To think no actually, English isn't piss easy for non natives

[twiney]

I'm in France and you wouldn't believe the amount of people who have this idea that English is really basic and easy, the irony being of course that they don't actually speak it.

Last night I was out with a woman who got on to the subject of helping her son with his English homework (she literally doesn't speak a word of it).
"Don't trouble yourself with complexity," she appparently told him. "In English they just make really basic and easy sentences. Keep it simple."

She then got onto the subject of English-language music, and how basic and straightforward lyrics are compared to the dense richness of French music.

I was brought up bilingual and between countries so i feel well placed to say that actually most French music is basically just poetry they've added a few instruments to.

But why do people think this? Is it true? Personally I don't see it that way, and I find that with French at least, I would consider it easier in the sense that:
A) Once you've learnt how the pronunciation works, there are practically zero variations on it. You can see a French word you've never seen before, and know how to pronounce it.
B) I find stock turns of phrase crop up again and again in French, whereas I find English "looser".

I can only think it has something to do with conjugation, or lack of feminine/masculine? There's also the fact that I rarely hear English speakers correct non natives, perhaps giving them a false sense of confidence.

What's your experience/opinion?

I e always heard English referred to as one of the hardest languages to learn.

The French believe all sorts of shite about the Brits though. People in all seriousness think that all houses are owned by the Queen (a myth perpetuated by documentaries about the leasehold system), the weather is akin to that of Northern Sweden (I have often spoken to people who are genuinely surprised that is doesn't snow in London really any more than it does in Paris), jelly and ice cream is a standard dessert eaten regularly by adults and, weirdly, our peas are unnatural and too green.

YANBU

I taught English in Spain and it is a minefield.

Pronunciation.... why is cough pronounced coff but though is not thoff?

Use of the auxiliary verb "to do"

Pheasant verbs....break up, break down, break through....

We don't have a subjunctive tense as such...it's a "mood"

Bloody hard language to learn and having taught it I should know!

I would view English as a hard language to learn, there are so many inconsistencies in spelling and pronunciation for starters. But I guess you could easily get by with a fairly limited vocabulary - and as you say, I think many native speakers would hesitate to correct relatively minor errors. I would, I’d feel awfully rude and I’d hate to dent someone’s confidence. But then there’s also the fact that English is widely spoken as a second language, so firstly there must be more opportunities to practice but also that must surely give a sense of ‘how hard can it be?’ While in the UK speaking a second language well (unless someone was raised bilingual) remains a relatively rare thing, IME.

Learning from a young age must help, as so many of my former colleagues who spoke English as a second language were very fluent and I think they started very early - I wish we took a similar approach to language teaching in this country. We certainly didn’t when I was at school, I didn’t learn to speak French until I was 11 or 12. Far too late, really!

Phrasal not pheasant!

Most people I know who have learned English say that it is extremely difficult because it is so irregular. You can get away with forming basic sentences because English speaking people are quite accustomed to non-native speakers but unlike some other languages if you go beyond the most simple sentences it becomes very nuanced. in contrast to Russian for example there is very little leeway for mistakes in English, even putting words in a slightly different order can completely change the meaning of a sentence.

As for English music the focus is very much on the metre and not the lyrics themselves. Pop music is certainly very simplistic lyrically speaking most of the time. In A lot if songs you could replace the lyrics with nonsense noises without having a detrimental effect.

But why do people think this?

They don't you've just come across someone that does.

Tbf, considering most of the world is at least bilingual then English in that sense is malleable. I speak 3 languages and think more Anglophones would do well to speak another language, however badly they are at the start.
I find the Dutch and Germans will just switch to English with great ease whereas the French are a bit more obstinate - but that's just my view.

In A lot if songs you could replace the lyrics with nonsense noises without having a detrimental effect.

I thought that's what they were anyway ?

I think it’s perhaps easier to make yourself understood with really quite limited English, and we are very reticent about correcting people, so they may think they’re doing a better job than they actually are iyswim?

When I’ve tried a little of some other languages, really tiny alterations in pronunciation have been pulled up. Although perhaps those people were just mean. And to be fair, in some languages pronunciation can change the entire meaning of a word or sentence.

@Paeisienne the queen actually does own all the land in Britain, everyone else only owns an interest in the land either fee simple (indefinite) or leasehold (time limited)-ironically this system was introduced to England during the Norman conquest.

According to my (German) husband, English is an easy language to learn. More so than French, Spanish and Russian, the other languages he has some knowledge of. He thinks it's because English has roots in German, French and Latin so there's a lot of commonality with other languages. As an example, we have one article: the. In German, there are three.

Yanbu.
My DM teaches English to foreign students at university.

I Remember having a french penpal who was convinced we ate sugared beans for breakfast.
And that our bread gave us cancer.
He was very odd though.

I m French and fluent in English - not bilingual but i do dream and think in English first. I still make a lot of mistakes though.

