All through school I was told that I was lucky because English is the hardest second language to learn because of it’s contrary rules, reversed grammer and wholesale pillaging of other languages throughout it’s evolution…
This recently got me to thinking, Australians regularly mock New Zealanders for thier accents (And simply being from NZ) .
So if a non-english speaker was required to learn English, which would be the easiest dialect to learn and which would be the hardest…?
I am an American who has been to Canada and England, as well as a couple of other English-speaking countries like The Bahamas. I am not a linguist, and there are some on this board, but I would not describe these countries as having different *dialects *of English. They do have slightly different word usage and slang, and I’ve heard people from Trinidad speaking English that I cannot understand at all due to the accent, but to my knowledge the rules of grammar are the same in all the countries you list.
There are places that have evolved different dialects of English, and I have heard speculation that the English spoken in India is on its way to become its own dialect (idiomatic phrases like “please do the needful” are never heard in the US but often in India).
As to what would be the easiest to learn I would opine that English, American, and Canadian, and possibly Aussie would be the easiest accents to emulate and formal usage would be very similar among those.
They are different dialects by any definition. I’m somewhat surprised that anyone would consider that they weren’t dialects.
I’d say there’s no GQ answer to your question, OP. It’s easier to learn one consistent dialect rather than lots of them, but that’s all. Perhaps American English would be easier because there are more media sources you could use once you have some grasp of the language.
I don’t think there’s any dialect that’s better or worse than any other. The pronunciation might vary, and there are different terms in each, but they are essentially the same.
English and American each have several different accents within them. And I’m sure Queenslanders sound different from Western Australians. Hell, probably North Islanders sound different from South Islanders. You’re juggling a lot more than 8 different “dialects” there.
Funnily enough, not really, IME. It’s more a City/Bush divide, not a state one, I’ve noticed.
Again, IME, people from Auckland tend to have the “Fush Und Chups” accent happening whilst people from Christchurch tend to sound more like they could be reading the news on the BBC, but there’s no way someone from outside NZ is going to be able to pick up on that sort of thing, as a general rule.
You’re not likely to be able to pick whether someone is from Dunedin or Wellington or Hamilton or Blenheim based on their accent- the only accents that are really noticeable to NZers are the Maori and Pacific Islander accents and the “rolled Rs” accent of people from the area around Gore and some other parts of the MacKenzie Country.
I would say that the most common dialects are the easiest to learn because of greater access to media and speakers using those dialects. They also have the advantage of being more easily understood as there is much greater exposure to them.
In my non-professional-linguist opinion, Newfunese (as in, what they speak in Newfoundland) rises to the level of a dialect. At the very least, I can’t understand what the hell they’re saying.
In Thailand, American, Canadian and English native speakers are the most sought after as language teachers (at least among Westerners; Indians and Filipinos get paid much less, and so it’s not unusual to see language schools filled with teachers from those countries). People with an especially strong accent from elsewhere – Australia, Scotland, even northern England maybe – often have a difficult time finding employment in the field. The wife cannot understand many Australian, New Zealand and even British and Irish speakers.
Wow, thanks folks, this exactly the sort of stuff I was interested in…
In my own experience I find that whilst the use of the language and grammar retains a broad spectrum similarity, the pronunciation of vowels especially can lead to differences (Somebody already mentioned Fush ind Chups )
The slang mention has me interested however, being a “Broad Australian” speaker I never realised that my language use reverts so heavily onto localised slang, ryhming slang, and “Australianisms” until I started using VOIP with some American friends and a few times there, they had no idea what the hell I was even talking about…
We need to distinguish here between accent and dialect. American English differs from my own Hiberno-English in a number of points of vocabulary, grammar and usage, but without any of these points being encountered I will spot an American speaker immediately by accent. And I am sure the same is true for most other varieties of English.
I suspect that it is accent, rather than dialect which dictates how difficult learning is. After all, why should “a couple things” (AmE) be more or less difficult to learn that the HibE equivalent, “a couple of things”? But the more unfamiliar sounds an accent has, the more homophones it has, etc, then the more difficult it is for someone unfamiliar with that accent to understand a speaker, or acquire his manner of speech.
I’ve heard that AmE is comparatively easy to acquire, if only because AmE speakers tend to speak slowly, by comparison with native speakers of other varieties. Possibly this in turn has been shaped by the successive waves of immigrants who came to the US; this would have favoured the development and retention of an easy-to-acquire variety of English in the US.
I tend to think the American (General American) accent is actually toward the faster end of the speed scale of dialects. It’s certainly faster than Australian or Kiwi, maybe on par with British, and maybe slower than Irish or Scottish.
I find the name “General American” accent to be disceptive. I do accept the terms “Broadcast Dialect” or “Broadcast Accent” as something that I can relate too. (A dialect includes vocabulary.)
The Midwest is where the broadcast schools were so that was the natural dialect for the training of broadcasters.
There are so many dialects in America that I can think of three or four in just the state of Tennessee where I live. And my own mother speaks a slightly different dialect than I do!
Examples: Word: piano Mother says *pie an’ uh *or pan’ na.
I say pee an’ o.
Mary Mother says *May ree*
I say *Merry*
My suggestion is not to try for any particular dialect but to follow whatever comes naturally to you.
I don’t think English that is heavily accented ‘away from the norm’ - the Queen’s English is as heavily accented as that of groundskeeper Willy - is harder to learn per se for foreigners. The only thing that might make it harder is that very few people on tv and in the movies are going to speak heavily accented English and a lot more speak main stream English, so that might main stream English easier to learn. One other thing that might make learning English from a ‘main stream speaker’ more desirable is that you might end up speaking fluent English, but sound like groundskeeper Willy. How far is that going to get you in the job market if you’re not after a groundskeeping job?
I’d like to re-emphasize that - what learning English as a second language is concerned - media exposure is of much importance. This also means you can choose to learn to speak with a certain accent. A friend of mine - for some ungodly reason - decided he wanted to speak English with an Australian accent (here in the Netherlands!?) and learned to do so by watching a lot of Neighbours on the BBC; he now has a fluent Australian accent.
> All through school I was told that I was lucky because English is the hardest
> second language to learn because of it’s contrary rules, reversed grammer and
> wholesale pillaging of other languages throughout it’s evolution…
Nonsense. English is no harder to learn than most other languages. I’m not even sure that it’s possible to say that one language is harder to learn than another. It may be harder for a speaker of language X to learn language Y than language Z, but that doesn’t mean that a speaker of some other language W might find language Y easier to learn than language Z.
So, because American English and English English have differences in vocabulary and pronunciation, and even a few differences in grammar, they are two different dialects of English. And, of course, there are different dialects within American English and within English English.
Arguably, at a certain level English is easier to learn because of its pillage of other languages, because people learning it will find some familiar vocabulary.
All languages have “contrary rules”: those in English may be more visible, because some relate to the spelling and pronunciation of some very common words.
And I’m not sure what is meant by a “reversed grammer”: English grammar is pretty much what you’d expect from a Germanic language strongly influenced by Anglo-Norman French, so speakers of Germanic languages and of French should find the grammar pretty familiar.
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