The 10 reasons why it’s so hard for us to learn to speak English correctly
It is true that in our country we have suffered the fat drop to properly handle Shakespeare’s language, but there are still certain pitfalls that we find difficult to overcome
Spaniards have collided time and again with the wall of foreign languages. Due to the fact that for a long time language learning was not especially valued (and much less English), we have dragged an inferiority complex that causes us to have a hard time launching ourselves to speak in English, even if it is okay to make mistakes. But what is it about English that makes it so complicated, when in reality we are increasingly used to hearing it on television series and movies and reading it on the internet? In principle, it shouldn’t be so difficult. Although it is a Germanic language and not a romance like English, we share a large amount of vocabulary and grammatical constructions. In other words, it is not Chinese, not even German. But even English speakers themselves recognize that their language can be nonsense, as pointed out by the Oxford Royale Academy. It is easy to find a good handful of reasons why English, despite its apparent ease (subject, verb, and predicate, right?) Is, at an advanced level, especially complex. Some of them are similar to what happens to English, but others are their own.
It is not written
One of the facilities of learning English is that, as Sean Sutherland of the University of Westminster points out in ‘The Conversation’ , “vowels like ‘a’ and others hardly change their pronunciation from word to word”. The same does not happen in English, in which each vowel can represent very different phonemes: the “a” in “hat” is not the same as that of “hate” or “father”. And it can even disappear completely, as in “oak”. In many cases, these pronunciations follow a rule … but in others, there is no criterion for a vowel to be pronounced one way or another. That is not to start talking about the challenge for a Spaniard to pronounce “Leicester” or “Worcester”. For example, the verb “read” is spelled the same when it is declined in participle, but it is pronounced differently. What a maze That may be, on a global level, the great difficulty of a language like English: its lack of consistency in the rules compared to other languages. An example: “through” (“through”) and “though” (“although”). Although the only difference between the two is a ‘t’, the pronunciation is completely different: / θɹuː / versus / ðəʊ /. One letter can change everything.
A tipper of irregular verbs
One of the clearest expressions of the exceptionality of English is the irregular verb read. Granted, many of them follow the general rules, but we all remember those endless lists of verbs with their participles that we had to memorize in high school. For example, “read”, which although it does not change form when it is declined in participle, is pronounced differently.
Courtesy
Perhaps one of the difficulties that we are least aware of, but one that can leave us in a worse place when speaking in English. As Sutherland explains, while other languages have simple ways of addressing in a formal tone (the English “you” or the French “Vous”), in English the courtesy is given in a much more subtle way, through the use of rhetorical formulas. as a question (“could you please …”?) or a subordinate (“I don’t know if you could …”). “If those subtleties are not handled, otherwise fluent speakers are likely to unintentionally pass for rude, “ Sutherland notes.
learn irregular verb take in English
Fake friends
The “false friends” are those words that are similar in pronunciation or writing to others in English but have a completely opposite meaning, as is the case of “actual”, which in English means “real”. But there are other types of terms that can mislead us, such as “pineapple”, which is neither “pine” nor “apple”, but “pineapple”, or the pair of “overlook” and “oversee”, which respectively mean “pass bypass ”and“ supervise ”(that is, almost the same words that nevertheless mean the opposite ).
Emphasis
Even more, than in English, much of the meaning of an English sentence comes from its intonation. Since all experienced speakers learn too late, the word we stop on will completely change the meaning of the sentence. For example, “ I love her” implies that it is you who loves her (and no one else), while “I love her “ implies that we love her (and not someone else). It is difficult for inexperienced speakers to select the right words and, at the same time, to emphasize correctly.
England vs. the USA
If it is already difficult to learn the vocabulary of a language, it is even more so when it has variants not only dialects, as in the case of English or French, but two major poles that, to make matters worse, are two of the countries most influential people on the globe. Hence, although generally in Spain we used to learn English from Great Britain, we end up truffling it with American terms (such as “highway”, “highway”), taken from the movies, songs, and novels that we have read in English.
learn irregular verb see in English
Word order
When we go to our first English class (or maybe it was the second?) We are explained that the syntax is jack, horse, and king, that is, subject, verb, and predicate. And that, unlike English, a language that lends itself much more to hyperbaton, the formula is immovable. In reality, this is not exactly the case, and as the Oxford Royal article explains, ordering can significantly alter the meaning of expressions, as occurs with inversions or when ordering adjectives. While it is correct to say “watch television”, it is not “see television”, and although “view television” is wrong, the one who watches television is a “viewer”
Homophones
Although in all languages there are these terms that, although pronounced the same, mean completely different things (and homographs, with which the same thing happens but in writing), in English these terms abound, perhaps because there are many more monosyllables. For example: “close” and “close” (“close”). It may also happen that they are not spelled or pronounced the same, but are so similar that they can be confusing, as with “dessert” and “desert” (“dessert” and “desert”).
Synonyms
One of the paradoxical terms of linguistics, to the point, that there are not few who, rightly, affirm that synonyms do not exist, neither in English nor in any other language. Two synonymous words supposedly mean the same thing. But in reality, not even two dictionary terms that translate the same way are used in the same cases. A good example is that of “see” and its supposed synonyms in English (“see”, “watch”, and “view”). While “watch television” is correct, “see television” is not, and although you cannot say “view television”, the one who watches television is not a “watcher”, but a “ viewer ”. A whole maze.
Archaicisms
All languages have theirs, and English is no less. If these are more difficult for us to understand, it is because they do not come from Latin, like ours, and therefore we have nothing to guide us with for their translation. And even if they do, they are confusing: this is the case of “alas”, which comes from the old French “a lasse”, “tired”, but which very few English speakers could translate without help.
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