Is English easier to pick -up than an foriegn language?

Glitter Stain said:
I think Traditional British English is much harder to learn than American English. There's slang in both, but Traditional English has even more odd rules than American English
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Ok, there are a few spelling differences which were changed when the US tried to make a point of being different. In many cases, the US spelling is more phonetic, although the "UK" (pretty much everyone else uses it...xD) English has evolved over time, retaining spellings from extinct pronunciations. I personally prefer the UK spelling, as it just looks fancier in most cases. EG: "Programme" as opposed to "Program"

And don't try to say "dood english has a bunch of rools" trying to prove it the most difficult language to learn -- I've had to remember a lot more rules for Spanish class. And there's words that mean the same thing in any language. ^_~
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There are rules that may seem wierd in any language, they just vary. English has some strange rules, as does French. You have to remember, the majority of active languages have evolved, retaining strange rules and inexplicable wordings.
What? This post is just ignorant. I'm assuming you're from the UK because most of that is wrong. First of all, we have both jam and jelly. They are two different things. Second of all, Jell-O is a brand name. What you're thinking of is gelatin. Finally, we don't call anything crisps. If you ask for crisps in the McDonald's drive-through, they'd put you through to the mental institution. Those are called french fries, my friend.
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Ok, in Australia:
Jam - A fruit-based spread that usually goes on bread.
Jelly - A flavoured, sugary, wobbly thing.
Chips - Usually describes the dry packaged flakes in bags.
Hot Chips - Deep fried chips, hot and usually in a cup/tray. Good with Tomato Sauce (Ketchup)

As you can see, everyone has variations. Australia has a footwear that carries the same name as a undergarment in other countries.

I think every language has points that make it easier and harder, it would really depend on your persistance with it.
 
Glitter Stain said:
What? This post is just ignorant. I'm assuming you're from the UK because most of that is wrong. First of all, we have both jam and jelly. They are two different things. Second of all, Jell-O is a brand name. What you're thinking of is gelatin. Finally, we don't call anything crisps. If you ask for crisps in the McDonald's drive-through, they'd put you through to the mental institution. Those are called french fries, my friend.
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Well, that's practically the way it compares to Australian English, so he's certainly not all wrong.
 
English is easy. Only to some, though.
Like, lets say a mexican, who has been speaking Spanish all his life,
Immigranted to America, and has to learn English to find a job.

Since English breaks it's rules of speech (I before E except after C: is one) all the times, spelling would become a big issue as well.
It's not hard to learn a language, It's just that would can't memorize 50 words per day.
>>"
 
English is easier to pick up because it's everywhere and borrows so many foreign words and phrases.
Though with the right motivation anyone could learn any language.
I do Chinese at school (no background) and I've noticed that people who speak English are rather reluctant to accept foreign languages. It's rather saddening. People who don't speak English make an effort to learn English but people who speak English are too lazy to learn other languages. That's how I see it.
 
It depends on where you live.
For example your native language is a Germanic one, then it's a lot easier to learn English cause there are many words that are almost the same. But if you live somewhere in Asia like China or Japan I would say that it's hard to learn English even if English is everywhere.

The advantage of English is that there aren't any articles than "the" and "a". For example in German you have "der, die and das" instead of a simple the.

Well, though English is my favorite language I gotta say that I'm kinda happy that it isn't my native language. That way I can speak two languages fluently. I guess it's difficult to learn foreign languages if you're native speaker of English. But that's anyone's guess.
 
A German foreign exchange student came to our school, and he was able to speak English pretty fluently within about the first one or two months, and other languages seem much harder to learn.
 
Tamoto said:
The advantage of English is that there aren't any articles than "the" and "a". For example in German you have "der, die and das" instead of a simple the.
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Der, die, das, den, dem, dein, deinen, deine, ein, einen, eine, ein again, ughhh German was soo difficult when we took it in middle school. Although it was only for a couple months and the actual learning experience of the language was what feels like hundreds of years ago, I still see it as uber hard xD. Though, I'm speaking as a natural born english speaker, so I can't talk.

I believe most people pick english so fast relative to other languages is because of its link to many other languages. If you think about it, many of our words stem from latin, french, and many common languages. It's related to so many other languages that it's just easier to pick up. Also, we don't have the umlouts from German or weird curve things under the letters in French (never payed attention in that class) or other addons that different languages have. Personally, I think it's much easier to take things away in a language than add them. :/
 
It was very easy for me, I learned it when I was about 5 very fluently and my Mothertoungue was Spanish. I take advanced English classes so that explain my superior english ability. And its not like english wil be easi to forgette, as I lern mor Italian,
ai epicly pun at teh at of englicsh, ok? Aim beter than u nau! JAJAJAJA!

Oye, que paso? Se me olvido el Ingles! :(
 
For children who go through an english based class like in the united states; you will have no problem with english but if it's your second or third language it's very very hard to pick up. But English is my first language and Korean is my second :)
 
Wokay... English is THE EASIEST WRITTEN LANGUAGE I'VE EVER LEARNT \o/ : no gender and number agreements with the adjectives, no verb classes, only a few preterit and present perfect exceptions, etc.

But right, it only depends on your mother tongue. If you need to learn the alphabet with it's... lol

Btw the problems are the pronounciation and the oral comprehension (ok native french speaker all have problems with that/I suck ok) 'cause the colloquial english is not a very clearly spoken english ;_;
 
It varies from language to language, really. I just naturally learned English by watching American cartoons so I can't really say how hard it is to learn by actually studying. All I know is that I'm better at English than Swedish despite having learned it a few years later. I've seen a lot of people struggling with all the grammar and pronunciation, not to mention the spelling so I wouldn't really say English is all that easy. From about a year of studying German, I'd say it seems to be a lot easier to pick up than English. Sure there's der, die, das, objective forms and all that to keep track of, but it doesn't really seem much worse than English. I'd hate to have to learn all the rules of the English language in any other way than simply observing and listening.

Still, anyone saying English or French or whatever is hard should try learning Finnish. We have ridiculously many needlessly complicated rules and suffixes and there's just so incredibly much to keep track of. I've spoken Finnish all my life and I've always been good at it and there are still times when I really don't know what's correct and what isn't. Finnish is a very flexible language, but also a very complicated one. Don't we all love words such as:

Kahdennentuhannennen viidennensadannen kuudennenkymmenennenkahdeksannen. (the 2568th's)

I'm not even sure if I spaced that correctly. <.<
 
English is the universal language, and it's the most easiest to learn. I bet you can be fluent in that in 5 weeks than in Japanese.
 
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