# What is the hardest thing for foreign speakers when learning English? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 7, 2009, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-hardest-thing-for-foreign-speakers-when-learning-english/502247 "2009-07-07T20:24:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2009, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-hardest-thing-for-foreign-speakers-when-learning-english/502247/61 "2009-07-09T03:33:51Z")
Oh, and the R/L and TH/DH/T/D questions? Only thems what grew up well after WWII might have a problem with them (parse THAT one, linguists!). And the younger ones are probably accustomed to making adjustments for Spanish pronounciations and constructions. We can figure out what you mean, often because that cliche about how the “US is a Melting Pot” works better linguistically than racially, but mostly because you can generally construct a sentence in English that not only makes sense, but has a grammatical name. ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2009, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-hardest-thing-for-foreign-speakers-when-learning-english/502247/62 "2009-07-09T03:38:57Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > I don’t really want them saying ‘you can’t’ to someone who might take it badly if said with a short vowel. 😃 [Bender] . . . what . . . [/Bender] ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2009, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-hardest-thing-for-foreign-speakers-when-learning-english/502247/63 "2009-07-09T04:31:09Z")
> [@HazelNutCoffee](#): > > Really random things tend to trip my students up. I am CONSTANTLY correcting them when they say “I’m boring” when they mean “I’m bored”. Or when they say “I’m going to my home” - and I tell them to say “I’m going home” instead. > [@Rigamarole](#): > > Heh - my girlfriend, a native Spanish speaker, would say that and it always made me giggle. I eventually corrected her. As well, when a Thai cutie looks at you and says “I am amazing” or better yet “I am exciting.” 😃 (That could help explain why so many guys get into trouble over them.) > [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > Another obstacle – and this holds true for just about any language – is the time and effort needed to master it at even a rudimentary level. I’ve never taught, but still many Thai students have asked me how they can improve their English. You could see the disappointment on their faces when I told them: “Study and practice.” They all seem to hope for a magic bullet that will allow them to wake up suddenly one day and know English. > [@guizot](#): > > Well, you have to admit that that’s a pretty vague way of putting it. And immersion in an English-speaking culture is, in a way, osmosis. Well, maybe, but the ones who have asked me were clearly looking for a literal osmosis, something like a pill they could swallow and Bing! know English. Many Thais honestly seem to think it should work that way with foreigners and the Thai language, explain something quickly and only once and then you’ve got it, because Thai is, after all, so easy, or so they think. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2009, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-hardest-thing-for-foreign-speakers-when-learning-english/502247/64 "2009-07-09T05:42:07Z")
> [@guizot](#): > > In informal speech we _do_ have a plural for _you_–actually, at least two: _you guys_ (sometimes shortened to simply _guys_), and _you all_ (_y’all_). I’d used y’all in the previous sentence… ---
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2009, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-hardest-thing-for-foreign-speakers-when-learning-english/502247/65 "2009-07-09T06:48:29Z")
I used to be a primary school EFL teacher in Bulgaria. Because my kids were young and not very advanced learners, some of the more complex stuff mentioned in this thread didn’t apply to them. That said, these were the issues that cropped up the most: 1. Spelling. That is to say, the differences between spelling and pronunciation. Bulgarian is written phonetically (which doesn’t prevent me from making spelling errors from time to time, d’oh) and my students found the often large gaps between how a word is written and how it is pronounced baffling. My counterpart - the Bulgarian English teacher I worked with - was often really impatient with the kids on this, which I found frustrating. (Native English speakers have trouble with this! I still realize from time to time that I’ve been mispronouncing words I’ve only read and never heard spoken!) I once got a round of applause from my seventh graders for saying straight out that reading and writing in English is much harder than it is in Bulgarian. 