English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018) • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by dang » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 7:56 AM UTC

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.

Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar. We've had to warn you about this before. Not cool.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26607520.

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

#82

Post by tarsinge » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 8:03 AM UTC

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…

> In English why do you need to say “exacerbate” when you can say “make worse”? Or “defenestrate” when you mean “toss out the window”?

You would love French (coincidentally these words are of french origin). I learn (or at least remember to use) words nearly every day.

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

#83

Post by iagovar » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 8:12 AM UTC

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…

As a Spaniard I agree with your observations. In Spanish most variations of pronunciation come from local variants, so even there there is consistency. In english is quite hard to grasp how to say new words. That's not a problem in Spanish.

For me the most difficult is pronunciation, and having so many exceptions.

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

#84

Post by goodcanadian » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 8:15 AM UTC

inkyoto wrote: post #67

IgorPartola wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In English why do you need to say “exacerbate” when you can say “make worse”? Or “defenestrate” when you mean “toss out the window”? The usual answer I hear is that it’s because it makes the language more beautiful and precise. I think it makes it inflexible and inconvenient in the same way that it’s easier to have 26 letters combined in arbitrary patterns than 5000 kanji that each represent one or more things. You h…

To be fair, once upon a time, England was full of English people. The educated would know Latin as that was the language of the church and of international correspondence. Then, the Normans arrived and the upper classes rapidly became somewhat French. So, the difference in speech between upper class and commoner as well as between educated and less educated (England had remarkably high literacy rates even among the commoners) has a strong historical basis. I also haven't even mentioned the influence of Danish (Viking) on the language. I would guess that part of the richness of the vocabulary is down to the fact that English is an amalgamation of several languages.

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

#85

Post by j4yav » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 8:31 AM UTC

inkyoto wrote: post #72

cpursley wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

«Эти хуи, на хуй, это захуярили и потом вместе похуярили на хуй» – «this bunch of not very nice men have done a sloppy job (of something) and then have locomoted out of here in a unknown direction»

You can kind of do the same thing in English:

Those fuckers fucked everything up and then promptly fucked off to fuck knows where.

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

#86

Post by lordnacho » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 8:33 AM UTC

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…

> In English why do you need to say “exacerbate” when you can say “make worse”? Or “defenestrate” when you mean “toss out the window”?

This is the thing about English. Everyone can learn intermediate English, but there's a long tail of vocabulary that comes from other languages. Often you find there's an English word, a French work, and a Latin word for something. You'll then discover that there's some subtlety of meaning between them. For instance, if someone has only figuratively been booted out of a position (politics), they've been defenestrated. You'd never say they've been tossed out the window.

Part of me suspects the French and Latin imports are to do with the elite who wanted to check if someone had been educated at the right places.

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

#87

Post by dorkwood » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 8:35 AM UTC

I know people who have spoken English for over 10 years, but still give themselves away as non-native speakers by using the incorrect tense.

A common one is that they'll type something like "I didn't understood what he said". I can see their reasoning here: "understood" seems like the correct word to use when talking about a past event. Sadly, I don't know enough about my own native language to explain to them why they should be using the word "understand" instead.

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

#88

Post by raverbashing » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 8:39 AM UTC

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…

> it's no more fit to be the global lingua franca than say Mandarin or Hungarian.

Sounds like an outrageous claim done by a monolingual ;)

These are the languages with the biggest barriers (tonal + alphabet in the case of Mandarin and weird case system in the case of Hungarian).

So no, those are the worse examples you could have picked. French could work, or maybe Japanese with a romanicized alphabet could work.

Heck, pick Latin, simplify the declensions, simplify the spelling towards ecclesiastical pronounciation and you might end up with something close to Italian.

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

#89

Post by dijit » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 8:42 AM UTC

yellowcake0 wrote: post #54

IgorPartola wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Depends on your social circle.

It’s used among the gentry in the UK when referring to board members of various types if they are ejected with force.

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

#90

Post by danjac » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 8:42 AM UTC

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…

The hardest things I found in Russian were the mobile stress - the way the stress on the noun or verb moves around depending on tense/case etc - and the sheer amount of irregularity in the inflections. The vocabulary is smaller though and it's also shared among other Slavic languages - I can get at least the gist of a newspaper headline in Polish or Bulgarian based on my knowledge of Russian, and I can imagine if you're a Slav native speaker it will be much easier than English.

That all said I found Finnish far easier, consistent and logical, even though it's not even in the same Indo-European family.