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[Napoleonthechimp]

no, actually it's one of the easiest languages to learn

But it has the largest vocabulary of all languages, but that's what happens when people make stuff up.

Irregular English verbs are slowly dying out.

Well, the English language isn't stuck in it's ways unlike some other European languages out there and it does change over time.

 

[Always-honest]

that was great. thanx

 

[Wizpig]

Isn't English like the hardest 2nd language to learn or something?

What?!
No, no, no.
English is the easiest language to learn, i'd say.
Look, my native tongue is Italian and i basically learnt English by playing videogames and surfing on the web.
OBVIOUSLY i studied English at school since i was 8 years old, but 90% of the words i know... i have to thank videogames.

Try to learn German, Japanese, Italian or other languages that way. :lol

 

[capslock]

What?!
No, no, no.
English is the easiest language to learn, i'd say.
Look, my native tongue is Italian and i basically learnt English by playing videogames and surfing on the web.
OBVIOUSLY i studied English at school since i was 8 years old, but 90% of the words i know... i have to thank videogames.

Try to learn German, Japanese, Italian or other languages that way. :lol

I think what the others mean is that because of the arcane and illogical rules, English is a hard language to learn in a formalized manner. Of course you picked up English by playing video games, if you had played only German video games you would be a German expert.

 

[Nolan.]

He looks better than some 60-70 year olds iv'e seen.

 

[MickeyMoose]

Awesome!

 

[skybaby]

but saying "the chair, he is comfortable," will never seem right to me i guess. i don't see a penis on my chair.

What if in your native language chair is fucking feminine? You'd sound like a retard changing the genres of every object around :lol

English is the easiest language to learn, i'd say.
Look, my native tongue is Italian and i basically learnt English by playing videogames and surfing on the web.
OBVIOUSLY i studied English at school since i was 8 years old, but 90% of the words i know... i have to thank videogames.

Try to learn German, Japanese, Italian or other languages that way. :lol

That's exactly my experience. And although I never studied English with much depth, I got my Cambridge ESOL certificate pretty damn easily

 

[May16]

Being an Engish teacher in Japan, I feel the pain of this man's sentiment every single day.
I occasionally have to shrug and just say "Sorry. English is hard," to the students. =/

 

[CassSept]

Meh, english isn't that hard. I think my native language (polish) is way harder to learn as a second language than english. Polish is just so illogical and hard to pronounce that if it weren't my native language i would never ever decide to learn it. Srsly.

 

[nelsonroyale]

very fun...hes looking great

 

[soqquatto]

This man is my IDOL!

Isn't English like the hardest 2nd language to learn or something? My English teacher told me that in college... as my native tongue its easier I suppose, but not even every English speaking country (for native English speakers) uses the same fucking grammar and spelling >.<

it's easy as hell, expecially when compared to suomi [finnish] or magyar [hungarian] (they're related, actually). it's just silly because there are many cases where the written language is at odds with the spoken language, but nothing special.

 

[Panajev2001a]

European Union to the rescue:

http://www.topix.com/world/puerto-r...ll-be-official-language-of-the-european-union

:lol

 

[Lord Error]

What?!
No, no, no.
English is the easiest language to learn, i'd say.
Look, my native tongue is Italian and i basically learnt English by playing videogames and surfing on the web.
OBVIOUSLY i studied English at school since i was 8 years old, but 90% of the words i know... i have to thank videogames.

Try to learn German, Japanese, Italian or other languages that way. :lol

Or Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, etc. There's simply no way. I'm in similar boat btw. When I was a kid, I learned conversational English well enough just by watching subtitled movies, and especially by reading texts in adventure and other games, and linking text to what I was seeing on the screen. I didn't even know it, but things just clicked, and I knew it enough so that I could read and understand what I've read, and even hold simple conversations. Games were more useful for learning to read, movies for pronouncing. Now with internet, exposure to language is even bigger. I had English in school later on of course, but knowledge I already had (and kept being exposed to throughout) made it so much easier.

People watching/playing dubbed movies and games are robbed of this simple learning experience on top of having 'wrong' voice acting to begin with.

I think what the others mean is that because of the arcane and illogical rules, English is a hard language to learn in a formalized manner. Of course you picked up English by playing video games, if you had played only German video games you would be a German expert.

When it comes to Japanese or Chinese, I actually doubt it. I've watched a fair share of subtitled Japanese movies, Kurosawa and whatnot (I actually did it intentionally thinking it would work like with English) but I could never figure anything out.

