Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Props to all you ESL peeps..

So, I was just thinking the other day about how difficult the English language really is. I mean, I get it obviously because I've learned it from birth but when I imagine trying to learn it as a 2nd language... wow, thank goodness I don't have to!

I guess I'm mostly thinking about writing the English language. Some of the things that made me really have respect for ESL people...

* Some words are verbs and nouns.. (building a building)
* There are different spellings of the same sounding word that all mean something completely different (there, their, they're, hear, here, etc.)
* A word like a lot could mean quantity or frequency.. We made a lot of cookies. We go to the store a lot.

It's just mind boggling (if I didn't already know the language). And I've taken about 9 years of English in school and STILL don't get grammar or spelling correct all the time (ask my twin).

Maybe other languages are just as complex... I wouldn't know seeing as I only speak English. So props to all you ESL people out there.

One of my college Spanish teachers told me years ago that many people have trouble learning English as a second language because it has so many "s" sounds in it. If you don't believe me, just read that first sentence aloud - slowly - and emphasize all the "s" sounds. People speaking English to a non-English speaker sound like a hose leaking air.

And our word order - which can be described as "flexible" - is often maddening to someone learning the language. For example, the Romance languages (Spanish, French, Italian) put the noun before the adjective ("chair blue" instead of the English "blue chair") to identify the thing being modified or described. It actually makes more sense to do it this way, but we don't! That's odd, especially considering the way we steal words and phrases from other languages and make them our own.

This "word shift" Terry mentions can lead to some funny results when English-speaking people go to other countries.

An example: this friend went to Brazil and, wanting to be cool, tried to order for himself - instead of having help from his Portuguese-speaking friend - a "potato pie" (don't ask me where they were).

He asked the word for potato ("batata") and the word for pie ("torta"). Turned to the waiter and promptly ordered a "batata torta", which, in Portuguese, means "crooked potato", while potato pie would be translated correctly as "torta de batata" (pie of potato). The waiter probably thought he was crazy until the friend corrected the order.

malu

To tell the truth, I found English to be the easiest second language to learn. Conjugating verbs is so simple, there is only one article rather than having to know if the noun is male, female or nothing.

Yes, many things sound alike. But once I learned what they mean and how they are spelled, I never had a problem with the whole there/their etc. In fact I cringe every time when a native speaker misspells it...

Sure there are some weird things and sayings (I still don't get why a car is sitting in a driveway when in the German language it is standing <g>) and stuff like that but over all, at least for me it was a joy to learn. And I did take French and Spanish too so I know what I am talking about.

But thank you. It feels good to have someone appreciate our efforts.

Natascha

To echo Malu: Americans who go to Mexico armed with an English-Spanish dictionary will sometimes root around in it when it's time to pay the bill at the restaurant and say to the waiter "Como mucho?" which is intended to translate as "How much?" It doesn't. The word "como" is the first person present tense of the verb "comer" which means "to eat." So instead of asking "How much?" the dumb American is saying "I eat a lot."

The waiter can either retranslate the bad Spanish and give the customer the bill for the meal, or be put in the position of either politely agreeing or disagreeing with the customer, which does not answer the question "Cuantos cuesta?" ("How much does it cost?" or "How much?") and can frustrate both parties.

And no, this didn't happen to me.

Hmmmm. Can't resist showing you the difference between English grammar and Swedish grammar, by taking a Swedish sentence and translating it word for word into English. Or, actaully, to give you an idea of what I'm talking about, I think I'll write down the English sentence first and the "Swenglish" sentence afterwards:

English: When the police officers/PCs had stopped him, they didn't ask him to show them his ID.

Swenglish: When the polices/the policemens had stopped him, so asked they him not to show them his leg.

Okay, in Swedish police officers are "poliser", but Swedish kids have been taught that they should say "policeman" or policewoman". The plural form of "man" in English is of course "men", and it is almost the same in Swedish - one "man", two "män". But Swedish kids have learnt that you must always use the "s" to make the plural form in English, which is why they will say "polices" or "policemens".

We don't have the do-construction in Swedish. Swedish kids, at least the not-so-bright ones, hate it and can't use it.

