To the foreigners!

Question: how difficult is English to learn? I know it has its quirks and inconsistencies, but I've learned French, German and Spanish... giving me the impression that English seems like it would be a breeze in comparison to them. But of course I'm gonna think that when English is my first language. However, we've no masculine/feminine/neutral to think about, don't need to think about the seven million cases like in German, context doesn't change words (like the way there are two "to be's" in Spanish).

I dunno... maybe English is hard in ways I take for granted?

Should add: I mean in comparison to languages with the same alphabet.

Allinall

I'd imagine all the English, Americans, Australians and many more don't have any problems learning English.

Pherekydes

English spelling and pronunciation are inconsistent, unlike most other languages. This makes it very difficult to learn.

SupplyandDemandZone

The vast vast majority of our own people can't speak our own language so we really aren't ones to be talking.

Kat1170

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118023021#Comment_118023021

Eh, I'd imagine you're wrong on that one 😂

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118023037#Comment_118023037

To be talking about what?

seamus

I'm not a foreigner, but I have seen it said that English is the hardest language to learn out of all the ones that use the latin alphabet.

The main issue with English is that there are patterns, but also a fuckload of exceptions to those patterns, and no real way to know what those are except to just pick it up over time.

For example, we say "i before e except after c", but weirdly even a simple rule like that is not true.

Plurals are a mess. Sometimes you add an s. Cars. Sometimes you change the word completely. Mice. Sometimes the singular and the plural are the same word. Fish. How can you tell? You can't! You just have to learn it!

Pronunciation is a mess. Not only are there silent letters everywhere (island), but the same letter sequence doesn't always make the same sounds. Sometimes two letter sequences make the exact same sound. As treat, on the street, with a book and a boom, I like to beat my great meat. How can you tell? You can't! Just learn it!

Of course, pronunciations also vary regionally. Sometimes book rhymes with took. Unless you're in Dublin where book and cook rhyme with puke, but not always with took.

The saving grace here is that out of all languages, English speakers are probably the most forgiving of mistakes. And this is probably because there are so many exceptions, that it's more important to the listener that they understand what you're trying to say rather than that you get it right. Because we get it wrong all the time too.

So when a foreigner says, "Mouses" or "fishes", there's no question about what they're trying to say.

The best quote I've read about English is that it's 3 languages wearing a trenchcoat, pretending to be one.

riffmongous

It's very easy to make yourself understood I think, and since the basic grammar is quite simple you can converse quickly and it grows from there.

I'd imagine it's a hard one to be perfect at, but since the vast majority of native speakers aren't either, no one will notice or care

AckwelFoley

English must be hard.

Ask any American. Theyre 250 years trying to learn it and still can't speak it

jim o doom

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118023027#Comment_118023027

There's lots of local and regional dialects of languages in loads of countries. In Paris they have that weird backwards street speak, there's tons of regional dialects in China, I've read of city folk in Japan struggling to understand rural folk -> different accents and pronunciations are universal.

Mr. CooL ICE

Probably because the language is a bastardisation of several older languages. People from German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and Arabic speaking countries will probably recognise a fair amount of individual words and phrases, but the grammar will be all over the shop to them.

Esperanto. Now that's a language you can set your watch to. Especially if you're European.

GreeBo

Though, tough, toe, thou, beer, bear, bare, ear, deer, dear I could go on all day!

Lester_Burnham

Bow to the chough on the bough wearing a bow.

osarusan

English language teacher and language learning and language teaching researcher here:

It all depends on who is doing the learning. Soembody who already uses the same alphabet has a headstart over somebody who doesn't. Somebody who knows a language with a lot of cognates (words similar to those in their languages) will find it easier than those with none. The same goes for languages with similar SVO structures (Subject-verb-object), similar use of prepositions, articles, similar tenses and so on. People coming from the Indo-European family of languages, from which most European languages have evolved, are well ahead in these areas, and better again if it's from a Germanic language, which is an even more recent shared ancestor.

