Sami Laitala <slaitala /c`e/ freenet.hut.fi> wrote:  English is definitely one of the most difficult languages I've  ever learned. I've been exposed to it for some 30 years, but it's  still one of the hardest to comprehend.   Before anything else, "30 years of exposure" doesn't mean active  conversational use of the language in a native environment, but  rather, passive use, books, TV, movies, records and other media.  *sigh*  I just wonder where to begin...   /c`e/  ARTICLES  I guess articles are confusing to anybody whose native language  doesn't use articles, but the use of English articles seems to be  beyond comprehension. Even if I'd write them correctly I still  feel uncertain all the time.  The Swedish articles cause me much  less discomfort.  A noun may take either definite or indefinite  article, but not necessarily - now what sort or noun is neither  definite not indefinite...?   /c`e/  GENDER  There is the distinction between he/she, but not between it(m) /  it(f) or you(m) / you(f) for example. English-speakers often  insist on importance of the he/she distinction, but I have never  heard anyone complain about not making the distinction with the  first or second person. After all, the first person is always  known and definitely male or female. Nouns do not have grammatical  gender - why should pronouns have? And the neuter gender then?   /c`e/  ILLOGICAL DERIVATION      ear - aural           mouth - oral     chest - pectoral      hand - manual     heart - cardial       sea - naval, maritime     word - dictionary     water - aquatic     book - literal        army - military     walk - pedestrian     ride - equestrian  French, Greek and Latin roots in derived words... why?  I often  have to stop and think of the word, because the word that I'm  looking for has no obvious derivative from the root word as it  would be in Finnish.    /c`e/  PHRASAL VERBS    Spoken language:  Dictionary:     go off            explode, detonate     come across       encounter     look for          search     put up            1.tolerate 2.accomodate     set out           depart, leave  The frequently used expressions are not in the dictionary,  because they're not one word expressions. One has to know some  other word that's given in dictionary, but who's rare in  colloquial language. So one needs a double vocabulary in English,  one for speaking, one for using the dictionary.    /c`e/  IDIOMATIC USE OF WORDS  English has an idiom for virtually everything. Plain indicative  expressions are rare, even such simple statement as "it rains  hard" has to be expressed like "it rains cats and dogs".  Even  in language study books, where an exact translation would be  important to present how the foreign expression has been  constructed, only some common English saying is offered for  translation (which is often something totally different).  The  poor foreign learner keeps flipping through his dictionary and  after translating every word he still can't figure out what the  original sentence says.  One of the worst is my Hebrew books, no  matter what I want to say I can't find it. The purpose seems  often to teach the learner translate the text into English, not  to teach to use the language.   English is supposed to be an "international language", and I  have often heard people say "at least a little English is needed  to..." but in reality it means that fluency of the language and  full mastery of idiomatic language is required if one is going to  make full use of let's say study books for English-speakers. They  are always designed for *natives*.    /c`e/  ONLY FEW DEFINITE GRAMMATICAL RULES  Learning a language without any better rules than "sometimes..."  and "usually..." makes anybody feel uneasy.  OK, there are quite  a few so-called rules, but only few of them are universally valid, and can be applied in any situation. I've been given "rules" every  now and then, but when I've challenged the giver by asking to him  to apply the rules with made-up words that could be English, I  always get replies like: "I don't know what to do with this..."  and I just wonder that if there are rules, then why not apply  them...   /c`e/  AMBIGUOUS MEANINGS   Many English words are ambiguous:     match, ball, lot, act, note, piece, body, set, bill...  When they are offered as a translation out of context how can  anyone know which is the correct meaning?   /c`e/  DICTIONARIES  No idiomatic expressions in dictionaries, I mean those made by  English-speakers. English=Finnish dictionaries made by Finns  usually offer all the most common expressions *both ways*.  # Since I'm a native speaker of English, it's hard for me to # form an intuition on the subject, and it would be good to # know which things are most problematic.  