The English construction "When I..., then..." is "När jag..., så..." Most Swedish kids do understand that our "så" can't always be translated into "so", but some not so bright kids don't get it.

In some clauses the Swedish language places the verb before the noun. Most Swedish kids really understand that you can't do that in English, but some kids just can't learn it. A Swedish kid with learning difficulties might say "Saw you it?" instead of "Did you see it?".

And finally, the leg... :rolleyes: Well, we use few abbreviations in Swedish, but one we do use is "leg". This is short for "legitimation", which means ID. Since we use few abbreviations in Swedish, we are, I guess, sort of proud of the ones we have, because most Swedes realize that the English language has so many abbreviations. Our abbreviations make us feel "up to date" and "international". So, yes, Swedes happily conclude that since "leg" is an abbreviation in Swedish, it must also be the international abbreviation of "identification". You wouldn't believe the sheer number of Swedes who will happily go abroad and ask people in other countries if they want to see their "leg".



Do you want to see my leg?

Oh well. But it really could be worse. English and Swedish are really quite closely related. When the Danes ruled much of England a thousand years ago, the Danish and English languages were sufficiently similar that the Danes could speak their own language and be understood by the people in England, or at least that is what I have read. And Danish and Swedish were of course extremely similar in those days. Danish and Swedish are still very similar when it comes to grammar and vocabulary, but the pronunciation is very different.

As for English and Swedish, our grammar systems still resemble each other a lot. Our vocabularies are not that similar any more, however.

Ann

P.S. So many Swedes can't say that they've been "in hospital". They will say that they have been "on the hospital" instead.



Fiddler on the hospital?

From the point of view of an English speaker trying to learn German, how about Mark Twain and "The Awful German Language" ?

Twain writes in his usual inimitable style, about the peculiarities of the language:

And, of course, the classic bit about adjectives:

And regarding German compound nouns:

And another great quote from Twain regarding German:

:::Twin rolls in to say this is true:::

The author H. Beam Piper had a quote of English being This also explains why English has so many cases of two words that mean almost the same thing. To a peasant it's a cow in the field, to a noble it's beef on the table. In most other languages you use the same word for both cases.

I agree. My first language is portuguese but apart from english I've also learnt spanhish, french and an infinitesimal bit of german and italian.

English was by far the easiest to learn. The grammar is simple enough once you know how to apply it, and even though I still have punctuation issues and hesitate a lot before I write some words because I'm not sure about the spelling I manage most of the time.

There are no such things as ´,`,¨,~ or ^ to place anywhere (whereas in french you're lucky if you can figure how many of those fit in a single word (I don't know what to call them in english ) .

That is also my opinion, Natascha




My dad always told me that to learn english you had to talk backwards. I never realized untill now how literal that could be...

I agree with those who say that English is one of the easier languages to learn. I've had English and French in school.
Although my English isn't perfect I think most of what I say or write is understandable. My French ... well I think I could order a meal or go shopping if I'm there on holiday but I doubt I could really talk to another person.

Here in Germany most kids begin with English-lessons in Elementary school and later most can choose which second foreign language they want to learn (depending what kind of school you are going to).
English has its difficulties but as Olive already stated there are no accents or points over the letters which makes writing and pronouncing much easier for us ESL people (altough most Germans have problems with pronouncing the 'th' right).
For me the most difficult thing with English are the tenses. Fortunately I have a great beta who shows me my mistakes (Thanks Corrina )

I can also see why so many people have their problems with learning German. We have three articles: 'der' (masculine); 'die' (feminine) and das (neuter).
There are even nouns which can go with more than one articles like 'ketchup' (it can be masculine or neuter).

I think Japanese is an interesting language and since they have only two tenses it shouldn't be to hard to learn...

Thank you Iolanthe for posting the link.

Wow, English is starting to sound easier and easier after hearing more about some other languages. I wish I had started to learn another language when I was younger. Here in the states (or at least TX), you don't have to take a foreign language unti HS (only 2 years required). And 2 years of Spanish just didn't make me fluent.

