apologies if this question has been answered here before – i’ve taken a look and found no clear answer, but i am by no means a master of the search engine (i have only a bachelor of googleology)
i’ve heard that english can be one of (if not the) hardest languages to learn, especially for a second language. among the reasons given for this assertion is the vastness of the vocabulary, the extensive borrowing and/or co-opting from other languages, and the (well, not fact, or at least maybe not fact, or rather, here is the root of my query – is it a fact that as a rule, every rule of the english language is broken {except, perhaps, this one?})
i before e, except… and all that.
…and yeah, yeah, i get the whole “language is in a constant state of evolution”, and all that. what i’m asking, i guess, is if english has less attachment to rules of language than average, or is at teh extreme in this regard, or whether i’ve perhaps picked up this idea from some misguided, if not incompetent, teachers and such.
I don’t know if English is at the extreme in that regard but it is certainly in the opposite direction from say, Spanish, when it comed to following rules. Spanish has extremely consistent rules for spelling and pronunciation that certainly make it easier to learn.
One thing that immediately comes to mind is the widespread but mistaken belief that the spoken word should be modeled on the written word. That is, one should talk “correctly.” Yet coupled with this is the odd belief that any vocabulary is fair game: if it’s a good English word, you can use it in conversation.
This scheme seems to apply more to American English, however.
In almost every other language (AFAIK), there is a clearer division between the written or formal word and colloquial speech. E.g., in Japanese there are locutions that you would use in conversation (comparable to “ain’t”) that are fine for that but are never used in prose. Contrariwise, there are words use in formal prose that would probably not be understood in conversation.
I don’t think you can say that “every rule of English” has an exception–unless you want to include every single dialect, in which case all bets are off. I mean, it’s not as though there are words beginning with a vowel sound with which it is considered proper to use “a” instead of “an” (but you would hear this in some dialects).
Ouija starts with the sound of a w, which is a consonant. So the article “a” is completely consistent with the rule. The point is that the “a vs. an” rule is based on pronunciation, not spelling. It’s “an SST” for the same reason. “S” is a consonant pronounced “ess”, which sound starts with a vowel.
“An historic occasion” is seen because in current English english, and in pre-1900 American English , “historic” is pronounced more like “istoric.”
The “a vs an” rule is one of the few in English that really doesn’t have exceptions, once you know what the rule really is.
The difficulty of learning a new language depends a lot on one’s native language. For example, it is probably easier for a Dutch speaker to learn English than it is for a Chinese speaker.
Much of English vocabulary is not used in everyday speech. One doesn’t need to know the whole dictionary to engage in normal conversation.
English spelling is notorious. Languages like Spanish that have very regular spelling don’t present this learning barrier. However, languages like Chinese with pictographic writing are much more difficult to learn to read and write than English is. Even an unfamiliar alphabet can make things harder (like Arabic to an English speaker).
English grammar is pretty simple. Also, English doesn’t have as much inflection as many languages, so one doesn’t have to learn a bunch of word endings and agreements. On the other hand, this means that word order is very important in English. For example, in a highly-inflected language it may be possible to put the subject of a sentence almost anywhere without losing the meaning, while in Engligh moving the subject might change the meaning of the sentence or turn it into gibberish. This can present problems to people who aren’t used to thinking about word order when speaking or writing.
English has a few sounds that aren’t common in other languages. The two versions of the “th” sound don’t exist in many languages.
Anyway, I don’t believe English is a terribly diffiicult language to learn. Many people come to the U.S. as adults and learn to speak passable English. English is the world’s most common second language.
Russian, on the other hand is supposed to be very hard to learn.
No, not really. Although English has few inflections, the complex syntax and prepositions make it difficult for people to learn it as a second language.
Apparantly Russian is so hard to learn that even native speakers mumble some word endings because they forget exactly how to say it. Or so I’ve been told.
I was a Russian major in college, and it wasn’t uncommon to hear native speakers swallow word endings when they weren’t sure about the case they needed (or how to make it). This could be very frustrating when you’re trying to learn the language, and the person speaking is only using half words. Another trick was to talk around sentence structures that would force you into cases you weren’t comfortable with – this happened a lot when a native speaker would find themselves in a situation where they would need to decline a number (Russian numbers have some horrendous, non-standard declination patterns)
How 'bout that? Samclem only been a Moderator for a few minutes, already he’s exercising his Arbitrary and Discretionary Power to change thread titles!
I’m a language ametueur in the simple sense of the word (hell, I’m sure I didn’t spell it correctly). I’ve taken German, French, Russian, and Spanish, and now speak Spanish daily.
I’ll say that Spanish is probably the easiest from the perspective of an English speaker. But all the same, English isn’t hard. We decline nothing. Our major difficulty is the phoneticeness of our language, and the vast number of words we have.
Yeah, there are modismos (Spanish word, how is it said in English?) that make no literal sense, but I imagine ALL languages have these.
Other languages, though, when understood, have things that just can’t be succinctly said in English. It’s not a matter of translation; it’s a matter of finesse. Hey, how do you say finesse in English?
No, not quite. Actually, you’re talking about declensions – conjugations refer to nouns.
But the general rule for Russian and most Slavic languages is this:
Numbers ending in 1 (except those ending in 11) – nominitive singular
Numbers ending in 2, 3, 4 (except those ending in 12, 13, 14) – genitive singular
All other numbers – genitive plural
Polish has the exception that only the number one takes the nominitive singular. The rest of the numbers take genitive singular or genitive plural.
Example
Jedna krowa - one cow
Dwa krowy - two cows
Trzy krowy - three cows
Piec kròw - five cows
Dwadziescia jeden kròw - twenty one cows
Dwadziescia trzy krowy - twenty three cows
And so on…
Plus you have to agree for gender, as well.
Dwa krowy - two cows
Dwoje dzieci - two children
Dwie samochody - two cars
No, it isn’t. It’s extremely complicated and confusing. I’m glad I’m a native speaker and thus picked it up easily and naturally as a child, but it’s not at all an easy task for non-native speakers to master English grammar. Even people who speak English as a foreign language quite well often make grammatical mistakes. The most difficult parts very somewhat depending on what the speaker’s native language is, but the various English tenses (subjunctive, past continuous, etc.) are a major sticking point for a lot of non-native speakers.