Is this the best illustration.....?

Question

to show why the English language is hard to learn. Here is a sentence I created. It doesn't make sense, but it illustrates the oddities of the English language;

"For the picnic, the bee had to be sure to have two pairs of pears too."

It is no wonder why people from other countries have problems learning the English language. Is this a good illustration to the problems of learning English?

The sentence is not suppose to make sense. I was just trying to illustrate how complicated the English language can be. Look at the words to, two and too, all have different meanings. Same for pair and pear and bee and be. If someone from another country is trying to learn English, they have a hard time trying to understand the differences in these words and would probably write the wrong one. We possibly wouldn't understand what the meaning of their sentence was. That is what I was trying to illustrate with this sentence.

The real reason for this, my wife is from Peru and she still doesn't understand the English language very well after 6 years of being in this country.

Answer 1

You made a very good point that I have never actually thought about. I have heard for many years how difficult the English language is to learn. But since it is the only language I know, I never really gave it much thought. With your clever sentence I understand how difficult English would be to learn. Thanks for enlightening me!!

Answer 2

No, you are very vague and actually don't understand the differance between English and other languages. For instance, to show the differance:
In English- the blue sky
in Spnanish- the sky of blue
In English- please
in Spanish, for a favor

The English language doesn't have to lengthfully describe something because of it's simplicity due to that it has many more words than other languages , as well as the differant placement of words in an english sentance changes the way a word is to be pronounced, as well as function and understanding of the content of a sentance. For example: "The heavy bag is in the way of my oversized truck, that i just don't want move it." The simple word 'it' doesn't let you know what 'it' is I'm talking about, the truck or the bag. Other languages don't have a sepparate, 'it', 'be', etc., they are built in to the other words.
You were too simplistic in trying to explain a language. You can't summarize language structure and differance in once sentance and expect someone to understand, even I had difficulty in explaining it, that's why we have English and Foriegn language teachers.
:)

Answer 3

The English language is littered with such homonyms (like butter and butter ), homographs ( like fair or and fare and homophones (like bear and bear ).

English is truly a difficult language to learn. If you are trying to make an illustration, however, I might recommend using a logical sentence. No point in confusing the issue further, it's already a tough lesson!

Here are a few examples:

John could not bear the thought of entering the bear's cage.

Jennie was playing the part of the Lady Fair, Godiva, at the Renaissance Fair, but she needed money for bus fare.

Answer 4

Thank you for bringing this up. The motive you recounted is precisely why I do not like to make use of this example, seeing that it suits Modalism extra intently than Trinitarianism. There are a lot larger illustrations that Trinitarians can use to speak approximately the Trinity, however they all are finally insufficient for describing God. "I choose the analogy of: a person-he's one man or woman, nonetheless he's 3 exclusive matters in that one man or woman. He would be a father, a son, and a pal. Three exclusive 'labels' but one unmarried man or woman. All 3 would possibly do exclusive matters however the guy remains to be the equal guy." Don't you consider that you just run into EXACTLY the equal situation as you do with the water example? This STILL means that God is just one man or woman.

Answer 5

Great sentence!!! Well done and yes it illustrates the difficulty of learning the english language.....very well done.

Answer 6

The sentence is pretty clever. haha
I agree, english can be confusing and to add to your point, stares and stairs. All languages are confusing though!! wouldn't it be nice if we all knew english and spanish??

Answer 7

I don't understand your question?
So the bee is having a picnic and wants to make sure that there are 4 pears, is that what you are trying to convey here?

Answer 8

yes that's a clever sentence!