2. Present simple v. present continuous. Bulgarian only has one present tense and now matter how many times we went over the difference between the two, to the point that they all knew the definition of when to use one and when to use the other, they screwed it up in practice constantly. I just have my fingers crossed that when they get to higher levels of education, the exercises we did on this will eventually pay off. 3. The lack of a gender. I always thought this would make things EASIER, but my kids had a hard time with it. They would write stuff like “My house is big. She is blue.” ALL THE TIME. It didn’t help that at one point I realized that my counterpart was giving a completely different explanation of gendering in English than I was. I had tried to explain that all objects in English were neutrally gendered (Bulgarian has a third neuter gender) and she was telling them that English doesn’t have gender at all. She was more accurate, I guess, but I thought it would be easier for them to understand it my way. Anyway, together, we confused the kids. Good job, us. 4. When to use “a” and “an”. My counterpart couldn’t figure this out, either. She totally taught the kids to say stuff like “this is chair”. _sigh_ ---
**Author:** ![Isamu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7c8e57/32.png) [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2009, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-hardest-thing-for-foreign-speakers-when-learning-english/502247/66 "2009-07-09T12:21:38Z")
> [@wolfstu](#): > > This Rolex I bought for ten euros outside the train station isn’t genuine afterall! It’s a **knock off**! It’s funny, I was having a meeting with a colleague today about that very term. He wanted to call a device that “knocks off” an unwanted section of a plastic, stamp-molded product, a “knock off” machine. As to the OP, I have no idea what the hardest thing is, but I have some guesses: 1. Getting used to different accents, from Birmingham to New Orleans and everything in between, or around. 2. Irregular grammar rules. 3. Lexicon - too many synonyms or near synonyms. 4. Depending on their own native language, pronunciation (“I like everything on the menu expect salmon”). 😛 5. Idioms - even first-language English speakers sometimes have to ask for clarification. ---
**Author:** ![Quercus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/7ab992/32.png) [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2009, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-hardest-thing-for-foreign-speakers-when-learning-english/502247/67 "2009-07-09T13:21:41Z")
> [@xnylder](#): > > “Je vais chercher un café” can be rendered as either “I’m going to get a _cup of_ coffee” or “I’m going to get a coffee”. Or even, I believe, “I’m going to look for a small informal restaurant” ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2009, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-hardest-thing-for-foreign-speakers-when-learning-english/502247/68 "2009-07-09T14:33:19Z")
> [@Kyla](#): > > 1. The lack of a gender. I always thought this would make things EASIER, but my kids had a hard time with it. They would write stuff like “My house is big. She is blue.” ALL THE TIME. It didn’t help that at one point I realized that my counterpart was giving a completely different explanation of gendering in English than I was. I had tried to explain that all objects in English were neutrally gendered (Bulgarian has a third neuter gender) and she was telling them that English doesn’t have gender at all. She was more accurate, I guess, but I thought it would be easier for them to understand it my way. Anyway, together, we confused the kids. Good job, us. I’m with you on that one, as are all my teachers. In Spanish, the neutral gender is extremely rare, but it exists. Learning that “about anything that gets a gender in Spanish but doesn’t have genitals will be an ‘it’” was relatively easy; I think that learning of stuff which does have genders as “exceptions in a genderless language” would have been harder. ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2009, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-hardest-thing-for-foreign-speakers-when-learning-english/502247/69 "2009-07-09T15:00:25Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > A Chinese speaker, for instance, will have difficulty with the distinction between L and R (since Chinese only has one sound somewhere in between those), but a German speaker wouldn’t have any problem with them, since their L and R are just like ours. No, German R is nothing like the English R. In standard German (_Hochdeutsch_), R is pronounced as the voiced uvular fricative [ʁ], except in a syllable coda where it is the vowel [ɐ]. In southern dialects, including the Bavarian dialect family, it’s a trilled [r]. English R, in rhotic dialects, is almost always realized as the liquid [ɹ]. These sounds are quite different from one another, having different places and manners of articulation. English speakers usually have a great deal of trouble pronouncing the German R, and German speakers likewise with the English R. About the only thing similar between R and L in both English and German is that they’re not allophones of one another as they are in, say, Japanese. ---
