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?

Whilst that is correct, it's not entirely what I was referring to meredintofpandiculation. In Romanian we say "the cat sat on the mat" or "the cat on the mat sat" or "on the mat sat the cat", without any case changes.

It becomes a lot trickier with negative or interrogative sentences. For example, without any changes to the relationship of the words in the sentence you can say: "I don't go to the market", "Don't go to the market I" or Don't I go to the market". The meaning doesn't change, although
depending on the speaker there may be a slight nuance implication.

@Backingvocals you're right, it's very difficult when you have a "blunt" language like that, to learn how to express yourself more politely. I've partially solved it by avoiding speaking in English (!) and get rather tongue-tied if under pressure to use English, and then realise I have huge vocabulary gaps, compared to my mother tongue. That said I encounter English in a passive sense every day, most TV programs are in English (not dubbed, subtitles only).

People think in Latin you can put the words in any order you'd like because that's what they tell beginners - it's true that it will make sense any way, and that that gives you a huge scope to play with word order, but it's not true that your Latin will be equally stylish either way, and also changing the word order changes emphasis. English poetry messes with word order a bit, but latin poetry in my very limited and long ago can mess a lot more, to fit in with the metre, and still not lose meaning. I know that's very different from everyday latin

IronCurtain Wow! We could change word order a bit with the cat depending on whether the important thing was the cat "the cat sat on the mat" or the mat "on the mat sat a cat". But I'd find the market example very difficult to get used to because those changes of word order change the sentence from a statement to a command to a question in English.

You know, it's a long time since I've enjoyed a thread this much!

BackingVocals Portuguese friend of mine said the same - he just could not get the hang of putting in all the extra words to make a command seem like a polite request (even though we all understand that the polite requet is still actually a command).

Isn't it?
Haven't you?
Don't we?

Hadn't thought about these - all of them have the "not" before the pronoun, but if way them in full, we put the "not" afterwards, as in "Is it not?"

And then the irregular ones - Aren't I? instead of Amn't I? Shan't we? instead of Shalln't we?

I've seen "Amn't I" in an older book, in reported colloquial speech I think, and in Victorian stuff and earlier there's less of a convention about the apostrophes, eg "Sha'n't" - ie an apostrophe to show every omission.

Great thread.

OP YANBU . English is difficult to learn (so are all languages but that is another thread). People think it is easy because on a basic level it is so forgiving. One can get tenses wrong, pronounce things wrong, and even use the wrong vocabulary and still be understood. That certainly isn't the case in French.

But once you get into any detail then it starts to get difficult. The very lack of rules creates confusion. I think this is why the French struggle with it so much. I teach English at the local primary, and help kids out from time to time as they go through senior school. When young all the children can learn the basics, if repeated often enough. But once they get more into the gammar and comprehension it is more complicated to teach. The French love rules, that is how they learn their own language, so faced with sentences that don't follow rules they flounder.

Googlen is Lis a verb in Dutch. As is pinnen (to put your PIN number in) which I think is genius.

I think English is very hard to speak fluently and well. Let alone spell.

As a foreigner who learnt both English and French as 2nd and 3rd languages, English is way easier and straight forward for me.

Surely the truth is that, for adult learners esp in non-immersive environments, all languages are difficult to learn to a truly advanced level? Which ones are harder or easier is dependent on so many factors - and all languages have their own idiosyncrasies that differentiate them.
I’ve worked with teachers and learners of a wide variety of languages over the years (worked for a long time in a modern language centre) and the thing that really set the ‘successful’ learners apart were two main things (imho): willingness to communicate orally and make mistakes, and good study skills (able to organise notes, structure time, rote learning which is often maligned but so so useful). And for teachers - the ones with the highest achieving learners were usually the most exacting and least forgiving of mistakes (which is not to say they weren’t kind, or they couldn’t correct in a constructive way).

I love this thread! Specially the poem - that is just wonderful.

@Backingvocals - "I amn't" is the "correct" contraction in some dialects. Nearly 50 years after I left the place of my birth (Dundee!) I still say "I amn't" (that, and the occasional use of "buik", "luik", together with the fact that I still aspirate "wh" sounds, are the only traces of my original accent left: otherwise, I speak RP, but with flattened north-of-England vowels).

Oh, and another thing... I stumbled on a book on poetic metre many years ago, which explained that because English is a stressed language, its poetic metre is "stress-syllable" (hence feet of "di-dum" and "diddy-dum" and "dum-di" are all interchangeable - the iambs, trochees, spondees etc. of classical poetry) whereas French is unstressed, hence its poetic metre is based on strict syllable count.

This book also speculated that American English was in the process of losing its stresses, which would match with something I've noticed sitting through talks by French speakers at numerous scientific conferences over the years: it is much easier to listen to a native French speaker who has learned American English than to one who has learned British English (I suspect the reverse holds true for German speakers, because the stress patterns in German are very similar to those in British English).

Maybe basic english is easier. Speaking native when we have multiple words for the same thing with slight variations, that then differ from the next town 5 miles away. Impossible.

