# What's the hardest part about learning English? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 24, 2004, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-hardest-part-about-learning-english/225861 "2004-01-24T02:35:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2022, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-hardest-part-about-learning-english/225861/41 "2022-09-30T21:31:04Z")
I had the impression people were saying the supposed difficulty was with phrasal verbs rather than with prepositions in general. Is it true that English has much more of this type of thing than German or Dutch? > [@RitterSport](#): > > But, to make up for it, we don’t have genders for nouns! You may be surprised, but I have heard people who are just beginning to study English mix up “he” and “she”. They soon figure it out, though, and it is much easier than gender in German. ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2022, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-hardest-part-about-learning-english/225861/42 "2022-09-30T21:35:52Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > I had the impression people were saying the supposed difficulty was with phrasal verbs rather than with prepositions in general. Is it true that English has much more of this type of thing than German or Dutch? Ah, phrasal verbs was the term I was looking for in a post a long time ago. I can’t speak for Dutch, but I suspect that in German, there are as much of them as in English. The point is that they don’t translate well and the prepositions are always ambiguous, in both languages. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2022, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-hardest-part-about-learning-english/225861/43 "2022-10-01T01:39:47Z")
As others have said, spelling and pronunciation is difficult. My students now are struggling with long and short vowel such as hat and hate or kit and kite. > [@Limmin](#): > > US engineer visits his fellow development team in Japan; they’re all working on a joint project. In a schedule discussion, a Japanese engineer says they’ll be having a day off next week (in order to vote in an election), as it’s “National erection day, and therefore, it’s a holiday.” That’s a fun addition to urban legends about Japan. I’ve been hearing jokes about erection / election for 40 years now, which is reminding me how old I’ve gotten. It is an urban legend because Japan holds elections on Sundays, although I don’t believe there are legally specified days to hold erections. > [@whitetho](#): > > A real life example I read about was a Japanese company confused by a U.S. engineer saying the two groups were working “in parallel”, meaning they were working toward a common goal. However, since the definition for “parallel” lines are two that never meet, the Japanese took this to mean that the two groups were taking separate, uncoordinated approaches. In Japanese, doing things in parallel often means to do unrelated things at the same time. A student may say they go to school and “do in parallel” a part time job. > [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > If it works one way (showing English speakers how to pronounce Japanese words), it should work the other way (learning which letter combinations in English correspond to the Japanese phonemes they already know), at least to an extent. In general, Japanese children learn a certain amount of basic English before they learn _romaji_, including basic pronunciations of the letters. Hence, they generally are exposed to English first, then _romaji_ later. Knowing _romaji_ isn’t that useful because it tends to reinforce the Japanese pronunciations of the vowels, which is a limited set of those found in English. However, as you say, @DPRK 's statement could too strong because it can provide one possibility for pronunciation. > [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > Japanese includes a whole array of consonant-vowel pairs, but it’s missing some that occur in English. Japanese also doesn’t combine many consonants, and the only consonant that can end a syllable is a “n”. Hence, “Brad Pitt” needs to be said, “buraddo pitto”. > [@DCnDC](#): > > I once attended a class on speaking English to non-native English speakers and a major point was to avoid idioms. This is true for all languages, but yes, when speaking to non-natives who aren’t fluent then avoiding idioms is helpful. However, most people don’t realize they are using idioms. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2022, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-hardest-part-about-learning-english/225861/44 "2022-10-01T01:53:47Z")
It is strongly dependent on what language you know. As one example, for most native languages it must be hard to learn the principal parts of the strong and irregular weak verbs. But it would be easy if your native language was German since they are mostly cognate in the two languages. Eg. sing, sang, sung compared to singen, sang, gesungen. Or bring, brought, brought compared to bringen, brachte, gebracht. And you need only know that the third person singular present adds an s and you know the entire verb conjugations. What you don’t know is when to use the simple past and when to use the compound one (basically, the first is perfect and the second imperfect) and, hardest of all, when to use the “progressive” (-ing) forms. Prepositions are an impossible mess in every language I know anything about. Hell, they are different across the pond. “Different from” on this side vs. “different to” on the other side. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2022, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-hardest-part-about-learning-english/225861/45 "2022-10-01T02:15:43Z")