I always wondered why it seemed like everyone else in the world knows English (even when it's not their native tongue)... I guess it could be because the language is easy to learn and that children start learning it so young. /me jealous

Actually, stephnachia, I think it's because English is considered a sort of "universal language" (don't mean to open a whole new discussion here...) for non-English speaking countries (at least it is in Brazil), and so if you want to "communicate with the world", you better learn English.

These days, with the Internet, I think it's incredibly easier to interact and learn English (or any other language, for that matter).

malu

I've read Mark Twain's "the awful German language" some years ago and it really had me in stiches. Some of the things he writes are soooo true. But others are not, at least they aren't true anymore. Our newspapers are not that complicated and I have to think hard about "die Regen" - nah, still nothing.

Well, for "die Regen". It could be taken for the river, although that one takes the "der". It's also simply the plural of Regen. "Die Regen der letzten Woche haben wieder einmal gezeigt, dass..."

I'd not consider English to be very flexible. Word order is actually very important in English.
"The cat ate the fish." gets a totally different meaning when the words get switched to "The fish ate the cat." With the cases in German that doesn't happen. "Die Katze frass den Fisch." has the same meaning as "Den Fisch frass die Katze.", just the emphasis gets shifted. One could even do "Den Fisch die Katze frass." or "Die Katze den Fisch frass."

In my experience the "false friends" are really difficult for Germans. We really got to learn that "freedom" isn't "Frieden" (peace). That "who" is "wer" and "where" is "wo". And that you "get" (bekommen) a car, not become one. And the aforementioned word order which is much more strict in English.

As for Japanese, it may not have so many tenses, but it has lots of it's own declinations, conjugations and other traps, depending upon politeness, tense, negative/positive, etc, etc. One easily gets more versions for a verb than one gets with the English tenses.
Or take "I", in Japanese depending upon who you are and whom you are speaking to you'd use "watashi", "ore", "boku", "atashi" or one of several more possibilities.

I've decided to add a tidbit of meaningless information, since we're on the topic of languages...
Peru (the name of the country) also means turkey in portuguese. Turkey (the country - known as Turquia in Portugal) is pronounced and written just like... well, turkey.
Is it me or was there a strange obsession with a certain bird when people were going around naming countries? :p

(and so you know, I'm just kidding. But if anyone who speaks a different language also has a translation for turkey that coincides with the name of some country it's no longer a coincidence but a world conspiracy) :rolleyes:

Well, the German word for the bird is "Truthahn" and we call the country "Türkei" - so at least we don't take part in this conspiracy...

The Hebrew word for India also means turkey. Though strictly speaking a turkey is called an "India rooster". But still.

Might have more to do with where each group of people thought turkeys originated, and named the bird after the country. But that's just a guess.

Julie

I found trying to learn Chinese difficult seeing as how it's more of a second language to me more than English is. It's also hard to wrap my head around simplified and traditional being from Taiwan people read traditional Chinese so it's often hard to try and figure out the word when you only know the traditional charcter. Eventually I just gave up learning to read and write it for fear that I'd even forget basic English.

On a side note I do understand 3 dialect if Chinese so that's something right? I should also add that the name Delilah literally translates to 'the pig is coming' in Hokkien so I always laugh when I hear that.

I'm currently learning two other languages and I find it hard enough to learn the base language let alone learning slang terms on top of that. It got me to thinking that I'm glad I don't have to learn ESL and then Aussie slang on top of that. We abbreviate just about everything, it made me laugh thinking about it, I never really realised how difficult it would be for an ESL person. Here's some examples:
barbeque = barbie
breakfast = breakie
afternoon = arvo
football = footy
U-turn - 'u'ie
cup of tea = cuppa...

Probably the most abbreviated are names and names of places, eg:
Tasmainia = Tassie
Subiaco = Subi
Garden City = Garbo
Cotesloe = Cot
Rockingham = Rocko...

It's probably pretty common around the world (?) but I have been told we in Australia take it a step further.

Another thing I wanted to add to the conversation is that learning another language is not compulsory at school in Australia, and it's not a popular extra subject to take at school. Looking back to when I was in school and having since travelled a fair bit I've realised that it is pretty common for people around the world to know more than one language and they usually get taught from a young age. I wish we had that here in Australia and learning another languauge was common at school. I guess being islated down here on our "island" the need to know other languages is not that important.