The "u" in non-american english

[Kantor]

Baroque_Dude said:

Kantor said:

thanny said:

ArcticGabe said:

English is hard? lol
Try to learn Chinese, Arabic...

Wow. This is an incredibly ignorant thing to say... just amazing how ignorant people are. Of course you think its easy, you learnt it from childhood and it is the language you know! just like someone as ignorant as you who great up in Saudi Arabia would think Arabic is easy and english is incredibly hard. As far as 'second languages' go, Engish is arguably the hardest to learn, because there are so many inconsistencys etc.

 

On another note, i think that the fact that North Americas baseball competition is titled 'world series' really summarises Americas attitude to the rest of the world.

I would say Chinese is the most difficult language in the world, followed by English.

Of course, if you speak any Latin-based language, it makes learning other Latin-based languages a lot easier. So someone who speaks fluent French as a first language wouldn't have too much trouble with English.

Hm... I agree on Chinese being one of the most difficult languages to learn, but, in my opinion, English isn't the second, since romance languages (Catalan, Castilian, Italian, French, etc.) are far more difficult than English. I mean, each verb has a different variation for each person (both in the singular and in the plural) and they use a broader variety of verb tenses. Those languages are still less difficult than Chinese (whether Mandarin or Cantonese), in my opinion.

By the way, if you were referring to "Gangsta English" then maybe yes, English is the second most difficult language to learn.

In difficulty, I would say English > French > Italian.

You are right about verb conjugations, but English has no spelling or pronunciation rules. Why does rough rhyme with tough and not plough? Why are there, they're and their pronounced exactly the same when they have completely different meanings? Why on earth does "through" have so many unnecessary letters in it?