 

[genjiZERO]

I'm not hating on the old man - his bit is pretty good, but people criticising English for it's irregular spelling is ridiculous. For one thing there aren't any purely phonetic spelling systems out there. The two languages that get cited the most, Italian and Japanese, have plenty of irregularity when it comes to phonetic spelling versus actual phonology. The other thing people need to realise is that phonology in English has shifted dramatically over the centuries, and that many spellings that seem irregular are remnants of this. Finally, there aren't enough letters in the English alphabet to represent all phonetics so a purely phonetic spelling systme would be impossible. He wants to spell dumb "dum"? Then how are we supposed to spell 'doom'?

 

[Dali]

I'm not hating on the old man - his bit is pretty good, but people criticising English for it's irregular spelling is ridiculous. For one thing there aren't any purely phonetic spelling systems out there. The two languages that get cited the most, Italian and Japanese, have plenty of irregularity when it comes to phonetic spelling versus actual phonology. The other thing people need to realise is that phonology in English has shifted dramatically over the centuries, and that many spellings that seem irregular are remnants of this. Finally, there aren't enough letters in the English alphabet to represent all phonetics so a purely phonetic spelling systme would be impossible. He wants to spell dumb "dum"? Then how are we supposed to spell 'doom'?

Why would his suggested spelling of dumb be confused with doom?

 

[Jacobi]

This man is my IDOL!

Isn't English like the hardest 2nd language to learn or something? My English teacher told me that in college... as my native tongue its easier I suppose, but not even every English speaking country (for native English speakers) uses the same fucking grammar and spelling >.<

I'd say it's the easiest language to learn

 

[genjiZERO]

Why would his suggested spelling of dumb be confused with doom?

because spelling doom 'doom' is non-phonetic. The combination of -oo- is not a diphthong. There is no rule of phonology that implies that it should be pronounced like a non yod-coalesced U. If you were being strictly phonetic doom would have to be spelt 'dum'. My point is that English doesn't possess enough characters to even represent all of its sounds so a phonetic spellign system would be impossible.

 

[-PXG-]

:lol...

Cum...

:lol

 

[Lord Error]

I'm not hating on the old man - his bit is pretty good, but people criticising English for it's irregular spelling is ridiculous. For one thing there aren't any purely phonetic spelling systems out there.

Several Slavic languages are pretty much fully phonetic. Ukrainian, Croatian and Serbian for example. I can attest to that. Sure, they have grammatical complexities out of wazoo, but on a phonetic level, once you learn how to pronounce each individual character from the alphabet, you can use that same pronunciation in every spoken (or written) word and you'll always pronounce it correctly enough for everyone to understand you. Sure, your accent will be terrible as there are many accenting guidelines, but it will be more than enough to always be fully understood.

 

[Bregor]

Every language has it's idiosyncrasies. For English it is spelling / pronunciation, largely due to its dual french / germanic roots. In some ways however, it is far simpler than other languages out there.

 

[Dali]

because spelling doom 'doom' is non-phonetic. The combination of -oo- is not a diphthong. There is no rule of phonology that implies that it should be pronounced like a non yod-coalesced U. If you were being strictly phonetic doom would have to be spelt 'dum'. My point is that English doesn't possess enough characters to even represent all of its sounds so a phonetic spellign system would be impossible.

Ah okay. I was taking what you said into the context of what the old man was saying, that's why you lost me. He wasn't talking about phonetics he was simply saying why aren't these words spelled like these words that sound the same way. So if doom were spelled dum he'd say that's stupid because soon, boom, room, etc. doesn't follow the same spelling scheme.

 

[I_D]

English has irregular verbs, too. A lot of them.

Fix = Fixed.
Hate = Hated.
Love = Loved.
Buy = Buyed. ... Oh wait, it's bought. Why the fuck isn't it buyed? Language can be stupid everywhere. But, I like the home team language the best. Go English.

Also, I think early English had gender rules. Modern obviously doesn't.

"Buy" I get, but what part of the first 3 makes them irregular?

If anything....

Go -> Went (rather than 'goed')
Sing -> Sang (rather than 'singed')
Swim -> Swam (rather than 'swimmed')
Run -> Ran (rather than 'runned')
Be -> Was

Those are DEFINITELY irregular.

