Language Difficulty

[arcthemonkey]

Exactly! You can't just look at an English verb and know how to conjugate it EVER.

If you learn the verb and learn it's standard, then great, but you still have to learn that individually for every verb.

Even asian languages have conjugation helpers in most words in the forms of -ru and -na (wait, is -na a verb ending?) endings in the case of Japanese.

Additionally, those verbs you mentioned aren't all exceptionally standard. Consider the person performing these verbs! The person who stayed is a stayer? No. Stayer is a word, but isn't accurately correctly defined as "one who stays". It can be used that way, but it's not really proper. Talker? Not a word. Not in English anyway. Calculater is also not a proper word. Calculator is, but why with the -or ending? Nobody knows. I don't know.

 

[rataime]

Only very few irregular verbs in French ??

Around 10% of the verbs are, and it means different for each tense... Most people here don't even know hot to conjugate properly subjective tense.

 

[Rhazdel]

90% is actually pretty good. That means that (assuming I know how to conjugate verbs), if you give me 10 infinitive forms of verbs that I have never heard of, I can conjugate 9 of them perfectly and in every tense and form.

The same really just doesn't apply to English. Verb conjugation varies by verb without any way of knowing, other than "just knowing" which ones are irregular - which is quite a few.

Every language has irregular verbs, but I think that English just has an exorbitant amount of them.

 

[WeissRaben]

Ok: let's look to the differences.
French (and Italian): 90% of the verbs are regular, but that 10% must be conjugated with a different form for EACH of the person of a tense, for EACH tense. There is no way to say how it must be conjugated.

English: 75% of verbs are irregular, BUT there are some patterns...know, fly, throw conjugate in the same way. And there are only 3 forms: Fly, Flew, Flown.

 

[Rhazdel]

Think of it like programming.

Say you want to create a program that a person can input any verb and it will produce every tense for it.

In most languages, this would be accomplished through a creating a class that runs the word through all of the normal conjugations, and then, creating the "exceptions" list, which would catch the 10% of irregular verbs on input and run them through another conjugation set. The exceptions list would be very small (comparitively), and this program would not be too much of a pain to program.

Now, imagine doing one for English. The "exceptions list" would contain the majority of all verbs, and each one would need to be run through a unique conjugation set. This would be a scripting nightmare.

Now apply that to learning. Once a person knows the "program" to conjugate regular verbs, they can do so for 90% of all verbs in that language. That is incredible.

And, I'm not saying that every language is easy to learn other than English, because it's not. Learning another language is very difficult, especially as you get older. There have been numerous studies on this, and it has been shown that a child under the age of 10 is MUCH less likely to encounter difficulty learning another language than a teen/adult trying to learn the same thing AND that children who learn a second language at a young age have a much easier time learing a 3 language later in life, even into adulthood, than a person who is trying to learn a second or third language taught after age 10.

It is very difficult to learn any language, though. Based on my personal opinion (and articles I have read), I feel that English's lack of defined rules makes it a more difficult language to learn than some others.

 

[Ravenith]

Well, gentlemen, I'd have to disagree with each and every one of you.
I learned English, French and German.
English -> Easy. No, Really.
French -> A bit harder, but not too hard.
German -> More challenging, much more interesting, still not too hard.
Also, a bit of italian, and that's very simple.
I also guess that chinese, japanese and arabic must be hard.

BUT.

My native language is modern Greek. Modern greek has by far the greatest vocabulary and most complicated (and structured) grammar among the languages I know. And it is simplified. The original greek language is considered by many linguists as the most structured and refined code of communication known to mankind. And maybe the hardest. A native speaker of modern greek, I'm totally at a loss when it comes to the original language.

 

[Me(tm)]

There is no way to say how it must be conjugated.

I am glad that is not too. There is an regularity in the irregulareties.

1s suis - ai - vais
2s est - as - vas
3s es - a - vas
1p sommes - avons - allons
2p ?tes - avez - allez
3p sont - ont - vont[/FONT]

I think you can see the regularities right?

As for german, it was one of the most easy languages to learn, but that probably is, because it is similar to my natives Dutch. However, in Dutch, we don't have real cases, which you still have in German.

English was one of the first foreign languages I was able to read. I think it really helps that in The Netherlands we barely have any synchronysation (Germans and French people know what I mean) Therefor, you learn english while watching ex. Grey's Anatomy, as you, automaticly in your head, bind the pronouncing with the actual translation.

But there is no way to distinguish "regular" verbs from "irregular" verbs.

Disagreed. You learn. That is what you do in all languages. You can't say, in French regular verbs end with an -er, simply because that is not true. Regular verbs can end on a ir or re too, and for every group you have exceptions. True, there is a problem with english, as you normally define a verb with to <insert base form> instead of the infinitif, as is in most languages where you actaully have an infinitif.

Base Form - Past Simple - Past Participle
finish - finished - finished
stop - stopped - stopped
work - worked - worked[/FONT]

As for english, just like in french, there are regularities in the irregularities. Go, combine some of the old scandinavien (orign) verbs, combine some of the roman, some of the arabic etc. You will see that all have something incommon.

Now Greek was one of the hardest to learn. I guess that was, because I ddi not know the character set, and it was very hard for me to get those words plugged into my brain. I actually dropped the class but whatsoever... Modern Greek is harder for me, as due to simplyfication for the natives, more irregular paterns has appeard, and the structure of regularity has been submerged.

 

[Nidhogg]

I voted for portuguese. It has the grammar with the most number of rules(believe me, they would take all the space of a small library). Actually I tried to learn most of these languages(actually, all of the but French and Arabian), but portuguese is more difficult than any one of them. And I use it everyday!
English, Japanese, and Chinese, the most voted ones, are quite easy: small words(try remmembering pneumoultramicrosc?picossilicovulcanoconi?tico in a few minutes, or even a smaller one, more used: inconstitucional?ssimamente), small grammar(REALLY small), with only a couple of rules.

And really, remmembering the tenses of verbs isn't that difficult. it's actually better than learning to use these guys: (?`~^, and others), with took a few years... I learned english in a year or two, and, altough I can't say I'm really good at it, I can say that it was quite easy, and I have almost all of these verbs in my memory.

And my gosh, you don't have genders in words! You guys don't use the "plural"(I think that's the word) as much as we do, ad you guys don't have so many past tenses!! heheh

Peace.