# 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:** 4
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/61 "2011-02-11T17:35:32Z")
> [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](#): > > I serve as the resident English proof reader for a department full of Italians. Italians often mistake “in” and “on”. In my experience, learning prepositions in other languages is VERY difficult, because they tend not to correspond well. I made approximately 843978943 prepositional mistakes in Bulgarian, at least half of which implied that I had watched something literally _on top_ of my TV. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/62 "2011-02-11T18:59:31Z")
> [@Kyla](#): > > In my experience, learning prepositions in other languages is VERY difficult, because they tend not to correspond well. I made approximately 843978943 prepositional mistakes in Bulgarian, at least half of which implied that I had watched something literally _on top_ of my TV. When using prepositions to communicate physical locations (_ **on** Baker Street_; _ **at** 212 Baker Street_; _ **in** Paddington_) correspondence (or lack thereof) to another language may be an issue, but the larger difficulty with prepositions is that they often collocate with verbs in what are essentially abstract and arbitrary ways: \*complain **about** a problem object **to** an insinuation accuse someone **of** a crime rail **against** an injustice fuss **over** little things impute someone **with** a misdeed look askance **at** an error \* etc.. However, this will be true of any language, and you can more or less expect errors with this. These collocations aren’t confusing–they’re just not something that is learned in the classroom. The focus in this thread–especially with regard to pronunciation–seems to be the ways in which English is problematic because of a speaker’s particular first language. But what are the innate qualities of English in and of itself that are confusing? The particular phonemes of English–or even it’s phonology–are not intrinsically any more “confusing” than those of other languages. They may present motor-physical challenges (certain consonant clusters, etc.) that are unfamiliar or difficult for certain L1 speakers, but what’s so “confusing” about that? For example, it’s not the particular vowels of English per se, but rather that there are so many of them (at least 23), and that English has dynamic vowel reduction. ---
**Author:** ![cuauhtemoc](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecb155/32.png) [@cuauhtemoc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cuauhtemoc)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/63 "2011-02-11T20:30:43Z")
Here’s another one I’ve noticed: I’ve heard foreigners say “funny” when they mean “fun”. Like “I took a ride on my bicycle, and it was very funny.” For a second, you think “What could be so humorous about a bicycle ride?” Then you realize they mean something closer to “pleasantly diverting” or “entertaining”. ---
**Author:** ![Bytegeist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@Bytegeist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bytegeist)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/64 "2011-02-11T21:21:17Z")
> [@DMark](#): > > Then I asked, “Did you drink a milk shake?” and they answered, “Yes, I drank a milk shook.” “Excellent! I would also have accepted, ‘_I have drunk a milk shaken_.’” ---
**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 11, 2011, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/65 "2011-02-11T21:55:16Z")
> [@DMark](#): > > 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 I have to disagree here. We may say “gotta” or “gonna”, but they’re understood to “mean” _to have got to_ or _going to_. It’s a case of the pronunciation being slurred because those words aren’t the primary verb of the sentence. That’s also why we don’t say “I’m gonna New York City next month.” I haven’t said _wanna_, except in humorous or ironic contexts since I was eleven. > [@](#): > > Also, our past tense gets weird. > > Yesterday, I lay on the couch all day. > Yesterday, I laid on the couch all day. Funnily enough, it was my first year of high school German that helped me to get that one right, at least from a prescriptivist perspective. German has cognates for _to lie_ and _to lay_, and as in English the first is an irregular verb and the second is not. In German, however, there are no homonyms among the different tenses of the two words. > [@](#): > > Which of those is correct, but which do you say in real life? I say “I lay on the couch all day yesterday”. I also use the words “stank”, “sank”, and “shrank”. ---
**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 11, 2011, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/66 "2011-02-11T22:00:34Z")
> [@Mops](#): > > As for words, “must not” not being the negation of “must” is a bit of a trap for Germans As is the reverse for us. I’d been reasonably competent in German for years before I became aware of this; it must be that from the context of what I was reading or listening to I was always able to discern the correct meaning. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/67 "2011-02-11T22:43:42Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > I have to disagree here. We may say “gotta” or “gonna”, but they’re understood to “mean” _to have got to_ or _going to_. It’s a case of the pronunciation being slurred because those words aren’t the primary verb of the sentence. That’s also why we don’t say “I’m gonna New York City next month.” Exactly. The challenge with teaching this aspect of English is actually teaching the students when to speak this way and when not to speak this way (as normally indexed by degree of formality)–and, of course, not to write these words in that way. As native speakers it’s subconscious and automatic for us (it’s one of the ways we mark register without, for example, using different pronouns, such as _Sie_ and _du_). For English learners who aren’t immersed, however, it’s not so obvious. ---
