Why English is Hard to Learn [Pic]

I’m sure as geeks we’ve all encountered our fair share of grammar nazis in our time (and many of us may be ones in our own right). Of course, when you really take a look at the English language (especially if you have another non-European language to compare it to) you can start to forgive people for some grammatical errors. Because, you know, English is just freaking weird sometimes.

[Via Gay Marriage USA on Facebook]




23 Responses to Why English is Hard to Learn [Pic]

  3. oh please! english is quite easy. I'll give you the pronunciation thing (writhing one way and pronouncing it in another is not very logical for me). but in any other aspect english is really easy, for example in Spanish we have a different conjugation of the verb for each person

    ENGLISH: I am, he-she-it is, you-we-them are

    SPANISH: yo soy/estoy, tu eres/estas, él-ella es/está, nosotros somos/estamos, vosotros sois/estais, ellos son/estan (in Spanish the verb to be have two meanings)

    You want a difficult language? try German. I'm in first year German and THAT is hard.

    • When I was learning Spanish, I found it much easier and more logical than English. Though I have great dislike for the subjunctive, the rest of the language is fine and dandy.

      I can't vouch for German, as the German teacher I had in middle school taught the language so poorly that when we tried to use vocabulary for our lessons when speaking to foreign exchange students, they looked at us as if we were crazy.

      One student at my high school who had moved here from Russia informed me that Russian makes English seem extremely easy, however.

      • I'm italian, and obviously I find other latin-languages easy.
        English is different, still it's fairly easy -and I can't really understand some problems native speakers have. And I could add another thing: the only problem is TALKING with native speakers. They usually require you to speak a "perfect" english (where, by "perfect", I mean as similar to their dialect as possible)

        If you want to try something REALLY hard, try slavic languages. I had to give up learning czech, that's really difficult!

  7. Yes english is probably the easiest language to learn.
    Ok, you might do one little spelling or gramar mistake here and then… but seriously compared to french or german… english is piece of cake.

    I only refer to the two other language that I know.

  10. I am a native Dane and speak/read & write my own language as well as German and English.

    I will see if I can find the source, because I recall one linguistics professor proclaiming that for a foreigner Danish and Russian were the top 2 languages that was the hardest to learn. Just for starters Danish has a lot of words that has a multitude of meaning, so basically it comes down to context and intonation to get the right meaning across.

  11. This is nothing compared to Danish irregularities in language… our is just obscene. It is a lot like German, but more ingrown :P

  12. this is not by anonymous! it from Crazy English: The Ultimate Joy Ride Through Our Language by Richard Lederer.

  13. Like you guys arguing about euro-centric languages without ever mentioning Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. Those are the fun ones. Vastly different syntax, removal of key vowels/consonants, tonal differences to words, and add in pictographic alphabets that span thousands of characters. Yeah… about your nasally German…

  14. For us learning languages may be hard. But every foreigner I know say English is the hardest to learn. My fiance from the Philippines is having a hard time learning English, mind you her mother is a English teacher. She doesn't understand the punctuation, use of words, why some things are silent but others are not. To her its a complex language.

    Heck I'm american and don't even fully understand English. Of course having a brain injury doesn't help. >.>

  15. I take it you already know
    Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
    Others may stumble, but not you,
    On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?
    Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
    To learn of less familiar traps?
    Beware of heard, a dreadful word
    That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
    And dead: it's said like bed, not bead –
    For goodness sake don't call it deed!
    Watch out for meat and great and threat
    (They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
    A moth is not a moth in mother,
    Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
    And here is not a match for there
    Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
    And then there's dose and rose and lose –
    Just look them up – and goose and choose,
    And cork and work and card and ward,
    And font and front and word and sword,
    And do and go and thwart and cart –
    Come, come, I've hardly made a start!
    A dreadful language? Man alive!
    I'd mastered it when I was five!

    Another nice one I always liked (being Italian too, is the pronunciation of words is always something I could not really relate to
    (SOurce: http://www.spellingsociety.org/news/media/poems.p…

  17. You think English, Spanish, and other European languages are hard? Try Maltese and get back to me. I swear THEY don't even know their own language at times!

  18. The kinds of mistakes above can be forgiven, but when somebody writes, 'but your not entitled to that' or 'thats there choice' which use the same rules all the time it's stupid. To all who do not know those rules please, L2english

  19. je suis tout à fait d'accord avec ce texte !
    l'anglais est totalement incompréhensible !!
    le japonais, ou même le chinois, sont beaucoup plus faciles à apprendre.
    ;)

  20. Might be that every language has its own difficulties. I doubt grammar is the hard part in english, especially verb conjugation… For that you should try spanish or french… You'll find a lot to conjugate in those two!