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I ask you, foreign people - is it hard to learn? I would imagine it's easy compared to say, French, because there's no male/female words etc.

At 5/22/07 01:03 PM, Dodge68 wrote: I ask you, foreign people - is it hard to learn? I would imagine it's easy compared to say, French, because there's no male/female words etc.

English is easy as fuck to learn, I'm Icelandic and when i was seven , I could speak perfect English.

Try learning Icelandic or finnish.

English is easy.

I'd imagine it's horrific to learn, with the likes of "Your" and "You're", or "There", "They're" and "Their".

It's renown for being difficult to learn, anyway.

yeah i know i heard that all my life that english is the hardest language in the world yet it took me 2 years to speak in english (as in i was 2 years old a baby ffs) yet at my age now i cant learn french or germen its fucked up

i have been learning these languages for 3 years

American English is hard for people to learn because we have different slang and many different meanings for words that we use.

English is easy as fuck. Even German or Swedish is harder.

Try learning Icelandic or Finnish. Those languages will fuck your ass.

At 5/22/07 01:06 PM, TheMaster wrote: I'd imagine it's horrific to learn, with the likes of "Your" and "You're", or "There", "They're" and "Their".

It's renown for being difficult to learn, anyway.

Hell, people in America have a hard time trying to figure it out (even though it should be easy).

I guess it depends on what your first language is.

At 5/22/07 01:06 PM, cookie-monsta1 wrote: yeah i know i heard that all my life that english is the hardest language in the world yet it took me 2 years to speak in english (as in i was 2 years old a baby ffs) yet at my age now i cant learn french or germen its fucked up

i have been learning these languages for 3 years

That's because you learn much faster as a child than you do in later years. You have no language before that, so you just pick up words from people speaking around you. When you're older, you're not learning like that, you're learning a new word for something you already know, and a new way of speaking.

Seeing as most people around my age have trouble with spelling i'd say yes , it would be pritty hard .

At 5/22/07 01:10 PM, TurtleJuice wrote: Seeing as most people around my age have trouble with spelling i'd say yes , it would be pritty hard .

You did that on purpose, right?

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Switch "Nob, Job"
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific, Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging,
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough--
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

It depends what age you learn languages at. English is supposed to be one of the most difficult, but as most foreign nations have it as a second language, and teach it pretty much as soon as possible, most kids pick it up quickly as they are learning it while their brain is still developing, so it is almost as easy as learning it as a first language.

The reason why English/American/Australian etc people find it so hard to learn other languages is that they leave it too late. After the age of about 7 it becomes much harder to learn a new language, as your mind has developed its language skills. Most British schools don't start languages until you are 10 or 11 (at least in my experience), by which point it is much more difficult to learn them. I don't know when other nations start teaching English, but I imagine it is much earlier.

I learned it watching televison.

Being probably the most expansive and descriptive language in the world, I would assume it would be hard to get to grips with, but learning the basics should not be any more difficult that any other language.

It's probably hard as fuck to actually learn how to do proper English. With all the clauses, minor rules, laws like, "I before E, except after C," that doesn't even make sense, and others.

At 5/22/07 01:06 PM, TheMaster wrote: I'd imagine it's horrific to learn, with the likes of "Your" and "You're", or "There", "They're" and "Their".

It's renown for being difficult to learn, anyway.

Actually that is not nearly as big a problem as you think. Most people who have structured lessons learn the written forms first. So it is all context based. Spoken comes into play after some written is know (95% of people).
Gramma is the hardest thing I think, and pronounciation (in general). Thoses are the 2 main issues with Chinese people - mainly due to a lack of active practice, rather than the difficulty of the language itself.

At 5/22/07 01:11 PM, PapoSwing wrote: I learned it watching televison.

and you're still learning i see :P

i learnt it watching television :P

There's also words with different spellings like knot and tide.

I thought this thread was going to be about how the english language gets butchered here on the BBS.

English is actually one of the hardest languages to learn because of the verb usage (go becomes went). Other languages, like Spanish and French, have simple conjugations. They follow a general set of rules depending on how the original verb ends, while in English there is almost no way of knowing how a verb changes in its different tenses.

Plus as Raguel's long ass poem points out, there is way too many variations using the same grouping of letters. It also depends on when you learn the language, little kids pick up on languages faster then someone in high school.

At 5/22/07 01:07 PM, Catoblepas wrote: English is easy as fuck. Even German or Swedish is harder.

Try learning Icelandic or Finnish. Those languages will fuck your ass.

Að Sjálfsögðu, enda erum við Íslendingarnir nokkuð frægir fyrir vort erfiða tungumál , hins vegar, þá er Enska með auðveldari tungumálum í heimi.
Ég borða Ensku í morgunmat. >:D

Yeah, Icelandic is a bit harder to learn, especially since we have Conjugation, and billions of complicated rules.

You might learn the system, but few EVER learn the pronunciations, I mean, Call me when you can pronounce the Icelandic sentence above.

At 5/22/07 01:13 PM, dELtaluca wrote:

At 5/22/07 01:11 PM, PapoSwing wrote: I learned it watching televison.

and you're still learning i see :P

i learnt it watching television :P

Eh i have an excuse why i don't spell properly.

At 5/22/07 01:06 PM, SirXVII wrote: American English is hard for people to learn because we have different slang and many different meanings for words that we use.

Basically, you took our language, messed with it so it sounded a bit crappy and then passed it off as this new american english.

At 5/22/07 01:13 PM, dELtaluca wrote:

At 5/22/07 01:11 PM, PapoSwing wrote: I learned it watching televison.

and you're still learning i see :P

i learnt it watching television :P

Nothing wrong with the original sentence. Learned and learnt are both appropriate.

It's just that "learnt" is more common in British English, and "learned" in American English. So there.

I speak English very well, I learn it from a book.

This thread is now about Fawlty Towers.

English isn't that hard to learn. Everyone can at least grasp the basics. It might be because you hear it so much on TV. German is definitely harder to learn due to articles. Swedish might be even easier to learn than English though.

At 5/22/07 01:19 PM, Solidone wrote:

At 5/22/07 01:06 PM, SirXVII wrote: American English is hard for people to learn because we have different slang and many different meanings for words that we use.

Basically, you took our language, messed with it so it sounded a bit crappy and then passed it off as this new american english.

Pretty much. That's what we do, we steal the indians land, black people's freedom, languages, iraq's freedom to decide... that's America for you.

At 5/22/07 01:22 PM, TheMaster wrote: I speak English very well, I learn it from a book.

This thread is now about Fawlty Towers.

"I'm trying to cheer her up, you stupid Kraut!"
"It's not funny for her!"
"FUNNY?! NOT FUNNY?! You're joking!"
"It's not funny for her! Not for us, not for any German people!"
"You have absolutely NO sense of humor, do you?"
"THIS IS NOT FUNNY!"
"WHO WON THE BLOODY WAR ANYWAY?!"