The challenges of learning English

Mizmo

Mizmo

Well-known Member
Location
Ontario Canada
some described here...


An Ode of English Plurals

We’ll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes.
One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice,
Yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.

If the plural of man is always called men,
Why shouldn’t the plural of pan be called pen?
If I speak of my foot and show you my feet,
And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth?

Then one may be that, and three would be those,
Yet hat in the plural would never be hose,
And the plural of cat is cats, not cose.
We speak of a brother and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren.
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine: she, shis and shim!

Let’s face it, English is a crazy language.
There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger;
Neither apple nor pine in pineapple.
English muffins weren’t invented in England.
We take English for granted, but if we explore its paradoxes,
We find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square,
And a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing,
Grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham?
Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend.
If you have a bunch of odds and ends and
Get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught?
If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?
We ship by truck but send cargo by ship.
We have noses that run and feet that smell.
We park in a driveway and drive in a parkway.
And how can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same,
While a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language
In which your house can burn up as it burns down,
In which you fill in a form by filling it out, and
In which an alarm goes off by going on.
And in closing, if Father is Pop, how come Mother’s not Mop?















 

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I'm a one language speaking loser. I have heard English is not an easy language to learn. Of course, I can't know since it's the only one I speak.

What rattles my brain is languages like Spanish, where there are male and female words for things. I can't wrap my head around that. Much like knitting charts. I can only knit from words, the charts spin my brain.
 

Remy said:
What rattles my brain is languages like Spanish, where there are male and female words for things. I can't wrap my head around that.
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I've been doing Duolingo to learn Spanish for months now, and I'm starting to get used to the masculine/feminine nonsense, but I just cannot get the hang of the doohickies on top of some of the letters. On the other hand, supposedly in Spanish the vowels always have the same sound, not like in English where the same vowel can have different sounds.

Oh how I wish American education had taught us foreign languages when we were at a young enough age that we could learn them easily.
 
I don't know where anyone else went to school but in my town,
languages such as French, Spanish, German and Latin, were elective
courses beginning in Junior High School. Nowadays there also are
immersive schools where children are taught in other languages.

English as spoken in the USA uses words from many languages as
well as words spoken by indigenous peoples, Greek and Latin too.
It's spelling and pronunciation that amazes me. To, two and too.
Read, read and red. Their, there and they're. The list goes on and on.
 
Going from one region of the UK to another can sometimes be like going to another country. There are so many different accents or dialects, each with their own slang words, so difficult to understand sometimes , but I love them all.

School Of British Accents – GEORDIE​


The Birmingham Accent Explained.​


Liverpool Locals Teaching Scouse​

 
Alligatorob said:
What does that mean?
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When a word in another language seems similar, but actually means something different.

For example, in Spanish, "embarasada" doesn't mean embarrassed; it means pregnant. And, speaking of actually, "actual" doesn't mean true; it means current/contemporary.

In French, "blessé" means injured, not blessed. And so on.
 
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NorthernLight said:
When a word in another language seems similar, but actually means something different.

For example, in Spanish, "embarasada" doesn't mean embarrassed; it means pregnant. And, speaking of actually, "actual" doesn't mean true: it means current/contemporary.

In French, "blessé" means injured, not blessed. And so on.
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Thanks, that is interesting. I learned something new. And not knowing I might have say soy embarazado but now I know better!

And an abogado is not an avocado.
 
Farrah Nuff said:
I don't know where anyone else went to school but in my town,
languages such as French, Spanish, German and Latin, were elective
courses beginning in Junior High School.
Click to expand...
Yes, Junior High was when my school started, though my daughter's school didn't have foreign languages until they got to High School.

But Junior High is after puberty and is too late for it to be easy and natural.

Here are some quotes about it:

"The study, published in the journal Cognition, found that it’s “nearly impossible” for language learners to reach native-level fluency if they start learning a second tongue after age 10 — though that doesn’t seem to be because language skills go downhill at this age. “It turns out you’re still learning fast,” says study co-author Joshua Hartshorne, an assistant professor of psychology at Boston College. “It’s just that you run out of time, because your ability to learn starts dropping at around 17 or 18 years old.” Those who start a few years after age 10 may still become quite good at a language, the paper notes, but are unlikely to reach total fluency."

"...However, according to an earlier study, the window of time when language learning comes naturally may begin to close as early as 5-7 years of age.

Meanwhile, a 2017 study found that Spanish-speaking babies age seven months to 3 years were able to learn English in addition to Spanish with as little as one hour a day of play-based instruction."

"Bak, who has conducted research on language and aging, tells Business Insider, "the thing which is most difficult to learn as we age is ... sounds." So while you may become more proficient in speaking and communicating in a second language other than your native language, if it's learned after puberty you won't ever speak with a local accent."

"The time when a youngster's brain is most open to learning the sounds of a native tongue begins at six months for vowels and at nine months for consonants. It appears that the sensitive period lasts for only a few months but is extended for children exposed to sounds of a second language. A child can still pick up a second language with a fair degree of fluency until age seven."
 
English is my second language. It's much easier to learn than Chinese. After the first semester, the professor divided the class into two groups. He welcomed the smaller group for the next semester, but he discouraged my group from trying it again. Japanese is easier, but you still have to learn about 6,000 characters in order to read a newspaper. I prefer English. The only problem I had was that it's so idiomatic. I still remember comments on my college papers like, "it's clear what you mean, but that's not how you say it." LOL
 
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You're right, English has more idioms than you could shake a big stick at. I often thought that you could tell if someone spoke English as a second language because their English was too precise. Idioms are also regional and I remember when I first moved here being asked "Where are you out of". Apparently this meant "where do you live?".
 

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