If somebody has already learned another language before English (even better if it's a language similar to Engish in the ways listed above, but any is better than none purely in terms of cognitive processing and meta-cognitive understanding), that helps a lot too.

There's also the issue of opportunity for exposure to (less of an issue now with internet) and meaningful engagement with/use of/interaction in the target language. Somebody living in Ireland has a huge advantage over somebody in their home country, obviously.

Purely in terms of the language itself, I'd put down the perfect tenses and the horrific nightmare that is phrasal verbs as two things that consistently cause problems for learners.

Irish would be considered difficult in terms of the wide variety of ways the past tense is expressed, in comparison to the English 'ed' for example, and also the many ways to say me/I.

Basque is typically considered one of the most difficult languages to learn, as it (along with a few other languages) is a language isolate, meaning that there are are none of the cognates mentioned above.

Squeeonline

https://www.learnenglish.de/pronunciation/pronunciationpoem.html

Dearest creation in creation....

My partner is german speaking, but thinks that english was really easy to learn. There's no shortage of "good content" movies/TV etc for immersion.

The fine grammatical details are hard, but getting to the point where you can effectively get your message across is easier than other languages apparently.

Annascaul

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058213247/to-the-foreigners

The thing is, French and Spanish are related. The grammar is very very similar, and most French people would understand and be able to read Spanish to a high degree, but would probably struggle with the pronunciation.

Spaniards would probably have a tougher time to learn French, but it's more down to the pronunciation as well.

In Romania they have it easy. Romanians should understand Italian with ease and learn French or Spanish with minimal effort.

It's more down to how languages are related and also down to the personal aptitude of each learner.

whisky_galore

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118023068#Comment_118023068

To be talking about the way we're not talking it. In English.

magicbastarder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118023099#Comment_118023099

The main issue with English is that there are patterns, but also a fuckload of exceptions to those patterns, and no real way to know what those are except to just pick it up over time.

blame the flemish printers (this is a good listen on this topic)

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/corpse-corps-horse-and-worse/

Igotadose

having been a student in an advanced Spanish class which served as an ESL class for native Spanish speakers, it was FAR easier to learn Spanish for me, than English for them. TBF, Spanish is known to be the easiest of the romance languages.

Allinall

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118023115#Comment_118023115

A language can’t be hard, or soft for that matter.

Americans might find it difficult; same as yourself.

Pussyhands

This is what I usually ask foreigners if I know them long enough and nearly all of them say it's the easiest language to learn.

Rules like I before E are not very scientific... And the pronunciations are very difficult to get a handle on as well... Especially the vowels - there's no rhyme nor reason to how they're pronounced eg do (pronounced doo) and go (pronounced goh).. That's two different sounds for the letter 'O' . A lot of it makes no sense... At least we use proper letters unlike in Russian, Chinese, Hebrew etc... so, there's that 😊

murpho999

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118023038#Comment_118023038

I think your wrong in you're post their. They're lots' of people in Ireland that you'll find cannot speak there own language good and struggle with they're English grammar particularly plural's, possession case's and inflections and contraction's.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118023330#Comment_118023330

This makes sense to me.

bigar

I learned it as child mainly by watching the BBC which could easily be received in Belgium. It is a very easy language to learn mainly because you can form sentences with the words all out of place and it will still be understood. In my mother tongue, Dutch (and other languages), moving words in a sentence make it sound like gibberish.

Pronunciation is a breeze one you know how how every letter sounds. There are of course some words you need to know as they sound different from their spelling, "Leicester" comes to mind. English has quite a limited amount of sounds for pronunciation which makes it very easy to remember and learn.

Also English has the neat trait that all words are written separately. For instance Waterzuiveringsinstallatie in Dutch consists of the words Water, zuivering (and) installatie. In English that would be Water Treatment Plant.