As for "Hate" turning into "Hated," that makes perfect sense, and isn't irregular (as well as the others).


As for early gender rules..... I have no idea. I've never bothered to look into it.

 

[Roughmar]

Isn't English like the hardest 2nd language to learn or something? My English teacher told me that in college... as my native tongue its easier I suppose, but not even every English speaking country (for native English speakers) uses the same fucking grammar and spelling >.<

You sir, have absolutely no idea as how easy English is to learn.

There are tons of other languages\dialects that are way more difficult, be it in speech, grammar, syntax, etc.

Mandarin, Japanese, Korean come to mind. Arabic. Finnish for Christ's sake!

 

[Fio]

I never understood why this was done and it was never explained to me. Why do some languages do this?

The real question is: why some don't? It's a very elegant solution. It blows my mind the fact that you have to say "female friend" or "male friend" to talk about friends of different genders, while, for example, in portuguese (my native language) you say "amigo" (male) or "amiga" female. The same goes to almost all adjectives and nouns.

 

[mollipen]

As a native English speaker, this is one thing I've come to appreciate about Japanese: if I can say a word, I can spell it.

...well, so long as I'm using kana. Ask me to write the kanji, and the benefit to Japanese goes flying out the window.

 

[vas_a_morir]

"Buy" I get, but what part of the first 3 makes them irregular?

First 3 are not irregular. They are to show how Buy is irregular. They provide context, I guess.

Right, Shidoshi. Kanji pretty much fucks your whole word when it comes to "spelling" but, eventually, you reach an impasse where you understand the language and the first time you see a word that you've never encountered before, like &#20013;&#32118; for abortion, and can guess the right pronunciation, you feel like a GOD. Chuuzetsu, btw.

 

[Dali]

The real question is: why some don't? It's a very elegant solution. It blows my mind the fact that you have to say "female friend" or "male friend" to talk about friends of different genders, while, for example, in portuguese (my native language) you say "amigo" (male) or "amiga" female. The same goes to almost all adjectives and nouns.

That blows your mind? If it makes you feel any better (and makes your universe stop collapsing upon itself) I don't think explicitly saying it like that is the norm. It'd be more like:

"So a friend and I were at the store. She's a real loony toon and starts just stealing shit left and right. I mean this chick was pocketing everything she could lay her hands on. True story."

On top of that how could cinematic hilarity ensue if punchlines based on unisex names, like Ashley or Tracey, had to contend with masculine and feminine articles, adjectives, or nouns.

 

[Deleted member 1235]

I'd say it's the easiest language to learn

I'd say it's also due to popularity. I'm learning dutch and while I find it tricky, the most obvious reason that its tricky is that every single fucking dutch person speaks very very good english and will switch at the drop of a hat.

In 3 years the times I've actually needed dutch in a social situation I can probably count on my... dick.
However, if I had every dutch person looking at me like a freak and speaking super loud dutch in my ear everytime I tried to speak english, I would probably claim dutch isn't that hard.

I imagine the same goes for a lot of languages. Immersion is the key and it's simply something you can't get a lot of the time.

 

[genjiZERO]

"Buy" I get, but what part of the first 3 makes them irregular?

If anything....


Those are DEFINITELY irregular.

As for "Hate" turning into "Hated," that makes perfect sense, and isn't irregular (as well as the others).


As for early gender rules..... I have no idea. I've never bothered to look into it.

irregular verbs exist in all Indo-European languages...

lot of the irregularity in English has to do with the origin of the word. Words of Anglo-Saxon origin will be conjugated differently than those of Latin origin.

 

[AmMortal]

English is easy but not for someone that is barely exposed to it. If it wasn't for tv/movies/games my english would have been significantly worse.

 

[Masked Man]

I really wish John McCain would stick to the issues instead of running these negative attack ads.

Oh, my gosh. :lol :lol :lol

 

[Baconbitz]

That guy's Awsum.

Fixed.

 

[Fio]

That blows your mind? If it makes you feel any better (and makes your universe stop collapsing upon itself) I don't think explicitly saying it like that is the norm. It'd be more like:

"So a friend and I were at the store. She's a real loony toon and starts just stealing shit left and right. I mean this chick was pocketing everything she could lay her hands on. True story."

I know it's not the norm. But, using your example, what if you just wanted to say that you where at the store, no more details? That's why I think that slightly changing some words to indicate its gender is an elegant solution.

