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English? Very challenging? Nonsense!
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An English teacher from the USA on the website italki.com wrote an article about English and published it. I read it and I find it quite funny. I want to share one sentence with you which I find funny, or ridiculous:
"Although reading and writing in English are very challenging tasks, each and every one of you is capable of learning these skills.'
The author's username is JasmineEnglishTime. I find this remark quite funny because, she claimed that 'reading and writing in English are very challenging' which I find funny. Nowadays little Chinese kids aged 8 learn English and can write in English, and they do it quite well. Why is English so popular? In one way, modern English is incredibly easy in its syntax compared to most European languages, including Romance and Germanic languages. English has almost little verb conjugation, and has lost its noun declensions too. Well, if you are talking about Geoffrey Chaucer's The Cantebury Tales, it is an entirely different story. Now I am talking about modern American English. Compared to German, which has the fours noun cases: Nominative, Accusative, Genitive and Dative, and the three gender-wise definite articles: der die das, English has no case, and only one definite article: the. Mark Twain wrote an article called "The Awful German Language". Those interested can refer to it for more detail. Compared to French, for which every verb has its own conjugation, English verb conjugation is much simpler. For example, 'Je connais', 'Tu connais', 'Il/Elle connait', 'Nous connaissons', 'Vous connaissez', and 'Il connaissent' are the equivalent of 'I know', 'You know', 'He/She knows', 'We know', 'You know' and 'They know'. This is only the present tense. French has more tenses that a foreigner can remember, let alone use.
To me Latin is quite a challenge, which has six cases. Writing in Latin is horrendously diffcult but not impossible. Julius Caesar, a Roman emperor who lived more than 2000 years ago, was capable of writing in Latin. You can refer to www.thelatinlibrary.com for more detail. In my opinion, writing in English will never be a challenge for most people.
I wrote this article with the intention to tell my readers that in fact English could be the easiest language in terms of syntax and grammar compared to most European languages. Please do not give up learning English for some other languages. In my opinion, if you cannot dominate English, you can hardly dominate any other language.
Post comment Comment (3 replies)
- Reply teadrinking
- You know well about so many languages and the difference between the English and them. Yes, compared with some others languages among EU countries, it is not so complicated. Actually we can write well as long as we really want to do that.
- Reply carolyayayaya
- From your article, we can know that you are a foreign language learner, at least an English major, and you have some understandings about French and Latin. I don't think that English teacher has said anything wrong. She wrote that might because she stood on the shoes of a lot of non-English majors. No offence, just my point of view. Anyhow, you are right, we should not give up learning English if we do need it or have interest in it.
- Reply sunnyv
- Frankly, I can't see what is so funny or ridiculous about that statement of the English teacher. Learning English is indeed challenging for ethnic Chinese people because it is a ''second language'' for them. It is not a everyday language and they do not have much chance to practice their English. Take me for example, I find learning Putonghua challenging and up to now I could not speak it properly. So either I am stupid or it is indeed difficult for a foreigner to learn Chinese.
Hope you are not attempting to ridicule those who are learning English. I am not certain how you learnt your English but just because you are competent in English does not mean that others can acquire proficiency easily. Just like driving for example, those experienced drivers believe the new drivers are stupid and they forget that they themselves once were stupid in driving too.
Nevertheless, I am glad to note your sincere comments in your last paragraph encouraging English learners never to give up. This is indeed good advice. Hope you would have good results in your endeavors to learn Latin and other languages.
