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've just googled that to check it was true and found out a new word: shibboleth. I LOVE new words

Careful with shibboleth.

tbh on a grammatical level, English is relatively easy.
It is not really an inflected language, and has mostly lost its case system.

Therefore at a basic level it is not that hard.

However I have lost count of the people I have met over the years who are convinced they speak fantastic English yet cannot string a natural sounding sentence together. I had one boss in Greece whose English was kind of OK, but he destroyed it by putting on this faux upper class English accent, complete with strangulated vowels.

My last boss (Czech) had the Cambridge 'Proficiency' exam yet couldn't speak in any kind of natural or normal way.

also I have had some really snotty Swiss kids who were convinced their English was great, but they still made really basic mistakes. (eg mens instead of men) However they are so used to the English way of teaching (don't correct, let people be free and fluent) that they were really rude and cocky and didn't take to being corrected at all. This was an 'advanced' class.

This is often an issue with people who have learned English from non native speakers in their home country, Dull

Their use of English can be grammatically correct but clumsy and dated and at the same time heavily influenced by colloquial expressions picked up here and there.

Tricky thing, languages.

One thing I found as a grad student in a university with a huge population of foreign students, some with English as a native language, some with very, very good English as a second language, is that once someone reaches a certain level of proficiency with grammar, it can be very hard to tell whether they're a native speaker or not - because all native dialects of English (northern English, the various Scots dialects, Irish English, American English, Canadian, South African, Indian, Australian... the list is almost endless) have their own quirks, idioms, irregularities, vocabulary not widely used elsewhere, quite aside from the obvious differences in accent. So it becomes hard to tell what's a "mistake" and what's simply a different dialect (my East coast Scots use of "I amn't" upthread isn't a non-native speaker's mistake, it's a native speaker's subtly non-standard dialect).

I haven't come across a dialect where "men" becomes "mens" (yet) but for e.g. I was on the phone to a call centre somewhere near Glasgow at a guess, where the woman I was talking to was using the Glaswegian form of "you": "can yous give me your card number now?" So, for me, once a certain degree of fluency is reached in English, I sometimes find it hard to decide whether it's a non-native speaker, or a native speaker from a country whose accent and dialect you haven't encountered before. (I'd be interested to know if this can happen with other languages: I do remember, same university setting, a group of French, Canadian and Senegalese students having a laugh about the pecularities of their various forms of French).

Cote- I just checked with her (I only speak Spanish, she is fluent in both) and she says, no, not pulling my leg at all. She said no, not as regards the grammar, but the phonology is very similar. She actually taught Spanish in Japan and her students for this reason found it much easier than English.

I do remember, same university setting, a group of French, Canadian and Senegalese students having a laugh about the pecularities of their various forms of French.

I've heard French and Canadians having to speak in English, as neither understood each other.

That said, there's a scene in the film "Night on Earth" where an actor from the Ivory Coast is speaking the most beautiful French. (In my head I imagine it as being the French equivalent of Trevor McDonald). I think that was the point of the scene, as I remember struggling to understand Beatrice Dalle - who is French.

There's something about the mix of Caribbean and English that's quite sensual. James Earl Jones, Paul Robeson and Neil Nunes (of Radio 4) do things to me . It's up there with a Scottish lilt ...

I find it odd that French and Quebecois would resort to English. French and Anglophone Canadians yes, but Quebecois?!

I have heard that the French are quite rude about Quebecois accents as it sounds provincial and old-fashioned to them (as I suppose it is a 17th century rural accent a few centuries on).

I find it odd that French and Quebecois would resort to English. French and Anglophone Canadians yes, but Quebecois?!

Shrug.

It's what happened. When the Canadian chap had gone off, I remember a couple of French students (they were early 20s) saying how embarrassing it was.

That said, there are UK accents that can leave me huh ?. Embarrassingly (for me) there's a thick unreconstructed Black Country accent which may as well be Greek.

And really deep Geordies.

And really deep Scousers.

And as for parts of Scotland .....

And that's before we get to the Deep South of the US. And I think that some South Africans believe they are speaking "English" too ....

There’s a tendency where I live to insert a “but” on the end of a sentence.

As in:

[RING RING]

Peter: Hello, is John there, please?
John’s wife: Sorry, no. He’ll be home later but.

LurkingHusband I've been here for over 20 years, and like your DF I sometimes forget words in my native tongue too as I don't get to use it much here.

No one back home has ever told me I speak my mother tongue with a foreign accent, but I do have to revert back to our version of English when I speak English back home. Nobody understands me if I speak English English there, just as no one here would understand me if I spoke our (very) non-standard English here!

DH (English) was once spoken to back home and asked me later "what language was that?"

He was shocked when I told him "English!"

And he was Quebecois, not Anglophone? Many English Canadians go to French immersion school growing up yet don’t get taught any French accent so may be difficult to understand. When I was in France they couldn’t understand my exh (speaking French w an English accent) but could understand me (putting on daft attempt at a French accent).

I’ve known quite a few Quebecois who’ve worked in France and said people were rude to them and mocked their accents, but never said they couldn’t be understood (though certainly some vocab is different due to the long separation from France).

Not saying it didn’t happen, just very odd so wondered if the Canadian was actually 1st language English.

And he was Quebecois, not Anglophone?

