Ack wrote:jfrost wrote:Mod_Man_Extreme wrote:English is one of only a few languages that tries to describe every facet, while most foreign ones (French, Chinese etc...) only give you just what you need without any hints.
I don't really get what you meant here.
General consensus is that English is not a very difficult language to learn at all. The complex part is pronunciation, since there seems to be no rule about what is the correct way to say a word -- that is, either you know the word or you don't, and the only way to learn it is listening to other people talk.
But sentence structure, verbs, pronouns, etc, are relatively easy.
English is considered a difficult language due to the large number of words that have multiple meanings based solely on context clues(bat), the large number of words with similar spellings and identical sounds(there, their, they're), and the large contradictions of rules(i before e except after c, except in words like neighbor, surfeit, height, seize, caffeine, etc.).
Really, these are not big difficulties at all. Every language has a number of homonyms. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least ten in Portuguese.
I'll grant that English grammar is complex. But it's very manageable compared to other languages. As you said, the hard part is the fact that there seems to be no consistency in spelling in relation to speaking. However, with very little reading you can dispel many doubts, which is not true of many other languages, which require deeper knowledge of the language before attempting proper reading or writing (I reckon that's how Japanese is).
And while mispronunciations are often accepted, it's partly because certain combinations of letters can produce different sounds depending on the individual word. For instance, in feign, the ei has a sound that's very different from the sound made in codeine. Hell, compare rein and sovereign. If you pronounce it properly, it should sound more like you were saying "rain" and "soverin."
Yes, as I said pronunciation is relatively difficult, since the language doesn't seem to be constant. But that's a relatively small problem. By just reading a word you can't know how it is pronounced, etc.
But, comparing to Portuguese, notice that English mostly doesn't have verb inflections. Each verb is almost always the same, the time varies according only to terms around it. In Portuguese, you have different verb inflections for present, past perfect, past imperfect, past more-than-perfect (yes, that's the name of the verbal conjugation), future perfect, future of the past, present subjunctive, past subjunctive, future subjunctive... not to mention inflections that English does have, like present continuous.
In English, nouns do not have gender inflections. There are no graphic accents (OK, this might or might not be a complication). English sentences always have subjects, making them comparatively easier (in Portuguese, subjects can be null). There are no noun or adjective inflections. Articles, which do not have number inflections, can be omitted much more often. I could go on, but I think this is enough to show that English is not too complex.
Sure, if you go deeper on grammar, you're always going to find complicating factors. Generally, however, English's structure is pretty straightforward. And this is good. English is a much more flexible language due to this.
