# What English words and rules of grammar are most confusing for people learning ESL? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 10, 2011, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835 "2011-02-10T01:04:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 7:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/21 "2011-02-10T07:13:36Z")
> [@Agent\_Foxtrot](#): > > I can especially see that being difficult with words beginning with ‘h’. > > “Did you stay in a hotel?” > “It was an honor.” Well, we had specific lessons on when to use “a” and when to use “an”, and the kids seemed okay with it during the lesson. But once the lesson was over, they would immediately forget about the existence of either of them, and almost never use them. Bulgarian doesn’t have an analogous word. Spelling was a nightmare for my kids, though. Bulgarian is a phonetic language and very easy to read and write. All the silent letters and letters with multiple sounds was just insane for them. My counterpart was very harsh on the kids when they made spelling and pronunciation mistakes (which was hilarious considering her own English skills) but I was a lot easier-going about those kinds of mistakes. I once got a big cheer from my seventh graders when I told them that English has much more difficult spelling than Bulgarian (Bulgarian doesn’t even have a _word_ for “spell”) and that native English speakers have a lot of trouble with spelling, too. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 10:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/22 "2011-02-10T10:45:27Z")
Since her first language is Spanish, I expect she’ll have trouble with the “my”: in English, “my head hurts”, in Spanish “to-me hurts the head” (or, less literally, “the heads hurts me”). The confusion about when to use the/that makes perfect sense as well; the Spanish usage of the equivalent articles is just different enough to be confusing. Does she use “that” more at the start of the conversation? (Until she’s sure _which_ table is being referenced) “Saxon genitive” was a major pain in the ass - but then, many native speakers can’t seem to make head nor tails of it either. (You know, the people who write “speaker’s” or even and so help me Shakespeare, “ha’s”). Spanish has five phonetic vowels; English has a bunch more. There are also different consonants: I can’t pronounce an English Y or J to save my life, apparently. The “th” group has sounds which don’t exist in Spanish, it’s very frequent, and it’s not consistant: sometimes it’s supposed to be closer to a Spanish d, sometimes to a Spanish z… aaaaargh! ---
**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 11:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/23 "2011-02-10T11:34:35Z")
One think I’ve noticed even fluent ESL-speakers get wrong is the use of “since” (in the sense of “since that time”, not as in the first line of the post above this one). Very often, they will say things like “since five years I have been speaking English”, rather than since a particular \*point \*in time. ---
**Author:** ![Agent\_Foxtrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc29f/32.png) [@Agent\_Foxtrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agent_Foxtrot)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/24 "2011-02-10T15:37:37Z")
> [@Kyla](#): > > Well, we had specific lessons on when to use “a” and when to use “an”, and the kids seemed okay with it during the lesson. But once the lesson was over, they would immediately forget about the existence of either of them, and almost never use them. Bulgarian doesn’t have an analogous word. > > Spelling was a nightmare for my kids, though. Bulgarian is a phonetic language and very easy to read and write. All the silent letters and letters with multiple sounds was just insane for them. My counterpart was very harsh on the kids when they made spelling and pronunciation mistakes (which was hilarious considering her own English skills) but I was a lot easier-going about those kinds of mistakes. I once got a big cheer from my seventh graders when I told them that English has much more difficult spelling than Bulgarian (Bulgarian doesn’t even have a _word_ for “spell”) and that native English speakers have a lot of trouble with spelling, too. Not to derail the thread topic, but does misspelling occur less often in other languages than English? Do native speakers of other languages tend to misspell words in their own language less often? ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/25 "2011-02-10T15:51:38Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > A common mistake that I’m not sure how to categorize is that Japanese speakers of English will often use “country” and “city” as adjectives, when a native speaker would usually say “rural” and “urban”. I don’t speak Japanese well enough to say whether this is because the same words are used for country/rural and city/urban in Japanese or whether the confusion is due to the fact that several common English adjectives end in “y”. Most nouns in English can be used as adjectives, so you can talk about “country schools” and “city streets” just as correctly as “rural schools” and “urban streets”. In contexts like these, “country” and “city” might be slightly less formal, but grammatically they are fine. It’s interesting that the commonest word in English is the one that causes the most problems: “the” contains two phonemes that are not found in many languages, and it’s a word that has no equivalent in many languages. (Speakers of Romance and Germanic languages get it easy, because most of them do have a word or words for “the”.) It’s not unusual for common words to cause problems, but “the” is a pretty extreme case. ---
**Author:** ![Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hypnagogic_jerk/32/4252_2.png) [@Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypnagogic_Jerk)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/26 "2011-02-10T18:45:24Z")
> [@Agent\_Foxtrot](#): > > Not to derail the thread topic, but does misspelling occur less often in other languages than English? Do native speakers of other languages tend to misspell words in their own language less often? I do know that French speakers make loads of spelling and grammar mistakes in French, due to French spelling rules being almost as hellish as English’s. That’s what the _dictée_ is an important learning tool, and even used as part of language contests. ---
