ALAN ZHOU
English? Very challenging? Nonsense! An English teacher from the USA on the website www.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.
Oct 10, 2015 7:36 PM
Corrections · 4

English? Very challenging? Nonsense!

An English teacher from the USA on the website www.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 no 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 'Ils 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 than a foreigner can remember, let alone use.

To me Latin, which has six cases, is quite a challenge. 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.

 

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Yes, English has relatively simple grammar and syntax. Our vocabulary comes from many different languages. On one hand, that means more people can find cognates from their native language. On the other hand, it means spelling is kind of annoying. :)

October 10, 2015
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