the importance of learning English

[mambocowboy]

It's been discussed before, but now that my wife has been in San Diego 2.5 years, I've done some more thinking about the importance of an immigrant learning English. My wife has alot of motivation to learn and has come a long way with her English. While she has a number of Colombiana friends in the States who are married to gringos, only two can get by speaking and understanding English, and most of them care less about it....  My wife pretty much tells me just about everything her girlfriends tell her, and I have to say that the ones who don't care to learn English tend to have more problems, some of them of their own doing, some of them because their lack of English simply leaves them with fewer options. I think that if a woman from another country doesn't have any motivation to learn English, her ability to adapt to this country long-term will be quite impaired. While there are parts of San Diego, Houston, Miami,etc, where no English is needed, the types of people one can associate with, work,etc, without English is severely limiting...

[Awesome]

I think location has alot to do with it.  For example my my ex girlfriend has lived here 6 years and knows very little english.  She's completed cosmetology school and has her license.  There are countless hair salons in our area where only spanish is spoken so english is not necessary at all.  She basically goes through life rarely needing english and rarely even hearing anyone speak english, ever.


I also know girls who came to the us in their early teens and learned english in public school.  They speak fluent english, but almost never use it.  They only speak english when they absolutely have to, which is almost never.


I know mechanics, construction workers, hair stylists, restaurant workers who get by fine with no english.  Of course there are many jobs where english is necessary.  It all depends on where you live and what line of work you want to enter into.


I think I've mentioned my gorgeous venezuelan lady friend who lives here in houston.  She has an engineering degree from venezuela and would never consider working in a restaurant or cleaning houses/offices so english in necessary for her.  She's been studying english for over a year now and it's been very frustrating for her because she's found jobs that's she's qualified for but the only thing she lacks is the ability to speak english fluently.  She's mastered the classroom grammar but doesn't get enough practice actually speaking it.  I told her to make friends with people who don't speak any spanish[size=78%](which should be easy for her because of her good looks jaja)[/size][/size][size=78%] so that she'll be forced to speak english wit them.  Actually I'm realizing as I type this I need to call her so we can hang out.  I'm one of her only english speaking friends.[/size]
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[/size]Another thing I've noticed is it's hard for women to help their children with their school homwork if they don't know english.[size=78%]


[/size]OMG THIS SOFTWARE SUCKS!  IT AUTOMATICALLY CHANGES THE FONT SIZE ANY TIME I COPY AND PASTE SOMETHING.  [size=78%]

[Elexpatriado]

They should be learning English in Colombia for Chris sakes...just like Expats living in Latin countries should be learning Spanish.


You travel all over the world, in almost every place, at least everyone speaks some English..when I was in Nepal ,just ending a weak ago,the Nepalese spoke to the German , French , Russian, (and even Spanish and even a couple Colombian)ouriss  in English..same all over Latin America, Asia, Europe..Africa..English is the International language. The Colombians are so backwards in this respect. I ran into a lot more English in even Chavista Venezuela than in Colombia.

It's been discussed before, but now that my wife has been in San Diego 2.5 years, I've done some more thinking about the importance of an immigrant learning English. My wife has alot of motivation to learn and has come a long way with her English. While she has a number of Colombiana friends in the States who are married to gringos, only two can get by speaking and understanding English, and most of them care less about it....  My wife pretty much tells me just about everything her girlfriends tell her, and I have to say that the ones who don't care to learn English tend to have more problems, some of them of their own doing, some of them because their lack of English simply leaves them with fewer options. I think that if a woman from another country doesn't have any motivation to learn English, her ability to adapt to this country long-term will be quite impaired. While there are parts of San Diego, Houston, Miami,etc, where no English is needed, the types of people one can associate with, work,etc, without English is severely limiting...

[mambocowboy]

I think location has alot to do with it.  For example my my ex girlfriend has lived here 6 years and knows very little english.  She's completed cosmetology school and has her license.  There are countless hair salons in our area where only spanish is spoken so english is not necessary at all.  She basically goes through life rarely needing english and rarely even hearing anyone speak english, ever.


I also know girls who came to the us in their early teens and learned english in public school.  They speak fluent english, but almost never use it.  They only speak english when they absolutely have to, which is almost never.


I know mechanics, construction workers, hair stylists, restaurant workers who get by fine with no english.  Of course there are many jobs where english is necessary.  It all depends on where you live and what line of work you want to enter into.