On top of that how could cinematic hilarity ensue if punchlines based on unisex names like, Ashley or Tracey, had to contend with masculine and feminine articles, adjectives, or nouns.

There are a lot of jokes that couldn't be possible if there weren't gender differentiation in some languages.

 

[Baconbitz]

I really wish John McCain would stick to the issues instead of running these negative attack ads.

Are you saying Barack Obama can't spell?

 

[evilromero]

Wut? Awesome!

 

[Dali]

I know it's not the norm. But, using your example, what if you just wanted to say that you where at the store, no more details? That's why I think that slightly changing some words to indicate its gender is an elegant solution.

Okay you got me. That's English though. I don't question why so many other languages have a need to assign a gender to inanimate objects. I just accept it as the way that language evolved.

I mean it's not a new programming language. People don't just get together and make drastic changes for the sake of elegance or precision to something that has evolved over hundreds of years... well maybe some eastern languages do this.. but generally it isn't done.

 

[genjiZERO]

I know it's not the norm. But, using your example, what if you just wanted to say that you where at the store, no more details? That's why I think that slightly changing some words to indicate its gender is an elegant solution.



There are a lot of jokes that couldn't be possible if there weren't gender differentiation in some languages.

the problem with gender in language is that for most words there's no real reason to associate it with a gender. Amico/amica may make sense and be efficient, but there's no logical reason for 'the house' (la casa) to be feminine.

 

[genjiZERO]

You're shopping at the wrong places then, let me tell you.

Does the T on this char stand for Turrisi? Have you been to Turrisi bar in Castelmola Sicily?

http://www.turrisibar.it/

 

[Ogni-XR21]

Even though there are no set rules on English writing I found it much easier to learn than French* where everything is written according to the rules. I guess the biggest difference is the age you start learning a language and how common it is. You practically can't cross the street in Germany without coming across some English words.


*I actually did not learn French, I hate that language and I gave up within months. There was like no incentive to learn this language since I only watch movies from the US and the whole internet only exists in English for me. I don't even visit German websites (well there are 2 sites, but that's it).

 

[Kilrogg]

Also, I think early English had gender rules. Modern obviously doesn't.

Well, at least it has in poetry. A boat, for instance, is a she.

English can't be the 2nd hardest language to learn, nor can any other language be. Why? Because the difficulty depends a lot on what your mother tongue is.

Also, since different languages can have different linguistic mechanics and structures, your brain is more likely to have a harder time with some structures than with others. Again, your mother tongue factors in.

I can tell you that Japanese is easy because there aren't many rules of pronounciation, there's no accent (well, apart from intonation and some homophonous words), no plural, no gender and no determiner, but that would be wrong, because for me, it's hard as hell. Why? Different structures, nuances in some words that can't be perfectly translated, tenses that don't work as in French, and, overall, it's completely different, because it's from another region. I could go on, but you get the point. Pronounciation would be even harder for an English speaker, because English has accents, which are hard to get rid of when you learn Japanese (just as accents are hard to get when you're French).

The thing that boggles my mind the most in English is the proper nouns, like cities and stuff. Why do you pronounce "Gloucester" "Gloster" ? Why can "Greenwich" be pronounced "gren-idge", "gren-itch" or "grin-idge", but not "green-witch"? Funny stuff. Not to say I don't like it or that it's dumb. In fact, exceptions might be the funniest things when you learn languages .

 

[farnham]

shit that guy just owned my world

props man !! 103 years well spent

 

[Tashi]

the spoken english might be easy to pick up but english grammar is tough. Too many exceptions to its own rules.

 

[Weapxn]

edit: fuck, beaten!

Just because he can spell it doesn't mean he can do it.

 

[cyclonekruse]

First off, to everyone saying English is hard/easy to learn, the difficulty of learning a second language in very much influenced by one's first language. For example, a German speaker would find it much easier to learn English (since the two languages are related) than, say, a Korean speaker.

Now, onto other things:

English has irregular verbs, too. A lot of them.

Fix = Fixed.
Hate = Hated.
Love = Loved.
Buy = Buyed. ... Oh wait, it's bought. Why the fuck isn't it buyed? Language can be stupid everywhere. But, I like the home team language the best. Go English.

