Is English Difficult? 2

[CajunCenturion]

What is the most difficult part of English to deal with for those who've learned English as a second+ language?

Good Luck
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As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[SteveGlo]

Swearing is a real problem - I used to know a very cultured man who would not dream of doing so in his primary language but had unfortunately picked up some ripe English 4 letter words that he used most inappropriately !

For some reason swearing in other languges doesn't seem to have the same shock value as swearing in your own unless you are a true linguist. ( See article in todays Metro on Page 14 about Austrian village with the curious name of F***ING ! ).

 

[ESquared]

A Clockwork Orange: 'Rumour has it that Burgess had intended to name the work "A Clockwork Orang" and was thus hypercorrected to the form we know.'

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The Chaos

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough–
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give it up!!!

—Gerald Nolst Trenite (1870-1946)

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I before E except after C... or when pronounced AY as in heinous... except for a ton of other exceptions

friend deity codeine weird feisty heifer their seize leisure hierarchy hieroglyphic concierge deice (de-ice) reinvent


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In one message here someone wrote polish, not Polish, and they are not pronounced the same! My favorite homograph is

unionized (not ionized, organized into unions)

Non-native English speakers might like to try their fluency out on homographs, one of the toughest things about English.

For example:
buffet - all-you-can eat food, or shove/batter about
Nothing will make you number than trying to number the peculiarities of English
I had to coax the coax cable through the small hole.

 

[LesleyW]

Surely that post covers them all, E-squared? ("don't call me Shirley!")

Ahhh I need a pint!

 

[ESquared]

My fiancée is Brazilian and is not completely fluent in English. It is interesting to me that she does great with technical, scientific, and medical terms, but continues to struggle with the slang and colloquialisms. She also has a fair amount of difficulty with prepositions. So many verbs in English are composed as verb + preposition, and often, neither word has much to do with the combined meaning.

Things she might not understand:
Run out of pills. (use the last one)
Run up a bill. (incur many charges)
I feel run down. (tired and without energy)
I was run over. (a car hit me)
There was an overrun. (costs were greater than projected)
I was run through. (A spear pierced through my body)
I had a nice little run-in today with George. (I interacted with George in a negative way)
You're full of it! (You are lying, polite transformation of you're full of manure)
I'll take you on. (I am ready to fight or compete with you)

Things she has said:
I dreamed with you (of)
Sleep in the air mattress (on)
I was in the shopping (I was shopping, I was at the shopping mall. Also, possibly in the shopping mall but only to distinguish from being outside in the parking lot, not to denote location in the city.)
I have a gift to your mother. (for)

 

[LesleyW]

I'll take you on." could also be "I'll look after you"

I am learning Spanish and find their prepositions hard too!

 

[Chopstik]

Coming in late to this, but most other languages (that I've come across, anyway) are full of slang. Chinese, in particular, increasingly is using slang terms. Though, oddly enough, I have found that some of the slang has Western (American) basis. For example, in Taiwan not too long ago, the word for "cool" (the slang defn) was "ku" and is a directly relation to the English word. I know there are others that have similar variations. It also tends to be much more prevalent among the younger generation(s).

Also, there is a difference between slang and common use language. Talking with natives from different parts of the mainland, for example, I pick up different expressions that have different meanings depending upon where the speaker is actually from. They're not exactly slang, but just commonly used expressions that can take on different meanings depending on location. But if two people from different parts of the country are talking to each other, they tend to converse more formally so as to avoid such confusion.

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"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair."
--Dou