AckwelFoley

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118023324#Comment_118023324

Nice try. But soft and hard can be used for the description of the non tangible

quokula

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118023218#Comment_118023218

Yeah there's more to learning a language than just the technical side of it. When I try speaking French in France the locals just speak English back to me because they can tell I'm not a native speaker. French people don't have that issue when speaking English over here. No matter what country you are in on this side of the world, English is ubiquitous, mainly from US cultural domination when it comes to movies, the internet etc. I've plenty of friends who might be e.g. Finnish and Portuguese, and they will speak English to each other because it's the language they have in common.

Even if you go somewhere like Japan, far fewer people will have any English, but in tourist spots English will be the only latin alphabet language. You're not going to see German or Spanish anywhere, so if you are German or Spanish and you don't speak Japanese you're going to end up relying on your English knowledge.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118023345#Comment_118023345

Yeah the pronunciation and spelling thing is all over the shop... but I'm talking more about grammar. With exceptions, surely English grammar is relatively easy?

mrcheez

I learned to pronounce it "shedule" in "shool"

Sunny_Arms

its hard. also, it depends on the school. in my home country, if you're in a public school, it'll depend on what province or city you're in. it might be or might be hard learning.

i attended in private schools all my life, and i actually had a time where, while learning English, we're also learning Old English which some of it are still applied today. (i forgot what those are sorry:/ )

it helps when you're surrounded by english materials like tv and music and novels. also, early exposure to english, like maybe at 3 years old, will help in speaking, reading, and writing english.

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118023099#Comment_118023099

Sometimes the singular and the plural are the same word. Fish

Or fishes. It used to be fishes was the plural, but became fish. It can still be fishes in some contexts. EG if you're talking about different kinds of fish. So a bunch of trout in a river are fish, a bunch of trout and salmon and minnow in a river are fishes. If you were writing a book about the different species of fish in Ireland it would be correct to entitle it "The fishes of Ireland". So the plural of fish in general is fish, the plural of different kinds of fish is fishes. The phrase "there's more fish in the sea" is kinda wrong, it should be fishes. Or not. Talk about confusing. 😁

mrcheez

I always thought the only people that said "fishes" were Mafiosos ... "swimming with the fishes"

Wibbs

English seems to be a very difficult language to learn. This difficulty can be somewhat hidden because so much world media is in the language so more is picked up by unconscious osmosis for many. Those who already have a Germanic native language tend to find it easier than those with a Latin language background, at least in the speaking aspect of it. I've known Italian and Spanish native speakers who would write English with a fluency that would rarely betray that it was their second language but in speaking this was obvious. On the other hand I've known native English speakers who spoke Italian and Spanish to a very high fluency level because they lived in those countries for extended periods of time and often native Spaniards and Italians could take a while to spot they weren't native speakers(particularly in Spanish). Some from the Scandinavian nations can speak English so well it's hard to spot it's not their first language.

One Italian guy I know who can speak a fair few European languages told me that English was far more a language of memory than rules compared to say Spanish. In that if you knew the rules of Spanish in grammar and vocalisations you were more than halfway there. With English you really weren't. You might have the basics, but you needed way more memory involvement because of the exceptions and contradictions.

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118035798#Comment_118035798

Good point actually. Maybe Italian Americans kept the older plural form, or they were being correct in that Mario was wearing concrete overshoes surrounded by many species of fish?

Gregor Samsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118035798#Comment_118035798

Or marine biologists:

"When referring to more than one species of fish, especially in a scientific context, you can use fishes as the plural."

https://www.grammarly.com/blog/fish-fishes/

Edit: You covered that already Wibbs. I'll go back to sleep (just not with the fishes).

neenam

From what I've heard, Greek is challenging as it's in it's own separate branch in the IE family, and the orthography rules.

Yurt2

English is an open-source language and native English speakers are (usually) highly tolerant of bad grammar and mistakes, even in a professional context. I've found Germans for instance to be very prickly when speaking less than perfect German and will give little space for learners and improvers to converse. Even people who have lived in English-speaking countries for a long time and whose English can be a little idiosyncratic, it doesn't tend to effect them all that negatively.

He'sa sleeping witha the fishes.