**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:** [July 9, 2009, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-hardest-thing-for-foreign-speakers-when-learning-english/502247/70 "2009-07-09T19:53:07Z")
When I was studying abroad in Japan, out of my Japanese friends who spoke English, the one who was the most fluent was the guy who used to watch \*Friends \*all the time. It really is a matter of exposure–you can read all the books and take all the classes you want, but until you actually spend a lot of time listening to native speakers of the language you’re learning speaking in a natural way, you’re not going to approach their fluency. ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2009, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-hardest-thing-for-foreign-speakers-when-learning-english/502247/71 "2009-07-09T20:12:38Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > We know and can express the difference between “I’ve been working for three months” and “I’ve been working since three months”, but use different grammar to express it. (Ich habe drei Monate lang gearbeitet / Ich arbeite seit drei Monaten). My english teacher used the trick of saying that the dot on the i of since meant that a point in time was referred to, to help us seperate when to use “since” and when “for”. The point made by ticker is that “I’ve been working since three months” is incorrect, and that this mistake is a noticeable feature of English spoken by French, Swedish and German speakers. Ich habe drei Monate lang gearbeitet = I worked _for_ three months Ich arbeite seit drei Monaten = I have been working _for_ three months “since” would not be used in either case. However, if the starting point (rather than the duration) is specified, you say “since”. For example, “I have been working since April”. So your teacher was correct! ---
**Author:** ![otorophile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3ab097/32.png) [@otorophile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/otorophile)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2009, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-hardest-thing-for-foreign-speakers-when-learning-english/502247/72 "2009-07-09T20:24:28Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > A Chinese speaker, for instance, will have difficulty with the distinction between L and R (since Chinese only has one sound somewhere in between those), but a German speaker wouldn’t have any problem with them, since their L and R are just like ours. Is this also Chinese, or just Japanese? ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2009, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-hardest-thing-for-foreign-speakers-when-learning-english/502247/73 "2009-07-09T20:24:43Z")
I do some work with English text produced by native speakers of Lithuanian and Russian. It seems to me that by far the most noticeable and frequent error is the misuse of “a” and “the”. These are competent professional translators, but they can not reliably make the correct selection between “”, “a”, and “the”. This is not because they are stupid, but because the rules in practice are far more complex than suggested above. Saying that you use “the” to specify a particular known example, and “a” to indicate any example of that type, is a good starting point, but utterly fails to capture the real complexity. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2009, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-hardest-thing-for-foreign-speakers-when-learning-english/502247/74 "2009-07-10T02:56:12Z")
> [@Isamu](#): > > 1. Getting used to different accents, from Birmingham to New Orleans and everything in between, or around. In Thailand, the preferred accents for teachers are American and southern England, sometimes Aussie and Kiwi if the accent’s not too strong. But no matter how qualified they may be, it’s virtually impossible for English teachers from Ireland, Scotland and northern England to get hired here, because of their “undesirable” accent. ---
**Author:** ![PBear42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@PBear42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PBear42)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2009, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-hardest-thing-for-foreign-speakers-when-learning-english/502247/75 "2009-07-10T05:38:14Z")
My favorite exposition on the oddities of English pronunciation is a long poem, _The Chaos_, by Dr. Gerard Nolst Trenité (1870-1948). The longest version I’ve found (274 lines), appears [here](http://www.neth.de/Interact/Sprachspiele/chaos.html) and [here](http://www.spellingsociety.org/journals/j17/caos.php) (the latter also includes a brief discussion of the poem’s publication history.) Note: If two words are near each other and don’t look (sound) ironic, odds are you’re not using the same pronunciation as Trenité. For example, victuals is VITL’Z, dour is DO-er, plover is pluh-ver, Cowper is COO-per, Froude is FROOD, piquet is pik-ET (now a secondary pronunciation), conduit is CON-duht (now archaic), schedule is SHEH-dyool (British), and so forth. ---