**Author:** ![kapri](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4491bb/32.png) [@kapri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kapri)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/27 "2011-02-10T19:04:17Z")
I used to teach foreign students at a language school here in Florida, and many of my students were Asian–many of them from South Korea. The students I was given already had a fairly good grasp of basic English, so I taught them advanced grammar and vocabulary. I remember their having quite a bit of trouble with idioms/figures of speech such as “fan out” (as in “let’s fan out and search this field”), and I had a difficult time trying to explain the concept of “random” to them, especially since they were hearing young people at the nightclubs they went to saying things like “Oh my god, that’s so random!” One student endeared himself to me by watching _Lost_ and then coming in the next morning with a list of words and phrases he’d heard on that show that confused him. As an aside, that was one of the best jobs I’ve ever had. ---
**Author:** ![PookahMacPhellimey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pookahmacphellimey/32/3175_2.png) [@PookahMacPhellimey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PookahMacPhellimey)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/28 "2011-02-10T19:47:26Z")
> [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](#): > > All in all, it is remarkable how often Arabic-speakers, even those who have excellent English screws up the Third-Person Marker. > > I work. > He work **s.** And the Italians. Their verbs have so many forms that the fact that English has only two seems to register as “hooray, we don’t have to conjugate _at all_”. A particular Italian pronunciation mistake is “joo-ish” for “juice” and “soo-it” for “suit” etc. Must. Pronounce. Every. Letter. As a non native learner in Holland I found the present perfect vs past simple problem the hardest to get my head round, and many of my students seem to agree with me. ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/29 "2011-02-10T19:55:47Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > There are also different consonants: I can’t pronounce an English Y or J to save my life, apparently. This would be much easier if we were doing this in person … but: - The consonantal value of English “y” (as in _young_ or _yell_)is not [phonemic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonemic) in Spanish, but it does occur as an artifact of conversational-speed pronunciations of words like _viejo_, _violeta_, _viuda_,and _ciento_. The “boundary” between the “i” and the “e”/“o”/“u” in these words is equivalent to English consonantal “y”. You may also be able to compare other Spanish-speakers’ pronunciation of Spanish _yodo_ (“iodine”), _yo_, or _yerba_ (“herb”) to your own – I suspect many Latin American Spanish speakers render the “y” in these Spanish words in a manner similar to English consonantal “y”. - English “j” (as in _jump_ or _jeer_) is a voiced version of the consonant notated as “ch” in Spanish (_chafar_, _macho_). Some Latin American Spanish dialect speakers pronounce the “y” of _yo_ this way. In any case, for a castellano speaker having difficulty with English “j”, I suggest regarding it esentially as equivalent Spanish “ch” and, from there, working to get the voicing consistent at conversational speed. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/30 "2011-02-10T20:24:00Z")
> [@Isamu](#): > > I think it depends on what their mother tongue is. For Japanese, most people have a lot of trouble with the English “the/a” and pluralization of nouns which then require verb agreement. I worked through college in the school’s writing center; it was a wonderful job. One of my favorite instances was this really smart Japanese exchange student who was writing a paper on French experimental film or something like that: the paper was a pleasure to read. But he could not get the articles right. I assured him that “the” and “a” meant different things, and that removing them had yet another meaning. He thought about it, and asked, “What is the difference between saying [something like] ‘The French absurdist films of the 1960s’ and ‘French absurdist films of the 1960s’?” I never was able to answer that question to his satisfaction or my own. I remember also my Korean roommate who never did grasp how to use prepositions. I imagine his difficulty is somewhat similar to the difficulty of English speakers in using the Spanish subjunctive correctly. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/31 "2011-02-10T20:53:29Z")
> [@Giles](#): > > It’s interesting that the commonest word in English is the one that causes the most problems: “the” contains two phonemes that are not found in many languages, and it’s a word that has no equivalent in many languages. (Speakers of Romance and Germanic languages get it easy, because most of them do have a word or words for “the”.) It’s not unusual for common words to cause problems, but “the” is a pretty extreme case. Even among different Germanic languages, though, there are subtle differences in how articles are used (or not). In German you could say, as it were, “How are things going for the Robert?”, but you can’t use an article with a personal name in English–unless there’s an adjective in between. ---
**Author:** ![cuauhtemoc](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecb155/32.png) [@cuauhtemoc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cuauhtemoc)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/32 "2011-02-10T21:21:18Z")
> [@Hypnagogic\_Jerk](#): > > I do know that French speakers make loads of spelling and grammar mistakes in French, due to French spelling rules being almost as hellish as English’s. That’s what the _dictée_ is an important learning tool, and even used as part of language contests. This is surprising. English is simply filthy with exceptions and irregular spellings. The “rules” for French pronunciation are way more consistent. If you read a word in French, it’s easy to pronounce it. On the other hand, if you hear a word in French, it’s not necessarily so easy to spell it. In English, of course, the difficulty goes both ways. ---
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/33 "2011-02-10T21:24:09Z")
I don’t speak it, but I hear that Danish has terrible spelling. I’m sure that Russian has some kind of pronunciation rules, but damned if I can figure out what they are. Why is “o” pronounced sometimes as “o” and sometimes as “a” and sometimes as “oah”? Why is the “g”-sound sometimes pronounced as “v”? It is a mystery. ---