I think I've mentioned my gorgeous venezuelan lady friend who lives here in houston.  She has an engineering degree from venezuela and would never consider working in a restaurant or cleaning houses/offices so english in necessary for her.  She's been studying english for over a year now and it's been very frustrating for her because she's found jobs that's she's qualified for but the only thing she lacks is the ability to speak english fluently.  She's mastered the classroom grammar but doesn't get enough practice actually speaking it.  I told her to make friends with people who don't speak any spanish[size=78%](which should be easy for her because of her good looks jaja)[/size][/size][size=78%] so that she'll be forced to speak english wit them.  Actually I'm realizing as I type this I need to call her so we can hang out.  I'm one of her only english speaking friends.[/size]
[/size]
[/size]
[/size]Another thing I've noticed is it's hard for women to help their children with their school homwork if they don't know english.[size=78%]


[/size]OMG THIS SOFTWARE SUCKS!  IT AUTOMATICALLY CHANGES THE FONT SIZE ANY TIME I COPY AND PASTE SOMETHING.  [size=78%]

Yes of course people get by without English. My point is it's extremely limiting in that your social and professional interactions are limited to Spanish speakers. And while San Diego has plenty of Spanish speakers, the nicer and wealthier areas are English speaking only.

[bcc_1_2]

I would highly advise against dating women that don't already know some English and have the interest in learning it. Maybe you can get by in SD, but in the Midwest.... no way.

[Chris F]

What I have said about this topic before I will say again.

If your going to have children, your going to want your wife to help them academically in school. If the wife never learns the language she will never be able to help their own child in school. ( as a teacher I tell this to my Spanish speaking parents every school year about the importance of learning English)

Second, your children as they grow and mature will easily be able to keep secrets around their mom by simply switching to English with their friends.

[Elexpatriado]

It doesnt matter if they speak a word of English or not..as long as they have the brains and drive to learn it, if you pay for the lessons and teach them yourself,,,I learned Spanish when I was almost 45...surely a Colombiana can learn English when shes less than 30,

I would highly advise against dating women that don't already know some English and have the interest in learning it. Maybe you can get by in SD, but in the Midwest.... no way.

[mambocowboy]

What I have said about this topic before I will say again.

If your going to have children, your going to want your wife to help them academically in school. If the wife never learns the language she will never be able to help their own child in school. ( as a teacher I tell this to my Spanish speaking parents every school year about the importance of learning English)

Second, your children as they grow and mature will easily be able to keep secrets around their mom by simply switching to English with their friends.

I agree on both counts. I think some guys don't think these things through when they marry a foreigner and bring her here...

[utopiacowboy]

My wife never bothered to learn English and we have communicated exclusively in English for the past 11 years. She is a production supervisor at the Toyota plant in San Antonio. English is becoming an optional language in Texas. She basically lives her life in Spanish and I can't see that it has caused her any problems really.

[bcc_1_2]

It doesnt matter if they speak a word of English or not..as long as they have the brains and drive to learn it, if you pay for the lessons and teach them yourself,,,I learned Spanish when I was almost 45...surely a Colombiana can learn English when shes less than 30,

Your micro example is impressive, but we need to consider possible versus likely.

[bcc_1_2]

My wife never bothered to learn English and we have communicated exclusively in English for the past 11 years. She is a production supervisor at the Toyota plant in San Antonio. English is becoming an optional language in Texas. She basically lives her life in Spanish and I can't see that it has caused her any problems really.

Try that in Fargo.

[Awesome]

Yes of course people get by without English. My point is it's extremely limiting in that your social and professional interactions are limited to Spanish speakers. And while San Diego has plenty of Spanish speakers, the nicer and wealthier areas are English speaking only.

No sh*t sherlock.  Did you even read my post that you quoted?  Did you read the part about my friend who's an engineer but can't get a job in her field because she still isn't fluent in english?


And in a place like california and texas latinos don't desire any social interactions outside of the spanish speaking community.  Professional yes because most higher level jobs require english, but social isn't important.


Houston has a huge community of wealthy latinos.  San diego I'm sure does too, you're probably just not aware of it mc.


I like UC's post.  That's the kind of progress I like to see, where the spanish language is becoming more important than english in texas.  It pains me to see latinos learning english and becoming americanized.  That's why I want my children to be born and raised in a latin country.

[mambocowboy]

No sh*t sherlock.  Did you even read my post that you quoted?  Did you read the part about my friend who's an engineer but can't get a job in her field because she still isn't fluent in english?


And in a place like california and texas latinos don't desire any social interactions outside of the spanish speaking community.  Professional yes because most higher level jobs require english, but social isn't important.


Houston has a huge community of wealthy latinos.  San diego I'm sure does too, you're probably just not aware of it mc.


I like UC's post.  That's the kind of progress I like to see, where the spanish language is becoming more important than english in texas.  It pains me to see latinos learning english and becoming americanized.  That's why I want my children to be born and raised in a latin country.

For the most part I ignore your posts. I haven't found a good reason to pay you much attention anymore and I know I'm far from the only one.... At any rate, English is still number one in the US. Not bothering to learn English in this country is low class, since free classes are just about everywhere.It's the equivalent of gringos going to foreign countries and expecting everyone to speak English with them.

[mambocowboy]

My wife never bothered to learn English and we have communicated exclusively in English for the past 11 years. She is a production supervisor at the Toyota plant in San Antonio. English is becoming an optional language in Texas. She basically lives her life in Spanish and I can't see that it has caused her any problems really.

