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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)

#51

Post by cpursley »

IgorPartola wrote: post #41
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…

My first language is Russian. I learned English from 12 to 14 to a basic level and from then came to the US and learned the rest of what I know here. Some thoughts: 1. English has a very simple, pre-defined sentence structure. Run-on sentence are discouraged. The language has almost logical decisions regarding the use of the verb “be”. Words are rarely skipped because they are implied. By contrast Russian is much mor…

Do you mind sharing the version of the dick conversations in Russian? I'm one of those crazy people studying Russian.

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

#52

Post by axaxs »

I'm convinced English is impossible to master. There are just too many corner cases.

That said, English is also a very abused language. Sadly these days, correcting someone leads to 'oh it's a living language and use determines definition', and more sadly, dictionaries play along with this idea.

This both makes the language harder to understand, and impossible to master IMO.

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

#53

Post by cpursley »

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…

English spelling really is terrible and needs a full writing reform.

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

#54

Post by yellowcake0 »

IgorPartola wrote: post #41
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…

My first language is Russian. I learned English from 12 to 14 to a basic level and from then came to the US and learned the rest of what I know here. Some thoughts: 1. English has a very simple, pre-defined sentence structure. Run-on sentence are discouraged. The language has almost logical decisions regarding the use of the verb “be”. Words are rarely skipped because they are implied. By contrast Russian is much mor…

To be fair, I've never heard someone use the word defenestrate unironically.

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

#55

Post by mbrubeck »

iso8859-1 wrote: post #32
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.

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.

English is a Germanic language, but about 60% of words used by English speakers today were imported from French and Latin, mostly after the Norman conquest of England. So by this standard, it stopped being English hundreds of years ago.

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

#56

Post by axaxs »

schrodinger wrote: post #49

After talking to people from a lot of other countries (inc. europeans who use English as their "lingua franca"), the main benefit of English is that it's incredibly fault tolerant. It's difficult to learn well enough to sound like a native speaker, but even if you are very far from it, you're still understandable. Think about these phrases: * I go store now * I hungry * I wash car later * I cook food grill tomorrow i…

This is a really good point. It reminds me of exactly how my daughter spoke English as she was learning. It always amazed me how she put words together to make a sentence that was at face value wrong, but intent was understood. I think my two favorites were 'i scary' and 'that makes me funny'(after laughing, I guess context matters too)

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

#57

Post by surfsvammel »

I’ve thought, for years, about improving my English. But I don’t know how to go about doing so. I already speak, read, and write English without effort. But I want to improve further. There seem to be a lack of options for someone in this situation, all English learning resources seem to be aimed at beginners.

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

#58

Post by leephillips »

flobosg wrote: post #45
leephillips wrote: post #12

I am, at the moment, learning Spanish and also teaching English to native Spanish speakers. The languages present almost opposite sets of challenges. English is chaos: the connection between spelling and pronunciation is so random that one practically has to memorize how to say every word, as if they are ideograms; there are few conjugations to learn, but in place of that many rules for modal and auxiliary verbs; wor…

> I was puzzled by the one about the present continuous tense, which does exist in Spanish According to Spanish grammar, what would be considered the Spanish analog of the English present continuous is formally classified not as a tense, but a periphrasis.

Yes, it seems some grammarians reserve “tense” for conjugations. The same grammarians will say that English has no future tense.

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

#59

Post by omniscient_oce »

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.

I see lose instead of loose so often online

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

#60

Post by tablespoon »

IgorPartola wrote: post #41
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…

My first language is Russian. I learned English from 12 to 14 to a basic level and from then came to the US and learned the rest of what I know here. Some thoughts: 1. English has a very simple, pre-defined sentence structure. Run-on sentence are discouraged. The language has almost logical decisions regarding the use of the verb “be”. Words are rarely skipped because they are implied. By contrast Russian is much mor…

> Where the drudgery of English comes in is vocabulary. Anyone that tells you that the SATs are not biased towards native speakers is full of putrescible waste.

How much of Russian's vocabulary is "native"? My understanding it that English's vocabulary is pretty messed up because it's a mongrel language: Germanic substrate with substantial portions replaced or augmented by medieval French, with lots of Greek/Latinate vocabulary for "educated" topics. That's made even worse because it tends to adopt words complete without translating foreign spelling systems (notable recent example: Pinyin). Things would be a lot simpler if the vocabulary had evolved from the original Anglo-Saxon substrate.

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