English grammar is chaotic !

English is the most difficult European language to learn to READ, according to a study. Finnish and Italian are the easiest.

And NO language, its grammar, etc, is easy to learn for everyone, and no language is hard to learn for everyone. How difficult a language is depends on a person's native language. For a Chinese person, English will be a bloody difficult language to learn, but for a Dutchman, it'll be easier.

One theory why English is less inflected than other European languages and has no grammatical gender is because when the Anglo-Saxons first arrived on the island (with their heavily inflected language) they had to communicate with the Native Britons (speaking their Celtic languages) in order to trade, so the Anglo-Saxons got rid of all the inflections and the three grammatical genders in order for the Britons to be able to learn the language more easily. The idea was that: "We don't need lots of inflections and grammatical gender. As long as we can communicate with each other, it'll be okay."

And that's why English has no proper grammatical gender.

Adam,

You are do misinformed to claim that Finnish is one of the easiest languages to learn !!!!

It is commonly known that Finnish, as a Finno-Ugric language is amongst the MOST DIFFICULT language to learn from any starting point !!

Although in Scandinavia, Finnish is not in any way related to Norwegian, Swedish or Danish.

Although bordering Russia for 2000 miles, it is unrelated to Russian or the Slavic languages.

I can't comment on the rest of your post as I stopped reading after such a HUGE mistake!

Go check Google if you don't believe me ! Seriously, Finnish is one of the hardest languages in history!

The only thing that comes to mind that is more difficult to learn in adulthood is Georgian (Sakartvelo) and the neighbouring Paleo-Caucasian languages of the Caucasus.

"You are do misinformed to claim that Finnish is one of the easiest languages to learn !!!! "


I never said English was the hardest to learn. I said it was the hardest to learn to read.

Finnish is much easier.

Message #1 Guest Thu Dec 15, 2005 10:34 pm GMT
>>English pronunciation and spellings are a chaotic mess compared with most indo-european languages ! not speaking about the irregular grammar !!! It is the messiest language !

How can you learn to spell ? will you ever learn ? Even UK’s Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Margaret Thatcher, (George Bush -doesn’t even speak properly ) etc. made shameless spellings mistakes in official documents !
God ! You even have to spell your common name like Carrie ? Kerry? Cary ? Cari ?

What a mess! How do you cope in this mess? <<

What's your native language?

Your conclusion is too subjective. Every language is difficult to learn for foreigners... and same languages are different to ppl from different contries. the ones similiar to your mother tongue is of course easier than those don't .

>>Every language is difficult to learn for foreigners... <<

I think English is difficult to lern for its nativ speekers too ...

>>I think English is difficult to lern for its nativ speekers too ...<<

As for the spoken language as a native language, no; it itself is no more or less difficult than any other language. Of course, yes, the English writing system is almost certainly more difficult than most other alphabet or abugida-based orthographies, but that is not the same as its difficulty in itself as a native language.

dear sir i need to know the most difficult english grammar points
i mean the tricky sentences to change into passive or to change into active or to use connectors

"It is commonly known that Finnish, as a Finno-Ugric language is amongst the MOST DIFFICULT language to learn from any starting point !!"

Do you really think that the difficulty of a language depends on whether it is Finno-Ugric or not? I wonder what "commonly known" means in this context.

Kirk:

"Similarly, a Southern British speaker reforming English simply based on that dialect would spell "tort" the same as "taut." However, that doesn't work for me--I pronounce them very differently."

Why do you think that all dialects should be written in the same way? If you spell "tort" and "taut" differently, write them differently, and let the Southern British speaker write them in the same way. Dialects do not conflict with phonemical writing.

<<Why do you think that all dialects should be written in the same way? If you spell "tort" and "taut" differently, write them differently, and let the Southern British speaker write them in the same way. Dialects do not conflict with phonemical writing.>>

Well, that's another issue. Many would-be spelling reformers are actually trying to reform English spelling as a whole but make the mistake of basing the reforms off their own dialects. That is the problem I was pointing out. Whether or not different dialects should have their own spelling norms is another issue which I honestly don't want to get into on this site.

I don't understand why you whine about the English language.

Solution: Don't bother learning it in the first place.

I myself have come to be actually relatively against spelling reform for English as a whole, beyond simply being consigned to its practical infeasibility and viewing it as still being useful as a single common orthography in the long run. The matter is that from a dialectal standpoint the "badness" of the current English orthography is actually a *positive* attribute, in that it is sufficiently detached from actual pronunciation in any English variety, standard or not, today such that it no longer exerts a strong prescriptive influence. While it still acts as a mnemonic que, it does not strongly specify any particular "right" pronunciations, unlike more phonemic orthographies. Even though notions of "standardness" are still present, they are not strongly dictated at every last turn by the orthography in Late Modern English due to such.

<<I don't understand why you whine about the English language.

Solution: Don't bother learning it in the first place.>>

Oh, I see you're a troll now. Never mind.

<Oh, I see you're a troll now. Never mind. >

Kirk: I detest the need to present such personal 'opinions as facts' as shown by a few people such as Adam and what you said in your last message. And I detest you calling me a troll when you lack the evidence to call me one.

I doubt you heard "innocent til proved guilty" but I wouldn't be surprised if you heard "guilty til proved innocent."