English is one of the easiest and hardest languages to learn, at the same time.
It is fairly easy, I mean conjugation alone is a piss (I go, you go, they go... no difference! in other languages even conjugating verbs is dependant on gender apart from the general change of person!).
But at the same time linguists can't get over the difficulty (generally linguists who study the English language), because in terms of pronunciation English is hard as F. There are many poems written on that subject. Some profs even half joke and say English pronunciation is worse than Mandarin.
English, in terms of pronunciation and in other terms as well in fact, is a clusterfck, confusing, follows few rules or patterns and is frankly unpredictable. This is because of the various influences (i.e. languages), which shaped English and made it what it is.
In comparison German, French, Dutch, Italian, Spanish or Slavic languages don't have that many influences and are therefore much more cohesive.
There are e.g. countless ways of pronunciation for "thorough"!!
Native speakers can't even hack when to use "me" and when "I", "too" or "to", "their", "there", "they're" or "your", "you're", and these are the easy challenges.
See this:
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe
Or "weight" and "height".
www.learnenglish.de
It is fairly easy, I mean conjugation alone is a piss (I go, you go, they go... no difference! in other languages even conjugating verbs is dependant on gender apart from the general change of person!).
But at the same time linguists can't get over the difficulty (generally linguists who study the English language), because in terms of pronunciation English is hard as F. There are many poems written on that subject. Some profs even half joke and say English pronunciation is worse than Mandarin.
English, in terms of pronunciation and in other terms as well in fact, is a clusterfck, confusing, follows few rules or patterns and is frankly unpredictable. This is because of the various influences (i.e. languages), which shaped English and made it what it is.
In comparison German, French, Dutch, Italian, Spanish or Slavic languages don't have that many influences and are therefore much more cohesive.
There are e.g. countless ways of pronunciation for "thorough"!!
Native speakers can't even hack when to use "me" and when "I", "too" or "to", "their", "there", "they're" or "your", "you're", and these are the easy challenges.
See this:
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe
Or "weight" and "height".