You have communicated exclusively in English or Spanish with her? I assume you meant to say Spanish? Sounds like you have done most of the adjusting for her...I guess you two don't have any non Spanish speaking friends over if she doesn't speak English. That wouldn't work for me but if you are happy with it good for you.

[Awesome]

Not bothering to learn English in this country is low class, since free classes are just about everywhere.It's the equivalent of gringos going to foreign countries and expecting everyone to speak English with them.

Who said not learning english in the us is low class?  Why learn something you don't need?  What would be the point?  Just because YOU say so?


If someone doesn't need english at their job, doesn't have or want any english speaking friends, and everyone they come into contact with speaks spanish, why should that person go through the headache of learning a second language which is NOT an easy task.

[mambocowboy]

Who said not learning english in the us is low class?  Why learn something you don't need?  What would be the point?  Just because YOU say so?


If someone doesn't need english at their job, doesn't have or want any english speaking friends, and everyone they come into contact with speaks spanish, why should that person go through the headache of learning a second language which is NOT an easy task.

What world do you live in? I'm not the only american who deems English proficiency as essential in the US.

[Chris F]

Who said not learning english in the us is low class?  Why learn something you don't need?  What would be the point?  Just because YOU say so?


If someone doesn't need english at their job, doesn't have or want any english speaking friends, and everyone they come into contact with speaks spanish, why should that person go through the headache of learning a second language which is NOT an easy task.

So Awesome..if  a couple is going to have a child here in the USA. You believe that the Mom still should not learn the language and not help their child academically?

[Awesome]

What world do you live in? I'm not the only american who deems English proficiency as essential in the US.

Mc I think YOU are the one who needs to go back to english reading class.  Do you even read my posts before you reply?


Each case is different.  Let me repeat again for you what I said.  IT DEPENDS WHERE YOU LIVE AND WHERE YOU WORK.  Yes, in some places english is more necessary than other places.  I know people who've been living in the us for 30 years and are doing very good for themselves without knowing english, much better than many people who were born and raised in the us.  Others who desire to work in professional fields absolutely need to know english fluently.  That's why I mentioned my venezolana engineer friend who's struggling to learn english to get a job in her field.


What's wrong with your brain function mambocowboy?  This isn't the first time I've had to repeat the same thing to you over and over again because you have a hard time comprehending english.  Prefieres que te explique en espanol?

So Awesome..if  a couple is going to have a child here in the USA. You believe that the Mom still should not learn the language and not help their child academically?

Go back and read my original post in this thread.  I was the first to mention that it's hard for a mother to help her child with school work if she doesn't know english.  And yes of course, a parent knowing english can help improve a child's academic performance.  With that being said I know people with masters degrees who's parents were both immigrants who have yet to learn english.  I also know people who's parents both speak english and the child dropped out in the 8th grade.

Another thing I've noticed is it's hard for women to help their children with their school homwork if they don't know english.

[Elexpatriado]

I have traveled to over 40 different countries and lived and/or worked in at least 7.English still is, and will remain so for quite a while, the International language, if you want to travel internationally,or  further your career, you definitely need English. Sure you can get by without it in Latin America and parts the SouhtWestern US,or almost any non-English speakingccountry, but the smart people are learning English and teaching their kids English, pretty much everywhere in the world.

Who said not learning english in the us is low class?  Why learn something you don't need?  What would be the point?  Just because YOU say so?


If someone doesn't need english at their job, doesn't have or want any english speaking friends, and everyone they come into contact with speaks spanish, why should that person go through the headache of learning a second language which is NOT an easy task.

[Kiltboy1]

I have not spoken a word of Spanish to my wife in over 5 years. And because of that and to Chris'F. point, my wife regularly helps our 11 year old 6th grader with his homework as I am in sales and travel most weeks at least a couple of days away. If you live in the USA and have kids, it’s not an option not to learn English if you want to have a full life without limitations here. My wife works for a credit union that has 90% Latino customers. The only employees that get promoted and get large salary increases are the ones that speak English . The company owners are Latinos—So what does that tell you ?
 
 My son, Born in Ecuador, considers English his first language and considers himself American even though he speaks Spanish with him mom in the house. She is completely fine with this as she knows his future is so much brighter being fluent in both languages.

[Gato4Astrid]

My ex-novia from Italy came to England last October to live with her sister who is married to my English friend.   She came to learn English, but for 6 months she hasn't learnt any, as she kept talking to her sister in Italian !!!   Yes, whole 6 months!!

[robert angel]

10 Reasons Why English Is A Hard Language
An Article from Xamuel.com

« Will The Languages Of The World Ever Merge?Examples of Japanese Onomatopoeia »
The purpose of this article is to put language difficulty into perspective for native English speakers struggling with foreign languages. Languages like Japanese, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, or even easier languages like Spanish, can seem very difficult, just because we’re not used to them. English seems sooo easy and simple, but that’s because we’ve been raised with it. Here are ten reasons why English is actually one of the hardest languages in the world.