**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, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/68 "2011-02-11T23:07:14Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > He was asking about whether there was any shade of meaning between the two phrases in my post; while I usually think that the addition or subtraction of a word changes meaning, however minor the change, I was unable to come up with any difference whatsoever, much less a functional difference. I was thinking about this during my commute, when I do all my deep thinking, and eventually concluded that there is a very slight difference between “The French absurdist films of the 1960s” and “French absurdist films of the 1960s”. I think the former places the teensiest bit more emphasis on “French”, and suggests slightly more strongly than the latter that whatever is about to be said about French absurdist films of the 1960s does _not_ necessarily apply to absurdist films of the 1960s from other countries. This is a very, very small difference though, and not really a significant one in this context. > [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > I have to disagree here. We may say “gotta” or “gonna”, but they’re understood to “mean” _to have got to_ or _going to_. It’s a case of the pronunciation being slurred because those words aren’t the primary verb of the sentence. That’s also why we don’t say “I’m gonna New York City next month.” The rules for this seem to be a bit different in British English, at least colloquially. I’ve heard British (and Irish, come to think) people say “I’ve a cold.” I don’t know if this usage is widespread or if it’s a regionalism, but I’ve encountered it several times. ---
**Author:** ![statsman1982](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e79b87/32.png) [@statsman1982](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/statsman1982)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2011, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/69 "2011-02-15T05:33:54Z")
> [@Mops](#): > > That’s probably not a grammatical issue, though - we use the plural of month in that construction too. My guess would be that the [θs] combination is particularly hard to pronounce if you have learned English as a second language. I for one tend to sloppily elide the ‘th’ in that case i.e. month=[mʌnθ], months=[mʌns] - your friend seems to drop the ‘s’ instead. One of these sounds needs to be sacrificed to avoid spraining my tongue. I’m pretty sloppy with it too. I tend to pronounce months as “munts”. ---
**Author:** ![watergallop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/3bc359/32.png) [@watergallop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watergallop)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2011, 9:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/70 "2011-02-15T09:03:29Z")
I work at a library in east Los Angeles and a lot of the patrons are Mexican Spanish-only speakers. It seems in Spanish there is only one word for both “print” and “copy.” So a lot of people will come in and say they want to print something, or they want to copy something, and in my mind those are two distinct concepts that require two distinct answers from me. I’ll direct the people who want to print to a whole different area of the library from the people who want to make a photocopy. And more than half the time, it turns out the people who wanted to print really wanted to copy, and vice versa. Now whenever anyone whose English is non-fluent comes in and asks me where to print or copy, I will ask them several questions to determine which it is they really actually want to do, in order to avoid confusion. ---
**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 15, 2011, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/71 "2011-02-15T15:57:54Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > In any case, we’re hijacking the heck out of this thread and I doubt it will help my pronunciation at all. Sorry guys! It really is best to do it in person. From the descriptions you gave above, I’m confident that the sounds of English “j” and (consonantal) “y” have never been properly explained to you from the perspective of _castellano_. Phonetics are your royal road, though, to pronouncing sounds that ear cannot distinguish. You can train your voice to do something that your ear cannot intially perceive. To simplify a lot, however, you can do the following: - just pronounce English “j” exactly the same as Spanish “ch”. The two sounds are, phonetically, very close. Since Spanish speakers do not [aspirate](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspiration_(phonetics)) initial “ch” in words like _charlar, cheque_, and _churro_, your naturally pronounced Spanish “ch” will often be recieved as a “j” by