For non-native speakers of english

[Wildtree]

Boys... you're diving way too deep into the theoretical parts of the language.
And, unless your job field requires it, fuck it. Forget about it.. It's the very parts of the language you won't need a lot if at all.
No one is perfect with the language, any language, gotta come to terms with that. There's a reason why one can study the language and become a teacher, professor, what not.
It does NOT help foreign people to overwhelm them with such gibberish stuff, the average native gives less than 2 fucks about.
Focus on the practical means, because that's what everyone's really gonna use.
Won't help if your theoretical knowledge is that of an English teacher, when you suck at common usage and pronunciation.

[Noradin]

I dislike the pronounciation and the lack of gramatical gender.
The latter because it cuts down on power of pronouns.

[Krawu]

Losing their native accent will never happen naturally for most people. You'd need a language coach and many weeks or months of hard work. I have relatives that immigrated to Canada back in the 50s and the older ones among them still have some of theirs left, even though they were only 8 or 9 years old at the time.

So what you're describing might not really be a difficulty in acquiring the English language, but having a really strong accent that you can't shake. I've noticed that particular quirk you're describing to some extent in virtually all Swedes I've talked to. Your brain just can't deactivate some of the muscle memory it has formed for pronouncing that first language of yours. You'll need to build a new one for English, and you're not 3 years old any more so it'll take a long time.

What has probably helped me most in minimizing mine is just quietly mouthing the problematic words whenever I hear them said correctly by someone else until I think that I've gotten it right. But even after over 10 years of speaking English at native level, I've retained a very thin German accent. No one can tell what it is any more, but it's definitely still there and I hate it

[Noradin]

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!

You do no understand how loanwords work, do you?
While I agree that the use of "lose" in the sense of loss in German is awful and likely the result of immature posturing it is no worse than using "loss".
In German sentences German rules apply (thus the German word "lose" should translate as "loose" into English) and it does not matter what the utterance would mean in another language. If they feel like making up new German words to make themselves feel cool based on their misconceptions on another language that is their problem and that of the German language. Not the English one.
There is nothing wrong with using "kindergarden" in English, is there?

[Danner]

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".

The fact that English is so terribly inconsistent. Sure every language has its list of exceptions to the rules, but English takes it to a new level.

A teacher teach today and taught yesterday.
A preacher preach today, and ... praught yesterday? No that's not right.

The words 'Buick' and 'quick' don't rhyme.
The words 'Glouchester' and 'foster' do.

The sentence "The large purple cotton bag belongs to her," is a-ok.
The sentence "The cotton purple large bag belongs to her," is gonna label you as a foreigner. But nobody can explain why.

You are supposed to contract "can not" to the word "cannot".
You are not allowed to contract "a lot" to the word "alot".

Words starting with a vowel use the article 'an', otherwise 'a'. -> An apple, a banana
Except 'uniform'. Because that word begins in j. Clearly. -> A uniform
Except again 'uninformed'. Because that's an u. Obviously. -> An uninformed person

[Vizardlorde]

I struggled with understanding native English speakers when it came to writing homophones. I understand its due to people learning to speak before they learn to read, however did half of these people never go to school?

[Noradin]

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?

That is likely because the learned the English language as a whole while only learning Italian words as loanwords.
When I was on an international school in Belgium for some time I had a boy from Spain in class who went to school in Germany for his first few years.
He spoke German well, but everyone could hear he was from Spain. When he switched to English though--everyone could hear he was from Germany.
Teachers always assumed he was German for sure if they didn't know his last name and even then we had a few who insisted.

[shonist]

i think im at lost with words with double consonants. Besides that... i think im doing good enough to be understood.

Past month i came across a guy in the street asking me if i speak english and if i can guide him to somewhere. i think i saved that guy's life. We was completely lost in Argentina. I even told him wich bus he should take and what to say to the driver. I was a hero. ♥

[Krawu]

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".

If that gets you cringing what about the bajillion other Germanisms our dear countrymen like to introduce into English language conversation?

To be fair, I've even seen some natives make that mistake. That and the dreaded "your" instead of "you're" and "loose" instead of "lose" in written English.

[Malacrass]

The differences between british and american english.

Things like grey & gray, or color and colour. Especially annoying when your (ancient) english teacher insists on using "the pure and untainted british english", while everything around you is largely influenced by american english.

[Noradin]

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.

You have to look a bit closer, it is a mix of three (two) verbs.
It is the same for the Geman verb sein(to be), which is based of the same combination of three verbs plus a fourth one.
French être(to be) is also a combination of two verbs.

This an artefact of how Germanic langues used to form tenses: Not by changing one verb and/or combining it with auxiliary verbs, but by simply using a specific verb for each tense.
Obviously the newer method of using auxiliary verbs to indicate tenses cannot work very well for the auxiliary verbs themselves thus you get this interesting mess.

[Puupi]

Can you give some examples of those words?
We say them as we hear them being spoken. To add some super Swedish accent to them would be weird unless you, on a personal level, do that naturally.

Okay a good example of this phenomenon is when you are watching ice hockey. Picked a video from youtube with couple of example spots in it:

Anytime you say "powerplay" in the middle of Swedish:



Anytime you pronounce an English name. In this occasion, a Canadian guy who has a Swedish surname, yet still the commentator pronounces that name with an English accent god damnit, "Jason Krog". It's an especially juicy example of the "idiocy" as the name isn't fully English and furthermore he continues with the Czech name "Petrasek" in the next sentence with plain Swedish accent:


PS: tried to timestamp the videos (doesn't work on my computer for some reason), the first one should be 0:51 and the second one 2:23.

[Chrno]

As a dutch i can say the english language plays a big role in our society.
Almost everyone can speak / write english to a point where they can at least communicate.

that said ... that goddamn dutch english accent we have going on annoys the shit out of me (and yes i have the accent as well!!)

[Archonite]

Pronunciation is the most difficult part for me, though i think thats due to the way i learned most of my english. Since the vast majority of my english language comes from watching series, playing games, reading stuff on the internet and chatting with people in games, i havent spoken english that much in comparison. Its not that i dont know how to pronounce most words, just that in an actual conversation i sometimes cant keep up in speed with the (written) words in my head and finding the right pronunciation for them. And as a gamer ive played with many people who would pronounce words incorrectly, and over time i would get used to those mistakes and even take them over out of habbit.

[Deleted]

I am almost entirely self taught, however I have spent most of my gtowing up years online, particular on MMOs, Tibia, Anarchy Online and Ultima Online and later WoW.

Had to learn by neccessity.

[ghotihook]

My username shows just how screwed up English is.
Ghoti = fish if pernounced using differant ways.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti

[Puupi]

I am almost entirely self taught, however I have spent most of my gtowing up years online, particular on MMOs, Tibia, Anarchy Online and Ultima Online and later WoW.

Had to learn by neccessity.

*growing
*necessity

You are no longer self taught.

[Noradin]

In fact I am confused how native speakers come to a point where they use "should of" instead of "should have"

They cannot distinguish between the pronounciation of "should've" and "should of" and then later when they learn to write pick the wrong one.

[Iphie]

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

What the actual fuck is 'Potentiaali'?? I've never heard of that one...the others I sorta know.

OT: Never felt English to be particularly difficult, I, ironically as a native dutch speaker, had more difficulties with German.

[Noradin]

Hardest part for me is to understand why the english language wants to decorate the words so much. The word Queue does't need all the ueueueueueues. Just use 'Q' like the word 'I', one letter!

You can blame that one on the French.