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English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018)

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Re: English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018)

#21

Post by raverbashing »

torstenvl wrote: post #9
bsder wrote: post #6

> I know a few foreigners with great English, but they still make mistakes all the time. Listened to any native English speakers lately? At least in the US, the native speakers mangle the language to a horrible extent. Most foreigners with decent English are actually much better at "English" than most Americans.

> Listened to any native English speakers lately? At least in the US, the native speakers mangle the language to a horrible extent. That's literally impossible. Please don't confuse your classism for linguistics.

I see what you're getting at, but I still disagree.

Because it's not only about classisism it's about not giving a f!

A non-native can communicate better than a native in several occasions.

Re: English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018)

#22

Post by bsder »

torstenvl wrote: post #9
bsder wrote: post #6

> I know a few foreigners with great English, but they still make mistakes all the time. Listened to any native English speakers lately? At least in the US, the native speakers mangle the language to a horrible extent. Most foreigners with decent English are actually much better at "English" than most Americans.

> Listened to any native English speakers lately? At least in the US, the native speakers mangle the language to a horrible extent. That's literally impossible. Please don't confuse your classism for linguistics.

Subject/verb agreement is regularly mangled. A vs an is regularly hosed up. Run-on sentences and clauses are all over the map. I can go on and on.

This is hilarious when two halves of a family come together and can't understand one another. It's not so hilarious when their children can't read certain books and can't spell for crap because their pronunciation is terrible.

Re: English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018)

#23

Post by bane »

Being a de facto global language where listeners also have to learn to tolerate very wide differences in pronunciation and grammar, I wonder how this simplifies the perceived learning of the language. I know when I try to learn and use languages in other countries even mild issues with pronunciation will get you blank stare in return which is highly frustrating.

Re: English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018)

#24

Post by cletus »

jeswin wrote: post #17
cletus wrote: post #11

I find the transformation and evolution of languages in general and English in particular fascinating. Old English was a Germanic language primarily. After 1066, the court language of England became French and remained so for centuries. It was in this period that the Middle English transformation happened. The fascinating thing about this is that the language became much more regular in that period and, more importan…

The biggest problem that non-native speakers face with English is the pronunciation. There are no consistent rules which can be applied to letter combinations; and that alone makes it hard to master. English is not my native language, but I've been using it for decades. Still have to look up pronunciation. OTOH, my native language Malayalam (and other Indian languages) doesn't really have the pronunciation problem. T…

It's a definite advantage if a language is phonetic (eg German, Turkish) but there are also worse than English. French springs to mind.

English pronunciation inconsistencies are really a product of how many loan words there are, when they entered the language (ie they tend to become more regular over time) and what language they came from (eg you see consistencies in words of Latin origin vs Greek origin).

Also, at least the vowels are written in English (unlike, say, Arabic or Hebrew, generally speaking).

Re: English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018)

#25

Post by raverbashing »

soldehierro wrote: post #15

The part about European langauges not having a present progessive tense was painful to read. Many european languages do have a present progressive, just not French and German, which aren't much of a representative sample.

And they "do have" it, but just in special occasions (more common in French, where it's directly translatable)

Re: English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018)

#26

Post by bane »

gruppe_sechs wrote: post #2

Something I've heard fairly consistently from people who've learned English as a second language is that it's relatively easy to learn English to a basic or intermediate level, since English grammar is relatively simple (no genders, no cases, simple verbs, etc), but taking your English from intermediate to advanced is much harder because of all the weird quirks, irregularities, idioms, phrasal verbs, inconsistent spe…

True. My wife started learning English seriously in her mid 20s and even after over 25 years of daily, immersed, use struggles with native grammar and pronunciation constructs.

Re: English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018)

#27

Post by plorkyeran »

jimbob45 wrote: post #20
torstenvl wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Listened to any native English speakers lately? At least in the US, the native speakers mangle the language to a horrible extent. That's literally impossible. Please don't confuse your classism for linguistics.

He’s right though. Who vs whom is one example that no one tends to get right. Ain’t is commonly misused, even as slang. Done vs have is epidemic within Ebonics.

"Correct" is defined by what native speakers do.

Re: English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018)

#28

Post by samatman »

jimbob45 wrote: post #20
torstenvl wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Listened to any native English speakers lately? At least in the US, the native speakers mangle the language to a horrible extent. That's literally impossible. Please don't confuse your classism for linguistics.

He’s right though. Who vs whom is one example that no one tends to get right. Ain’t is commonly misused, even as slang. Done vs have is epidemic within Ebonics.

When the rules in the rule book are used as a cudgel to beat on native speakers of a language, it is the rules, and especially those using the rules in that way, which are wrong.

English has prestige dialects which conserve certain features, and others which are low status and don't. A phrase like "I done been doin it!" is grammatically regular, in a dialect of the language which you don't speak; it isn't the same thing as the mistakes a non-native speaker will make, at all, and you shouldn't treat it like it is.

Re: English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018)

#29

Post by torstenvl »

jimbob45 wrote: post #20
torstenvl wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Listened to any native English speakers lately? At least in the US, the native speakers mangle the language to a horrible extent. That's literally impossible. Please don't confuse your classism for linguistics.

He’s right though. Who vs whom is one example that no one tends to get right. Ain’t is commonly misused, even as slang. Done vs have is epidemic within Ebonics.

> Who vs whom is one example...

of a distinction that exists in only the formal written register of less than a handful of English prestige dialects.

It is not wrong to say "Who did you learn this nonsense from?" It is just not formal written Standard American English.

Your insistence that one native speaker's dialect is somehow "more right" than another's is not a measure of someone's linguistic competence, it's a social value judgment with classist and racist overtones. Maybe if you spent some time studying AAVE (African American Vernacular English) and other dialects, you wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it as "ebonics."

Re: English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018)

#30

Post by samatman »

cletus wrote: post #24
jeswin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem that non-native speakers face with English is the pronunciation. There are no consistent rules which can be applied to letter combinations; and that alone makes it hard to master. English is not my native language, but I've been using it for decades. Still have to look up pronunciation. OTOH, my native language Malayalam (and other Indian languages) doesn't really have the pronunciation problem. T…

It's a definite advantage if a language is phonetic (eg German, Turkish) but there are also worse than English. French springs to mind. English pronunciation inconsistencies are really a product of how many loan words there are, when they entered the language (ie they tend to become more regular over time) and what language they came from (eg you see consistencies in words of Latin origin vs Greek origin). Also, at l…

I don't think that's true about French. It has some weird rules, the refusal to pronounce the last consonant in a word is especially galling (ok, pun was intended), but it's fairly consistent once you figure it out.

English, though, is a slough. Enough practice, thorough practice, and you'll get through it. But it's rough going.

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