What Makes English Difficult? (1)

Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here again, and today I want to talk about English.

Is English difficult?

If it's difficult, what makes it difficult?

Why do some people struggle?

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Now I know that many of you, many of my viewers uh, watch my videos to work

on their English, which is a very good idea because I try to speak clearly.

Uh, the transcripts of these videos, uh, are all available on LingQ to

study as lessons if you want to.

So it's a good thing.

And if you're interested in what I have to say, which may or may not

be the case, uh, that's so much the better, because if you can learn

from things that are interesting, of course, that's a good thing.

So, I often hear people say, you know, I've been studying English for so

long or my English is not good, and I don't feel confident with English.

I wish I spoke English better.

And often the subject comes up: is English difficult compared to,

I don't know, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, French, and so forth?

So what's my view on all of this?

Yes there are people who struggle with English.

Uh, I know people in Canada, immigrants who have been there for

10 years, longer and who really don't speak English very well.

So does that mean that English is difficult?

I don't think so.

Uh, we've all...

not we've all, but many of us have been watching the Olympic games

and they interview athletes from all kinds of countries and their

English is simply phenomenal.

And I'm always impressed when I hear someone speak another language,

whether it be English or any language other than their native language.

Why are they...

the same is true of athletes who are professional athletes who come to

north America or perhaps the same is true of those who go to England

from different countries, they end up speaking English very well.

So in fact, more people learn English and more people learn to speak English

well than any other language, because more people need English than any other

language as an international language.

So is it difficult?

I think there are things that make English difficult and there are

things that make English easy, but the biggest factor in terms of how

successful people are at learning English is the learner him or herself.

A, the learner may make unreasonable demands on themselves.

In other words, you don't have to perform.

You don't have to be perfect.

You don't have to sound like a native.

If you learn English as an adult, you'll probably always have an accent.

You'll probably always have a certain turn of phrase, which reflects your

native language habits that you simply can't, you know, get rid of.

And I've seen this in people who speak English extremely well and still have a

German turn of phrase or a Swedish turn of phrase or a Japanese turn of phrase

that they aren't going to get rid of.

And so we needn't worry about that.

English is a popular form of international communication and for

that reason, it's for communication.

So it's not like you're taking some exalted, you know, test and Japanese

or Chinese, and you're working on getting the pronunciation just so.

It's not like that.

It's just for communicating.

So once you accept that, you just have to be able to commit.

And I said many times the most important thing is comprehension.

So you have to have a good level of comprehension.

If you have a good level of comprehension, the person speaking with you, especially

a native speaker, feels more comfortable because they can sense if you

understand and if you don't understand.

So now when we talk about tests it has been my experience that those people

who learn English and focus on TOEIC and TOEFL, they end up speaking less well.

I don't think the Olympic athletes or the professional hockey players from

Russia or Slovakia or Sweden who play in north America, or maybe Brazilians or

Argentinians who play soccer in the UK uh, or, or Croatians or whatever, they

don't take TOEFL, I don't think so.

They learn from their teammates and they're not shy about using whatever

they have and as they use it and as they hear more, they get better.

So I think the extent to which people take these tests, it's almost in...

inverse relationship to their ability to speak the language.

So it's something I would definitely advise against.

Focusing on these tests, your results on these tests.

I had, in fact, the beginning of LingQ was when we had...

we had hired a person from China.

It's a long story.

I heard that he had his money stolen as an immigrant arriving at the airport.

We said we'd help him out.

Give him a job.

He was in IT, he had a high score in TOEFL.

He couldn't communicate in English quite simply.

And it was to help him that we developed LingQ, but he had a high score in TOEFL.

And the high scores in these tests don't mean that you speak well.

And then absence of test results in these tests of English as a second language.

The fact that you haven't taken these doesn't mean that

you can't speak the language.

There are a lot of languages that I speak well, there's some

that I don't speak so well.

Uh, I've never had a test of proficiency.

The only one I had a test to proficiency in was Chinese because it was my job.

So I took this, uh, British Foreign Service exam in Mandarin Chinese.

So tests, I think are a bit of an obstacle.

So that makes English a little difficult.

Another thing that makes English difficult is, perhaps like many

languages, but English is kind of like an amalgamation of language.

So 2000 years ago, uh, the Romans were in Britain and the original inhabitants there

spoke some Celtic language, and I'm not a linguist like Luke, who I had on here last

week talking about, uh, Latin and Greek.