THE WORLD’S CRAZIEST SPELLING SYSTEM

English spelling is extremely counter-intuitive! Why is it that words like “through”, “trough”, and “though” sound so different? It seems like for virtually every “rule” a prescriptivist writes down to try and model English spelling, exceptions can be found.

The fact is, although it’s possible to make rough guesses at English spellings using phonetics, in order to really know English spelling, you have to memorize the spelling of every word. Even words whose spelling seems straightforward and simple, you still memorize (maybe subconsciously without even trying) just because otherwise when you wanted to spell it, you’d have no way to know it was simple and straightforward.

There is a method to the madness of English spelling. It’s based on etymology. Based on how a word is spelled, we can make guesses about where the word came from. German, French, Latin? Maybe somewhere more exotic like Japanese? This is very useful, because it keeps spelling consistent between different English-speaking nations.

English is pronounced rather differently in the United States, in Britain, in Australia, and in India. If, as so many people have suggested, spelling reform were attempted, which nation would be the standard? At most one nation could enjoy perfectly phonetic spelling. The others would just switch from one bizarre spelling system to another. And even for that one country, the spellings would become obsolete as the pronunciations of words changed. Even in the United States, pronunciations vary from dialect to dialect.

So, there’s good reason for the English spelling system. It’s one of the most successful spelling systems in the world, because of its flexibility and its strength across wildly differing dialects. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to learn! For a foreigner trying to learn English, spelling is extremely difficult!

THE SOUND SYSTEM IS SO RICH

When you study a foreign language, you’re liable to run into sounds which aren’t present in your native tongue. Part of the challenge is learning, mechanically, how to produce these sounds. In Japanese, there’s a different “R” sound, which actually sounds something like a mix between “R”, “L”, and “D”. In Mandarin, there are a dozen sounds which are all really hard to learn. German is famous for its hard gutteral sound, which we’d have to master if we wanted to get Johann Sebastian Bach’s name right.

Generally, more exotic new sounds mean more difficulty learning a language. English has a very rich set of sounds. It has the ability to string consonants and vowels together almost arbitrarily. Take a look at the word, “strengths”. There’s only one vowel out of six or seven consonants, depending how you count! Again look at “squirrel”. A very difficult word for foreigners to learn to pronounce.

And this is only made worse by the crazy spelling system. Not only are there a million sounds to learn, but there’s small indication from a word’s spelling which sounds are involved.

And, going the other direction, some foreigners must learn to identify certain sounds which they consider distinct. For example, English actually has two distinct “L” sounds, but we as English speakers can’t hear the difference because we never need to in order to understand the language. But to, e.g., a native Russian speaker, suddenly there are two sounds floating around and both are to be considered identical. It’s similar to learning Japanese, where the “g” of “go” and the “ng” of “thing” are treated as being identical.

SUBTLE ORDERING

In English, there are subtle ordering requirements which even English native speakers aren’t consciously aware of. We get them right every time, because we subconsciously know about them through practice, but that just makes it all the harder for foreigners, since these rules are so subtle and hidden.

The best example is adjective ordering. Compare, “a cute little puppy” to “a little cute puppy.” The first is fine, while the second sounds wrong. How is a foreigner to know which order to use?
Can you explain it to them? (There is actually a method, but it’s rather complex and better to just learn subconsciously)

WHICH SYNONYM TO USE??

Because of its diverse, promiscuous etymological origins, English has lots of synonyms which, just from a dictionary definition, seem very similar if not identical in meaning. Part of becoming a master English speaker, is knowing which words to use when. Although synonyms are grouped up in a thesaurus, that doesn’t mean the words are identical. Even if their official meanings are identical, different synonyms convey subtly different moods and ideas.

You can watch a movie or see a movie, but you can only watch TV, never see it. You can’t view either of them, even though when you watch either of them, you become a viewer (and never a watcher, much less a seer!) Try explaining that to someone who speaks Arabic!

STRESS

In English, the entire meaning of a sentence can be changed by placing stress on a word. For example:

I entered my room.
*I* entered my room.
I *entered* my room.
I entered *my* room.
I entered my *room*.
A grammar of English usually only even addresses the meaning of the first, stressless, version of the sentence, even though a foreigner will hear all variations if they’re immersed deeply enough in the language.

For native speakers of stressless languages, it’s very difficult to even hear the stress at all. This counter-balances Mandarin’s dreaded tone system which English speakers always cite as evidence of Mandarin’s horrid difficulty.

POETIC, OLDER ENGLISH IS EVERYWHERE

In order to be really fluent in English, you can’t just learn modern English, you must also know a little bit of older, more poetic English. Not actual “Old English”, since that’s a whole other language entirely, but “older” English.

