To the foreigners!

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.

osarusan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118045927#Comment_118045927

I couldn't tell you much about Hungarain or Finnish, but my understanding is that they have fewer cognates to other European languages, which is probably factor in how they sound 'out there'. They make much more use of compound words too than English does, which probably adds another layer of confusion.

Yeah, the point I was making about Irish words for 'I/me' is that as well as 'mé, mise', there are also different prespositional pronouns such as 'liom', 'orm', 'asam', dom' and so on. Not specifically 'I/me', but an added layer of pronoun complexity when referring to yourself (or others) that doesn't exist in the same way in English.

Irish Stones

I learnt English quite easily, it came naturally. I'm Italian.

I can read and write in English without any problem, I think, even though, every now and then, I have to check a word I never came across before.

I can make some conversation with native speakers, though I can understand some better than others due to their accent.

Of course I will never speak English as fluently as a native speaker, and my vocabulary won't be as rich as yours. I used to train my spoken English a lot during my holidays in your country in the past 20 years, but now, with limited or no chances to travel again, I think I might gradually lose that skill.

Anyway, to me English is one of the easiest languages to learn.

Italian is a hard language, with lots of masculine and feminine words, even the adjectives can change their gender and be plural accordingly. An adjective can be put before or after a noun, sometimes this can be done, sometimes it can't, and sometimes this swapping can completely change the meaning of a sentence. Verbs are conjugated according to the person, and very often we omit the subject in a sentence without losing the meaning, but it can also generate misunderstandings. An interrogative sentence is made by just changing the voice intonation when spoken, or by putting a question mark at the end when written, without changing the construction of the sentence. The good thing is that my language has very little rules for pronounciation and a word is very often pronounced as it's written.

A few people that I know and that have learned my language say that it's been hard but rewarding, because it's nice to speak and hear that sound.

But I envy you native English speakers.

I would have liked to learn some Irish 😁

osarusan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118046036#Comment_118046036

There's nothing unusual about a native speaker knowing very little about the rules of their own language in comparison to a language they have learned.

It's completely natural for a native speaker of a language to be able to speak that language perfectly but have very little understanding of how/why it is structured the way it is. They don't need to know they 'how' or 'why', they just know instinctively how to construct perfect sentences.

Usually, it's the study of another language which makes them aware of the structures/rules of their own languages, as a result of comparison with the language they are learning.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118046299#Comment_118046299

That's why I named the thread "To the foreigners!"

I'm finding actually on this thread that it's English speakers who say it's difficult, and non native English speakers mostly saying it's not.

What are phrasal verbs? Is that like "Do"? (Do you drive? Do you drink?) Because that is one aspect of English that must be tricky. Other languages don't seem to use the verb "to do" in that way. We use the "ing" participle a lot more too. "I am driving", "I am going" - in other languages it's just "I drive", "I go" in all contexts.

anplaya27

Native ISL user. A foreigner would prob find it easier than me. I find any spoken language hard to learn or understand but thats more to do with not being able to hear.

osarusan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118047062#Comment_118047062

Phrasal verbs are things like 'look after' or 'take care of'. Basically, a verb followed by 1 or 2 more words, mainly prepositions. They can be separable (throw away the tv, throw the tv away) or inseparable (look after).

Just as an example, the phrasal verb 'take up', could mean, depending on the context, to continue, to start, to collect, to use/waste (time), to alter clothes, and maybe even more I can't think of right now. And it's separable, which means a non-native speaker will have to wait until all the words between 'take' and 'up' are spoken until they finally hear the preposition 'up' and can understand the meaning.

And that's just one verb and preposition. There's also others with take (take in, take away, take over, and more) and many many other vers have multiple combinations also.

CalamariFritti

Learning English is not easy but it has some advantages.

First of all there is the fact that nouns aren't gendered in English except in some abstract ways like countries or ships being deemed female or such that has no real impact on grammar. Latin languages have male and female attributed to everything and with that articles change and verbs change and it goes all the way through the different past tenses and whatnots. German has neutral nouns on top of it. Its definitely an added difficulty.

Then there is - what you call it? - conjugation? In English I walk, you walk, we walk, they walk. In Portuguese for example this is a different thing altogether. Eu ando, voce anda, nos andamos, eles andam. For every friggin verb! You get the picture. It can be a headwrecker, a lot to learn off.

An another advantage English has is that it has such a huge coverage. Most non-English speaking people would have had some exposure to English either through music, movies, technical texts, all sorts even if they had no English classes in school which most would have.

They are the biggies that come to my mind.

I came to Ireland almost two decade ago and I had honours English (Leistungskurs it was called in Germany then) in school. Meaning my English was as good as any 'school English'. But yet in an actual English speaking country I could hardly understand a word even on the news and was struggling to speak casual English for at least a year or so after. I'd pass as 'fluent' for some years now but it wasn't easy.

Irish Stones

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118047191#Comment_118047191

By your username I thought you were Italian 😄

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118046312#Comment_118046312

Different languages are based on (and cause) different outlooks on life and the world. The prepositional pronouns in Irish are a thing, and you can figure out what they mean or memorise them. The, er, fun and games start when you find the prepositional pronouns doing the work that would be done by verbs in English (and indeed many other languages). It takes a while to figure out how to express an emotion or state of mind, or to find a verb equivalent to want, love, need, have, know, like, prefer or owe.

bodhrandude

Learning English is one thing but it's learning the colloquialisms of regional English, of which there is an amazing variety in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England.