I'm 15 right now, and I am taking Spanish class, and have been for 5 years. I've spoken English since I was 3, along with Khmer and Madarin. I never really thought about the rules of English all that much.
Now I'm taking Spanish, and I find the language really easy to understand. I mean like, there aren't that many complex rules as there are in English. Example, "wind" can be pronouced two different ways with two different meanings, and the "o" in "opposite" and "open" sound different. There are so many grammatical rules.
Do you think English is a wierd language, although so many people around the world speak it? Don't you think it must be hard for other people of other languages to learn English?
2006-11-14 12:43:04 · 14 answers · asked by Lola 3 in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
*Mandrin
Whoops
2006-11-14 12:51:26 · update #1
English is harder to learn than Spanish according to my Spanish teacher because there's more rules for grammar and pronunciation. I'm in my third year of Spanish and Spanish rules are simple compared to English. Except for pronunciations, the Khmer language is probably easier to learn than English. In fact, I think it's similar to Spanish. The adjective comes after the noun. English seems to be the most different from the languages I know.
2006-11-15 15:31:23 · answer #1 · answered by ¡Jessica! 4 · 1⤊ 1⤋
The closest language to English is German (this isn't my opinion, it is a reality), however german has many problems with the genders (three), and the constitution of the sentences (which appears just like the Japanese one). French, Spanish and Italian have the equal sort of problems similar to grammar, genders, and conjugating verbs, however French except the 2 different ones has additionally a tricky pronunciation, despite the fact that there are lots of French phrases in English. Italian, French, German or Spanish are most often the simplest. I'd say that Russian have got to be difficult, as it is not even the equal writting.
2016-09-01 12:38:54 · answer #2 · answered by ? 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I think there are things about every language that are easy, and things that are hard.
It's true that the sound system of English is particularly complex. We have a lot of vowels, and we allow quite a few different consonants, even at least one that many other languages don't have.
However, there are some things about English that are very simple. It is not very inflected, for example. We don't have any different verb conjugations for the different persons except the third-person singular. And we don't have to change adjectives to agree with the nouns they modify.
2006-11-14 17:07:27 · answer #3 · answered by drshorty 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
As a language teacher and as someone who also speaks other languages, I can tell you that English is a very hard language for most foreigners to learn to speak. The pronunciation is very difficult to master because of the many different ways a word can be used and spoken, according to its environment and use. The grammar also is very flexible and not as fixed as in many other languages such as Spanish.
2006-11-14 12:55:00 · answer #4 · answered by quietwalker 5 · 0⤊ 1⤋
my native language is Spanish and when I started learning English it made perfect sense to me, maybe because by living close to the US I grew up with a lot of contact with the language and maybe because both languages share the same alphabet with the exception of a word or two
2006-11-14 13:10:11 · answer #5 · answered by Carlos 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋
I think English is one of the richest languages out there simply because of all of the exceptions in the languages. The main reason there are so many exceptions is because English borrows many words from other languages, even now, and many words were also built from other languages, noticeably Latin, Greek, and Anglo-Saxon. English itself emerged as a mix of German, Old Norse, and another extinct language.
2006-11-14 13:12:42 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 2⤋
Yes. Pronunciation does not consistently following spelling, as you point out. In the grammar there are lots of exceptions to rules. Even native speakers have problems getting the grammar right at times. Learners of English have much difficulty with knowing what prepositions to use, for example, you ride on a train, but fly in a plane. There are lots of phrasal verbs (for example: get up, get down, get in, get into, get out, get at, get by, get on, get onto, get about). English has the largest vocabulary of all languages because of the large number of synonyms and technical terms.
2006-11-14 13:02:03 · answer #7 · answered by Marakey 3 · 0⤊ 2⤋
English is one of the hardest languages to learn because there are so many exceptions to the rules.
2006-11-14 12:47:10 · answer #8 · answered by mstrywmn 7 · 0⤊ 3⤋
Absolutely, English is one of the most irregular languages on earth. It is extremely difficult to learn unless you grew up with it.
2006-11-14 12:54:17 · answer #9 · answered by rbwtexan 6 · 0⤊ 2⤋
yes! it is supposedly one of the most difficult languages, probably due to the fact it is a combination of several other languages Saxon, french etc..
in my linguistics class in school we are working with English and it is much more difficult to explain grammer/verb and noun phrases, rules etc. than many of the other languages we are working with.
i am a native English speaker and still have problems every now and then! or is it than?
2006-11-14 12:47:14 · answer #10 · answered by monkmonk 2 · 0⤊ 3⤋