I've heard that English is the hardest language to learn? Anyone else heard or agree? for an example read on..

Question

I read a lot of books - i also read a great book the other day!

pour (a drink)
poor (no money)
pore (skin)
paw (animal foot/hand)

saw (tool/seen something)
sore (hurt/pain)
soar (like a bird)

all pronounced the same but spelt differently - if we put it like "sour" though we're descibing a lemon or something!! there's loads of stuff like this in our language, no wonder people struggle.

ok everyone seems to have mixed opinions here. perhaps what i heard was wrong. i'm not for a minute saying it IS the hardest language just that i'd heard that. i guess it's harder to read it and write it for other countries, speaking it could be easier for other natioanilities as some one said, there are similarities in a lot of the words.

Thanks everyone, interesting comments.

what is this GHOTI thing?

XD? great comment at the end about the I before E thing! Clever :D

Answer 1

Difficulty is all relative. For an native Mandarin speaker in their 80s English must be impossible to learn. For a native Dutch speaker of 7 years old learning English should be no problem.

For a baby learning ANY language (perhaps up to 4 languages) IS A PIECE OF CAKE.

GHOTI can be pronounced like "fish"

gh in "tough"
o in "women"
ti in "nation"

Reasons Why The English Language Is Hard To Learn:

(English uses the same word in different categories like wound is both a noun and a verb.)

The bandage was wound around the wound.
The farm was used to produce produce.
The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
We must polish the Polish furniture.
He could lead if he would get the lead out.
The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
I did not object to the object.
The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
They were too close to the door to close it.
The buck does funny things when the does are present.
A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
After a number of injections my jaw got number.
Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Fruit flies like an apples.
Time flies like an arrow.
Lead pencils lead pens in office supply sales.
The bass player was an avid bass fisherman.

We'll begin with box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox should be oxen, not oxes.
Then one fowl is goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a whole lot of mice,

But the plural of house is houses, not hice.
If the plural of man is always called men,
Why shouldn't the plural of pan be pen?

The cow in the plural may be cows or kine,
But the plural of vow is vows, not vine.
And I speak of a foot, and you show me your feet,
But I give a boot...would a pair be beet?

If one is a tooth, and a whole set is teeth,
Why shouldn't the plural of booth be beeth?
If the singular is this, and the plural is these,
Why shouldn't the plural of kiss be kese?

Then one may be that, and three be those,
Yet the plural of hat would never be hose.
We speak of a brother, and also of brethren,

But though we say mother, we never say methren.
The masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine she, shis, and shim.
So our English, I think you will agree,
Is the trickiest language you ever did see.

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, slough, and through?

Well done! And now you wish, perhaps
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.

And dead; it's said like bed, not bead;
For goodness sake, don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat,
(they rhyme with suite and straight and debt)

A moth is not a moth in mother.
Nor both in bother, broth in brother.
And here is not a match for there.
And dear and fear for bear and pear.

And then there's dose and rose and lose--
Just look them up--and goose and choose.
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword.

And do and go, then thwart and cart.
Come, come, I've hardly made a start.

A dreadful language? Man alive,
I'd learned to speak it when I was five,
And yet to write it, the more I sigh,
I'll not learn how 'til the day I die.

Answer 2

People who say that English is difficult to learn need to talk to a foreigner. For Europeans (or any people who speak Indo-European languages) it would be easy. It has simple, Germanic grammar structure and a very Romantic vocabulary. Grammatically, people who learn ESL, have said that it's so simple. One can put a word in almost any part of the sentence. Not to mention we don't have any noun genders nor do we have cases! With vocabulary we have a lot of French and Spanish cognates, not too mention all the words we take from German. In other parts of the world, such as Asia or the Middle East it could potentially be very hard-for instance, the pronunciation. The hardest thing about English is probably spelling. It can be phonetic, but both British and American spellings are tricky. English is very easy and that's why it's so international and has been the lingua franca for 50 years.

Answer 3

I think English is hard at least for me because english is not my first language furthermore nobody at my home speak English. Our school teaches english once a week by a local )so if you get a good teacher, then you are quite safe) Can you imagine and how you feel when I posted a question in Yahoo Answer the other day and was criticised by a user called Calif_fo about my poor english, he also posted here. Strangely he is quite humble this time!
However, it is a forever learning process for me and I have improved a lot as compared to 10 years ago. Learn it through many sources by asking people, refering to books and dare to speak out until you remembered how to pronounce it correctly. Wish you all the best!

Answer 4

No! I don't agree that English is the hardest language in the world,in fact it is probably one of the easiest as nouns remain the same in all 'cases', unlike many languages where there is a different form of the word for the nominative,the genetive and the vocative and sometimes for the dative and the accusative as well.
As for different spellings being pronounced the same way,this happens in all languages-eg) in Gaelic the words "Dh'fhigh" and "Dhith" are both pronounced the same way-they are both pronounced "Yi"!
Another Gaelic example is the words "Dhubh" and "Ghuth" which are both pronounced roughly "GHoo" (roughly because the broad sound "Dh" doesn't exist in English,unlike the slender "Dh" which is pronounced like an English "Y".
Compared to words like that, the spellings "sore" and "soar" are not really all that different.

Answer 5

if English is the hardest language to learn then all English speaking kids must be the most intelligent in the world because the majority of them are fluent by the age of 5.

It's no more difficult than a language that has a case system, a subjunctive mood or that uses a sentence construction that is different from subject verb object

Answer 6

You are using homonyms as examples. Homonyms exist in a lot of languages. No language is easy to learn but English is not one of the hardest ones. English-speakers who claim English is the hardest one only try to find excuses for their shabby English, especially they ave no excuse since they were born and raised in English-speaking countries. English grammar is very easy if compared to Spanish, French, German.... If you think English is the hardest because of the pronunciation, you haven't heard Americans speaking Spanish or trying to utter a Mandarin phrase. If English were (now I change to conditional) the hardest language, why is it the most learned language in the world?

Answer 7

The spelling's harder than most (probably not as hard as French though), but the grammar's exceptionally simple. At least half of all native English speakers don't pronounce pour and paw or saw and sore the same, either.

Answer 8

How can hardest language is decided in one language? It is impossible. Do you think it's same difficult for Japanese people and Spanish people to learn English? Obviously Spanish people feel English is easy to learn but Japanese people don't think that. Also talking about Spanish speaker, do you really think English is hardest to learn for Spanish speaker? Just compare with Chinese as an example. Do you think Chinese is easier to learn for Spanish speaker than English? I do not think so.

What I say here is it is depends on the mother tongue and also culture is involved a lot too.

P.S. I have read an article from the US government wrote by linguist and it says for native English speaker, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic take longest time to be fluent(note; taking longest time to be fluent is different from hardest to learn.)

Answer 9

Arguably English has the most difficult spelling/pronunciation of any language (French is also up there) because it has the most complicated rules and inconsistencies in spelling/pronunciation.
Grammatically, no, English grammar is not very complicated or inconsistent.
The difficulty of learning a language can seldom be well defined altogether, it makes more sense to talk about the difficulty of specific aspects of the language.

Answer 10

I've heard that English is the hardest language to learn? Anyone else heard or agree?
Going by the way English children use English grammar and spelling on here it must be getting harder, or they are getting lazy.