Is English an easy language to learn?

[DontSayBanana]

How do you communicate that something happened in the past or will happen in the future without tenses?

Apparently, it functions similarly to the subject/object mechanism in Japanese- it's explicitly stated at one point, then implied in subsequent sentences until changed, when it's explicitly stated again.

[Martinus]

It doesn't help that grammatical gender can be very arbitrary. In German, sun is f. and moon is m. In French it's vice versa. In German, tree is m., but most specific trees (oak, ash etc.) are f.

Not to mention that the gender can be different over time, and there's currently differences between Germany and Austria, e.g. Cola is f. in Germany, but n. in Austria, or Schranke (the bar you'd find at e.g. a level crossing) is f. in Germany and m. in Austria.

Oh, and rivers can be either - Rhine is m., Elbe is f.

Same in Polish. Vistula is f., but Bug is m.

[KRonn]

English is easier to learn than other languages. Grammar is relatively straightforward and easy enough to get sufficiently proficient to carry simple conversations, but it can get harder if you want to write grammatically correct, with how adverbs work, which tense to use when etc.

Pronunciation is tricky, because how a word is spelled isn't always a clear indication of how it's spoken (think "oo" in blood, food, foot, moot, or ough in though and cough, or word vs. sword). If you're used to a letter (or short group of letters) almost always being pronounced the same way (as is the case in German) then this can be all kinds of confusing.

That said, it's the easiest language to immerse yourself in, even if you're not living in an English language country. Internet, movies, TV shows, games are readily available if you have access to the internet, and it has become the lingua franca of the 21st century. And exposure to a language makes it easier to learn.

Yeah, the odd and inconsistent pronunciation must be difficult to learn. There are many examples of that. What I find difficult and odd about other languages I've studied (French, German, Spanish) is the masculine, feminine, neuter stuff.

[Admiral Yi]

I've always thought that the American "r" (as distinct from the English r) is not a very easy sound to pronounce for someone not born to it.

Thoughts?

[Valmy]

In French it is usually masculine. You can tell when it is feminine when the last consonant is pronounced because it has that silent -e thing.  Like Jean vs. Jeanne or Loire vs. Rhin for rivers.

Of course there are exceptions but I didn't find it hard. But man will people get confused when you get it wrong.

[Eddie Teach]

I've always thought that the American "r" (as distinct from the English r) is not a very easy sound to pronounce for someone not born to it.

Thoughts?

The Spanish "rr" is worse.

[Jacob]

English is relatively easy to learn due to the reach of English speaking culture. If you're regularly exposed to attractive entertainment products in a language, it makes it easier to learn it.

From my perspective, with Danish as a mother tongue, English was relatively easy due to similarities of the two languages, as well as early and continued exposure. The "th" sound is tricky for Danes, and I find I occasionally still mess up was/were when I'm not paying attention. Another significant challenge with English is the fact that things frequently aren't pronounced the way they're spelled.

Danish is roughly the same as English, but with a few more wacky sounds (depending on where you're coming from).

Chinese is relatively easy in terms of grammatical structure, but the pronunciation is challenging (with the tones in particular) and the characters are pretty daunting.

Japanese is relatively easy in terms of pronunciation; generally if you pronounce something like it's spelled you won't be far off. Of course, the kanji is challenging, and the grammatical structures are unintuitive coming from Germannic.

Spanish isn't too bad in my limited experience. The conjugations are kind of a pain, but the pronunciation seemed fairly consistent with the spelling.

I don't think there's anything particularly easy or logical about English.

[alfred russel]

I don't know. I think simplicity of language helps too in international trade and exchange of ideas. Plus, anyone who has ever tried to translate an English game/computer programme into another language will tell you how much more complex the language interface needs to be for that (and often, early English games/programmes were too simple for that).

So, in other words, a programmer wanting to write a working German or French language interface must dedicate a lot more resources than one doing it in English.

I can't really speak to the relative ease of English, but if it is relatively easy it may be due to the fact that the simplified global english that is prevalent internationally has already been simplified through that cycle many times. American english in particular is the result of a synthesis of italian, german, spanish, and many other language speakers mixing with english speakers. British english before that was the language of the british empire, and even in britain there were a number of diverse languages present.