And it was a fascinating.

And, uh, so the Romans were there 2000 years.

But the local inhabitants spoke a Celtic language, uh, and surprisingly

the Latin component of English doesn't come from the Romans.

As I understand it, it comes from the Norman French who invaded in 1066.

But, uh, so these Celtic people suffered the invasion of the

Anglo-Saxons and that brought a major sort of dramatic element to English.

And then England was subject to invasions from the, uh, Scandinavians

and especially the east coast, uh, Britain had a significant, uh,

influence from Scandinavian languages.

And of course in 1066, the Normans who actually were Vikings who

had invaded France, became French speaking and then invaded Britain

and brought their language with them.

And the upper classes spoke French.

That's why, as you may know, beef, pork, and mutton and so forth in terms of,

uh, for food are French origin words.

Whereas those same animals, the pig and the lamb and the cow,

those are Anglo-Saxon words.

So the Anglo-Saxons were the peasants and the Normans, French speaking

Normans, were the upper class.

And with all of these different linguistic influences the, uh, spelling

in English is very inconsistent.

And this is definitely an obstacle in English.

It's a delight to go to a language like Spanish, like Russian, others,

where what you see is what you get.

In other words, you don't have to guess at how to pronounce words.

Russian isn't as good as Spanish.

Spanish is...

you can just pronounce anything you see.

That's far from the case in English, we all know, you know, uh, OUGH can be

pronounced any number of different ways.

And, uh, you know, for me like studying Greek where they have some of the same

issues, or Persian or Arabic, where you can't necessarily tell how a word

is pronounced just by looking at it.

Uh, those kinds of problems exist in English.

Um, you could argue that, uh, the fact that English seems to be more

idiomatic, but that's not really true.

I think there's a, maybe there are more tenses than some, like, I think

every language has its grammatical intricacies and, and I don't think

those differences are so important.

The big advantage with English is that there's so much of it around us.

We don't have to go looking for content in English.

We have it.

We have movies.

We have Netflix series, uh, podcasts on every imaginable subject.

And given that the fastest way to improving in any language is to do a

lot of listening and reading, to be exposed to the language and eventually

to just start speaking the language without worrying, then the conditions

for English are better than for any other language, because there is more content.

There are more English speakers around, whether native speakers or otherwise,

that you are going to meet wherever you go that you're going to need when you're

in an airport uh, so that the, the, the need for the language language is greater.

The availability of content, the opportunity to use it, all of these

things make learning English easier.

Now this all does require a certain level of commitment from the learner.

And, uh, so obviously if you're a young hockey player that arrives from Russia,

as in the case of Vancouver, we had a player called Podkolzin who arrived,

not speaking, uh, English, and now speaks English, I think quite well.

He's thrown in with a bunch of guys.

They might be Swedes, Finns, Americans, Canadians.

He's got to speak English.

And so therefore thrown into that environment he's going to end up speaking.

Whereas the immigrant typically who comes to Canada or the US they have their

support group of people, of the same sort of origin who speak that language.

They don't go out for dinner with the teammates every night, they sit at

home and watch, the immigrant does, TV programs from the home country.

And so to break through in English, English, even though the opportunities

are great, it does require commitment.

And if you're living in say Brazil, or if you're living in, uh, Japan,

Then you have to make a commitment to take advantage of all of the

English content that is out there.

And if the opportunities for speaking don't exist, you have to continue

with your input activities, you know, until that opportunity arises

and the opportunity will arise.

Now, you can also find online tutors, language partners, language

exchange partners, you can travel.

But even if those kinds of things aren't available to you, there is just

so much content available that you can absorb that you can listen to.

You can read, you can train your brain, you can get used to it.

You can feel comfortable, confident that you understand, which is of course the key

skill so that you can prepare yourself.

And then when you get in a situation, Where you have to, you

know, use the language, go for it.

Don't worry about it.

The world is full of non-native speakers of English who speak with a variety

of accents who don't speak perfectly.

And their goal is simply to communicate.

So I guess in conclusion, even though I hear a lot of people say English

is difficult, or my English is not good, I think people should stop

saying that their English is not good.

They should just continue hopefully finding ways to enjoy the language,

spending time with the language, taking advantage of all the English language

content that's available opportunities to use English which are available.