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What makes English so difficult to learn?
just cos they can speak A LITTLE english they think they've mastered it!
It's exactly the same thing when English speakers butcher a foreign language and they think they master it, Everybody is the same
>>It's exactly the same thing when English speakers butcher a foreign language and they think they master it, Everybody is the same<<
No I don't think so, most English speakers learning a foreign language will expect to make lots of mistakes, and are certainy unlikely to claim the particular language is extremely easy, while thinking they have totally mastered it. For me it's been the other way round, I always think I must make quite a few mistakes in German, but the Germans tell me I make hardly any. I never believe them, but I know I don't butcher it either.
I don't think most English-speaking adults who kind of speak a foreign language think that they have mastered it. I also don't believe certain nationalities when they praise you in a language. Japanese compliment any attempt at Japanese it seems because they themselves think their language is difficult for other people.
"Joozu desu, ne" You're really skillfull/proficient. Usually you wouldn't say "Arigatou" Thank-you. (Once a completely fluent man who favoured his white, Jewish father not his Japanese mother answered this way, but he didn't want to get into his history, lol.) You have to say " Ie, tondemonai desu." (No, that's absurd.) It's actually quite strange. Think about it in English. Wow! You're great at English. No, that's absurd. It's like a clip I posted in the languages forum. You can't claim you speak the language, so you say "It's absurd." very fluently. Well, that's one way to do it.
So you won't be left out of the jokes:
Sign on Tree: French/forbidden to "Nomads" and "Campers" Later: The men speak in German after the girl tries "Speaken sie Deutsch" or something like that. The men speak in German, then we hear them denying their ability to speak in German and tell her that they hope they'll be able to communicate next time in English or perhaps in German.
<<English has far more vocabulary than any Romance language.>>
Thats because we have more loan words. 60% of english vocabulary is latin and/or french in origin. <<hahhahahhahahahahhahaha what pathetic folly to suggest that you can't express nuances in English!!!!!>> Yes, but not without using latinate words. There was a piece in the Christian Science Monitor years ago called "English Sans French"(google it), that demonstrates how difficult it is to express anything in english, without using french words. Almost all our "lofty", fancy words used to express nuance and subleties, are french.
<<how difficult it is to express anything in english, without using french words. >>
It's also difficult to express anything in English without the Germanic words.
<<It's also difficult to express anything in English without the Germanic words. >>
The base of the language (the simple short words) are anglo, but our complex words used to express "shades" of meaning, are nearly all latinate.
<<Almost all our "lofty", fancy words used to express nuance and subtleties, are french/latin >>
Indeed. Even the words "nuance" and "subtle" themselves, are of french origin.
<<Yes, but not without using latinate words.>>
Lol wtf kind of argument is that? The latinate words ARE PART OF ENGLISH! Why on earth are they 'not allowed'? hahahhahahha what about the other words, from German origins, are they allowed? Hahahhahahah! Of course you can use latinate words to speak 100% legitimate English! Hahahahahhahahahhahahah! Hahahhahahahhaha! Latinate words are now ENGLISH words, and in the future people will remember them not as 'latinate' words but as 'anglic' words, ie the romance roots will be forgotten and they will be associated with english. <<It's exactly the same thing when English speakers butcher a foreign language and they think they master it, Everybody is the same>> No, that is a lie. English speakers are VERY conservative when it comes to languages, because it's not something which you come across very habitually in english speakers so they tend to lack confidence. On the other hand you get these Europeans who've been learning languages their whole life and used them, and are used to people speaking foreign languages around them so they are more used to it and more confident, and their confident quickly turns into the idea that they are the masters of English when in fact their English is terrible and riddled with elementary mistakes and hahahahhahahahahhahahahahaha!
At least here in the US, I would go further and say that most people native to here are assumed to be *unable* to speak any language other than English, aside from recent immigrants and people born to immigrant parents, and that it is almost strange for such individuals to be able to effectively speak anything other than English (and especially anything other than Spanish). Yes, they may have taken N number of years of some given language in school, but they still generally cannot speak such well and are assumed to not actually be able to really speak such one way or another.
>>>I don't think most English-speaking adults who kind of speak a foreign language think that they have mastered it. I also don't believe certain nationalities when they praise you in a language. Japanese compliment any attempt at Japanese it seems because they themselves think their language is difficult for other people.
I may never know what YOU think, but I think it's typical at least of me to avoid commenting or to say 'ah, nice' in this case. It isn't really as surprising as seeing an animal that speaks like us. But it could be very eyebrows raising when very few people learn your native language and suddenly, at the right time, speak a few random, meaningful phrases to you. Yet, I'm still having difficulty understanding speech that is out of tune with lots of pauses. Pronunciation is very important also for English. Slight improvement already raises eyebrows of 'monolinguals' who think you have been in the Anglosphere for quite some time....
In Taiwan, learning English become boring and not easy to learn because we emphasize grammar so much.Therefore, I need to remember lots of grammar rulers by mindless retention, imitation and rotely activities.
That's your own fault if you're not intelligent enough to use the internet to find stuff which interests you. Unless sites like youtube and wikipedia are still banned in China?
>>In Taiwan, learning English become boring and not easy to learn because we emphasize grammar so much.Therefore, I need to remember lots of grammar rulers by mindless retention, imitation and rotely activities.
*Cough* But your situation is still better than mine. Here people in high schools taught in English assume you must know a lot of English to prepare for exams, and no one actually learns anything. Learning English literature raises others' eyebrows very much in high school, but this subject is simply the counterpart of Chinese literature (you know what I mean) you would normally take or learn even as an amateur in school. And at university, since freedom rules... people simply assume you must learn English quite well and you can learn virtually anything (and virtually nothing if you want). No one talks grammar or vocabulary anymore. I was never taught much grammar in high school, and I simply had to learn it on my own. If English shall be a language of freedom (and being so popular), then English did make me think through learning on my own - I wasn't bound by others' opinions and I simply made it through the way. That socialist country has nothing to do with the ex-colony or the treasure island in this regard. LOL |