Kindly tell which one of the following, is the main disadvantage of English language ..?

Question

1. Phrasal verbs and idioms.

2.Pronunciation is probably the most difficult.

3.Puns.

4. Many words for one word
for example
baby and infant (noun)
student and pupil (noun)
pretty and attractive (adjective)
sick and ill (adjective)
interesting and fascinating (adjective)
quickly and speedily (adverb)

Answer 1

Out of the list that you offered, I would pick #1 phrasal verbs and idioms. There are a great many idioms that are regional and most people don't even know their origin. However, I think there is 1 disadvantage of the English language that is not on your list: homonyms.

Having so many words that sound alike but mean different things is probably the hardest:
there-their
hare-hair
bare-bear
bread-bred
barred-bard

Answer 2

1.The slang often creates a barrier. And here I'm talking about two different kinds: the first, I guess, would be just the idomatic expressions that are used, and of which new ones are made all the time (esp by young people). Those kinds of expressions are hard for even older native English speaking to keep up with!!
2.Then there are things like phrasal verbs (which, I'll call a kind of slang for argument's sake). Phrasal verbs are those verb phrases that we know so well and use so often that most often consist of some basic verb plus a preposition or adverb that then changes the meaning of the verb. Take for example, the verb to MAKE. Then add some prepositions/adverbs to it:
to make OUT (= to kiss and smoosh faces with someone passionately) to make UP (=to do at a later time, as with a test; to get back on good terms with someone you might have been fighting with) to make OVER (=to complete redo, as with getting a whole new wardrobe, look, etc.)
See what I mean? :P These phrasal verbs are some of the hardest things for non-native English speaking to learn, and to be able to use correctly.
3.Spellings in english is hard...because so many words have extra letters that you don't need...like through...psycology.The fact that the spelling is far from phonetic - the same combinations of letters can stand for totally different words, like the "ough" in "tough", "though", "drought", etc.
One might also say it's the complex verb system, though - it seems obvious to native speakers, of course, but for non-native speakers it takes a long time to figure out which tense to use when, and many never quite master it.
Its pronunciation, and all the words that sound the same but arent, like see and sea, wander and wonder. it makes it hard to follow ppl sometimes, especially when accents are involved.
In most words that end in "e", the vowel is
long (says it's name) bake, take, fate, smite, home, phone.
The idioms are insanely difficult for others to understand. ("Rains cats and dogs," "see the light," etc.)

if you want to pick one then probably number 4.

Answer 3

4

Answer 4

I would say 1 is what makes learning the language difficult for foreigners. Difficult pronunciation means that the speaker makes mistakes in which meaning is probably still recognisable, and the listeners have to put in more effort. Punners may be irritating if they keep interrupting the flow of conversation to make their puns, but the ability of a language to be put into puns has its uses. Abundance of synonyms I don't see as a particular problem, except that it simply means there are more words to learn (I seem to remember reading that English has about 4 times the number of words as French.)

Phrasal verbs and idioms are a sort of super-linguistic way of communicating, and it's usually involuntary. Your use of idiom gives people a fairly clear idea of whether you are a foreigner, how educated you are and even your age. It can even tell people about your assumptions concerning them (e.g. teenagers know when a middle-aged person is trying to fake the kind of phraseology that he assumes the teenagers would be using, and they know when he's got it wrong).

The answer to your question depends partly on things like whether the person having difficulty is a public speaker of any kind, in which case continual mispronunciation would become a bigger problem. But in most cases, I am sure that the biggest obstacle to two-way communication is that most of us use idioms all the time, and most idioms have very little directly understandable meaning, so a foreigner gets very quickly lost in conversational terms.

PS to other answerer: P. M., I really like you, and you make interesting points, but I've caught you with an icky apostrophe! (it's/its)

Answer 5

Hello there,

Well, if I had to choose something out of that list, I would probably pick number two. I was born and brought up in England, so speaking English and English pronunciation is not really a problem for me. However, I know many foreign people who struggle tremendously with the subtle nuances inherent in the English language, especially regarding pronunciation. One problematic feature of the English language is that there is often no straightforward connection (or consistent rule) between the way a word is written and the way it is pronounced. A good example is the letter combination "ough", which has several different variations to the way it is pronounced (bough [rhymes with wow]; cough [rhymes with toff]; rough [rhymes with buff]; thorough [rhymes with low]; through [rhymes with boo], thought [aw sound, rhymes with caught], hiccough [cup sound], etc. - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ough_(combination)). All of this means that you have to memorise all the different pronunciations, and you learn the words by rote, rather than other languages (for example Spanish) where words written in a certain way are always pronounced the same (without variations). Anyway, hope this helps:

Regards,

Crafty

Answer 6

None of them are particular to English -- that is, many other languages share all these features, and none of them are weaknesses.

Most languages have difficult verb constructions, and all languages have idiomatic expressions; English is no worse in this regard than French, as anyone who has struggled with irregular verbs a la Francais will tell you.

Thinking that idioms are a "disadvantage" reveals a real lack of familiarity with any other language.

English pronunciation is a cinch compared to any pitched language. Get the accent wrong in Chinese and instead of telling someone they have pretty eyes, you have insulted them back 30 generations.

Puns exist in all languages. Many people eschew them because they require a certain quickness of wit...but that has nothing to do with the difficulty of the language, and a lot to do with the intelligence of the speakers.

English is rich in synonyms because of it's history. It is one of the wonderful things about English that there are so many words with the same or similar meaning; it gives it a richness and variety that is truly entertaining. It's hard to understand who would find that a disadvantage.

Answer 7

#5 Also the rules in English never stay firm. For instance, in most words that end in "e", the vowel is long (says it's name) bake, take, fate, smite, home, phone. However, just as you get that down along comes the word "come" you would expect it to mean the item you straighten your hair with but that is spelled "comb" while come is pronounced "c.u.m". Hey "love' is another one that won't follow the rule. So is "move".


#6 words that sound the same, but mean different things..
read, red..wright, right, write..night, knight..etc

Answer 8

As with all languages - once you have conquered the grammer and then the pronounciation you are 99% of the way.

I would say that THE SINGLE most difficult thing to cope with will be with humour.

English/British humour is unlike any the world over.
To self deprecate is almost obligatory - and modesty is held up as national sport almost!

However - once you understand that, the British will always appreciate ANYONE who tries to speak our language and will be happy to help if you just ask

Good luck!

Answer 9

Well number 4 is an advantage to me, not a disadvantage. 1 is a problem in any language, 2. might be true.

Answer 10

I think the answer is clearly illustrated in the title of a book by Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss), I think the title was "The Tough Coughs as he Ploughs the Dough".

It's number two, easily.