Is English Easier to Learn

[minteK917]

English is easy because we're exposed to it so much, but I don't think it's requires any less practice than the others.

If you had German in school and was exposed to it daily for 20 years, you'd learn German.

As someone born speaking french an learned 4 latin language and korean. English is by far the easiest of the latin language i had to learn including my own. English and spanish are clusterfuck. 3 verb tense vs 20 something lol.

[geniebsmart]

Excluding Mandarin, if you learn English or Spanish these two languages will take you in your travels across the globe.
Learning German will allow communication in...... um Germany. French is another pointless language too, you can speak it in...... um France.

French is the official language in many African countries, and a large number of people in Canada speak French too as their main language... German is the main language in Austria and Switzerland.
did you drop out of middle school or just never paid attention in geography class?

[matt4pack]

The problem I've noticed for a lot of other languages is just how fast they seem to be spoken which makes them harder to learn by just listening. English seems like a language people speak at a slower pace with breaks so maybe that makes it easier to understand and learn when older.

[Mercadi]

As a non-native English speaker who is now fluent in it, and as someone who also learned to be fluent in other languages, I'd put it at 3.5 on a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 is super hard. Russian at 7-ish, and Cantonese at freaking 10.

[Tradewind]

Age seems to make it difficult.

I'm trying to learn German and what the fuck.

[Theodarzna]

I am a native English speaker, and have attempted a few times to learn other languages such as Spanish and German. But personally i don't take to new languages for some reason. It seems though that a lot of people who aren't native English speakers can speak or at the very least read it. For those of you are aren't native English speaking, how difficult was it to learn? Is it considered easier to learn compared to other languages?

A) English is very different from most European languages. For example most random crap doesn't have a gender, consider say Scottish Gaelic were not only does EVERY Noun have a gender, but literally you just have to memorize it because there are very few easy hints in the word for what is male and female. For a speaker of German, Spanish might be easier just because it retains some similar features were as English .... The gap between English and other languages is pretty intense.

B) For you, lack of exposure is a factor. Language learning is relatively hard without some community to be exposed to or chances to practice.

[Shakadam]

Grammatically English is a very simple language compared to pretty much all other languages. It has a very large vocabulary and many dialects but it's simple grammar means that it's easy to pick up and speak "poorly". Mastering English takes a bit more time but is still more or less just a case of memorizing a lot of words.

Compare this with Finnish for example which is an agglutinative language (words are formed by joining morphemes together, it has no words for on, in, to, from for example), which requires a much higher understanding of the grammatical process in order to be able to say or write anything.

[Hooked]

I only talk to people who speak the queens English. The rest I shun.

[Lochton]

As a native danish speak, yeah.. English is easy as hell to learn. I mean, you get so many language impressions etc from just being out in the world, and most is english.

[Darksoldierr]

English is one of the easiest language to learn. By far.

[Hooked]

Its easy because its the best language.

[Deleted]

Age seems to make it difficult.

I'm trying to learn German and what the fuck.

Book + Dictionary approach if you like to read >:
My english drastically improved when I started to read stuff in english even if I only understood like 10%.
I was 18 at the time and my english grades in school were like so close to failing the entire course^^

[Faenskap]

I will be honest - I found English to be hard to learn. We (Norway) start with English early in school, but I think I must've put up some barriers and it was a struggle. Not so much now though I also had German in school, but eeeeh... I don't know German. I'm trying to learn Bulgarian now by myself (and have, for some time), which is more difficult than English, but I'm happy to report that I know more Bulgarian than German, so yay me!

As far as dialects go... well, most languages have them. I can understand most British/American dialects fine, though the more "rednecky" dialects in both countries can be tricky. African, South African, Australian and New Zealand English are harder for me to understand, to be perfectly honest again. There are some Norwegian dialects I can't understand as well, so there's that.

Unless you've got a special talent, it's difficult to learn languages, though some are easier than others. I spoke with a girl who had learned both Danish and Spanish. Danish took her 3 years, Spanish 3 months.

I think we as adults are afraid of sounding like retards when speaking a foreign language, so we like to the grammar to be in order. To some extent, that's true, like Norwegians going LOL@thatgrammar after some Pakistani spoke with them, but... let go of the grammatical worries. If you make yourself understood, and can also understand them, that's wonderful!

Exposure to the language is also important. I find it easier to pick up Bulgarian when I'm in Bulgaria, as opposed to Norway, but it's not a requirement, as the polyglots would let you know So films, series, news could replace "being in the country", for sure.

The reason foreigners speak English so well is because of the exposure, I would argue, with insanely popular films and TV series from America, and technological advancement. Also because the English grammar isn't that tricky, like there's no genders and when you need a plural, just slap on an "s" at the end of the word in 95 % of the cases

[Milchshake]

I found English easy to learn. Its really forgiving in terms of syntax. Coming from German, the vowels were easy to master. The dipthongs were a bit more tricky. The subtle tongue difference in "th", /θ/ and /ð/ took a lot of practice.
I'd imagine people coming from a language with a lower vowel count might struggle more.

[Deleted]

I found English easy to learn. Its really forgiving in terms of syntax. Coming from German, the vowels were easy to master. The dipthongs were a bit more tricky. The subtle tongue difference in "th", /θ/ and /ð/ took a lot of practice.
I'd imagine people coming from a language with a lower vowel count might struggle more.

That doesn't matter in the end I knew an algerian guy who spoke terrible german after being a year or so here
but he spoke like ten times better than the other people I met with similar background because he was such a blabbermouth not giving a fuck and constantly communicating.

[Deleted]

Yes, it's pretty easy to learn. Exposure is also a great factor, i.e. movies, games etc.

[Milchshake]

That doesn't matter in the end I knew an algerian guy who spoke terrible german after being a year or so here
but he spoke like ten times better than the other people I met with similar background because he was such a blabbermouth not giving a fuck and constantly communicating.

His terrible German would seem to support my inference. Arabic has among the lowest count of vowels and dipthongs of any language.

[Deleted]

Age seems to make it difficult.

I'm trying to learn German and what the fuck.

It's not really that hard...

[Sathnick]

Define English. American English may be the hardest language in the world to learn. So many dialects, slang, the fact the same word has 4 different meanings depending on context. It is not really hard by nature, we have just bastardized it so much it makes it more difficult than it should be.

English is one of the easiest languages to pick up - American english even more. Its not about mastering it...any language is difficult there. I speak German, Russian, Spanisch, French and English. English was by far the easiest to learn. Try picking up Finnish one day....

[Deleted]

It's not really that hard...

But what is it good for anyway? xD