My memory stops there ... it was over 25 years ago ! The only thing I can think, is why would an Anglophone Canadian be attending an EFL class in London ?

However, I totally get how people like to be "clever" and pretend they can't understand. Had it myself in France a couple of times. Once in a queue for the RER ... the ticket clerk kept pretending I was unintelligible to the extent I doubted myself. Eventually the person behind me repeated my request to the clerk with a very sniffy attitude, and apologised to me - in flawless English naturally.

Besides, I've seen my Dad treated that way too .

I have had a lot of experience of the french making out they can't understand foreigners when they try to make themselves understood. I it's sheer bloody- mindedness. Mind you this was always in Paris.
It totally put me off and I have A 'level French.
They even ignored my 3 year old at the time when he was practising very simply greetings.
In Lyon last summer though I found the locals really kind and patient with my very rusty French.
I knew a French man years ago who was a pilot, so travelled a lot, he also spoke fluent Italian . He agreed with me re French attitudes but said the Italians were worse. I don't know about that though as I can't speak a word of Italian.

Italians are lovely if you just try out your few words of their language.
They will either break into English, or use very loud Italian with hand gestures..

Mind you this was always in Paris.

The helpful queuing persons parting shot to me was "Don't take it personally. Parisians are like that with everyone." .

I've always found Parisians very snooty, but elsewhere in France the locals always seemed delighted whenever I spoke in my horrific French! (I actually resorted to speaking in my mother tongue first in Paris as I seemed to get a better result having done that when I eventually spoke in English or French).

Also found Italians loved it when I tried out Italian words on them.

I live in France (not Paris) and I have the same experience as Proper. If your pronunciation is not perfect, or you get the article wrong, or anything similar - and the French shrug and say they can't understand a thing you are saying. Interestingly, Hungarians are the same (but they were probably just astonished that someone tries to learn the language).

Oh, sorry, didn’t realize it was an EFL class. They may have just been being obnoxious then, apparently some French consider Quebecois country cousins.

When I was in France, small towns in Brittany, people were lovely. I think they really couldn’t understand my ex though, I think his vocabulary is decent, but his pronunciation is odd. I don’t speak French, but have an ear for accents, so would repeat what he’d said in my Inspector Clousseau accent and that seemed to work. Or it’s because he’s a miserable bugger and I was a pretty young woman.

Some people (though probably not parisians!) are very unused to heating foreign accents. I’ve tried saying Japanese phrases to Japanese students and they just look baffled. If I get over my embarrassment and attempt a higher pitched, soft, Japanese cadence then they can understand me.

Japanese people have also quite often been taught English by other Japanese people (who then Japonify words, turning them into Japanese altered loan words). Camping turns into camping-gu for example (this sounds borderline racist but I can assure you is true). So Japanese people often read and write English quite decently but are unused to true pronunciation so lose confidence when they go to listen and speak to native English speakers.

I found Quebec French very hard to understand. For example, 'neige' (snow) sounds something like 'nayge'.

My dad has lived in the UK since the age of about 21, but I don't think he forgets words in his mother tongue. I do remember a German colleague saying they had forgotten the German for a particular word.
My dad's relatives say he now has an English accent in the other language and occasionally uses English grammatical structures, and I suppose he doesn't always know modern slang or new words. He does go there at least once a year, more now he's retired, has kept in touch with family and now has the option of reading/writing/watching material in the other language. I wonder if an adult could forget their mother tongue if they had no exposure whatsoever to it after moving to new country. Or would it be 'dormant' somewhere?

I find most South American Spanish practically impenetrable.

You don't forget a language. Not your mother tongue or any secondary languages.
It's hard wired in your brain but they can indeed go a bit dormant, nothing a couple of weeks of immersion won't cure.

English isn't easy for anyone. You only have to look at native speakers' use of grammar. How often do you see a menu with something like "tea's and coffee's" on it? Most of us make mistakes in our own language every day (and I'm sure there will be mistakes in this!)

English is idiosyncratic and a very difficult language to absolutely master. Pronunciation and spelling rules are not always consistent. I have no idea whether other languages have the same inconsistencies and quirks as I never got beyond basic French. YANBU.

I should think a lot depends on when you learn a language. I started learning French at 11, Latin at 13, and both those made it easier for me to learn Spanish and German as an adult - I didn't have to go through the learning curve of understanding cases in German that many others in the class did, because I understood the concept from having done Latin. There was a lot of Spanish vocabulary I could work out from having done French and Latin.

All that background also means I sometimes understand bits of Italian and Dutch, at least when reading, despite never having made any attempt to learn either (which I do point out to my Dutch coleagues every time they send me a message in Dutch. ) I doubt it would help me with a non-European language, though. Plus I'd have probably found the grammatical side of German harder if I hadn't done Latin previously.

Now I've done enough language learning to expect that prepositions are going to be tricky - because every language does them differently. We travel by the bus or on the bus, Germans travel mit dem Bus, with the bus. You just have to learn it. But I think that also helps me, because I am more prepared for it.

I'm currently learning Welsh, and we'very been doing modal - one of the other people in the class is really struggling, because he can't map it exactly to English. I don't expect to, so I don't have the same mental barriers, and I think I am finding it easier to get my head round as a result. (Welsh is definitely the hardest language I've tried to learn to date.)