I can't say that any particular grammatical point would difficult,  but rather, the lack of logic and "built-in" structures that could  be used throughout the language.   In general English isn't very systematical:    For example you say:     "I am a Finn.   You turn it into a question by reversing the order:     "Am I a Finn.   Then you say:     "You have a car.   Now, a Finn would spontaneously say:     "Have you a car?   because that would follow the same pattern.    If you say:     "Do you have a car?   Then why don't you say:     "Do I be a Finn?  Trying do find out the meaning/construction/pronunciation by  making comparisons to familiar words/expression is often  misleading.  If you try, it GOES like this:   I go in, you go out, she goes by, he goes off.  How do pronounce it... let's compare...   cater, crater, hater, later... so "water" is pronounced... Then I see that after w, a is pronounced differently...   wall, war, warn, was, wash, watt... wag?  # I don't mean spelling, since that's not a matter of comprehension, # and is clearly a mess in English even for native speakers. :-)  Let's skip that then, besides we have discussed enough of that  already. I'm still doing that outside the list.  # I speculate that metaphors might be one such area, perhaps? And # yet by now you must know a certain percentage of those, too.  Like "it rains cats and dogs"? It means: it rains hard, but if it  rained mice and guinea-pigs, would it be drizzling?  Hippos and  elephants = pouring with rain?  Penguins and polar bears =  hailing?  Trying to sort things like that a dictionary is often useless.  It's common that if there's anything I can't understand, I can't  expect to find any help from a dictionary unless it's some special  dictionary. I have a huge pile of English dictionaries: phrasal  verbs, idiomatic expressions, prepositional idioms, slang,  thesauri etc. etc. but often it's hard to conclude the meaning  of the sentence. After learning the very basic grammar it's no  problem to read Esperanto or Welsh, even to write simple language  just with a little pocket dictionary.   ------------------------  On Fri, 21 Apr 1995, Sami Laitala wrote: > English is merely random gibberish of old Celtic languages,  > Latin, Old norse, Saxon, Norman French, etc. whatever mixed  > in the common peasant's mouths, all words mispronounced,  > it's without any definite grammatic rules, it has no  > orthography in the true sense of the word and even the best  > trained and educated people keep misspelling it all the  > time...  How could anybody seriously suggest such language  > would be easy?  ! From: millert /c`e/ babbage.csee.usf.edu (Timothy Miller)  ! I suppose I should consider myself lucky to be a native ! speaker, n'est-ce pas?  Good for your English. Ungood for other languages, except maybe  some IE. A misfortune to a linguist anyway.  I common joke I tell to English-speakers:  "It's a good thing English has become the language of  international communication... *smile* ...because it's so  horrible to listen to English-speakers trying to speak other  languages."  ! Deutsch ist nicht so einfach. (how would you attach 'either' ! to the end of that, or would you?)  I'd rather try something in German. *grin*  Herr Miller, ich weiß nicht. Ich habe keine ahnung. Ich habe  niemals Deutsch studiert. Ich kenne kein Deutsche Grammatik.   Aber Deutsch ist ähnlich Englische und Schwedische Sprache.  ! Timothy Miller ! millert /c`e/ grad.csee.usf.edu  ------ % From: BobMichael /c`e/ aol.com  % I don't think it's fair to call English gibberish, though.  Sorry, no offence meant. Just my limited vocabulary, "mix" would  have sounded too neutral. I must consult my thesaurus and  dictionaries... How about "hybrid" or "bastard" then?  % It serves us very well for a number of sophisticated  % applications. And we rather like peasants.    ..and I'm terribly sorry for offending the peasants.  "It serves  us well" ...simply because you don't know of any better?  I guess  it serves YOU well, but how about nonnatives?  % You're right about the difficulty, though.   "The difficulty" suggests there's only one, "difficulties" would  be more like it... They keep coming across all the time. Because  logic and derivation are rather useless tools the most helpful  grammatical rule is: "just memorize it".   Luckily I have a good memory.  % Just goes to show that ease of learning has next to nothing % to do with a language's acceptance as a linguistic currency. % Economic and social factors far outweigh any linguist's % notions of logic and simplicity.  Unfortunately... OTOH, it's good that linguists are kept on the  leash.  Just think what would happen if linguists were to decide  what and how we'd be speaking... what a horrible  idea. Brrr!  % Bob Michael  Sami.