For non-native speakers of english

[Deleted]

What was the hardest part in learning english for you?

I always struggled with things like hour because I pronounced the h not realizing it should be silent, three vs free, pronouncing the as de, a/an their/they're/there and "you" since english seemingly lack the means to distuingish one person from a general "you".

[Gully Man]

What was the hardest part in learning english for you?

I always struggled with things like hour because I pronounced the h not realizing it should be silent, three vs free, pronouncing the as de, a/an their/they're/there and "you" since english seemingly lack the means to distuingish one person from a general "you".

Funny you mention that because i (native english speaker) struggled with the whole du/dig/ni/er/man thing when i started learning Swedish.

[Puupi]

Nothing really, especially when I woke up and stopped trying to speak in an English or American accent. The words and the language generally aren't hard, faking your accent is.

As you are a Swede, you probably speak like other Swedes; so here is a question for you: why do you pronounce English words with an English/American accent when you are speaking Swedish? If you say an English word in the middle of Swedish and use an entirely different accent for that word it sounds absolutely idiotic. Swedes always do this. o_O

[Flarelaine]

What was the hardest part in learning english for you?

I always struggled with things like hour because I pronounced the h not realizing it should be silent, three vs free, pronouncing the as de, a/an their/they're/there and "you" since english seemingly lack the means to distuingish one person from a general "you".

Gender pronouns. I still mess those up occasionally, despite being fluent in English for 26 years now. Attempts to introduce more are not helping, either.

[Deleted]

Understanding "th". Understanding that you write it with a T, but you're not supposed to pronounce it like a T. Being able to correctly pronounce "Three", instead of "Tree" or "Free". Then later realizing that there are multiple ways to pronounce "th" (this/thick/thames/...).

Understanding vowels. Double-vowel sounds being written with a single vowel (cAke), while single-vowel sounds are written with double vowels (shEEp).

Understanding "gh". Don't even get me started on this one.

Could go on...

[Aggrophobic]

Nothing really, especially when I woke up and stopped trying to speak in an English or American accent. The words and the language generally aren't hard, faking your accent is.

As you are a Swede, you probably speak like other Swedes; so here is a question for you: why do you pronounce English words with an English/American accent when you are speaking Swedish? If you say an English word in the middle of Swedish and use an entirely different accent for that word it sounds absolutely idiotic. Swedes always do this. o_O

What? Should you use a different pronunciation when using english words while speaking swedish than you do when you speak english? That makes no sense at all.
Do you come up with some weird finnish-english mix pronunciation that you use only when speaking a few words of english? Now thats idiotic if anything.

Do you spell the words with a finnish twist as well? A few dubble i's and u's just to make it feel more finnish?

Thats suuper weiird.

[Puupi]

What? Should you use a different pronunciation when using english words while speaking swedish than you do when you speak english? That makes no sense at all.
Do you come up with some weird finnish-english mix pronunciation that you use only when speaking a few words of english? Now thats idiotic if anything.

Not different pronunciation, but accent. I don't change the tone and pitch of my voice when there is an English word mixed in a sentence when I'm speaking Finnish. But Swedes do, and it's god damn weird - and they only do it for English. Or do you use Italian accent when you use the word "pizza" in a Swedish sentence?

Do you spell the words with a finnish twist as well? A few dubble i's and u's just to make it feel more finnish?

Thats suuper weiird.

Now that was just a poor effort of bashing.

EDIT: And about those double i's, u's and so on: you Swedes use them all the time, too. We just write them like we say them, unlike you. Couple of words in Swedish with double vowels: Ole, Håkan, liten, smör, öl, djur......

[Machismo]

I'm a native English speaker, but to me, it would seem that the most difficult thing to fully grasp, would be the verb "to be." Its conjugations and usages seem to be unlike every other language.

[Puupi]

I'm a native English speaker, but to me, it would seem that the most difficult thing to fully grasp, would be the verb "to be." Its conjugations and usages seem to be unlike every other language.

Well it is true that it's an odd thing in English language. Considering it's such a key concept in thought and language - it's very weird that you use two words for a single meaning.

[Aggrophobic]

Not different pronunciation, but accent. I don't change the tone and pitch of my voice when there is an English word mixed in a sentence when I'm speaking Finnish. But Swedes do, and it's god damn weird - and they only do it for English. Or do you use Italian accent when you use the word "pizza" in a Swedish sentence?


Now that was just a poor effort of bashing.

EDIT: And about those double i's, u's and so on: you Swedes use them all the time, too. We just write them like we say them, unlike you. Couple of words in Swedish with double vowels: Ole, Håkan, liten, smör, öl......

