Is it True that english is the hardest language to learn because of all the grammar rules?

Answer 1

english has its terrible reputation because of its heavy use of modal verbs, and the non-temporal nature of its verb aspects. (see: 'the english verb' by michael lewis).

basic english grammar is actually more straightforward than many languages, and someone learning english will make much faster progress in the early stages than a person learning a fully inflected language such as german or russian.

but once the basics have been mastered the learner who thought she was flying along realises that there are very precise shadings of intentionality possible in english by using our huge range of tenses and our even huger number of synonyms.

so the difficulty of english is partly actual but partly apparent. it is an easy language to make oneself basically understood in, but a very difficult one to fully master.

Answer 2

English is neither the easiest or hardest language to learn. If it's the first language (i.e. from a babies perspective), every language is of similar difficulty. A child will learn chinese as easily as Swahili as easily as English. If English is being learned as a second language by an adult, then difficulty depends on many factors, but most importantly, the if the structure of English is similar to the structure of the the learner's native language. Do they have the same/similar sounds? Do they mark tense in a similar way? Do they have the same word order? Do they read left to right or right to left? Do they share a common ancestor language so some words may be similar (i.e. English & German, Spanish & French) All these things make a difference. Hope this helps.

Answer 3

Every language has some things that are hard and some things that are easy. Actually, the grammar of English has a lot less complicated inflection than many other Indo-European languages, because we don't have many case or gender issues to worry about, and we only mark the third-person singular on verbs in the present tense. Also, English word order doesn't have a lot of flexibility in comparison to many other languages. If anything's hard about English in comparison to other languages I would say it's the pronunciation, since depending on which dialect of English you speak there are some 14 vowels that you have to worry about.

If you're looking for a language with complicated grammar, I might pick Georgian, which has something like 23 possible declensions for each noun. Or Swahili, which has something like 11 or 12 possible genders...

Everyone's native language(s) is/are much easier for them to use than any language they learn later.

Answer 4

What language is the hardest to learn depends on the student's native language, but I doubt that English is the hardest for anyone. What makes English easier than many languages is the simple and rigid grammar of basic speech, lack of gender, verb ending changes for 3rd person singular only, and extremely few cases.

What makes English difficult is the spelling, pronunciation, large amount of irregular nouns and verbs, and the many synonyms and homonyms.

I can see how advanced English grammar could be fairly difficult to master.

If you want to try a difficult language, learn Hungarian. It is phonetic, but that's about where the simplicity stops. It might be easier for native european language speakers used to verb endings and cases, but for English speakers it can be a nightmare. Loose word order, two different sets of verb endings for present tense alone, and not to mention 23 CASES!! Yikes. It's fun though if you're brave enough.

Answer 5

The fact that even English speakers can't comprehend fully all the grammar rules should tell you something!

But in truth, it is no less harder than plenty of other languages. What could possibly be problematic is the many ways in which we use words, especially in connotations. We also have some odd grammar rules, some odd spelling and annunciation, but you can blame where we get our language from!

Half latin, and half Germanic didn't help heaps when creating the language. Certain words follow different words depending on what language branch they came from.

Answer 6

From my personal point of view I'd say English grammar is one of the "easiest grammars" I have come across.
I have studied English, French, Spanish and Italian in
highschool (European highschool). I have also read grammar books on Icelandic, Swedish, Japanese and other languages.
My native language is German.
The English pronounciation is horrible! You basically swallow vowels as well as consonants, contrary to German or Italian which are pronounced in a rather " clear" way!

Answer 7

It depends whether you like that language or not. If you dislike it, I would rather you don't pick that language. Why some people pick up certain language/subject fast and do well in that language/subject is because some people love the language/subject they are learning. But if in the future, you are forced to learn a language/subject, and if you are afraid its very very difficult, i suggest you using a creative method to learn the language/subject, this makes learning more interesting =)
If you dislike the language/subject or if you keep thinking "its difficult! its hard!" then, it would really be difficult.

Answer 8

Not so much the grammar as the pronunciation. The SVO is fairly standardised, but words such as [K]Now, [H]our, sta[T]ion, as well as the three different pronunciations for the suffix -ed give foreign students all sorts of problems.

It is easy in that we have one gender for words, there is no mon or ma, its just "the". We also have a fairly easy simple-past tense, but irregular verbs and the other 11 common tenses can be problematic. Phrasal verbs are also a bugger, you should see students faces drop at the mention of them.

Answer 9

all languages have hard stuff, and it depends on what language you are coming from. but english is pretty hard because it is a mix of a lot of different languages and has lots of different rules because of that, not just the grammar

Answer 10

I'm fluent in Spanish and English, and I'd say Spanish is harder to learn because of the verb conjugations. Also, all nouns are either feminine or masculine.
The spelling in English is hard because it doesn't make a lot of sense, like Spanish.