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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)

#31

Post by bonoboTP »

soldehierro wrote: post #18
ekianjo wrote: post #4

That sounds like a blanket statement valid for most languages.

"Angloexceptionalism" really gets on my nerves to no end, and the worst part of it is that it seems it's mainly anglophone monolinguals that are making these outrageous claims, like English being intrinsically superior to other languages or being exceptionally easy to learn. Sure, English is really damn useful, but the grand scheme of things it's no more fit to be the global lingua franca than say Mandarin or Hungari…

As a Hungarian speaker who also knows other languages, I think there is indeed a difference. To construct even quite basic sentences in Hungarian you have to learn much more rules than to do the same for English. At a basic level English feels like just putting words next to one another. I mean basics like "I go in the house. You eat dinner." To say these in Hungarian as a beginner you'd have to either rote learn stuff or prepare to work through lots of rules and tables.

In my experience English tends to be more "forgiving" and robust to non native mistakes for basic communication and the time to one's first fully correct sentence (self made) is shorter.

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

#32

Post by iso8859-1 »

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.

What about people who mix, e.g. Spanish and English? Is that English too? How many Spanish words does one have to use before it stops being English? Surely there must be a limit.

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

#33

Post by yongjik »

raverbashing wrote: post #21
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.

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.

Grammar is, by definition, what native speakers get right when they don't give a fuck.

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

#34

Post by hnaccy »

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.

If we're taking descriptivist approach wouldn't it also apply to ESL speakers? There is probably many more Indian english speakers than AAVE speakers so wouldn't any differences not be mistakes?

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

#36

Post by something98 »

bane wrote: post #23

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.

This! It’s been many years since I first started “adjusting” my processing circuits to understand all of the ways various English learners can mess up (and long ago started noticing similarities on what they consistently mess up, and their mother tongue). And don’t get me wrong, watching two or more people use broken English as their intermediary is always cool.

However, even the slightest mispronunciation in -their- tongue just hits a brick wall. I suspect it’s because so few have to deal with poor to intermediate speakers (excepting children) that their brains just can’t cope with imperfection.

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

#38

Post by luisfmh »

Waterluvian wrote: post #37

This got me wondering about the concept of a custom designed language focused on functionality, unambiguity, ease to learn. My understanding is that all commonly used spoken languages are basically organically evolved and not designed?

That's the whole concept of esperanto afaik. Google it, it's a language designed to be easy to learn.

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

#39

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

dragonwriter wrote: post #19
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…

> 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. Compared to, say, Italian, sure, especially coming from another language using the Latin alphabet with nearly equally consistent and mostly similar mapping between sounds and writing (say, Spanish). Compared to languag…

What I’ve always wondered about this is if there’s a better way to present this: pronunciation in English is sort of path-dependent and I wonder if a two-phase approach of recognizing the etymological groups (Germanic-origin, French-origin, Spanish-origin, etc.) and then applying the rules for that group would make the pronunciation appear more regular.
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