I used to work with a guy who came to uk and got very sick in hospital for 3-4 months and learned english from the nurses. This is in Wales so every morning in his Kosovo accent hed be like 'you arigh' love? (Yes you) Oh Tidy Aye'. I miss hom always made me smile.

A French friend tells me that English is easy to learn but hard to master.

Easy to learn because there are very few inflections. If you compare it to sheer number of conjugations in Spanish.

Or the case system in German.

Or the subjunctive in Latin languages.

Once you have the main auxiliary and modal verbs and a collection of gender-free nouns you have lots of building blocks to start with.

On the downside it’s hard to master because the spelling is a phonetic mess. Plus the number of synonyms from its varying origins.

But that’s what makes it so flexible, creative and eloquent.

we have one article: the. In German, there are three.
In Russian there are 7 for example.
English is not difficult to learn,but to speak without a foreign accent is a different ballgame all together

basic english is relatively easy. simple gramar structure, (generally) short words...
but speaking/writing fluently is not.

As a non-native English speaker I have the following to say:

1. Speakers of more inflective languages think that their languages are too hard or almost impossible to learn. So English is easy in that respect because you don't have to learn to conjugate verbs or noun/adjective/pronoun declensions.

2. English has borrowed from many languages and therefore has a vast vocabulary compared to many other languages. You can easily use a German root and then for the same meaning a Latin or Greek with different connotations or meaning variations to spesialise. It is very nuanced in that respect. I can't believe all the different words used on mumsnet to describe somebody sitting or being quiet or sad. Just the "First Aid in English" book is not enough to teach you everything and is a shocking starter! Or the different names of different groups of animals, people etc is just crazy!!! We encourage our children to read a lot and I now understand why schools also insist on it so much if you have to learn all this vocabulary!

I remember seeing foreign speakers asking for lyrics clarification in youtube "but what does this mean? Doesn't X word mean the same?" with native English speakers answering that it is an extremely convoluted language with too many words and I agree! There is synonyms and then there is ... chaos

I think English makes sayings on the fly or is just to hard to explore its vastness! I am curious and may I ask, how would you say in French "plodding along" for a stalled and boring relationship?

Btw, apart from DH who is a native speaker who occasionally corrects me nobody else I know does. Do the French people have form for this?

I thought that Russian had no articles? Do you mean 7 noun etc cases?

My bilingual friends are very fluent. But they have lived and worked here for years now.

I had a discussion with one last year about how easy/hard English is, she thinks is fairly easy. But again you can have the basics and get by quite easily. The rest has come from experience. (Also she is very particular and will seek out imformation for anything she comes across or is unsure of)

I'm dyslexic and was part of the generation which missed out on grammar being taught at school. So believe my understanding of English is through experience rather than rules and understanding them.

I love the English language and love to learn about it. I am learning all the time about many rules I unconsciously use.

I know, I know there is probably loads of mistakes in my post, I just can't see. But then again that's the beauty of the language. People can still read it and understand it!

English is a really hard language to learn for non natives as the grammar, spelling and punctuation are all so irregular.
This is exactly why foreigners laugh at English only speakers saying their language is hard to learn.

English grammar is as easy as it gets with very few irregular rules compared to other languages. Have you tried French or German grammar and irregular verbs? Ask any French person who've learnt English and German at school which language they found the easiest!!

English has TWO articles, both definite and indefinite while in most other languages the number one is used as indefinite. It just doesn't have genders.

As a foreign who has studied and speaks several languages I can tell you that, yes, English is commonly referred to as an 'easy' language to learn, at least in southern Europe.
The reason being that the grammar is quite straightforward: no feminine/masculine/neutral, no cases (genitive, dative,...), simpler verb conjugation ...
This said, after you learn the grammar basic it becomes so much more difficult as pronunciation is so varied! In most other languages the same set of letters is always sound the same (there are exceptions, but fewer), while in English it varies a lot, making difficult to apply the same rules. You really have to have a large vocabulary to be able to speak properly.

I write computer code for studying languages. Amongst the commonly spoken Languages, English is one of the most complex.

Never trust the French. That was your first mistake.

*I'd have thought you'd be better off asking Jane

I'm offering advice that you haven't asked for and probably won't take. This is the response to "I'm going to ask Charlotte"

I'd think you'd be better off asking Jane

You've asked me for my advice and will probably take it. This is the response to "Should I ask Charlotte?"

I think :-)*

Not really, though, since you could easily switch the questions and answers and the conversations still sound perfectly natural.

Saying 'I'd have thought' instead of 'I think' is an example of hedging. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedge_(linguistics) It makes the speaker sound a bit less sure, which is something the speaker may want to do for reasons of politeness (for example).

There's not jut regional accents in the UK though - there's American English, Aussie English, Kiwi English etc.

Most language teachers I know say that their language is particularly hard for -insert whatever - reason. Of course they think that - they see their students struggling with tricky things year in year out. The English teacher seeing students struggle to master aspect, or phrasal verbs, or colloquialisms, DON’T see the Russian students struggling with verbs of motion and declension, or the Japanese students trying to master keigo.