Why is English such a hard language to learn?

Answer 1

try learning Russian, English is not difficult at all!

Answer 2

Most of the answers you are getting are, basically, correct, but none of them get to the root of the matter.

The English language is made up of pieces of SEVERAL major language groups. Much of it is Germanic in origin, while many parts are rooted in the "Romance" languages, such as, French, Italian, Spanish, and, of course, Latin. Many techincal terms that had ancient Greek origins make their way into everyday speech. Dozens, if not hundreds of concepts and word originated in Arabic and Indian Sanskrit.

Because of this variety of origins, many spellings, pronounciations and even meanings of words do not follow any fixed, rigid rules that some of the "purer" languages have. Rules for English grammar are taught only to help people "get started" on learning. Only continued practice will help a person approach the mastery of the language.

Remember, many native English speakers do not speak the language perfectly.

Answer 3

Most languages have their roots either in latin or greek. The english language is one of only a few Germanic languages. Unlike spanish, and most other languages the Germanic background means its sencence structure is backwards. The verb proceeds the nown, instead of vise versa. Most other languages are just the opposite. Germanic languages evolved from the merging of latin, and greek languages, as well which means there is no distuingished line for words that can be tracked back to its origin many times. Another thing that makes American english so hard to learn is the abundance of slang words. This in conjunction with the indian, words added in the eighteen hundreds, and the mexican spanish words added from the eighteen hundreds till today make for a very complicated language.

Answer 4

Because English evolved from many languages, the native Celtic, Latin, and German. Each of those languages had differences in dialect. Sounds pronounced in one language were very difficult in another.
Words were phonetic at one time. Example knife was pronounced Kah-neef-eh. It was made easier to say nif, but the spelling did not keep up with the pronunciation changes.
So now we have words that are spelled the same but pronounced differently.
English borrows from all languages, so it has far too many words. In some cases there are seven or eight words that have to same meaning.
So yes, English is tough, but it's spoken all over the world. Many countries have a bureau of language. Their chief job is to keep English words rom creeping into their language.

Answer 5

For one thing, it has taken words, and even grammatical rules and structures, from lots of other languages. And the result is not consistent. For every rule your teacher tells you, there is a handful of exceptions.

Then it is also a really huge language: lots and lots of words, lots of literature, and a lot of people currently using it and therefore changing it. Dictionaries have to be updated constantly as new words are coined and become popular enough to be included. And still the Yahoo Answers spell-checker does not recognize the word "muggle"! LOL

Answer 6

I don't know. For me it's a hard to learn too. I had spent a lot of time to reach my intermediate level. But I heard, that among european languages, english very easy to learn. The most difficult russian and finno-ugric languages (finnish and hungarian).

Answer 7

There are lots of reasons. Most other languages don't use contractions, we also have a lot of silent letters in our words. Also, lots of other languages put the predicate before the nomnative...for example, where we say "the dog runs down the street", other languages say "down the street runs the dog".
Probably some other stuff.

Answer 8

Because there are so many exceptions in the English language.

Like our plurals get pretty annoying, the general rule to make a word plural is to add s or es. (Dog=Dogs) but then there are tons of words that can be both plural and singular (Moose=Moose) and then there are other words you have to spell differently to make it plural.(Child-Children or Goose=Geese) its a pain in the butt!

Although i have heard Chinese is very difficult to learn.

Answer 9

So many pronunciation of the letters or big words.Since English is my Native Language, I am using it quite well and I have no problems with it.

Answer 10

It really isn't.It is one of the easiest European languages I have studied.For you it would largly depend on your native language.English spelling is kind of hopeless but with a lot of practice you will learn.I did and I am sure you are pretty near as smart as I am.

Answer 11

it depends on what your mother language is,
if it is a hard one or one that's similar to english (has the same roots, like italian of french) then it is easy...
If not, then you must try harder...
try learning greek...
the even have a saying when they don't understand somrthing...
"it's all greek to me"