[Agelastus]

Chinese doesn't even use alphabets.  There are no tenses, no concept of singular or plural.  Lots of English pronounciations, like "th", "v", and "r", are not found in Cantonese at all.  There are around 3,000 common Chinese characters.  I think there are far more common English words than that.

Probably depends on how you define common.

When you look at international usage of English as a lingua franca, you'll probably find a huge variety. For tourism in many countries, people will only speak very basic English with a very small vocabulary. And there are observations among EU diplomats that while everybody understands the English of everybody just fine, the British seem to speak a different language that is not understood by everybody...

I've used some of those phrases in that exact fashion in meetings; hopefully they were correctly interpreted by my (majority British) colleagues.

[viper37]

When I was in school, our teachers told us that English was a very difficult language to learn.  I didn't quite buy that, I mean I get by with it.  Hell I picked it up fairly early.  Now that I'm older I look at other languages and it doesn't have things like grammatical gender, or bizarre cases like "instrumental".  It's not tonal and has an alphabet which seems to make it easier then say, Chinese.    Spelling and syntax can be a bit of a chore, but "good enough" acceptable in most settings.  Now I know a lot of your learned English in school, so this is more directed at you guys.  Was it difficult?

I thought it was easy. Until College (pre-university), when the teacher started removing points for bad grammar.  Now, it was suddenly difficult.  But I learned a lot.

Otherwise, no, it's not difficult to learn the language and speak it decently enough so you can be understood.  But I live in a small nation drowned in a sea of anglo-speakers, and I've watched english television since we had cable in my teenage years and mostly english tv shows since university.  And I have family outside of Quebec that we visited regularly when I was younger, it helped a lot.  And I had pretty good english teachers at the private school I attended for my 3 first years of high school.

Currently only particular accents give me trouble.  Afro-american slang is extremely difficult to understand, some British localized accents, some New Zealanders or Australian actors, when they don't use an american or international accent give me trouble too.  And non native english speakers, like Indians or Pakistanis, that too is problematic to me.

So, no, not too terribly difficult.  But you have to consider that I had a lot of exposure to the language.  For those not as fortunate, it can be difficult.  By comparison, Spanish is reputed to be fairly easy for a French speaker, but since I never travelled in a spanish speaking country and don't fancy much about latin american socialism & general Che-loving culture, my only spanish class was a very moderate success.  I can understand that people not exposed to the english language&culture come to see it as difficult.

Also, I had a teacher that taught us that when no one is looking, the French secretly speak German rather then their ridiculous difficult language and that the French language is actually a way to trip up foreigners.  I don't know if that's true either.

It's a very good technique at counter-spying.  The Vietnamese army used it during Vietnam war, they spoke in French instead of their native language, that way, Americans could not understand their battle plans and that's why they lost the war.  Or so they say.

[Josquius]

it has the advantage of being hard to avoid if you want to be an educated person in most of the world.

[viper37]

So... what's an easy/easier language to learn?  Any thoughts?  I dabbled with Spanish in High School and Dutch in College.

the one you'll get the more exposure to.  If you live in China or travel there frequently, it won't be so hard to pick up, I guess.
If you try alone to learn Chinese while never having the opportunity to hear it and speak it, you'll likely fail.

[viper37]

Yeah. English is very logical. You can almost see why the world's greatest scientific and computer achievements of the last century were developed by people who speak English.

it probably has more to do with the wealth of the British Empire, developped over centuries, and the development of the United States as a world power with the two world wars.
Given the number of english speakers in 1st world countries vs other languages, it kinda comes naturally that they'll have more great scientists in absolute numbers.  They also have more actors than other non english nations, probably more poets and singers too.

[celedhring]

I have been wondering with this myself. I want to learn another language, and initially I went with German since I like their literature a lot, etc... until I realized I'm not likely to ever use German in any practical situation. So all the effort felt a bit like a waste.

Problem is that I can't think of any language that I'm likely to "need" or get exposed to besides the ones I already know (Spanish, Catalan, English); unless I order a Russian bride.

[Admiral Yi]

I have been wondering with this myself. I want to learn another language, and initially I went with German since I like their literature a lot, etc... until I realized I'm not likely to ever use German in any practical situation. So all the effort felt a bit like a waste.

Problem is that I can't think of any language that I'm likely to "need" or get exposed to besides the ones I already know (Spanish, Catalan, English); unless I order a Russian bride.

If you learn Arabic it will give you an advantage in the coming Caliphate.