Here in downtown Columbus, there’s a church which advertises with the message: “Which part of ‘Thou shalt not‘ don’t you understand?” This slogan always makes me laugh, because, having studied languages, I’ve come to see how the slogan must be extremely confusing to most ESL speakers. The truth is that, for a lot of speakers, “Thou” and “shalt” are both unfamiliar. And the fact that by stringing them together in essentially the same structure as “You will not”, you end up creating a command– that’s even worse!

Older English shows up in literature, plays, poetry… even video games.

WHAT’S UP WITH THESE QUESTIONS??

In English, it’s very strange how the whole grammar of a sentence changes when the sentence is put in question form. “It is warm” becomes “Is it warm?” Notice how the “it” and the “is” are switched. To us, this is totally natural because we’ve been raised with it. To a lot of speakers of other languages, the whole device seems needlessly difficult.

Continuing with the “It is warm” example, there actually is a valid question, “It is warm?” It’s interesting to ponder the difference in meaning between “It’s warm?” and “Is it warm?” In the latter, the speaker genuinely doesn’t know whether it’s warm. In the former, it seems almost like the speaker thinks it’s not warm, and is asking for re-confirmation.

These kinds of subtle distinctions make English a pretty difficult language grammatically.

IRREGULAR CONJUGATIONS OF VERBS, AND SIMILAR PHENOMENA

Some people who study Spanish think the verbs there are bad. English is stuffed full of irregular verbs! How come the past tense of “buy” is “bought”, and the past tense of “sell” is “sold”, and neither “buyed” nor “selled” are real words?

And that’s just the “usual” conjugations of verbs, i.e., past tense and third person singular. There are other verb conjugations, but they’re just so irregular we don’t even acknowledge them as conjugations. For example, taking an adjective and forming its “-ness” quality. As in, deriving “swiftness” from “swift”. This process is as irregular as you can get. “Strong” doesn’t become “strongness”, it becomes “strength”, even though its opposite, “weak”, does become “weakness”. “High” becomes “height”, and if you mess up and say “highness” instead, it sounds like you’re talking about some bizarre royal bloodline!

Sometimes you can even “undo” a conjugation and end up with a whole new word than what you started with. The word “truthiness”, for example, has recently been popularized. Another example is “awesomeness”. “Awesome” is actually derived from “awe”: something is awesome if it inspires awe (at least, that’s the original meaning). So in theory, “awesomeness” and “awe” should be the same thing, and “awesomeness” shouldn’t even be a word since it should be redundant, and yet, they don’t mean the same things and “awesomeness” is a word.

THE CASE OF THE LEFTOVER CASES

Being derived from German, which has a heavy case system, English originally had its own heavy case system. English cases have mostly been phased out, but the remnants of a case system still exist, which almost means in English it’s the worst of both worlds.

Let me explain what cases are. Cases are different “forms” for words to indicate what function they serve in a sentence. For example, in the sentence “the cat ate the fish”, “the fish” is the “object” (it’s getting eaten), and “the cat” is the subject (he’s doing the eating). There are no cases here; in order to tell who did the eating and who got eaten, we have to look at word order. If the sentence were “the fish ate the cat”, the meaning would be very different!

In a cased language, “the cat” might have different forms, to indicate whether the cat is the subject, object, or something else (German has four different cases and Russian has even more). Similarly with “the fish”. The advantage of a cased system is that word order is more flexible. The forms of the nouns tell us what roles they play, so the order of the sentence is less crucial. The downside of the case system is that it’s more complicated, and there’s more to memorize.

As I said, English is mostly case-free. But, there are leftovers from the old case system. That’s why we have “I”, “me”, “mine” and “my”. And why we have “you”, “yours” and “your”. And why we have “he”, “him”, and “his”, and “we”, “us”, “ours” and “our”. In each of these groups, it’s really the same word, just in different forms- different cases. So, part of learning English is learning a case system, even though it’s only used for a handful of words.

And English doesn’t even get the positive advantages from its case system. Even in a sentence entirely using cased words, like “I hit him”, word order is still important– “Him hit I” is totally incorrect unless your name is Yoda.

Incidentally, the leftover case system also explains the annoying “who”/”whom” dilemma, which many native English speakers are confused by, not to mention ESL speakers!

WHAT KIND OF WORD IS THIS, ANYWAY??

One of the most difficult things about English, is the fact that there’s very little in the way of signals to tell you what kind of word a word is. For example, in Japanese and Spanish, all verbs have similar endings. Not so in English.

The lone exception is the English adverb, which often ends in “-ly”, but even this isn’t a universal rule, and adverbs are about the least important words in a language anyway.

In English, the same word can even fall into multiple categories. “Trust” is a noun, but also a verb. “Quiet” is both a noun and an adjective (even though its opposite, “loud”, is only an adjective). “Abstract” is all three!