> [@TokyoBayer](#): > > Japanese also doesn’t combine many consonants, and the only consonant that can end a syllable is a “n”. Hence, “Brad Pitt” needs to be said, “buraddo pitto”. I never thought about it before, but how would you say “zdravstvuyte” (or Wojciech Szczesny, to pick a random name) in a Japanese accent? Maybe English is not so bad, relatively speaking. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2022, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-hardest-part-about-learning-english/225861/46 "2022-10-01T02:21:01Z")
Oh my god. It’s horrible. Japanese have a lot of “loan words”, mostly from English although some from other foreign languages as well. “Positive”, is now a Japanese word, but the pronuciation, as @Machine_Elf showed above, requires being memorized by native English speakers or Japanese can’t understand it. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2022, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-hardest-part-about-learning-english/225861/47 "2022-10-01T02:29:45Z")
> [@TokyoBayer](#): > > Japanese have a lot of “loan words”, mostly from English although some from other foreign languages as well. “Positive”, is now a Japanese word, but the pronuciation, as @Machine_Elf showed above, requires being memorized by native English speakers or Japanese can’t understand it. I was at a coffee shop in Osaka several years ago and tried to order the peanut butter latte featured on a poster behind the counter. My downfall was in speaking with ordinary American pronunciation, which elicited only a blank stare from the cashier. My wife, having been born and raised in Japan, stepped in and saved me by uttering “pinatsu batta ratte”, at which point the cashier promptly swung into action. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2022, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-hardest-part-about-learning-english/225861/48 "2022-10-01T02:42:11Z")
I agree with what has been said, but it goes beyond Japanese, really, though the magnitude of the difference in pronunciation of borrowed words will, naturally, vary. For example, who or what is “Confucius”? Or, one time I found myself in an Arab country speaking with someone in English. I mentioned Alexandria, and the person had no idea what I was talking about. I then carefully pronounced, “al-ʾIskandarīyah” and that was understood. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2022, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-hardest-part-about-learning-english/225861/49 "2022-10-01T02:56:04Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > My wife, having been born and raised in Japan, stepped in and saved me by uttering “pinatsu batta ratte”, at which point the cashier promptly swung into action. I’m not doing this as a gotcha, just simply to show the hassle of this, it’s actually “piinattsu bataa ratte” Where the doubled vowels “ii” and “aa” are pronounced the same as a single vowel, but with twice the length. The doubled consonants “tt” are glottal stops and a necessary part of the pronunciation. I used to run into trouble all the time with mistakes such as saying “batta” for “bataa” and getting blank stares. > [@DPRK](#): > > I agree with what has been said, but it goes beyond Japanese, really, though the magnitude of the difference in pronunciation of borrowed words will, naturally, vary. Absolutely. English has butchered some of the Japanese words such as “harakiri” (both "a"s are pronounced the same as the “a” in “father” and the "i"s the same as in Hawaii) and “karaoke” which is just another mess. ---
**Author:** ![Limmin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f04885/32.png) [@Limmin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Limmin)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2022, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-hardest-part-about-learning-english/225861/50 "2022-10-01T16:11:26Z")
@TokyoBayer I hear you…when in Japan, the more I “Japanize” my English words, the faster the comprehension. I just have to think of English in Japanese terms, as if it’s a foreign language. As I go for years between visits to Japan, I manage to forget a lot of my Japanese vocab, so I liberally sprinkle in a lot of Japanese English when speaking. It usually works pretty well in most cases. ---
**Author:** ![Charlie\_Tan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/charlie_tan/32/12582_2.png) [@Charlie\_Tan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charlie_Tan)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2022, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-hardest-part-about-learning-english/225861/51 "2022-10-01T21:24:03Z")
Maybe not the hardest, since I’ve been exposed to English most of my life through tv\*, so I would never say _Red Little Corvette_ The rule of ordering multiple adjectives. > The rule is that multiple adjectives are always ranked accordingly: opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose. But to actually learn this, instead of just getting it ingrained by exposure? Ho-boy. > **[Order force: the old grammar rule we all obey without realising | Tim Dowling](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/13/sentence-order-adjectives-rule-elements-of-eloquence-dictionary)** > > I had no idea there was a specific order for adjectives until I read a viral post. It was a side-of-the-mallet moment \*We never dubbed in Sweden, just subtitles. AFAIK the same is true for Netherlands, Denmark and Norway. This might also explain why most people from these countries speak an at least passable English. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-hardest-part-about-learning-english/225861.md?page=2)