And is it really even that difficult, when so many other countries adopt it as their second language and speak it a lot more fluently than we Brits speak. The order of the words This, on the other hand, is a big, interesting book. Native English-speakers is english hard to learn know what order to put words in, but this is hard to teach to those learning the language. For example, we often use more than one adjective to describe a noun, but which order should they go in. There are silent letters at the start of words, too. Sadly, many English learners have to learn the hard way when it comes to our confusing pronunciation; if you pronounce something incorrectly, most Brits will demonstrate the correct way to you — but not without a little chuckle at your expense. To make matters even more complex, the way in which you emphasise certain words in a sentence can subtly change its meaning. For example, consider the different ways of emphasising the sentence below: — I sent him a letter — a plain statement. If not, you will be after this next point. English is absolutely full of homophones — words that sound the same but have different meanings or spellings. Even words whose definitions are seemingly in the same ballpark differ subtly — or apply to something completely different, because English words can have multiple meanings. Regional dialects The Glaswegian accent is famously hard to understand. Is it really the hardest language. Other notoriously tricky languages include Finnish, Russian, Japanese and Mandarin. Finnish is held to be difficult because of its numerous cases; Arabic because, among other things, its script has four different variations for each letter depending on where in the word it sits. Written Japanese differs from spoken Japanese, and there are three different writing systems — including 2,000 to 3,000 kanji characters that must be learned by heart. It makes English sound easy in comparison. Some people have a natural aptitude for languages and pick them up quickly; children, of course, absorb new languages much more easily than adults. The difficulty of a language also depends on its similarity to your own language. If you want to take your English to the next level, join us at for a summer of turbocharging your English skills. I am a native English speaker currently in German I. I decided to just learn as much as I can out of class. The 4 cases and genders were easy to learn, especially since I set my phone to German. Also, it is really easy after that. The conjugations are quite simple, especially past tense, especially compared to English. I think that German is English but with the cases and without all the wacko stuff that is in English. If you think the conjugations are hard, look at Spanish. Spanish has -er -ar and -ir verbs, verses German, which only has -en verbs and the 6 modals. Spanish also has plenty of irregular verbs. I am also learning Arabic in my free time, and it is certainly harder than German. It has plenty of verb forms: singular, feminine and dual. It has cases, and it has 2 genders. The vowels at the end of words change when you change the gender. Their are plenty of irregular plurals and their are no vowels in the script. The script is difficult at first, but after exposure it is quite easy. It is definitely learnable though. I know very little Arabic, so my opinion on this may change as I get further into the language. I think that any language is learnable. Others have said that it is easy to begin and difficult to master. English is much more subtle and nuanced than can really be explained. For example, adjective stacking order, which was touched in the article. Why is it the ugly big red house and not the red ugly big house. It was literally never mentioned to me. The order in this is example is: quality, size, color. This is simple to us but to learn it is difficult and this is a simple example. There are lots more categories of adjectives. Learners avoid contractions like the plague. Under the exceptions to the grammar rules in English you should include superlatives, where it is grammatically acceptable to break grammar rules, in some cases mae new words to provide emphasis. Spanish actually has a special bit they add to the adjective or adverb to do that in English we just intentionally break the grammar rules which is grammatically acceptable. I learned Spanish and when I was in Spain the second time I got mistaken for a tour guide I spoke it that well. Learning it was an experience though first day of class the teacher said forget everything you think you know about language because it is wrong and she was right. They have two words for to be, they have a familiar and formal version of you and a singular and plural of those. Adjectives must agree in gender and number with what they are describing and must go after the noun, to this day I find that strange. There is a certain order the adjectives must go in when speaking Spanish and if you put them in the wrong order you might offended someone. But we do have sounds that, really, only a native can speak of all people trying to say the nh, lh, ã and õ sounds. It is usually very easy to tell if someone was born a portuguese speaker or learned it as a second language. Which, at least, in my opinion, makes it much worse than english being able to interchange but you have to change the sentence to fit the new word because sometimes you could get a sentence that makes sense but carries the wrong meaning, which makes the conversation hard. Idioms Every language has it, that is not even close to unique to english. These are only 6 of the 33 in total time tenses. I picked it up in around a year or so, and ice been to Brazil with no problems at all. I know some friends from Brazil that have been learning English for more than two years now and all the similarities between words, the grammar, and most of all the pronunciation screws them up a ton. They still commonly ask me for help when it comes to speaking to others correctly. Which of these should be the standard. The language is evolving in scope, and in multiple domains — like science, diplomacy, internet, business, literature. It is a language in constant development that makes it difficult even for the English speaker in some respects. Whether it is easy or difficult depends on what you want from it. To say enough to be able to travel, understand the spoken word in order to talk and make friends, the written word to read the literature or the news, the language of business to trade and so on. For each of these, the English is different, and has differing levels of difficulty. So most Dutch kids learn it easily as the languages are close and the exposure is high You must be a native English speaker. Chinese is the hardest language for English speakers to learn, but there are over 1. You argue that English is difficult to learn, citing the problems with English, which granted, there are many. I imagine every language has idoms, homophones, spelling anomolies, inconsistant pronunciations etc. How does English grammar compare. Do contractions make English easier or harder to learn. After struggling with German for 6 months now English seems like Anglo-Saxon 2. The language had a few centuries to kick around and change before the Normans added French to the mix. To put it simply: English is all messed up. If a new dictionary were published to fix these errors and replace all the old English textbooks in schools around the world, that would be amazing. Noah Webster has already got us started, but unfortunately not all his ideas made it through. A dictionary with spelling and pronunciation consistency would help future generations and those interested in learning it tremendously. I want to be the one to publish this new dictionary, for the sake of humanity. Native speakers who say English is easy have likely not learned another language above a 6th grade level. I know English, French, Spanish, and Japanese to varying degrees. Another major cause for English being so difficult is the sheer number of options we have to express a thought, emotion, or idea. As a native speaker living in the states I see how difficult English is on a daily basis. Nobody knows most of the language. Everyone speaks it improperly in different ways. Everyone writes it improperly in different ways that differ from the ways they improperly speak it. Everyone reads differently than they write, and they write differently than they speak. Everyone has their own set of rules to drop when being informal vs formal. I think the simple fact that English has too many cooks in the kitchen with little regulatory oversight is enough to make it the hardest language to learn in general. Everything I have written can and will be interpreted differently by every single person that reads it. This very paragraph had infinite ways of being formulated and has an infinite number of ways to be interpreted. I had to go back and restructure the entire sentence for 1 word. I know that every language has some of these difficulties. Every language has its quirks. Anything missing that native speakers see as an advantage no genders, accents, little conjugation, etc actually exist in the background and it makes English much harder to learn. Some instinctively think in terms of bare minimum to communicate. Others think in ter
