Thread: English.... worst language.... ever!

at my school we have two monopoly games... french and german... we've been playing them recently in italian (go figure) and i can understand about 70-80% of the stuff written on the cards... anyway gtg to school... c yas

[quote=TexasMark]I
"Trotz der Zugest

I take it Scandinavian languages have the thing where you're supposed to mention the expression of time first, or were you just translating directly?

I did the mistake of translating it word by word at first, then rearranging the words. Turned out a little messy...

messed up

the thing is americans have slang its sort of like a dialect. but the thing i dont get is why european and asian languages care so much about formalities and who uses them. i mean for "how are you doing" u have informal male, informal female, formal male, formal female. what is up with that? why dooes it matter that much?

If you are speaking to a female or male and informally ask them how are they doing, the question is the same. But if you are talking to a female you know well, you don't use the formal endings.

Originally Posted by traveler

the thing is americans have slang its sort of like a dialect. but the thing i dont get is why european and asian languages care so much about formalities and who uses them. i mean for "how are you doing" u have informal male, informal female, formal male, formal female. what is up with that? why dooes it matter that much?

I believe that at one time English also had a formal form, which gradually went of use. However, what you're talking about goes beyong pronouns. Although you may use "you" with both of them, I'm sure you speak to adults you don't know differently than to your close friends.

If you are speaking to a female or male and informally ask them how are they doing, the question is the same. But if you are talking to a female you know well, you don't use the formal endings.

Eh? I don't think I've quite deciphered your message, Evgenia. If you are talking to a male you know well, you don't use the formal endings either.

I know, Pravit. But he said this:
i mean for "how are you doing" u have informal male, informal female, formal male, formal female.
For "how are you doing" there is formal and informal, it does not change for gender. This is what I meant to say. Sorry. But for past tense there is formal, male, and female. There is no formal female and formal male.

As for languages...
I think English is pretty easy when it comes to studying it from the very beginning. To start speak bad English is much easier than to start to speak bad Russian. I mean it makes no dificullty to explain "I go, you go, he goes" or "I have, you have, he has" etc. But when you try to explain "Я иду, ты идёшь, он идёт" or "вижу, видишь" or "У меня есть", you inevitably stumbles over all those endings, root alternations and impersonal constructions, so if the student is not familiar with language terms, it almost impossible to say "WHY", it shoud be only remembered then.
On the other hand, to get the real fluency in English is almost as hard as to get fluency in any other language.

I agree 100% with Propp. Starting Russian is much harder than starting English.

The final stages of learning good English involve:

-developing the ability to use the full range of tenses accurately. Most students can do this eventually.

-developing some kind of unconscious internal rule set (with thousands of exceptions) telling you when to use articles and which to use. Non-natives never completely master this except in very special circumstances.

-developing a feel for and mastery of phrasal verbs; perhaps the hardest thing of all.

Of course one must also get to grips with idioms, connotation, collocation, register and perhaps some forms of slang, but that's true in any language.

On the subject of history, well, I'm no historian, but I would have thought that the development of the printing press must have had a big effect on the stabilization of the language. The internet may be having a similar effect on a global scale today

Originally Posted by waxwing

On the subject of history, well, I'm no historian, but I would have thought that the development of the printing press must have had a big effect on the stabilization of the language. The internet may be having a similar effect on a global scale today

Ага. Only English will be left in its "basic" international form.

Yes, it's not an unreasonable prediction. But then again, we must not forget Mandarin Chinese, not just yet anyway

My vote goes to English being the hardest language to learn, period.

...IF being taught to you by a guy from Glasgow.

I think English is the most irregular language in the world. Especially due to its phonetics, pronouciation and spelling. English grammar though is not so difficult, I think.

Only French, I guess, has more difficult phonetics. If you open Russian or German or Latin dictionary you see no transcriptions or so. If you open English dictionary - you do.

So, I believe, learning Russian, German or Latin is easier than English.
When I heared native Italian speech I was able easily separate and understand words, but when I hear native English speech, I dont.

By the way, I think English much more far from other German languages than they are from the each other. So, I guess, It will be another "Anlo-Saxon" language family in the nearest future.

Besides, there are many German words in Russian, for example, солдат, патруль, пароль, патрон, вагон, вокзал, шторм, штиль, штык, штаб, эрзац, матрас, штамп, ранг, горн, флаг, штат и т.д.

French doesn't have more difficult phonetics. You might get put off by all the q's and apostrophes, but the spelling system is entirely regular. And, Nixer, you are a native Russian speaker, so of course you will think Russian is easier to learn.

ОК, May be French is easier, I could agree.

Please Delete and/or Ignore.

Originally Posted by a true arab

As an arab, I think English is easer than Russain in terms of pronunciation, and grammar structure. On the other hand, Russian has more powerful descriptive tools and a solid and more precise grammatical structure in terms of verb conjugation and the grammatical role each word plays(declension, by the way Arabic has the most perfect declension ever). Regarding, my own experience, I have learned English when I was 11 years old own my own I used books, listened to BBC, watched TV because I have an interest in languages and other cultures. as a result, I scored High marks in English courses and I passed the Michigan Test easily. The russian is my new love and actually I have tried to learn it before and I bought a book that dissappointed me because of its preface where the author mentioned the declension obstacle but when I found this forum it gave me a new hope. I do respect english and Russian and I think in learning languages you should have some motives such as strong desire, struggle, and of course love. You should love the language in order to immesre your self in it. On last thing, English and Russian are easy to learn languages( millions of English and russian non- native speakers all over the world do not have Genius Minds,) and they worth doing so. Just begin andd think of the knowledge you will acquire by mastering these languages and the cultures you will be exposed to. By the way, Arabic is a language that when learned will inspire your imagination because it has mathematical grammar and the most beautiful calligraphy, the best phonetic system and thousands of descriptive and distinct words. ( Its my mother tongue !do not blame me)

Do you by any chance attend Cranbrook? Just curious.

Now on the topic. I agree, English is extremely simple to the other languages I am learning, the very conjugations stay the same except in third person singular, while in French, German or Russian thats not the case. That's the only true difficulty I have encountered.


[quote=Dogboy182][quote=TexasMark]This thread is probably already dead. I think we can conclude (1) that some languages are easier than others depending on your first language and target language and (2) no generalizations can be made just because something is in the same language group.

As my final word on the subject, to prove my point in (2) above, rather than give a German quote, how about this one, from another Germanic language:

"F

Yeah, and which language has six cases with tons of exceptions and rules that have to be learned for each preposition? And two forms of the same verb to learn?