I ment no offence with that. It's a joke. Sorry if it was "over the line".

But I probably do change the tone a bit when I use spanish or german same as with english.
Trying with russian as well but that language is freaking hard. I'm not quite there yet.

Probably not with the word pizza though. I don't think most people, swedes or not even think about the fact that it's an italian word.

[Deleted]

I found English so easy to learn and still so easy to write and use daily and loved my time in the UK so much - so...nothing, really that I found "hard" or "struggled with" French on the other hand? Bloody grammar and pronunciations and in Latin the grammar even more

Same for me, pretty much.

I am a native German speaker, and over the years I have learned English, French and (now) Swedish. French was SO much more difficult and a pain to get into than the other two...like, it's not even close. It is a very nice language, but ugh.

[Devonitar]

Articles and perfect verb forms.

Mostly because, they have no equivalent in my native language, so they were kind of foreign concept to me.

[Puupi]

Articles and perfect verb forms.

Mostly because, they have no equivalent in my native language, so they were kind of foreign concept to me.

I assume you are Finnish, what do you mean there are no perfect verb forms?

[Machismo]

Well it is true that it's an odd thing in English language. Considering it's such a key concept in thought and language - it's very weird that you use two words for a single meaning.

If this doesn't mess with a person's brain, I don't know what will when it comes to learning English.

http://conjugator.reverso.net/conjug...h-verb-be.html

[Flarelaine]

I'm a native English speaker, but to me, it would seem that the most difficult thing to fully grasp, would be the verb "to be." Its conjugations and usages seem to be unlike every other language.

If it's a comfort, the copula is an anomaly compared to the rest of the verbs in several languages.

[Allatar]

Understanding "gh". Don't even get me started on this one.

Could go on...

Though we could go through it, if you didn't find it too tough

[Deleted]

As a German, I study English and French, and for me there are only some small spelling issues with things like receive, belief, believe, etc. where for some reason "ie" is just flipped around. Occasionally I mess that up.

Still, French is waaaaaay harder to learn as a German than English is. The conjugations of English are a joke compared to French, and, as I would imagine, any other language.

Oh and what just came to my mind, I sometimes messed up past verb forms of "to lie" (as in "to lie down") and "to lie" (as in the sense of "liar!")

Giving lessons myself at university, and judging from general usage of English, I have to say most Germans have a problem distinguishing "loss", "to lose" and "loose".
It's horrible. Whenever you start a bg and you lose the first objective, they instantly spam "schon ein lose!" which translates "that's already a lose!"
GERMANS PLEASE! LEARN!

[Puupi]

If this doesn't mess with a person's brain, I don't know what will when it comes to learning English.

http://conjugator.reverso.net/conjug...h-verb-be.html

I don't know, it's not that bad. Rather simple. Just that the base for the whole thing is a bit weird, "to be" and those present indicative forms "is" and "are".


Here is the same thing in Finnish:

https://fi.wiktionary.org/wiki/Liite...tus/suomi/olla

[Puupi]

And when it comes to weirdness with "to be": Russian is weird, they don't use it pretty much at all. That was weird to learn. Like if you say "here is a car" in English, that's "zdezh mashina" in Russian aka "here car".

[Wildtree]

What was the hardest part in learning english for you?

I always struggled with things like hour because I pronounced the h not realizing it should be silent, three vs free, pronouncing the as de, a/an their/they're/there and "you" since english seemingly lack the means to distuingish one person from a general "you".

You're addressing phonetics.
I can see how you have slight problems with it, but that won't last forever (hopefully so). By my observation, you/we are having an advantage. Native speakers struggle with sound alike words more than foreigners do.
Especially when you:
1. write a lot
2. use your logic sense
you will overcome the obstacles.

There's no such thing as "cheaper then the AH"... then, then what? use your fucking brain (looking at you, native speakers..)
The list goes on. Eventually you get all those similarities in.
And then, there's that... Forget a lot of what you've learned in school. It's rather useless.
English is no exception to other languages. You'll run into vast differences of accents and dialects. The general rules of the language persist, of course.
But the way you have to talk relies entirely on your surrounding. You gotta learn to adapt. Gotta, or got to? Depends on such things.
If you live among those funny people, you get there automatically. If you are aware of some things, you get there even faster.

Oh, and the golden "secret" to learning the language quick..
Watch TV.
What the natives watch, you watch that too. It'll burn things into your mind via repetitions.
Every single person I know here in the US, that's a foreigner like me, used this tool and it does miracles.