In fact, almost any adjective can be used as a noun, just put “the” in front of it: “The dead shall walk the earth.” And any noun can be used as a verb, like in the famous example, “I’ll cookie you!” The possibilities are endless, as long as you’re creative. All this makes English a lot of fun- but it also definitely makes the language complicated!

CONCLUSION

If you ever find yourself stressing out over learning a foreign language, just be glad you don’t have to learn English as a second language!!

[Elexpatriado]

What your saying is true, but the grammar and verb conjugation is extremely simple and easy.
What they need to do is phoneisize and standardize English and get rid of the stupid eccentricities.

10 Reasons Why English Is A Hard Language
An Article from Xamuel.com

« Will The Languages Of The World Ever Merge?Examples of Japanese Onomatopoeia »
The purpose of this article is to put language difficulty into perspective for native English speakers struggling with foreign languages. Languages like Japanese, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, or even easier languages like Spanish, can seem very difficult, just because we’re not used to them. English seems sooo easy and simple, but that’s because we’ve been raised with it. Here are ten reasons why English is actually one of the hardest languages in the world.

THE WORLD’S CRAZIEST SPELLING SYSTEM

English spelling is extremely counter-intuitive! Why is it that words like “through”, “trough”, and “though” sound so different? It seems like for virtually every “rule” a prescriptivist writes down to try and model English spelling, exceptions can be found.

The fact is, although it’s possible to make rough guesses at English spellings using phonetics, in order to really know English spelling, you have to memorize the spelling of every word. Even words whose spelling seems straightforward and simple, you still memorize (maybe subconsciously without even trying) just because otherwise when you wanted to spell it, you’d have no way to know it was simple and straightforward.

There is a method to the madness of English spelling. It’s based on etymology. Based on how a word is spelled, we can make guesses about where the word came from. German, French, Latin? Maybe somewhere more exotic like Japanese? This is very useful, because it keeps spelling consistent between different English-speaking nations.

English is pronounced rather differently in the United States, in Britain, in Australia, and in India. If, as so many people have suggested, spelling reform were attempted, which nation would be the standard? At most one nation could enjoy perfectly phonetic spelling. The others would just switch from one bizarre spelling system to another. And even for that one country, the spellings would become obsolete as the pronunciations of words changed. Even in the United States, pronunciations vary from dialect to dialect.

So, there’s good reason for the English spelling system. It’s one of the most successful spelling systems in the world, because of its flexibility and its strength across wildly differing dialects. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to learn! For a foreigner trying to learn English, spelling is extremely difficult!

THE SOUND SYSTEM IS SO RICH

When you study a foreign language, you’re liable to run into sounds which aren’t present in your native tongue. Part of the challenge is learning, mechanically, how to produce these sounds. In Japanese, there’s a different “R” sound, which actually sounds something like a mix between “R”, “L”, and “D”. In Mandarin, there are a dozen sounds which are all really hard to learn. German is famous for its hard gutteral sound, which we’d have to master if we wanted to get Johann Sebastian Bach’s name right.

Generally, more exotic new sounds mean more difficulty learning a language. English has a very rich set of sounds. It has the ability to string consonants and vowels together almost arbitrarily. Take a look at the word, “strengths”. There’s only one vowel out of six or seven consonants, depending how you count! Again look at “squirrel”. A very difficult word for foreigners to learn to pronounce.

And this is only made worse by the crazy spelling system. Not only are there a million sounds to learn, but there’s small indication from a word’s spelling which sounds are involved.

And, going the other direction, some foreigners must learn to identify certain sounds which they consider distinct. For example, English actually has two distinct “L” sounds, but we as English speakers can’t hear the difference because we never need to in order to understand the language. But to, e.g., a native Russian speaker, suddenly there are two sounds floating around and both are to be considered identical. It’s similar to learning Japanese, where the “g” of “go” and the “ng” of “thing” are treated as being identical.

SUBTLE ORDERING

In English, there are subtle ordering requirements which even English native speakers aren’t consciously aware of. We get them right every time, because we subconsciously know about them through practice, but that just makes it all the harder for foreigners, since these rules are so subtle and hidden.

The best example is adjective ordering. Compare, “a cute little puppy” to “a little cute puppy.” The first is fine, while the second sounds wrong. How is a foreigner to know which order to use?
Can you explain it to them? (There is actually a method, but it’s rather complex and better to just learn subconsciously)

WHICH SYNONYM TO USE??

Because of its diverse, promiscuous etymological origins, English has lots of synonyms which, just from a dictionary definition, seem very similar if not identical in meaning. Part of becoming a master English speaker, is knowing which words to use when. Although synonyms are grouped up in a thesaurus, that doesn’t mean the words are identical. Even if their official meanings are identical, different synonyms convey subtly different moods and ideas.

You can watch a movie or see a movie, but you can only watch TV, never see it. You can’t view either of them, even though when you watch either of them, you become a viewer (and never a watcher, much less a seer!) Try explaining that to someone who speaks Arabic!