It fits better than fish (because of course all Italian Americans speak in that stage Italian way).

dxhound2005

Spelling doesn't matter much.

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118041854#Comment_118041854

True, though if you start writing like that suddenly you're having a stroke or high as a kite. 😁

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118023099#Comment_118023099

The saving grace here is that out of all languages, English speakers are probably the most forgiving of mistakes.

That's some big research job you're after describing right there. Care to elaborate?

I've seen something or other about rankings of languages in terms of difficulty and English is right up there, certainly in terms of the Latin alphabet languages. I think learning to a professional level and checked properly it'll be hard but the sheer amount of English content available now makes it easier to pick up bits and pieces as well. And if a non-native speaker says something that's a noun with an s at the end I think most people will indulge them. :P

Markus Antonius

I got a B in honours English in the leaving cert and yet people laugh at me when I say "Wasp" because I pronounce it the correct way like grasp, gasp, clasp. Whereas they say "wosp" like big upturned-nose snobs that they are.

Apparently a lot of non-native english speakers struggle with the pronunciation of "bear" which they often pronounce beer. Japanese can't initially make an "R" sound as this phonetically doesn't exist in japanese.

In a complete u-turn to this post with a link to a video that's as off-topic as it is interesting and catchy - Adriano Celentano, an Italian entertainer created a music video in what sounds like English but in reality (as we are fully aware) is complete nonsense in an effort to prove a point that non-english speaking italians will like anything that sounds American.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VsmF9m_Nt8

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118023203#Comment_118023203

Basque is typically considered one of the most difficult languages to learn, as it (along with a few other languages) is a language isolate, meaning that there are are none of the cognates mentioned above.

How difficult do the experts rate Finnish and Hungarian? Purely based on reading text and hearing a few words, I find Basque, Finnish, and Hungarian to be "out there" in comparison with other European languages.

Irish would be considered difficult in terms of the wide variety of ways the past tense is expressed, in comparison to the English 'ed' for example, and also the many ways to say me/I.

Is the past tense in Irish that different to (say) French or German in terms of complexity? And are there that many ways to say me or I in Irish? The listing in focloir.ie (Foras na Gaeilge's online dictionary) suggests that there are two words - mé and the emphatic mise. English has at least three, thereby giving Joan Armatrading the title for her highest charting album.

A tricky thing about learning Irish is that it is hugely dependent on the position of the speaker, and a lot of phrase constructions rely on references to or offsets from the position of the speaker (I heard that described as locative, by the way, but I dunno if that's a word any self-respecting linguist would use). This means that you need a really good grasp of the prepositional pronouns (forainmneacha réamhfhoclacha) to describe things, and a lot of people make mistakes with those, especially English speakers.

Deregos.

I knew an Italian girl who had the nicest way of describing things in English . . she would say stuff like "I am a fridge" meaning she was feeling the cold or "my mama is a library" (she reads a lot).

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118045952#Comment_118045952

Aw I love that. 😊

I remember overhearing a French girl in the pub saying that she visited the far east earlier that day. She was referring to east Cork. Her friends couldn't hold in the laughter, and someone quietly explained why to her - she then had a good laugh herself. Nobody was being mean but it was just so funny. Midleton and Ballycotton and Youghal as China, Japan and Hong Kong. 🙂

I was trying to converse in a bit of Spanish with two colleagues one time, and I used a wrong word, which actually means "cumshot". They were buckled. 😁

riclad

Watch programs with subtitles on or YouTube videos with subtitles the average person has only a fee 1000 word vocabulary you don't have to speak like a college professor there's probably apps and podcasts how to learn English I heard people watch the office friends, eg a comedy you enjoy to learn English

Of course Americans use words the Irish don't use like sidewalk , gas for petrol

You can download podcasts from bbc 4 Co UK

Or bbc 4 extra radio from any country

BBC 4 radio programs.are unusual the presenters, are well educated and usually speak clearly with little use of slang unless its a comedy

