To anyone who paid attention in English...

[Fontes]

Azurerogue... Those examples can be found on about ANY language. A few in portuguese just popped out, on my mind, right now.

And I'm with Wired... verbs in english are easy as pie, compared to latin-derived languages. Today, I got more trouble writing some verbs in my own native language, while i can do it easily, in english.

One of the few "grammar kicks" I usually do, is the "at", on", and "in" thing... At school, On the bus... I got some trouble, deciding which is the right one to use, depending on the situation... XD

[azurerogue]

I don't know portuguese, but I have studied Chinese, Japanese and Spanish and it doesn't happen much in those languages (not at all in the Chinese I've learned, rarely in the other two). And by "it doesn't happen much" I am, of course, referring to being able to spell a word the same, but have it be pronounced differently simply based on the context it is used in.

I also do not know of many other languages with 5 characters to represent vowels, but 16 sounds associated with those five characters. I would also argue that, while conjugation is more extensive in other languages, that the lack of a set pattern of conjugation in English makes it harder to perfect, though generally easier to pick up on.

I think this guy says it very well:

Quote:English, no cases or gender, you hear it everywhere, spelling can be hard and British tenses you can use the simple and continues tense instead of the perfect tenses and you will speak American English. English at the basic level is easy but to speak it like a native it?s hard because of the dynamic idiomatic nature.

Learning conjugations is not the hard part of learning a language. English is hard because, despite what you say about their not being many exception in English verb conjugation (there are, but that's not my point), there are exceptions everywhere else in English. Exceptions in spelling, usage, tense, conjugation, etc etc etc. Either way, we obviously disagree and are not going to come to a conclusion. I'll be done here.

And I'm not saying "Ha, I'm right." and ending it. You very well could be correct - and I'm sure that, for some people, learning English is easy. My point is simply that you cannot learn English by learning its rules like you can with other languages. You have to learn each rule and become familiar with each and every exception. Either way, sorry for causing such a long argument about it. o.O

[Général_Argos]

azurerogue Wrote:I also do not know of many other languages with 5 characters to represent vowels, but 16 sounds associated with those five characters.

http://www.toutenclic.com/spip.php?article363
http://www.toutenclic.com/IMG/doc/alphab...e_fr-3.doc

Oh snap, 36 sounds associated with vowels, and we have the "same" alphabet in french.

;l

[azurerogue]

Right... except for the fact that a ? ? and other variants with other letters are DIFFERENT characters... And only the first 16 of those listed on that document are vowel sounds, unless I'm reading it wrong.

[Général_Argos]

azurerogue Wrote:Right... except for the fact that a ? ? and other variants with other letters are DIFFERENT characters... And only the first 16 of those listed on that document are vowel sounds, unless I'm reading it wrong.

Different characters, but they are the same letter! Like capital "P" and p are the same letter in english, but two different characters! ? ? ? ? ? ? are not additionnal letters!

Sounds are different with the non-vowels, like in english, the non-vowels are what decide wich sound will the vowels do...This debate is just plain stupid.

[GM-Pandora]

azurerogue Wrote:Actually, after Chinese, English is generally considered one of the hardest languages to become fluent in.

Being fluent in a language, and mastering it is not the same thing. English is one of the easiest language to become fluent in, but mastering it perfectly is probably hard (then again mastering any language is hard, because all languages have those small exceptions with no particular rules).

[azurerogue]

azurerogue Wrote:Either way, we obviously disagree and are not going to come to a conclusion. I'll be done here.

And I'm not saying "Ha, I'm right." and ending it. You very well could be correct - and I'm sure that, for some people, learning English is easy. My point is simply that you cannot learn English by learning its rules like you can with other languages. You have to learn each rule and become familiar with each and every exception. Either way, sorry for causing such a long argument about it. o.O

You keep saying this is a stupid argument... and I tried, before, to let it die and agree to disagree - so why, then, is this still going on?

EDIT: Since I won't convince you, I'll even say you're right. And with that I take my leave of this topic - arguing endlessly doesn't really interest me.

[ShadesOfBlue]

are you really a girl ultima?

[Ultima_Pi]

Yeah, I am.

I'm also Chinese (born in America).



Carry on with the new topic.