STRESS

In English, the entire meaning of a sentence can be changed by placing stress on a word. For example:

I entered my room.
*I* entered my room.
I *entered* my room.
I entered *my* room.
I entered my *room*.
A grammar of English usually only even addresses the meaning of the first, stressless, version of the sentence, even though a foreigner will hear all variations if they’re immersed deeply enough in the language.

For native speakers of stressless languages, it’s very difficult to even hear the stress at all. This counter-balances Mandarin’s dreaded tone system which English speakers always cite as evidence of Mandarin’s horrid difficulty.

POETIC, OLDER ENGLISH IS EVERYWHERE

In order to be really fluent in English, you can’t just learn modern English, you must also know a little bit of older, more poetic English. Not actual “Old English”, since that’s a whole other language entirely, but “older” English.

Here in downtown Columbus, there’s a church which advertises with the message: “Which part of ‘Thou shalt not‘ don’t you understand?” This slogan always makes me laugh, because, having studied languages, I’ve come to see how the slogan must be extremely confusing to most ESL speakers. The truth is that, for a lot of speakers, “Thou” and “shalt” are both unfamiliar. And the fact that by stringing them together in essentially the same structure as “You will not”, you end up creating a command– that’s even worse!

Older English shows up in literature, plays, poetry… even video games.

WHAT’S UP WITH THESE QUESTIONS??

In English, it’s very strange how the whole grammar of a sentence changes when the sentence is put in question form. “It is warm” becomes “Is it warm?” Notice how the “it” and the “is” are switched. To us, this is totally natural because we’ve been raised with it. To a lot of speakers of other languages, the whole device seems needlessly difficult.

Continuing with the “It is warm” example, there actually is a valid question, “It is warm?” It’s interesting to ponder the difference in meaning between “It’s warm?” and “Is it warm?” In the latter, the speaker genuinely doesn’t know whether it’s warm. In the former, it seems almost like the speaker thinks it’s not warm, and is asking for re-confirmation.

These kinds of subtle distinctions make English a pretty difficult language grammatically.

IRREGULAR CONJUGATIONS OF VERBS, AND SIMILAR PHENOMENA

Some people who study Spanish think the verbs there are bad. English is stuffed full of irregular verbs! How come the past tense of “buy” is “bought”, and the past tense of “sell” is “sold”, and neither “buyed” nor “selled” are real words?

And that’s just the “usual” conjugations of verbs, i.e., past tense and third person singular. There are other verb conjugations, but they’re just so irregular we don’t even acknowledge them as conjugations. For example, taking an adjective and forming its “-ness” quality. As in, deriving “swiftness” from “swift”. This process is as irregular as you can get. “Strong” doesn’t become “strongness”, it becomes “strength”, even though its opposite, “weak”, does become “weakness”. “High” becomes “height”, and if you mess up and say “highness” instead, it sounds like you’re talking about some bizarre royal bloodline!

Sometimes you can even “undo” a conjugation and end up with a whole new word than what you started with. The word “truthiness”, for example, has recently been popularized. Another example is “awesomeness”. “Awesome” is actually derived from “awe”: something is awesome if it inspires awe (at least, that’s the original meaning). So in theory, “awesomeness” and “awe” should be the same thing, and “awesomeness” shouldn’t even be a word since it should be redundant, and yet, they don’t mean the same things and “awesomeness” is a word.

THE CASE OF THE LEFTOVER CASES

Being derived from German, which has a heavy case system, English originally had its own heavy case system. English cases have mostly been phased out, but the remnants of a case system still exist, which almost means in English it’s the worst of both worlds.

Let me explain what cases are. Cases are different “forms” for words to indicate what function they serve in a sentence. For example, in the sentence “the cat ate the fish”, “the fish” is the “object” (it’s getting eaten), and “the cat” is the subject (he’s doing the eating). There are no cases here; in order to tell who did the eating and who got eaten, we have to look at word order. If the sentence were “the fish ate the cat”, the meaning would be very different!

In a cased language, “the cat” might have different forms, to indicate whether the cat is the subject, object, or something else (German has four different cases and Russian has even more). Similarly with “the fish”. The advantage of a cased system is that word order is more flexible. The forms of the nouns tell us what roles they play, so the order of the sentence is less crucial. The downside of the case system is that it’s more complicated, and there’s more to memorize.

As I said, English is mostly case-free. But, there are leftovers from the old case system. That’s why we have “I”, “me”, “mine” and “my”. And why we have “you”, “yours” and “your”. And why we have “he”, “him”, and “his”, and “we”, “us”, “ours” and “our”. In each of these groups, it’s really the same word, just in different forms- different cases. So, part of learning English is learning a case system, even though it’s only used for a handful of words.

And English doesn’t even get the positive advantages from its case system. Even in a sentence entirely using cased words, like “I hit him”, word order is still important– “Him hit I” is totally incorrect unless your name is Yoda.