Google learn English podcast

If you like a program watch every episode with subtitles on

Characters in comedys speak in a fairly simple fashion

riclad

Most people do not always follow the strict use of grammar in normal conversation and of course Irish people use alot of slang there's loads of old bbc programs panel shows comedys on YouTube

Google bbc tv comedy i hear some people are learning French just to watch call my agent a French TV comedy

fritzelly

To be verbal with English is not so hard and still be understood even if the order of the words is wrong - many Brazilians in Ireland pick up the language pretty easy for conversation even though they only had basic teaching in school but find it hard to write it down

On the other hand if you had to sit a written exam it would be pretty hard for a non native speaker to get a pass, a lot of nuances that don't exist in other languages

Even as a English first language speaker I cannot remember all the rules - whereas Germanic languages are much more simpler in their rules. One thing I hated about learning French was everything was either male or female

Damn I find Kerry accents hard to understand even though they're kinda speaking the same language (I think)

is_that_so

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058213247/to-the-foreigners

As a language the basic format is not complex, we don't do declensions or change the forms of nouns and adjectives and you can say some very simple things quite quickly. 

Pronunciation issues with spelling are really a minor part of it and with practice these spelling anomalies can be dealt with. What can be more difficult is recognizing and producing individual sounds as English has a lot more of those than other languages. It's actually in areas of connected speech that people have more problems, as in when we use full sentences like how is “whatche do thatfer” the same as “what did you do that for”.

What makes English very difficult to master is the massive range of vocabulary and particularly what are called multi word verbs – take up , put up with. And we just keep making up more of those. Polsemy – or multiple meaning of the same word (e.g. type) is another area of challenge along with the tendency to use an awful lot of fixed idiomatic phrases. 

HalloweenJack

Having taught English in the Czech Republic, Brazil and Spain and learned Spanish as a teen and Portuguese as an adult (also went to all-Irish primary and secondary), I speak from experience as a teacher and a learner.

FWIW, I don't remember studying English grammar. Was this an all-Irish thing or a general Irish education system thing?

First and foremost, I think people from English-speaking countries may think English's global prominence is because of its perceived easiness, which is not the case.

People from English-speaking countires tend to be less interested in learning other languages (Why bother? they already speak the most important one) and therefore don't put as much emphasis on or effort into learning languages or they more often do it for pleasure as opposed to necessity. Wheras in Spain, students now need a certified level of a foreign language to graduate from college. People from places like Finland or the Czech Republic will need a decent level of English (or any other language) if they want to have a life outside their own country. Immediately, this adds a lot more importance to the need for learning a language (which is more often than not English).

English is not particularly hard but its not easy. Its vocabulary is a mix of Germannic and Romance so there's something for speakers from lots of languages to cling on to. It also has, at times, a simpler grammar. However, the inconsistency of pronunciation and plurals, as well as phrasal verbs and modal verbs, can be extemely frustrating.

What is true is that there are far more opportunities to learn English and practice it than any other language and as a learner you are also equally likely to meet other non-native speakers, as opposed to learning a language like Czech where you will practically always be speaking with native speakers. Non-native speakers know what it's like to learn a language and will also not be perfect so they are more patient and easier to communicate with. Native speakers (in any language) tend to struggle adjusting their level.

I found Spanish easy enough to learn. There are concepts that are tricky (subjunctice verbs) but on a whole its more consistent and intuitive. It's also quite flexible. Portuguese is trickier in some ways but not overwhelmingly so. I also studied German and Czech. I just couldn't wrap my head around German vocabulary while Czech is so far removed from Germannic and Latin languages that it was a constant struggle with vocabulary and cases.

English is everywhere so there's plenty of opportunity to learn it and it is practically essential for anyone wanting to move about. As it's our native language, we don't appreciate how hard it is to learn it and how lucky we are that our passport is essentially a certificate that saves us years of study and a lot of money that others have to spend to have the same opportunities.

Frankly, asking native English speakers if its an easy language to learn is nonsense. Ask someone who learnt it and one or more other languages and see what they say.