How are you doing in your school?

[thedon5]

I've never been in the position of sitting down in a classroom and learning English. But being a Spanish A-level student, sometimes I just can't help but think how easy it would be to learn English. For one, the subjunctive tense does my nut in, and I'm pretty sure it's more or less non-existent in English.
...Think about conjugating a verb in English:

I - speak
You - speak
He/She/It - speaks
We - speak
You(Pl) - speak
They - speak

And in Spanish it's:

Yo - hablo
t? - hablas
?l/ella/Formal - habla
nosotros - hablamos
vosotros - habl?is
ellos/ellas/Formal pl. - hablan

Which one do you think's easier to learn?

English is the hardest language to learn as a second language, purely because the grammar is completely different (I, me, you, etc as opposed to expressing it in a single word like in Spanish), and also because there are so many words in English, I think it's something like a hundred or a thousand times more than other languages. There are so many synonyms for each word. Plus the words are derived from a number of languages, pretty much every language there is really has a word in English, whereas foreign words are mostly derived from one language.

We are blessed that English is our first language. All you need to do as an English speaker to find foreign languages a breeze is to study Latin.

 

[Parmesh killer]

English is difficult but I consider it better than Hindi and other languages.

 

[Dipak]

Hindi is very difficult to perfect. Almost one third of the sentences I speak are wrong. Never get more than 80 in school in Hindi either. Opted for Sanskrit in ninth.

 

[thedon5]

Take a look at how English is spoken by native English speakers for comparison, like Americans. It's a problem when they themselves can't speak their own language properly.

Hindi isn't too bad. I am not fluent, but I don't see how it is any different to a language like Spanish other than the script.

 

[El Loco]

Take a look at how English is spoken by native English speakers for comparison, like Americans. It's a problem when they themselves can't speak their own language properly.

Hindi isn't too bad. I am not fluent, but I don't see how it is any different to a language like Spanish other than the script.

I disagree. The sentence structure is completely different.
In Hindi I would ask 'Apka naam kya hai?' (If I've typed that correctly) Which translates literally as 'Your name what is'?
Como te llamas? However translates to 'What are you called?'
I figure as a speaker of a Romance language, the first one would take some getting used to, if you've never seen it before.

 

[thedon5]

I disagree. The sentence structure is completely different.
In Hindi I would ask 'Apka naam kya hai?' (If I've typed that correctly) Which translates literally as 'Your name is what'?
Como te llamas? However translates to 'What are you called?'
I figure as a speaker of a Romance language, the first one would take some getting used to, if you've never seen it before.

That's just word order. It varies in each language. Latin has it at the end of sentences too, like Hindi.

It might just be me, but I never had any trouble learning languages. I was one of the best in my school at Spanish and Latin early in high school, and before that I did a bit of French and Japanese and didn't find it difficult. The fact is the grammar is pretty much the same in all those languages, except Latin has it fairly differently for nouns. I imagine I would've had it tough learning English though if it wasn't my first language just due to how different it is to other languages.

 

[Sulaiman7]

Pashtoo is a lot more difficult than any other language to me tbh, try translating any sentence into pashtoo and then copy that sentence and translate it to English via the online dictionary. You'll definitely find it hard and the whole sentence will be changed.

Decided to take English as a 1st language now. Hope I do good. I'll just have to learn some synonyms, right ?

Hindi/Urdu is just too easy for me.

 

[El Loco]

Hindi/Urdu is just too easy for me.

A person who speaks Swahili as their mother tongue would also say exactly the same thing.

 

[thedon5]

Pashtoo is a lot more difficult than any other language to my tbh, try translating any sentence into pashtoo and then copy that sentence and translate it to English via the online dictionary. You'll definitely find it hard and the whole sentence will be changed.

Decided to take English as a 1st language now. Hope I do good. I'll just have to learn some synonyms, right ?

Hindi/Urdu is just too easy for me.

I have no idea what Pashtoo is.