Incidentally, the leftover case system also explains the annoying “who”/”whom” dilemma, which many native English speakers are confused by, not to mention ESL speakers!

WHAT KIND OF WORD IS THIS, ANYWAY??

One of the most difficult things about English, is the fact that there’s very little in the way of signals to tell you what kind of word a word is. For example, in Japanese and Spanish, all verbs have similar endings. Not so in English.

The lone exception is the English adverb, which often ends in “-ly”, but even this isn’t a universal rule, and adverbs are about the least important words in a language anyway.

In English, the same word can even fall into multiple categories. “Trust” is a noun, but also a verb. “Quiet” is both a noun and an adjective (even though its opposite, “loud”, is only an adjective). “Abstract” is all three!

In fact, almost any adjective can be used as a noun, just put “the” in front of it: “The dead shall walk the earth.” And any noun can be used as a verb, like in the famous example, “I’ll cookie you!” The possibilities are endless, as long as you’re creative. All this makes English a lot of fun- but it also definitely makes the language complicated!

CONCLUSION

If you ever find yourself stressing out over learning a foreign language, just be glad you don’t have to learn English as a second language!!

[robert angel]

As the article copied below explains, the older you are, the harder it becomes to even begin to learn a new language. It's insane that most USA  school systems continue to wait until middle or even high school, before they make students take the REQUIRED for graduation, typically two or three years of a foreign language--usually limited to Spanish or French. By then--actually by puberty, the neural pathways that enable you to learn a new language w/o it being mumbo jumbo are pretty much closed. Your mind has become hardwired into not only speaking, but also in thinking in the language you grew up on. It's best to start pre school age really.

Besides, how many of us took 2 or 3 years of Spanish or French in High School and in 2 or 3 years, forgot 90%+ of it? I took Spanish, I have native Spanish speaking relatives and I still have difficulty ordering at Taco Bell!

You can still do it--and some adults can easier than others, but like learning to play an instrument, it's just a typically lot harder the older you are. Once again, your mind's become hardwired. Take into account that in some places on earth, they don't feel compelled to have much exposure to English or to teach conversational English--it's no wonder those who try to learn as adults end up frustrated, tongue tied and confused.

I think many--especially women, find it embarrassing, frustrating and humiliating--often afraid what they want to say in English will come out sounding dumb. My wife is highly educated, grew up where English isn't that uncommon and even when she has an important, complex business correspondence letter, she still--with ten years now in the USA, will sometimes run it by me to make sure syntax and other grammatical details are perfect. Funny thing is, some of the people she works with--born and raised here in the USA--speaking English only, can't write well and really don't worry about it.

""According to the critical period hypothesis, there's a certain window in which second language acquisition skills are at their peak. Researchers disagree over just how long that window is -- some say that it ends by age 6 or 7, while others say that it extends all the way through puberty -- but after that period is over, it becomes much harder for a person to learn a new language. It's not impossible, but children in that critical period have an almost universal success rate at achieving near fluency and perfect accents, while adults' results are more hit-and-miss.

Because children are so much more skilled at picking up a second language than adults, immersion preschools and elementary schools are a popular choice for parents. Students at these schools have math, story time and social studies the way other students do, but their classes are taught in a foreign language. Not only does this give the students ample time to practice the foreign language, but some research indicates that such a program might have other academic benefits, such as higher math scores and sharper critical thinking skills. And learning a second language at such a young age doesn't hinder any abilities in the child's native language -- it seems a child's brain is wired so that all linguistic rules, be they native or foreign, are picked up quickly.

However, just because a child becomes fluent in Italian, Russian and Portuguese doesn't mean that he or she will be speaking those languages 50 years later. Without extended exposure to a language, the child's abilities diminish, so it's important to provide continued opportunities to practice these skills. And even if your parents let your critical period for language acquisition pass by without so much as an "adios," don't fret. Even though young children may be more naturally gifted at learning languages, adults can learn them, too -- with motivation and hard work.""

[robert angel]

What your saying is true, but the grammar and verb conjugation is extremely simple and easy.
What they need to do is phoneisize and standardize English and get rid of the stupid eccentricities.

Sure...If our computer based spell checkers have issues, I can imagine computerized translation devices guys use talking to chicas... Makes me remember when my son applied to get into a highly completive school that required a lengthily vetting process, including an essay portion. In his essay, he meant to say "I want to ENGAGE my Teachers". Instead, after running spell check, he wrote: "I want to ENRAGE my Teachers"--which being spelled correctly, flew right under the radar. Good thing I proof read it. He got into the school and saved me about $50,000 I would've otherwise had to spend to send him to a school of similar quality.

A Little Poem Regarding Computer Spell Checkers...
 
Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

I sometimes read articles written in English by Chinese people and although some are pretty much near perfect, there's often a certain stilt--or 'tiltedness' to them that makes me realize they're Chinese--sort of funny to me in a way, but hey--if I had to speak, never mind write in their language, that'd be a real bad joke on me!