How difficult was it for you to learn English?

[CaptainF]

We can all speak english on this board, with varying levels of proficiency.

What I'm asking is how hard it was (is) for you to learn English.

The poll is a scale: 0 means you are a native speaker, 1 means it was quite easy, 10 means it was almost impossibly hard.

When rating yourself on the scale, try to average out your proficiency at reading/writing and speaking, if you would be so kind.

I'm interested to hear!

 

[garric]

All too easy.

 

[CaptainF]

Damnit, could a mod please make the poll results viewable? Pretty please?

 

[Souron]

It's hard to say without having something to compair to.

 

[Gr3yL3gion]

It's hard because everyone here speaks\write a combination of English\Malay\Mandarin together.

So far I and my friends can understand each other pretty well, but I doubt native english speakers will have an easy time understanding what I'm trying to express most of the time.

 

[Grohan]

I'd say that english is fairly easy language expect some things are pretty hard (at least for me). Basic things like tempuses, plural, conditional and genitive are easy. But advanced stuff like indirect speech is hard.

Reading english is very very easy. I understand 95% of written text but writing is much harder and it's sometimes hard to figure out the right expression.

I'd say that pronunciation is the hardest part in english. Sometimes it's very hard to know how some words are supposed to be pronounced. Ie. the word myth. When I saw that word first time I thought it's supposed to be pronounced something like this: mith or just myth. But the right way is more like this: miFth. Aargh! How could I know that?

Unfortunately many languages are much harder to learn than english (eg. swedish... ).

 

[TheBladeRoden]

I'd say that pronunciation is the hardest part in english. Sometimes it's very hard to know how some words are supposed to be pronounced. Ie. the word myth. When I saw that word first time I thought it's supposed to be pronounced something like this: mith or just myth. But the right way is more like this: miFth. Aargh! How could I know that?

You were correct the first time.

 

[aneeshm]

I'm a non-native speaker ( English is my third language ) , but the pathetic grasp of spelling and grammar displayed by many native speakers on other internet boards ( CFC is a very notable exception ) disgusts me .

EDIT : The irony . . . . . . . I edited this post to correct a typo . I wonder whether a typing error counts as a spelling mistake ?

 

[Elta]

I'm a non-native speaker ( English is my third language ) , but the pathetic grasp of spelling ang grammar displayed by many native speakers on other internet boards ( CFC is a very notable exception ) disgusts me .

...I think it's because they are just lazy by following the examples of others. I've steped up my grammer and what not since I came here but it is still worse than people who learned english as a second language. Why? ...I dunno probably due to me being a fool and to a lesser extant when I right something out in pen it takes longer so I actually think it through, you my be able to say the same for people typing in a non native language .. they think it through.

 

[soul_warrior]

sort of a native speaker
first language i understood was WELSH of all tongues.
but then i saw the light and started speaking proper english.

english is actually a VERY easy language.
if youre looking for a hard one try hebrew, swedish (all scandinavian ones, really) or welsh!

 

[Strauss]

Learning English was very easy for me since I only watched English television shows, played English games etc. I'm also taking the bilingual course (Dutch/English) at school, and all of this combined means that English has become my second native language. Of course I don't know every single word or grammatical rule, but I don't even know that in Dutch either.

 

[Elta]

Learning English was very easy for me since I only watched English television shows, played English games etc. I'm also taking the bilingual course (Dutch/English) at school, and all of this combined means that English has become my second native language. Of course I don't know every single word or grammatical rule, but I don't even know that in Dutch either.

Post of the day

 

[Dann]

Very easy actually. I grew up surrounded by all the languages that I eventually mastered. Tagalog in the general environment, Hokkien and a bit of Mandarin among family members, and English on TV, movies, comics etc.

 

[Cheetah]

It was easy enough. TV, movies, games and books help a lot.

Oh, and reading certain posts on CFC and using a dictionary helps to extend my vocabulary.

if youre looking for a hard one try hebrew, swedish (all scandinavian ones, really) or welsh!

What's so hard about scandinavian languages?

 

[Elta]

It was easy enough. TV, movies, games and books help a lot.

Oh, and reading certain posts on CFC and using a dictionary helps to extend my vocabulary.

What's so hard about scandinavian languages?

I don't now if this is relating to what he said but on 20/20 they said that sweedish was the hardest european language for an english speaker to learn.

 

[Verbose]

I don't now if this is relating to what he said but on 20/20 they said that sweedish was the hardest european language for an english speaker to learn.

Really? Did they try to specify why and in what way?

Seems strange as I personally know both Brits and Americans who technically speak zero Swedish but are still able to make reasonable guestimations about newspaper headlines etc. just based on word and grammar similarities between Swedish and English.

So Finnish, with a fairly radically different grammatical structure, vobaulary and system of pronunciation poses less trouble? I find that stretching my credulity a bit.

Or does "learning to speak" here focus on the possibility of learning perfect pronunciation?

I can see how that could be problem, since Swedish has a set of if not unique at least uncommon features. Though I'd say I find it unlikely English speakers would have less trouble getting a perfect French pronunciation for example.

 

[Cheetah]

Perfect pronounciation?

Try rolling your r's when you talk. A lot of norwegians can't even do it properly.

 

[Cuchullain]

I would have thought that Irish or Welsh (what's the deal with all those "W"'s and "DD"'s in Welsh, anway? I'm totally lost on the pronuciation), with so little similarity to English, would have been harder than Norwegian or Swedish. Aren't both of those close enough to German, that at least some of the basic vocabulary makes sense to a non-speaker? I don't speak either one, so forgive me if I'm wrong here. I can understand Finnish being a world apart, but I thought the others (and Danish, as well) shared some similarities with German.

 

[Verbose]

Perfect pronounciation?

Try rolling your r's when you talk. A lot of norwegians can't even do it properly.

Here, anything you do, we do as well.

But there are entire, major Swedish dialects where you don't roll your r's. The million and a half inhabiting the deep, deep south (Skåne) can't be wrong on this.

The fact that it's done in Stockholm might even be a reason for active refusal.

 

[Verbose]

I thought the others (and Danish, as well) shared some similarities with German.

Yup.
To the point where if you don't know what something is called in German, you can take the Swedish word and subtly "Germanise" it in pronunciation. 80-90% of the time it works, and you make yourself understood, even if your choice of expression comes across as slightly odd.

It works the same from German to Swedish I know.