiots.
Anyway, language difficulty is different, depending on which language you are familiar with- for instance, one of the easiest languages fo us to learn is Spanish (I think?), because it is similar in stucture to English. Japanese, however, is very difficult, because it is very different

 

[Flee the Cities]

also to just expound upon this a lil bit, our grammar is primarily german, but the contradictions and exceptions that alot of people have been talking about in this thread are the result of natural language evolution, but also the influx of many different colonial powers on the english tongue. we started with latin, acquired native british terms and dialects, adopted old german grammatical structures, had an influx of norse, experienced a period of french colonization that infused many words with tangentil, aristocratic meaning, and only then began to truly codfy english in books as its own particular language worthy of noble study. until then it had been the domain of the commoners of england. if u want a wild ride u should check out old and middle english and see where we came from. the ultimate benefit of all this is that we have this immense ability to assimilate foreign words, bc the epistemology of our grammar essentially demands it. english is cool and hard as hell.

 

[Drexlor]

English is very easy to get a basic understanding of. IMO Chinese is way harder due to the several THOUSAND symbols.

 

[BigEaZyE]

English is one of the most difficult languages to learn because even the people who speak English as their first (or only) language don't speak English properly 95% of the time.

Just look at all the replies in this thread. All have errors according to the rules of the English language.

How can you learn a language when the people who speak it don't know it?

 

[Flee the Cities]

English is very easy to get a basic understanding of. IMO Chinese is way harder due to the several THOUSAND symbols.

see this is a misconception. chinese and japanese are difficult languages, yes. and they suffer from pretty unique flaws. a buddy of mine (native japanese phd) was trying to give a lecture in japanese to his class. he forgot the symbol for "pen." he asked his class, and no one could remember how to write the symbol, even though they knew how to say the word. japanese has a reliable grammar system, which makes it easier to learn than crazy fucking english, but the completely arbitrary symbol system often fools even native speakers. that learning curve is difficult, but japanese (and mandarin) grammar is much more consistent than english, which aids fluent learning ability, even if you never know all of the script that is used in the transcription of the language.

 

[Flee the Cities]

English is one of the most difficult languages to learn because even the people who speak English as their first (or only) language don't speak English properly 95% of the time.

Just look at all the replies in this thread. All have errors according to the rules of the English language.

How can you learn a language when the people who speak it don't know it?

btw, if anyone ever says this to you, this is not a good person to learn english from (dangling participle wut upppp)

 

[Crash 9000]

Seems to be fairly easy for our Scandinavian friends

 

[Flee the Cities]

Seems to be fairly easy for our Scandinavian friends

well yea, duh. for that matter, ask germans about shakespeare, who they refer to as "our shakespeare" bc he is so popular. similar languages have an easier time understanding each other, news at 6

 

[BogComm]

English is a highly contextual language in which different situations, speakers, audiences, etc. all contribute to the total meaning. The specific structure and composition of a sentence also reflect differences.

Think about something you have either read or heard and rearrange the words into some other order and see what you get. Some sentences will have a valid, albeit different, meaning. Others will make no sense at all. Also, how many times have you read or heard something out of context that just blew your mind? If you had been in on the conversation from the beginning, it would have made perfect sense.

As I suspected, someone pulled a forum ninja on me and stole my point about English being a composite language.

 

[cavemano727]

I've only heard this a few times, It's because there are so many contradictions and rules that only apply some times. There are about 200,000 words in the english language, maybe that's also a factor.

 

[Flee the Cities]

English is a highly contextual language in which different situations, speakers, audiences, etc. all contribute to the total meaning. The specific structure and composition of a sentence also reflect differences.
\.

not saying ur wrong, bc ur post is the most right-headed opinion ive read in this thread thus far, but this phenomenon of contextuality is pretty much a universal feature in every language system

 

[mrdude2010]

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.

are you kidding? the other romance languages are so ridiculously easy to learn because theyre all based solely off latin. spanish was so much easier than english for me. some of the nordic languages are bound to be more difficult than english, but english is pretty difficult because there is no consistency to it. the pronunciation has no consistent rules, only generalizations. there are a million different ways to say the same thing, every word usually takes multiple modifiers, and the sentence structure is pretty much unique. its probably not the easiest language to learn, but it is pretty difficult if its not your native language

 

[Flee the Cities]

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.

are you kidding? the other romance languages are so ridiculously easy to learn because theyre all based solely off latin. spanish was so much easier than english for me. some of the nordic languages are bound to be more difficult than english, but english is pretty difficult because there is no consistency to it. the pronunciation has no consistent rules, only generalizations. there are a million different ways to say the same thing, every word usually takes multiple modifiers, and the sentence structure is pretty much unique. its probably not the easiest language to learn, but it is pretty difficult if its not your native language

nordic languages are cool as hell, i wish i knew more about them other than that theyre crazy

 

[Billion Backs]

Nobody ever, ever, ever thinks so.

Japanese is hard. Finnish, I hear, is pretty hard. Russian is hard in comparison to English because practically every verb is irregular and most words in sentences have different endings depending on situation, I've got first hand experience... Esperanto was pretty hard, I heard, - it seems just like a messy mix of different languages, because that's what it is.

English is among the easier languages to learn. Seriously. Even French and Spanish are harder.

In order to speak English correctly, abiding by all the rules and forming sentences correctly is incredibly hard to learn. The thing is our other disregard for much of the structure of the English language throws that out the window and makes our language very easy to pick up. Basically its easy because we on average don't do well in English class and don't care if anyone else does as long as their accent doesn't render then incomprehensible.

Languages evolve for a reason. That's why you aren't speaking like people from 1800s. Society changes, language needs change over time. Putting an old standard on pedestal seems awfully stupid. It's like glorifying swords battles and saying that guns should not be used for combat...

Every language has it's idiotic parts, including English. But why stifle it to that old form? Let it evolve and change.

 

[Kaymish]

English is the easiest language to speak badly but the hardest to speak well