Question???????

Question

why do people think english is so hard? I'm learning spanish and it seems way harder to remember and the verbs and not only that there are like 14 tenes instead of just future present and past and the whole masculine and femine thing. so why is english so hard?

Answer 1

I think English is one of the easier languages to learn.
It has only one difficulty, that a sound can be spelled in many different ways, and viceversa.

But about all other characteristics, English is a lot easier then all other languages I know (Italian, French, German, Russian). In English you have only few tenses, and verbs are identical for all persons (I, you, he etc). If you have an irregular verb, you have to learn only two words (not 42 like in Italian, for example!).
Identical words with different meanings there are in ALL languages (I could give you hundreds of examples).
In English you don't have feminine and masculine for all words and you don't change words adding a lot of suffixes.
In everyday life you can speak in English using a lot less word then in other languages without looking like a ignorant.

I'm very happy the universal language nowadays is English. Life would be a lot harder if it would be, for example, French (like it was in past centuries) ^_^ .

I can't understand why English native speakers think English is so difficult. I didn't know it. I discovered it here at Yahoo Answers. I have never heard anybody else saying something like this.

Answer 2

English is harder than most languages because it does not have a lot of definite rules. The sound of a long "a" can be spelled in 4 different ways. Then some words have a lot of different meanings. Think about the fact that as an American, we take English throughout all of our schooling: we can't even speak our own language correctly. Some people speak just enough English to get by and that is their first (and sometimes only) language!

Answer 3

Because once you figure out Spanish it is really not that hard. You are just learning something which makes it more difficult. But once you get the basics it will not be that tough.
With the English language though we have MANY words that sound the same but do not mean the same "They're,there,their" "son,sun" etc etc etc
Also the English tenses for forgeiners are difficult to learn too. They are just simple to you because you have grown up learning them.
Many of our words do not sound like they are spelled.
Many of our phrases are hard to grasp.

Like I said once you get the basics of Spanish it will be much more easy. Where as English most naturally born English speakers do not do it correctly

Answer 4

My first language is Hungarian. In Hungarian, every verb has over a hundred inflectional forms. For non-native speakers it's almost impossible to learn.
The English language is relatively simple to learn in terms of grammar, but it's pretty hard when it comes to pronunciation (and spelling). Also, there are a lot exceptions or irregularities, but most languages have them, too, so I would discount those.

Answer 5

i know both english and spanish.english is harder for the non native speakers cuz in most of the other languages u write almost how u hear.it's a pronunciation problem too,cuz in most of the languages there is just a letter for every sound.while in english there can be a lot of groups of letters that can be read the same.im romanian(with a latin language)and it took me years till i learned english,but spanish i learned in just a few months,cuz it is latin language too,and the words and grammar are very alike.ofcourse for u spanish seems harder to learn, cuz u don't speak a latin language,english beeing a german language

Answer 6

Well I know both languages. I would say the only reason English is hard is because every letter has like 20 different sounds to it.

Answer 7

I would say the hardest part of the English language is our curious "multiple use" of words, I know we are not alone in this, but it seems the English language has more than its share.:

We chop a tree down - and then we chop it up.

That makes perfect sense to most English folks - but is likely to puzzle folks who try to translate things literally.


"Well well well", she said as she spotted Mary at the bottom of the well, luckily she was quite well - but, well, need to get her out well before dark"

Ok that is ugly even in English - but a native speaker will understand the different uses of the word "well". Most foreign students would quite rightly be utterly aghast!

Answer 8

It seems hard for some people becasue the way they think and say words, especially if they have an accent. But if your willing to learn it's not that hard. It's just that some people want evrything to be easy in life.

Answer 9

Because a lot of native speakers never manage to speak it properly themselves they think it has to be hard.
In fact it is one of the easiest languages to learn to a functional degree (for the reasons you pointed out yourself), and that is exactly why it is so popular as a second language all over the world.

Answer 10

Actually, we do have all these tenses in English. We are not all aware when we use the different tenses, because the differences are subtle.
Anyway, English is your first language, so it doesn't seem hard to you. Spanish has very few irregularities. English has many.