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| Rugalbernstein 1411th Post
 
Red Carpet Executive Member
    
    
    
    
|  "Re(2):English."
, posted Wed 20 Mar 19:45:
I'm surprised to hear a non-native English speaker say English is easy, and even more surprised to hear that it apparently follows a pattern. Having " been around " , almost every foreign national I've encountered has more or less said " English is a bitch to learn, and is damn confusing " . As for the " standard pronunciation ".. say " rake " and " track " . They both involve the letter " a " , but it's pronounced differently, unlike in Spanish where the " a " has a standard sound. There are many reasons English is a bit odd... amongst them, A.) It's actually a rather primitive language at its base, and B.) it derives heavily from other languages, especially the romantic languages, because of the continental influence.. so it's a bit of a mess, really.
[this message was edited by Rugalbernstein on Wed 20 Mar 19:49] |
| Toxico 1571th Post
Red Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Member
| "Other two cents" , posted Wed 20 Mar 20:07
I'm surprised to hear a non-native English speaker say English is easy, and even more surprised to hear that it apparently follows a pattern.
- I have spoken with people here in south america (not only my country) and they state (same as I do) that English is so wildly spread because it is easy to domain.
Having " been around " , almost every foreign national I've encountered has more or less said " English is a bitch to learn, and is damn confusing " . As for the " standard pronunciation ".. say " rake " and " track " . They both involve the letter " a " , but it's pronounced differently, unlike in Spanish where the " a " has a standard sound. There are many reasons English is a bit odd... amongst them,
Remember that Spanish has also several differents whays of pronunce the letters thanks to this litlle sing ´ wich changes the sound of the letter; there are pronunced "acentos" (Dunno how it is said on Engrish), some writed ones and other just pronunced ones that modify a little the sound... for me it was way harder to append French pronunciations (art that have already forgoten) than English ones... may be we just have some excellent teachers over here; there are also other painful marks such as ¨ ; but they are minorly used on lesser words.
B.) it derives heavily from other languages, especially the romantic languages, because of the continental influence.. so it's a bit of a mess, really.
Spanish comes from Latin, a little bit of Portuguese and some other lenguages that did hit Spain... there are words that are from other countries that have been "Castellanized" into Spanish... maybe all lenguages has their "thing"...
Well; I once heard, "There is no such thing as a good person good on English, Italian or Spanish; there is such a thing as a person good in LENGUAGES"... Nice theory that I need to check.
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| Rugalbernstein 1411th Post
Red Carpet Executive Member
| "Re(1):Other two cents" , posted Wed 20 Mar 20:26
Valid points all around.. but still, at least the accents indicate that you're supposed to pronounce the letter differently, it's not just " there " .. Yes, all of the romantic languages are based off of latin. Perhaps my theory is a bit flawed, though, I'm basing my conclusions primarily off of conversations with people in asia, where languages tend to be more different from English than say, Spanish is to English. Also, the Russian Cyrillic alphabet is based off of Greek... so perhaps Greek is a might different when reading/speaking, as well?
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| Toxico 1572th Post
Red Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Member
| "Re(2):Other two cents" , posted Wed 20 Mar 20:36
quote:
Valid points all around.. but still, at least the accents indicate that you're supposed to pronounce the letter differently, it's not just " there " .. Yes, all of the romantic languages are based off of latin. Perhaps my theory is a bit flawed, though, I'm basing my conclusions primarily off of conversations with people in asia, where languages tend to be more different from English than say, Spanish is to English. Also, the Russian Cyrillic alphabet is based off of Greek... so perhaps Greek is a might different when reading/speaking, as well?
Well; in the Accents remember that the are unwrited ones that you just know by hearing the word previously... I guess here English is found easier because there are a lot of examples; almost all movies and many manuals come in English; diccionaries are quite satisfactory; providing pronunciatoins and semantical rules and such... I heard that Spanish -speaking wise- is a *little bit* like japanese (where most letters are said as they are writed) and that English is more like the other European lenguages; where there are pronuncations rules & exceptions (bullet; bus = U is pronunced differently, as far as I know)... yet I have not such big references to back up what I said on the lenguages similarities.
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| Time Mage 281th Post
Copper Customer
| "Re(2):Poll:What's the most difficult language" , posted Thu 21 Mar 02:22
quote:
Chinese has to be the hardest, even japanses is a bit easier to learn then chinese. As for the latin based languages, once you have one down the rest aren't too hard to learn.
I'm spanish and I can understand italian very easily.... ^_^ tho, I could never speak it...LOL!
You're spanish, Daala???
I didn't knew that. Where are you from? I'm from Granada.
And about the languages issue, from what are there put on the poll, I'll say that Chinese is the hardest.
Also, when talking about what's harder, if spanish or english, I'll say that english is a lot more easier. English has a very simple verb structure, with only 3 basic forms for every verb, and not that much tenses. Spanish has like... one form for every pronoun... let me expalin thi with an example, because I think that I haven't used the correct words here:
Yo(I)------------>como(eat)
Tú(You)---------->comes(eat)
Él/Ella(He/She)-->come(eats)
Nosotros(We)----->comemos(eat)
Vosotros(You)---->comeis(eat)
Ellos(They)------>comen(eat)
Note the difference?
In things like pronuciation spanish is easier, because it follows some rules, and there are not as much as, for example, french. However, the verb system, the phrase structure and punctuation rules make it more difficult.
Also, Daala, not only italian is very understandable, also the (Portugal) portugese is easy to understand!
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| petteri
10th Post
New Customer
| "Re(4):Poll:What's the most difficult language" , posted Thu 21 Mar 09:25:
What is Scandanavian? :) Here in scandinavia we have many languages:
finnish
swedish
danish
etc. finnish is very different from those other languages and many people say that it's really hard to learn. So my point is that there is no one scandinavian language.
hmmm....
[this message was edited by petteri on Thu 21 Mar 09:26] |
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"Poll:What's the most difficult language?" 
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"Re(1):Poll:What's the most difficult language" 
