Reasons why the English language is so hard to learn:

[T.H. Oughts]

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce produce.

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture.

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.

8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

13) They were too close to the door to close it.

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

18) After a number of injections, my jaw got number.

19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting, I shed a tear.

20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Can you think of any more??????

 

[T.H. Oughts]

Come'on people, you are breaking my heart here.... page two with only 9 views!!!!!!

 

[christophe]

my head is pounding thinking of a repsonse.......arghhhhhhhhhhhhh

 

[T.H. Oughts]

my head is pounding thinking of a repsonse.......arghhhhhhhhhhhhh

A pound is not the same amount in currency as a pounding on Christophe's head....

Don't worry sweetie I would never hit ya.

 

[CarolineOh]

I have an employee who is a recent immigrant from Albania and is working very hard on his English. He asks me a question about the absurdity of it almost every day.
Today it was through/ threw. The other day he wanted me to explain the difference between moist and damp.
Honestly, anyone not born to English who can learn it has my greatest respect for the achievement.

 

[LukkyKnight]

Although I read through the list thoughtfully, T.H., I don't think you have enough variety in your examples to convince anybody that this is a tricky language. There's a rule for everything.

For instance:

Rule number Eight:

I before E except after C or when sounded like "A" (that's "eh" if you're in Canada) as in neighbor or weigh, or except as in neither which isn't that way either.

What could POSSIBLY be clearer or more systematic?

 

[T.H. Oughts]

I before E except after C or when sounded like "A" (that's "eh" if you're in Canada) as in neighbor or weigh, or except as in neither which isn't that way either.

Ahhhh now you are trying to confuse me


CarolineOh my husband said to tell your firend that hopefully moist is when a woman is around, lol

 

[LukkyKnight]

Moist is the woman, damp is her lingerie.

 

[CarolineOh]

Ahhhh now you are trying to confuse me


CarolineOh my husband said to tell your firend that hopefully moist is when a woman is around, lol

I can't say that to an employee! LOL (not that something like that didn't occur to me )

 

[Guest]

I was reading a book in the library that I had already read before.

I was eating a delicious pear while washing a pair of jeans.

*That's about all my brain can come up with at this moment. lol*

 

[phrodeau]

The shipment arrived in a car, and was stowed as cargo on the ship.

I'll drive down the parkway and park in the driveway.

 

[Guest]

The shipment arrived in a car, and was stowed as cargo on the ship.

I'll drive down the parkway and park in the driveway.

phrodeau,

The driveway thingy has always made me wonder why they call a place where you park your car a drive way and the place where you drive a parkway. lol

 

[apple3141]

Moist is the woman, damp is her lingerie.

There are interesting results when, for example, an Italian is translating from his language into English.

In the instructions for an Espresso machine I bought : "clean the parts with a humid cloth". Of course a purist would have known yhat should have been "AN humid cloth".

I did say "please" but not, I pleased you. Straight translation into e.g. German works OK.

English is easy in some ways, but hellish when you get to the nuances. You can get by with a 500 word vocabulary, which is all that the state education system gives to the lowest quartile (in UK). If you want more, read books; LOTS of books, as old as you can understand.

 

[mig]

Learning English can't be that difficult.

Babies do it all the time.I know,I was one.

 

[Starblayde]

some non-english professor wrote this

The Chaos

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

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.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

 

[T.H. Oughts]

Ahhh I rest my case Starblayde.

 

[Sateema Lunasi]

I am Icelandic and I had a bitch of a time learning English, though I began learning around age seven. Another reason it was hard for me was the influence of so many other languages. Spanish, French, German, Italian, latin (of course) and any other thing you can think of. I learned it and now I can speak and write with barely a hint of my heritage but it was very hard. I hear people say English is easy to learn, but I think they are insane.

 

[T.H. Oughts]

I hear people say English is easy to learn, but I think they are insane.

So true, someone online asked me how my day was going the other day... I came back with

1. I'm Flat tack.
2. I'm working like a blue ass fly.
3. Like a chook with my head cut off.

They still didn't know what I meant.

 

[Starblayde]

English must be easy to learn, as its derived from all the other European countries that invaded us up 'til 1066!

 

[Darowyn]

You see, where you are going wrong is in thinking English is only one language. It isn't. English is a pidgin- a hybrid of several languages, evolved in the streets so that Danish speakers could trade with Celts, Norman French could talk to Saxons, Latin speaking scholars could explain the rules to the peasantry. We are still picking up words from Hindi, Spanish, Chinese- you name it!
Every group brought their own vocabulary, which is why we have so many words for the same thing. For most things we have at least the Latin based word and the Nordic one. Usually they mean the same thing but carry different associations.
Shop and Emporium are the same- but different!
English grammar comes from the same source- you don't have to know much of it to be able to make yourself understood. It uses connecting words so that you don't need to be too picky about word order. It works either way. Either way, it works. There are still regional differences- my native northern english still uses a lot of Celtic grammatical structures which sound odd in the Saxon lands of the midlands, but are fine in the Welsh border country- and that is after two thousand years. In America the whole multilingual pot was stirred up once again when Spaniards and French met Africans and Native Americans.
Formal grammar and spelling is a much later addition, mostly imposed by classically educated academics (like Johnson) who tried to make the rules of Cicero's latin fit English, and to link Germanic words to a Latin or Greek root via non-intuitive spelling
English is a hybrid and has hybrid vigour. It's a language born on the borders and all the good new things happen on the borders.
All you students can now print this out and put it in as your next assignment. (Academic sources on request)
Cheers

 

[T.H. Oughts]

You see, where you are going wrong is in thinking English is only one language. It isn't. English is a pidgin- a hybrid of several languages,

Ahhhh now I can sleep tonight...

 

[heterotic]

Although I read through the list thoughtfully, T.H., I don't think you have enough variety in your examples to convince anybody that this is a tricky language. There's a rule for everything.

For instance:

Rule number Eight:

I before E except after C or when sounded like "A" (that's "eh" if you're in Canada) as in neighbor or weigh, or except as in neither which isn't that way either.

What could POSSIBLY be clearer or more systematic?

And in weird. Weird has a weird spelling.

When even the Vice President can't spell a vegetable's name, it has to be tough.

A little-known homonym: Cleave can mean "to split apart" or "to stick together" I don't have the creative energy to use it in a sentence which would make that obvious right now, though.

 

[Lovepotion69]

Learning languages....

...is always funny.

I grew up bilingual and had private English classes too. Amazing how pissed off a teacher can get about one pupil not listening in class, and how she fumed when she'd give me a sentence to translate she hadn't taught us - and I translated it correctly.

Another case was in 7th grade. You'd have heaps of good students who just knew how the sentence was built up grammatically, but then you had for homework to know the rules and WHY it was this and that. Then the teacher would give you a sentence, you'd be able to say it, then you were supposed to explain WHY that was the correct choice of grammar.

Eh??? I thought the point in learning rules for grammar is to help you learn it by heart so you can speak the language naturally afterwards, but if you already speak it without a problem, why forced to know the rules...and the whole way around again...!!!