You'll need to learn English grammar properly too. For exams, usually things like contractions (don't instead of do not) aren't allowed. The grammar you see here is in a very casual form.

 

[Sulaiman7]

You'll need to learn English grammar properly too. For exams, usually things like contractions (don't instead of do not) aren't allowed. The grammar you see here is in a very casual form.

You are scaring me man. I thought the contraction were used for writing easily..makes no sense why aren't they allowed. Will listen more from now on.

 

[thedon5]

Contractions aren't a big deal, the only thing that's hard about them is remembering not to use them. Things like commas in the right place are important.

For example, your post in correct English: "You are scaring me, man. I thought that contractions were used for writing easily. It makes no sense that they are not allowed. I will listen better from now on."

 

[IceAgeComing]

English is the hardest language to learn as a second language, purely because the grammar is completely different (I, me, you, etc as opposed to expressing it in a single word like in Spanish), and also because there are so many words in English, I think it's something like a hundred or a thousand times more than other languages. There are so many synonyms for each word. Plus the words are derived from a number of languages, pretty much every language there is really has a word in English, whereas foreign words are mostly derived from one language.

Rubbish. People have done studies into this and generally have come to the conclusion that the hardest language for anyone to learn is Polish; hence why Poles aren't "fluent" in their own language until 15; three years older than native English speakers. English is actually pretty easy to learn the basics of, its when you get to the billions of tenses that exist that it starts to get complicated (then again, most other European languages have cases and they are the worst if you are a native English/French/Spanish etc speakers because they simply don't exist. Lithuanian was bad enough with 7 of the things, some languages have 15+ of them!).

As someone trying to learn some before going to visit my friend in Krakow: I can agree with that. I have good morning (Dzien dobry; not 100% accurate but the character map of the forum doesn't support special characters) down but not a whole lot because its very cryptic to non-Poles...

e: They shouldn't pull you up too much over contractions - I've used don't, shouldn't, won't etc hundreds of times in uni essays and exams and I've never been called out for it...

 

[Sulaiman7]

For example, your post in correct English: "You are scaring me, man. I thought that contractions were used for writing easily. It makes no sense that they are not allowed. I will listen better from now on."

Well, I can be as formal as that. It is all about the formality for me.

e: They shouldn't pull you up too much over contractions - I've used don't, shouldn't, won't etc hundreds of times in uni essays and exams and I've never been called out for it...

Good news for me. They were created for our ease so why should not we use them ? I will try to avoid using them, though.

 

[thedon5]

Rubbish. People have done studies into this and generally have come to the conclusion that the hardest language for anyone to learn is Polish; hence why Poles aren't "fluent" in their own language until 15; three years older than native English speakers. English is actually pretty easy to learn the basics of, its when you get to the billions of tenses that exist that it starts to get complicated (then again, most other European languages have cases and they are the worst if you are a native English/French/Spanish etc speakers because they simply don't exist. Lithuanian was bad enough with 7 of the things, some languages have 15+ of them!).

As someone trying to learn some before going to visit my friend in Krakow: I can agree with that. I have good morning (Dzien dobry; not 100% accurate but the character map of the forum doesn't support special characters) down but not a whole lot because its very cryptic to non-Poles...

e: They shouldn't pull you up too much over contractions - I've used don't, shouldn't, won't etc hundreds of times in uni essays and exams and I've never been called out for it...

Sorry, wrong choice of words. I meant "One of the hardest". In comparison to the likes of other languages which are commonly learnt, like Spanish, French, etc. English is definitely harder.

He's doing Cambridge I believe and they don't like contractions.

 

[Parmesh killer]

Hindi is very difficult to perfect. Almost one third of the sentences I speak are wrong. Never get more than 80 in school in Hindi either. Opted for Sanskrit in ninth.

Sanskrit is useless language. I hate it. Rubbish thrash and boring. It doesn't suits the modern world. Never got more 10/30 in it.