native English-speaking listeners. It won’t sound 100% on-target 100% of the time, but it will be quite close. - as for English consonantal “y” … it’s tongue position is essentially the same as that of the Spanish vowel “i”. In fact, the Spanish word _y_ can be your mnemonic device. In an English word like “young”, start off by pronouncing that initial “y” as you would pronounce the Spanish word _y_. In English, this would commonly be spelled “ee”. So essentially, you’re pronouncing “young” as something like “ee-oung”. Once you get comfortable pronouncing the English “y” that way, work on making that initial “ee” sound a little shorter and more fleeting. The sound of English consonantal “y” does exist in _castellano_ (e.g. in almost every Spanish word with -_ie_-), but it’s not perceived as a distinct sound in own right by native Spanish speakers (unless they’ve been trained in phonetics). ---
**Author:** ![BwanaBob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bwanabob/32/2985_2.png) [@BwanaBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BwanaBob)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2011, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/72 "2011-02-15T18:07:52Z")
> [@Arrogance\_Ex\_Machina](#): > > Those word pairs you gave aren’t clear from the context – you can say “It’s smurf outside” and there’s no way to know if it is dark or light, giving and taking are different acts as are dropping and picking up. It’s just language defines our world and when you learn something it ends up being a part of the tools you think with, and when some foreign guy comes and tells you that even one of your tools of thinking is silly it is impossible to agree. 😉 > > When you know several languages, you start to see how one language does something better and another is better at something else. Finnish is hardly the best language in the world, but I still think having just one word for borrowing/lending is the way to go. Of course, that’s me indoctrinated to think like that by my own first language. I’m now confused. You see a distinction between giving and taking, and that they need different words, but if it’s giving money temporarily and taking money temporarily, then one word is good enough? ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2011, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/73 "2011-02-15T19:55:36Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Eventually I learned to say that someone had “studied in Yale” As long as we’re discussing prepositions… That should be “studied \*\*at \*\*Yale.” > [@Kyla](#): > > In my experience, learning prepositions in other languages is VERY difficult, because they tend not to correspond well. I made approximately 843978943 prepositional mistakes in Bulgarian, at least half of which implied that I had watched something literally _on top_ of my TV. Japanese postpositions mostly made sense to me, but sometimes I’ve gotten tripped up where the general correlation with a given English preposition doesn’t carry through in all contexts. [spoiler]For instance, I usually think of で (_de_) as the equivalent of _at_. I read at the library. 図書館で読みます。 _Toshokan de yomimasu._ Then I think of に (_ni_) as _in_. The wallet is in the bag. 財布は鞄にあります。 _Saifu wa kaban ni arimasu_. However, some places where I would use \*in \*in English instead take で in Japanese. I swim in the pool. プールで泳ぎます。 _Puuru de oyogimasu_.[/spoiler] The problem with being an L2 speaker of a language is that you’re constantly trying to connect the new language with your native one, and sometimes you’ll come up with a mnemonic that doesn’t actually correlate in every case, because the feature will serve a slightly different function in the two languages. ---
**Author:** ![sqweels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f19dbf/32.png) [@sqweels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sqweels)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2011, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/74 "2011-02-15T22:35:39Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > Speakers of some American English dialects actually do use the same word (“borrow”) for both concepts. In parts of the US it’s common to hear people say things like “Can you borrow me a dollar?” I’ve only encountered this in the upper Midwest, and it’s possible it’s due to the influence of Northern European immigrants. I’m from the Upper Midwest, and yes we relentlessly say “borrow me a dollar” when we mean “lend”. It’s never clear to me who’s doing it deliberately and who’s being ignorant. How common is this in other parts of the US? ---
**Author:** ![treis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bc79bd/32.png) [@treis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/treis)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2011, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/75 "2011-02-16T01:21:58Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Yeah, I know all that, although I used more layman’s terms (saying “the=defined set” can be confusing if folks think of “defined set” as necessarily plural, for example). He was asking about whether there was any shade of meaning between the two phrases in my post; while I usually think that the addition or subtraction of a word changes meaning, however minor the change, I was unable to come up with any difference whatsoever, much less a functional difference. The