French thinks (i used to as well) English is easier because on tge surface the grammar is easier. When you learn a foreign language at school the aim is to teach you to talk and write properly but it is the basics. The aim is not to take you to Oxford and write an essay on say James Joyce. So because French's grammar is so so hard and there are so many exceptions, English seems a lot easier.

Now, after having done a Postgrad and a master and after 15 years in London, helping my kids for their english homework. English isso bloody hard ilack in vocab (i can do descriptive writing in french but not as well in english), sentences construction is hardbecause grammar isnot taught in school and the pronunciation OMG to me everyting looks like a ted word!!!

And yes, my native friends never corrects me. They always say "your english is perfect" therefore forget there are some stuffs i stillfindhard

I also find English more porous and open to being played with, and people will get what you mean. As an example, you could turn anything you like into a verb. I could be talking to you and say something like "She Kardashianed her way into the party' and you would smile and get the image.

On the other hand I experimented with using "Google" as a verb in French the other night (as opposed to the anal "run a Google search" stock phrase) and people were like "woah what just happened".

I've heard people (who have learnt it as a second language) say multiple times that English is a relatively easy language to get the basics of, but an incredibly hard one to become fluent in.

But I also don't think there's an absolute 'hardness' in languages that can be ranked. My friend who speaks Mandarin insists that she found it a reasonably straightforward language because it's all about vocab, which she finds easy to learn, with minimal grammar learning, which she hates. Most people find it a very hard language because of the role of intonation. At school everyone else seemed to find French easier than German, but I just could not do French pronunciation, but found German, including its grammar rules, came more easily. But for me reading and writing were always the easy part of language learning and speaking and listening I found very, very hard - which is why Latin was the only language where I excelled. So I think it's individual - and familiarity does help, I can imagine it is easier to pick up English pronunciation in a very Anglophone world than it is for an English speaker raised in the UK to begin speaking say, Russian, where if you haven't heard them lots before the sounds can sound completely unfamiliar and thus unpronounceable.

Pronounciation - no rules apply! Regional accents REALLY vary.

Grammar - our nouns dont have gender (other than boats), so slightly easier I suppose. But there are more tenses than in Danish for example.

Which kind of english - there are differences between different speaking lands - Americans dont differentiate between practise the verb and pratice the noun (I believe). They just use one spelling with an S. Idioms vary.

Origin of speaker - romantic languages are pretty close, German and Danish are the closest (same language group). I remember proof reading a project proposal for someone from Montenegro and she hadnt put a single article in, because in their language it doesnt stand alone like it does in English. Also, it must be easier to learn when you have the same alphabet to start with surely?

As an ex teacher who also studied French to A Level and Spanish to Degree level, YANBU!

Even using phonics, the English language is so baffling to small children learning the rules. It must be ten times harder for non native speakers. Even though I'm trained to teach phonics, I help my 5yo read and wish we had a nice truly phonetic language like Spanish which has simpler rules to follow!

I've noticed French schools are very keen on teaching children that everything French is far superior to anything from abroad. The language is the finest language in the world, the arts are the most refined and sophisticated, French food is the finest, French Law is the most advanced... They often have (not always, have met loads of lovely friendly Anglophile French) a dim view of the British, our inferior language and dreadful food (though FWIW some of the worst meals I've eaten were in France).

I also find English more porous and open to being played with, and people will get what you mean. Beautifully put!

therefore forget there are some stuffs i stillfindhard

Was that a test of whether we'll correct you, Bubblesgun?

My 5 year old is learning phonics and English is hard! Silent letters, words with the same letters that get pronounced differently.

Why is ‘have’ not spelled ‘hav’ is a good question from my DS but ‘same’ is not ‘sam’. Oh it’s a minefield.

Don’t get me started on though, cough, bough, through.

I speak several languages and have tried to learn about a dozen. English is definitely one of the easiest. I find it comparable to Swedish and definitely easier than German or French, not to mention Hungarian.

French is a piece of piss to learn I found as the general vocabulary is much smaller.

English is a really hard language to learn for non natives as the grammar, spelling and punctuation are all so irregular.

It’s all relative isn’t it, depends what your native language is and how the language is taught and accessed/used by the learner and by the culture they live in. But I don’t think English is any easier or harder than most other Western European languages. I do think, however, British reluctance to correct mistakes can definitely lead to non natives thinking they are better than they are AND to Brits feeling really crap when they get corrected for a mistake that they might consider minor. That’s a big cultural difference I think.

It is a horror of a language to learn

Its a mongrel of a language which, in many cases, just doesnt make sense. So many exceptions to so many rules that often its impossible to work it out, you just have to know

In German "googeln" is now a verb. The French are resisting!
I teach EFL and it is a minefield. So many exceptions to the grammer rules, etc.
Do you know the poem on homonyms that starts with "I take it you already know..." ?