Very well described...
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atomic_punk
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Finally, honest, friendly sellers on eBay. It's a miracle!
Yeah, English is incredibly messed up as far as languages go. Imagine growing up learning Spanish (sensible and intuitive as far as languages go), and then having to learn English at age 20 or so . . . that would be horrendous. And I've met so many people who whine about the difficulty of Spanish and French and German . . . they make infinitely more sense than English, which is kind of a mish-mash of all of those plus latin and some celtic stuff with spellings randomly changed throughout the years.
Yeah, English is incredibly messed up as far as languages go. Imagine growing up learning Spanish (sensible and intuitive as far as languages go), and then having to learn English at age 20 or so . . . that would be horrendous. And I've met so many people who whine about the difficulty of Spanish and French and German . . . they make infinitely more sense than English, which is kind of a mish-mash of all of those plus latin and some celtic stuff with spellings randomly changed throughout the years.
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rickinroma
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Yes Robert is right, English language is quite simple until a medium/advanced level... Afterwards, oh my God...the main difficulty of this language for us foreigners, in my opinion, is the incredible amount of idiomatic expressions and phrasal verbs with several different meanings... which might be considered an enrichment of the language, but... how can a foreigner learn all of them being sure that they may have different meaning if you are in australia or in the usa
Ah, the wonders of the English vernacular. Indeed, spectacular...and, yes, very confusing.
I work in a place where over a 100 languages are spoken and have a lot of the people asking me questions as I speak the "English" English as they call it.
True, there are so many different meanings, and all that goes with it, and many feel badly about their ability to learn, until I point out to them, that my Spanish, French and in other cases Thai and Russian is far, far worse than their English!
I work in a place where over a 100 languages are spoken and have a lot of the people asking me questions as I speak the "English" English as they call it.
True, there are so many different meanings, and all that goes with it, and many feel badly about their ability to learn, until I point out to them, that my Spanish, French and in other cases Thai and Russian is far, far worse than their English!
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rickinroma
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bob_the_bass
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British English has the added complication of rhyming slang. Words like "quid" and "loo" come seemingly out of nowhere because they are the rhyming parts of slang expressions.
By pure I mean fixed vowel sounds and spellings. In German, a given vowel always has the same sound so pronouncing new words is not a major task. We even screw with consonants! New English speakers must really wonder about words like "laugh" and "cough".
By pure I mean fixed vowel sounds and spellings. In German, a given vowel always has the same sound so pronouncing new words is not a major task. We even screw with consonants! New English speakers must really wonder about words like "laugh" and "cough".
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rickinroma
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about vowel, well...a friend of mine who's english teacher usually jokes saying that you'd need to have something in your mouth, like a potato, to pronounce english correctly LOL -
thinneckrick
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