You know what's crazier? The phonetic rule to add past tense is different for all of your examples. "Fixed" ends in a 't' sound, "hated" adds in a schwa before the 'd' sound, and 'loved' just adds the 'd.' It's tempting to assume that these differences can be considered irregularities but there are actually very regular rules here. When a word ends in an unvoiced sound, the past-tense marker is unvoiced (/t/). When the word ends in a voiced sound, the past-tense marker is voiced (/d/). And, when the word ends in a /t/ or /d/, insert a schwa before the past-tense marker (which is always /d/).

Also, I think early English had gender rules. Modern obviously doesn't.

Sure it does. But only on pronouns and a few words that are dying out. Host/hostess comes to mind. Then there's actor/actress, waiter/waitress, etc.

I remember taking French and everyone complaining about how many irregular verbs there are... until our teacher pointed out how English has far more of them.

Go -> Went (rather than 'goed')
Sing -> Sang (rather than 'singed')
Swim -> Swam (rather than 'swimmed')
Run -> Ran (rather than 'runned')
Be -> Was

They're a pain to learn in any language, but when you think about it English has a ton of them, and it does it with fundamental verbs like 'go' and 'be'.

That's the way it is in most languages. The most commonly used verbs (e.g. to be, to have, to go) tend to be irregular.

Læstli, &#1072;&#618; da&#650;t ju g&#1072;&#618;z w&#650;d laik I&#331;gl&#618;&#643; tu ækt&#643;j&#601;li bi sp&#603;ld sup&#601;r-f&#601;n&#603;t&#601;kli.

Spoiler

Lastly, I doubt you guys would like English to actually be spelled super-phonetically.

 

[Gaborn]

Læstli, &#1072;&#618; da&#650;t ju g&#1072;&#618;z w&#650;d laik I&#331;gl&#618;&#643; tu ækt&#643;j&#601;li bi sp&#603;ld sup&#601;r-f&#601;n&#603;t&#601;kli.

Spoiler

Lastly, I doubt you guys would like English to actually be spelled super-phonetically.

I don't konw, Egnislh can srvuvie a lot of mpaniloatiun.

 

[disappeared]

English is difficult only because we keep adding, subtracting, and changing the way we pronounce, spell, and dictate words. Nevermind that the internet has brought on all sorts of different quirks to the way we carry out conversations or write letters or email.

 

[cyclonekruse]

I don't konw, Egnislh can srvuvie a lot of mpaniloatiun.

True, but spelling things phonetically would cause different problems to arise. Take plurals, for instance. The rule of adding an 's' to form a plural works out pretty well in our current system of writing. The exception is for words that end in sibilants which causes a schwa (written as an 'e' if one is not there) to get added before the 's.' Still, it looks good visually:

cat > cats
dog > dogs
horse > horses

However, spelling it phonetically would result in something like:

kæt > kæts
d&#593;g > d&#593;gz
h&#596;rs > h&#596;rs&#601;z

Instead of the pattern of adding an 's' or sometimes 'es' to form a plural orthographically, the pattern becomes add an 's', 'z', or sometimes '&#601;z.' In this case, spelling becomes more difficult precisely because the words are spelled phonetically.

 

[Gaborn]

True, but spelling things phonetically would cause different problems to arise. Take plurals, for instance. The rule of adding an 's' to form a plural works out pretty well in our current system of writing. The exception is for words that end in sibilants which causes a schwa (written as an 'e' if one is not there) to get added before the 's.' Still, it looks good visually:

cat > cats
dog > dogs
horse > horses

However, spelling it phonetically would result in something like:

kæt > kæts
d&#593;g > d&#593;gz
h&#596;rs > h&#596;rs&#601;z

Instead of the pattern of adding an 's' or sometimes 'es' to form a plural orthographically, the pattern becomes add an 's', 'z', or sometimes '&#601;z.' In this case, spelling becomes more difficult precisely because the words are spelled phonetically.

The fcat taht yuor rposesee was so srueois cnoeusfs me as to wehtehr you saw waht I did.

 

[cyclonekruse]

The fcat taht yuor rposesee was so sreois cnoeusfs me as to wehtehr you saw waht I did.

You're doing the trick of scrambling the letters (except the first and last) to show that English is readable even if manipulated. You can apparently even leave letters out as in your 'sreois'.

Edit: Well, it was that way before you fixed it.

 

[Gaborn]

You're doing the trick of scrambling the letters (except the first and last) to show that English is readable even if manipulated. You can apparently even leave letters out as in your 'sreois'.

heh, yep (which was I typo I saw after the fact)