**Author:** ![Mops](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mops/32/16494_2.png) [@Mops](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mops)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/34 "2011-02-10T21:33:38Z")
As for words, “must not” not being the negation of “must” is a bit of a trap for Germans (we tend to understand ‘You must not touch the live wire’ as ‘You are not required to touch the live wire’). The sounds ‘th’, ‘w’ and to a lesser degree the English-language 'r’s are a bit difficult for Germans. Travelers on German high speed trains will have heard the conductor’s announcements ‘Ssenk you for treveling viss Deutsche Bahn’. ---
**Author:** ![Rushgeekgirl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rushgeekgirl/32/3715_2.png) [@Rushgeekgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rushgeekgirl)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/35 "2011-02-10T21:34:18Z")
Mig still seems to have trouble with whores/horse. And after 16 years of speaking English he still calls that thing that holds up his pants a seat belt. ---
**Author:** ![treis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bc79bd/32.png) [@treis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/treis)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/36 "2011-02-10T21:37:50Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > He thought about it, and asked, “What is the difference between saying [something like] ‘The French absurdist films of the 1960s’ and ‘French absurdist films of the 1960s’?” I never was able to answer that question to his satisfaction or my own. A=One The=defined set No article=undefined set/general In most cases “The” and “No Article” are functionally equivalent because the second part of the sentence defines the group. However, in some cases such as: The hungry people are angry Hungry people are angry There is a meaningful difference. In the first, we are talking about a specific group (poor people in a country, prisoners, etc.), whereas in the 2nd it is talking about hungry people in general. ---
**Author:** ![DMark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@DMark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMark)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/37 "2011-02-10T23:47:54Z")
Having taught ESL for years, I could write a book about the odd things in English that even native speakers don’t know. One thing that is difficult is teaching words that we use, but are not necessarily correct or even written that often: gonna gotta wanna We teach, “I am going to go to the movies. I have to meet my friends at 8:00 PM. We want to be there early.” But most Americans would say, “I’m gonna go to the movies. I gotta meet my friends at 8:00 PM. We wanna be there early.” Also, our past tense gets weird. Yesterday, I lay on the couch all day. Yesterday, I laid on the couch all day. Which of those is correct, but which do you say in real life? And then there was the great practice exercise I did with students. I would say, “Did you eat pizza?” and they would have to answer, “Yes, I ate pizza.” All was going well. Then I asked, “Did you drink a milk shake?” and they answered, “Yes, I drank a milk shook.” (Hey, it is past tense, isn’t it?) Oh. the things you learn when you teach your own language! ---
**Author:** ![Waxwinged](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c2a13f/32.png) [@Waxwinged](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Waxwinged)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/38 "2011-02-10T23:51:30Z")
ESL person here; always have had trouble with the proper usage of “the/a” in writing, same with distinction between has/had in terms of tenses. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/39 "2011-02-11T01:00:15Z")
> [@Ximenean](#): > > One think I’ve noticed even fluent ESL-speakers get wrong is the use of “since” (in the sense of “since that time”, not as in the first line of the post above this one). Very often, they will say things like “since five years I have been speaking English”, rather than since a particular \*point \*in time. When I was in Germany I noticed that the native German English-speaking guides tended to use “until” when “still” or “yet” would have been more appropriate. I believe these concepts are covered by the same word in German, hence the confusion. I remember one guide saying “We don’t know until today what really happened”, unintentionally suggesting that there was breaking news about this historic mystery. Something like “We still don’t know today” or “We don’t yet know” would have been better in English. > [@Giles](#): > > Most nouns in English can be used as adjectives, so you can talk about “country schools” and “city streets” just as correctly as “rural schools” and “urban streets”. In contexts like these, “country” and “city” might be slightly less formal, but grammatically they are fine. That’s true, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a Japanese speakers of English use the words in that way. The construction I remember was “X is city/country”, as in “I was surprised, Pittsburgh is very city” (she had expected it to be a smaller town). This type of phrasing is not normally used by native speakers of English, although I suppose they are sometimes used in this way in colloquial speech: “My family is really country” or maybe even “She’s totally ‘city’.” I think it would be quite unusual for a native speaker to say something like “This street is city”, though. ---
**Author:** ![PSXer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/48db29/32.png) [@PSXer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PSXer)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/40 "2011-02-11T01:06:49Z")
> [@Mops](#): > > As for words, “must not” not being the negation of “must” is a bit of a trap for Germans (we tend to understand ‘You must not touch the live wire’ as ‘You are not required to touch the live wire’). > > The sounds ‘th’, ‘w’ and to a lesser degree the English-language 'r’s are a bit difficult for Germans. Travelers on German high speed trains will have heard the conductor’s announcements ‘Ssenk you for treveling viss Deutsche Bahn’. what is the right way to say “you must not touch the live wire” in German? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835.md?page=3)