French absurdist films implies that there is a defined set of films which constitute “French absurdist films”, whereas French absurdist films does not. ---
**Author:** ![Walther\_Ego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8dc957/32.png) [@Walther\_Ego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walther_Ego)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2011, 7:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/76 "2011-02-16T07:50:10Z")
> [@BwanaBob](#): > > I’m now confused. You see a distinction between giving and taking, and that they need different words, but if it’s giving money temporarily and taking money temporarily, then one word is good enough? I think the real reason why you absolutely need separate words in English is that there are no prepositions involved. If it were borrow to you - borrow from me, for example, (or borrow out - borrow in) the preposition would tell you wich way the transaction takes place. In Finnish it is the form of the other words, since it uses relatively little prepositions. I think the English way is neat and works and I find it perfectly logical. The Finnish way also works, but actually leads to confusion sometimes. ---
**Author:** ![Themenin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ee59a6/32.png) [@Themenin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Themenin)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2011, 11:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/77 "2011-02-16T11:10:17Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Yeah, I know all that, although I used more layman’s terms (saying “the=defined set” can be confusing if folks think of “defined set” as necessarily plural, for example). He was asking about whether there was any shade of meaning between the two phrases in my post; while I usually think that the addition or subtraction of a word changes meaning, however minor the change, I was unable to come up with any difference whatsoever, much less a functional difference. “French absurdist films aren’t exactly the biggest sellers right now” vs “ **The** French absurdist films on the top shelf go for 5 dollars and **the** ones on the bottom shelf go for 10” As for the OP, I agree that phrasal verbs are universally difficult to learn and use for ESLers. Unstressed vowels is a close second - eg the vowel sound in “I _can_ do it.” vs the vowel sound in “I _can_.” ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2011, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/78 "2011-02-16T12:17:35Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > Speakers of some American English dialects actually do use the same word (“borrow”) for both concepts. In parts of the US it’s common to hear people say things like “Can you borrow me a dollar?” I’ve only encountered this in the upper Midwest, and it’s possible it’s due to the influence of Northern European immigrants. This is a remnant from Old English, and isn’t peculiar to American dialects. I’m pretty sure it still crops up in East Anglia, where ‘larn’ to mean acquire knowledge, as opposed to imparting it, certainly still gets used regularly. I’d hear it from kids I taught in Suffolk - “…what you larned us last week…” Sadly, it gets ‘corrected’ by some teachers, who see it simply as an error, unaware of its origin. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2011, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/79 "2011-02-16T18:07:51Z")
> [@Themenin](#): > > “ **The** French absurdist films on the top shelf go for 5 dollars and **the** ones on the bottom shelf go for 10” I believe that is a bad example, as it already contains delimiters that can function the same as the definite article. The following seems to convey the same information. “French absurdist films **on the top shelf** go for 5 dollars and ones **on the bottom shelf** go for 10.” A better example would be something like “The dogs run away often,” which specifies some defined group of dogs, vs “Dogs run away often,” which is more of a truism about dogs in general. ---
**Author:** ![manila](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e5b9ba/32.png) [@manila](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manila)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2011, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835/80 "2011-02-16T18:35:38Z")
Wow first of all thanks for this thread. here in Philippines the commonest mistake I hear is people mixing up he and she. Dunno maybe the word is the same in Tagalog. (Siya saya?) In Russian ( a gorgeously different language) … well a lot of the words or phrases are so structurally different to english. Some of the words (even nouns) are approximations of english phrases or nouns. Me and Peter (english) We with peter (russian) I Like (english) It is pleasing to me (russian) Also in Russian not only are there feminine, masculine and neuter nouns, but even if you are speaking about a woman or a woman is speaking to you then feminine verb endings will be used! If someone is speaking on a phone and you hear the conversation you will always know whether the person on the other end of the phone is feminine, or a close familiar person by the language (not the the tone) that the speaker is using Amazing language! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-english-words-and-rules-of-grammar-are-most-confusing-for-people-learning-esl/570835.md?page=5)