AmericanTeacher
Do you think English is difficult to learn?
Jun 25, 2009 8:51 AM
Answers · 7
2
The easiest of all the languages within the Latin system. German verbs have four conjugations and Russians have 6. I have trouble to keep tracking the matrix.
June 25, 2009
1
English, like all languages, has trade-offs. It's a very 'colourful' language with many similar synonyms and a degree for many concepts (boiling, hot, warm, luke-warm, tepid, cool, cold, freezing...) but this means there is a lot of vocabulary to memorise (I have heard that there are more words in an English dictionary than any other language). Grammar is difficult for learners of non-latin-based languages - in Thai, changing the tense is uncommon and only then requires the addition of a prefix, suffix or tense-determiner which is very similar for Chinese and Japanese, in English there are many tenses (perfect / simple / continuous for past, present and future...) so tenses can be tricky to get right for the non-native speaker. At least there are almost no gender-specific grammar rules or, as ichbinlance points out, so many conjugations. Spelling is another issue. American spelling is objectively easier than British spelling but is still not entirely phonetic (there is a seperate phonetic alphabet found in dictionaries that is worth learning if you want to teach English to Asian students - in my experience they prefer it as would I). Although the spelling is based on an alphabet which is easier than Chinese - memorising 26 characters and their sounds is easier than memorising 2,600. All in all (a phrase that itself would need an explaination!) I have found English to be challenging to teach and I often imagine that if I were to learn English as a non-native speaker then I would struggle with the above issues.
June 26, 2009
1
no language is difficult to learn if you are sufficiently exposed to it, it becomes a part of your everyday life, or it is not just a kind of abstraction as for example as when you have a TV that is able to connect to 70 channels. Understand me?
June 25, 2009
1
One person or another would say that learning English is either difficult or easy. I must admit that I'm not too good in english and still learning progressively. Although, english is spoken accross the globe, some nation may find it difficult to learn (perhaps because of patriotism or just being in remote areas). Historically, we were once colonized by Americans in the late 19th century and from that, our ancestors learned the foreign language and began to be one of our culture. This I would say that english learning is not that hard for us to learn. :)
June 25, 2009
1
In my opinion,learning English is easier than Chinese.But our cultures is very differently,so you are hard to express exactly.Therefore,I think the good way to learning a language is to contact the native people.Like here,the more contact,the more progressing. Do you agree with me?
June 25, 2009
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