Why do people usually say English is "easy"? I was wondering about that whilst reading literature, where I always find a myriad of new words to add to my SRS.
I'm aware that if you compare to languages such as Mandarin (depending on your tone, the meaning of what you say changes; ideograms), Japanese (3 writing systems; fucktons of kanjis, and so on) or Spanish (conjugation), English sounds pretty shitty easy, but if you take into account how much time you spend to master a proficient level, being able to read, dunno, Dostoevsky, without a dictionary at hand, it doesn't really sound easy.
My guess is: people think that knowing ordinary speech is mastering the language. When I come across someone saying English is easy in real life, I'll demand they read any of my books in front of me, translating word by word.
English has a very large vocabulary because it has influences from Latin, Greek, Old German/Saxon, Middle Ages French, Celtic, and so on. The truth is, most native speakers in English have very small vocabularies compared to the number of words used in literature. Most people know somewhere around 15,000 to 20,000 words total, more educated people might know 30,000, and skilled writers draw from a pool of 40-50,000 words. Learning English at the level of an advanced writer is like learning a second language by itself.
Aiden Foster
I would never fucking want to learn English, pronunciation in general is a crapshoot free of rules. In addition it's not really big on compound words so unlike languages like German you can't really use logic to remember words.
For example the word vehicle in English is just vehicle, in German its "Fahrzeug" which means "driving thing", or "pet" in English is just its own word but in Kraut it's "Haustier" which literally means "house animal"
Jayden Lee
Also while I commend German on its sensible vocabulary, the grammar is an unnecessarily complex shitshow
Austin James
Spanish is way easier than English. The conjugation sounds hard but all of the ideas conjugation expresses in Romance languages have to be expressed in English too, in ways that are harder to understand
Nathaniel Johnson
>Why do people usually say English is "easy"? Never met people saying that.
Julian Allen
At least just about every language has easier grammar than Navajo, Choctaw, or certain other North American native languages. People have no idea how bad things can get...