**Author:** ![jovan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/0ea827/32.png) [@jovan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jovan)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2009, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-hardest-thing-for-foreign-speakers-when-learning-english/502247/76 "2009-07-10T06:17:18Z")
> [@otorophile](#): > > Is this also Chinese, or just Japanese? While the point that **Chronos** was making in his first post was spot-on, he did use poor examples. Standard Mandarin has three distinctive sounds that more or less correspond to /r/ and /l/ in English, and are written using those letters in pinyin: /l/ is pronounced like in English. For example, _long_ (dragon): [http://hua.umf.maine.edu/Chinese/Language/Sound4c/4278zxw.wav](http://hua.umf.maine.edu/Chinese/Language/Sound4c/4278zxw.wav) /r/ can either be retroflex frictative, a sound that doesn’t exist in English and might sound to some as in between /l/ and /r/. For example, _rou_ (meat): [http://hua.umf.maine.edu/Chinese/Language/Sound4b/4394cpa.wav](http://hua.umf.maine.edu/Chinese/Language/Sound4b/4394cpa.wav) /r/ can also indicate a sound that is very close to the English /r/, for in instance _er_ (two): [http://hua.umf.maine.edu/Chinese/Language/Sound0a/183jz.wav](http://hua.umf.maine.edu/Chinese/Language/Sound0a/183jz.wav) Of course, there’s some variation between dialects. Japanese, on the other hand, has a single sound, usually romanized with the letter “r” that’s about halfway between an English /l/ and a short Spanish /r/. It’s used to replace both /l/ and /r/ in loan words. [http://japanese.about.com/library/media/audio/raion.wav](http://japanese.about.com/library/media/audio/raion.wav) [http://japanese.about.com/library/media/audio/meron.wav](http://japanese.about.com/library/media/audio/meron.wav) [http://japanese.about.com/library/media/audio/orenji.wav](http://japanese.about.com/library/media/audio/orenji.wav) [http://japanese.about.com/library/media/audio/ragubii.wav](http://japanese.about.com/library/media/audio/ragubii.wav) Many if not most Japanese adults cannot tell the difference between the English /l/ and /r/ sounds and will very often mix them up when speaking. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2009, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-hardest-thing-for-foreign-speakers-when-learning-english/502247/77 "2009-07-10T16:55:25Z")
> [@](#): > > 1. When to use “a” and “an”. My counterpart couldn’t figure this out, either. She totally taught the kids to say stuff like “this is chair”. _sigh_ OK, this one, at least, is easy: If it starts with a vowel sound, us “an”, and for everything else, use “a”. Note that this is based on the sound, not the letter, so you have “a unicorn” (yooneekorn), but “an NSA agent” (en ess ay). And I stand corrected on the L/R example, which I apparently completely botched. Is there any language that has the same R as English? ---
**Author:** ![Zackmo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e19adc/32.png) [@Zackmo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zackmo)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2009, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-hardest-thing-for-foreign-speakers-when-learning-english/502247/78 "2009-07-10T16:59:22Z")
Sarcasm. ---
**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:** [July 10, 2009, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-hardest-thing-for-foreign-speakers-when-learning-english/502247/79 "2009-07-10T17:01:20Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > OK, this one, at least, is easy: If it starts with a vowel sound, us “an”, and for everything else, use “a”. If you look at the example, though, it wasn’t a question of when to use “a” \*\*versus \*\*“an,” but when to use articles **in general**. The other instructor didn’t say, “This is an chair,” she said, “This is chair.” ---
**Author:** ![Jeff\_Lichtman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jeff_lichtman/32/1531_2.png) [@Jeff\_Lichtman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeff_Lichtman)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2009, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-hardest-thing-for-foreign-speakers-when-learning-english/502247/80 "2009-07-10T18:10:19Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > In Thailand, the preferred accents for teachers are American and southern England. . . My guess is that there are American accents they wouldn’t like, such as New Jersey or the many Southern accents. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-hardest-thing-for-foreign-speakers-when-learning-english/502247.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-hardest-thing-for-foreign-speakers-when-learning-english/502247.md?page=5)