Is English an easy language to learn?

[Caliga]

Related question:  How do you pronounce 'São'?  Is it "sano"?

That tripped me up to. It is pronounced like a female pig, sow.

Except you need to go nasal on this one since it's a nasal diphtong.
Valmy has an advantage here,  since he may use his French phonetic knowledge on this one.  Sã=saint/sein in French (NOT sans).

IPA for those interested
[sɐ̃w ˈpawlu]
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Br-SaoPaulo.ogg

Ok, thanks.  I had a TA in college from Cape Verde.  His name was João, and he told us to just call him "Joe" but the one time I remember him saying his name I think it sounded pretty much like "Juan".

[Admiral Yi]

The vowel is nasal, not the consonant.

My French teachers always talked about the nasal n.  N is a consonant.

[Duque de Bragança]

The vowel is nasal, not the consonant.

My French teachers always talked about the nasal n.  N is a consonant.

They probably meant that the -n nasalises the vowel in French.

[Gaijin de Moscu]

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.

Chinese is easy after about 3 years aif intense study. I loved learning it.

[jimmy olsen]

Up to like 10 years ago, Seoul was known in Chinese as the "City of Han".  The Koreans aren't happy about that, because it implies that their capital is a Chinese colony.  So they led a successful PR campaign to get the Chinese to change the name to a neutral translation based on the English pronounciation of "Seoul".  No idea how they did it but they did it.  Now, nobody calls it City of Han anymore.

Yet the Korean effort to rename the Sea of Japan has failed till now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_of_Japan_naming_dispute

East Sea anyone?

Probably because that name only makes sense in relation to the geographic position of Korea.

[Duque de Bragança]

Up to like 10 years ago, Seoul was known in Chinese as the "City of Han".  The Koreans aren't happy about that, because it implies that their capital is a Chinese colony.  So they led a successful PR campaign to get the Chinese to change the name to a neutral translation based on the English pronounciation of "Seoul".  No idea how they did it but they did it.  Now, nobody calls it City of Han anymore.

Yet the Korean effort to rename the Sea of Japan has failed till now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_of_Japan_naming_dispute

East Sea anyone?

Probably because that name only makes sense in relation to the geographic position of Korea.

I'd rather say East is too vague while Japan is much more precise. That and the PC aspect 

[The Minsky Moment]

French is pretty easy to learn.  Very difficult to master but my personal experience (YMMV) is that outside of a few stereotypical Parisian waiter types most regular sort of French blokes are quite patient if you make a sincere effort and the worst thing that happens is you get a smile and a correction of your incorrect gendered noun or adjective or use of subjunctive etc.

The same I think holds for German, at least for native English speakers.  If you want to be truly fluent at a UN interpreter level and read Heidegger yes you need to devote your life to it.  If you want to be able to order kebabs and get train tickets and get the gist of articles in Der Spiegel then the bar is not so high.

My main goal at this point in life is being able to read texts so getting declensions down 100% is not critical.

[Admiral Yi]

My biggest problem with French is the lack of clearly pronounced consonant word endings makes it difficult to tell what people are saying.

[The Minsky Moment]

My biggest problem with French is the lack of clearly pronounced consonant word endings makes it difficult to tell what people are saying.

RFI has a daily 10 minutes podcast in "francais facile" where they try to pronounce more clearly.
good for practicing listening skills.

[Admiral Yi]

RFI has a daily 10 minutes podcast in "francais facile" where they try to pronounce more clearly.
good for practicing listening skills.

Which would be great if every French person spoke like Jaques Chirac.  But they don't.

It's like they're playing a game in which you have to guess the word based on the first two letters.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

RFI has a daily 10 minutes podcast in "francais facile" where they try to pronounce more clearly.
good for practicing listening skills.

Which would be great if every French person spoke like Jaques Chirac.  But they don't.

It's like they're playing a game in which you have to guess the word based on the first two letters.

but what Minsky spoke about can help making what you're talking about easier.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I grew up bilingual with a German parent / American parent ( I think Hans when he used to post here was in the same boat?), anyway I think that knowing German strengthens your English, particularly your grammar. At least relative to monolingual kids speaking English. There are a lot of things with English grammar or word usage that are vague (because the rules have eroded so much and are inconsistently applied), and knowing German gives you sort of the perspective of "ah, this is a general if not well enforced rule because of this", which in turn helps you better understand what's correct and incorrect grammar in English. The converse is not as true, knowing English arguably makes German grammar more difficult.

I think both English and German are similar in that both are easy to learn for someone who speaks another European language, at least to get to "conversational" level. But extremely difficult and nuanced when it comes to being able to understand higher level literature. But I've heard Russian trumps both in that regard (fortunately only evil people learn or know Russian.)

FWIW I feel like I half know Dutch, so that'd be the easiest language for me the learn I think. They say it's one of the closest relatives of both German and English and I find myself picking out a lot from Dutch when I hear it despite literally having never deliberately tried to learn any of it.

Oddly Italian is also a language where I find myself understanding bits and snippets despite having never studied the language. Spanish which I did study at one point, I found far harder. I think it's because the cadence and pronunciation of the typical Spanish speakers results in less clearly pronounced words (to my ears) than the guineas, who often strongly enunciate a lot of words.

[Admiral Yi]

Studying French and Spanish has helped me with my English grammar I feel, for the same reason Biscuit mentioned.

[Razgovory]

I grew up bilingual with a German parent / American parent ( I think Hans when he used to post here was in the same boat?), anyway I think that knowing German strengthens your English, particularly your grammar. At least relative to monolingual kids speaking English. There are a lot of things with English grammar or word usage that are vague (because the rules have eroded so much and are inconsistently applied), and knowing German gives you sort of the perspective of "ah, this is a general if not well enforced rule because of this", which in turn helps you better understand what's correct and incorrect grammar in English. The converse is not as true, knowing English arguably makes German grammar more difficult.

I think both English and German are similar in that both are easy to learn for someone who speaks another European language, at least to get to "conversational" level. But extremely difficult and nuanced when it comes to being able to understand higher level literature. But I've heard Russian trumps both in that regard (fortunately only evil people learn or know Russian.)

FWIW I feel like I half know Dutch, so that'd be the easiest language for me the learn I think. They say it's one of the closest relatives of both German and English and I find myself picking out a lot from Dutch when I hear it despite literally having never deliberately tried to learn any of it.

Oddly Italian is also a language where I find myself understanding bits and snippets despite having never studied the language. Spanish which I did study at one point, I found far harder. I think it's because the cadence and pronunciation of the typical Spanish speakers results in less clearly pronounced words (to my ears) than the guineas, who often strongly enunciate a lot of words.

Well, how the hell are we supposed to spy on the Russians if we don't have people learning it?

[DGuller]

Well, how the hell are we supposed to spy on the Russians if we don't have people learning it?

With NSA.  Russians haven't got a clue about what it can do.