Job Discussion Forums

[japanman]

"English is easy" "English is clear" "English is easy to understand and simple" etc, I hear these kinds of phrases often. They often come from people who don't speak such good English. This kind of thinking can irritate me because it just isn't true at all, or is it?
Even very fluent speakers make mistakes sometimes, I think in all my life i've only met two non- English speakers who I thought were native speakers, one was from Thailand and one from Denmark. Many others have been 99.99% perfect but not quite there.
Another part of it may be because English is the world language, native English speakers are more tolerant of errors because we are used to such a wide variety of accents.

[GambateBingBangBOOM]

Saying English is easy is much better than the alternative. I taught with one Japanese teacher of English who used the first English lesson of every JHS grade one class to tell the kids how hard English is, and that they can try and try and try and they won't ever be any good at it, because "we Japanese cannot learn languages". Not surprisingly, the kids in that class all went on to learn very little English.

English isn't particularly hard if you are already familiar with grammar from Romance and Germanic languages (the grammar of English is like a combination of the two with a bit of its own thing thrown in to make it work properly). But of course, Japanese people usually aren't familiar with those types of languages when they begin studying English. And, of course, it assumes that grammatical knowledge leads to ability in language, but it sounds more like you are looking at accents as well as grammar.

If you equate accents with errors, then not a single English speaker, including all of the native English speakers are not fluent. If I am in Toronto, where I grew up then I speak the same as the other native speakers (assuming that all of us have no carryovers from other languages- like if our parents speak English at home, but with an accent from another country=- even another English speaking country). If I then go to New York, I suddenly make a tonne of 'errors'. Also, there are different grammatical norms in different areas (the most obvious being the differences seen between British and North American varieties of English). That's why people study things like descriptive grammar instead of prescriptive grammar in university TESL/TEFL programs these days.

[Nismo]

I've heard this often as well, but what I think they are actually saying is that English is direct, and they don't have to worry about different levels of keigo and such. They think that, in English, whatever is said is the whole message. They are, of course, mistaken. But they feel they have more liberty in the content of English than they do in Japanese, not because of the actual language itself, but because of the social customs that come with speaking the language.

[furiousmilksheikali]

I think it also comes from people who believe that English can be learnt by anyone as opposed to the "mystical" language of the Japanese that can only be understood by those embodied forms of yamato damashii.

I have heard all kinds of folky nonsense from some people about the uniqueness of Japanese and the impossibility of anyone understanding a Japanese other than another Japanese. The corollary of that is that English is easy.

[japanman]

So many japanese do indeed think that their language is the most difficult in the world etc. And this line then opens up a whole list of other topics including the age old racism debate, which I don't fancy going into again. The racism debate always ends up with evryone argueing about points they fundementaly agree on.

Anyone who says that English is clear and direct, just give them Portrait of a Lady by Henry James or such a novel and see how they get their heads around that.

I heard some utter nonsense from a few different Japanese people who were all Japanese language teachers to non-native speakers. they all know about this study that said how many words each language uses in it's "daily conversation". Ofcourse, suprise suprise it's japanese that comes out top with English and French at the bottom. What utter rubbish. Any language that is well developed and has many native speakers, different dialects, mixed levels of education of speakers etc is going to be on the whole similar in its daily vocab, be it English, Hindi, Japanese or French etc.

[JimDunlop2]

[GambateBingBangBOOM]

[canuck]

Well said Jim.

[cornishmuppet]

I'm cr ap at math. But I'm good enough to add up the scores in group games in class at a hyper fast speed. I just put all the single figure scores together in tens and tally them while the teacher does his or her complicated carry the digit thing that they've obviously spent their entire school childhoods writing out a page of such like in a notebook each day.

The Japanese would be good at English if they actually had a decent system of teaching it in schools. I had a class today where my input was minimal and I don't think a single student said anything that wasn't a direct repetition from me or the JTE.

[Odango]

I'm just about to finish the CELTA course, and from what I've learnt, English is pretty damn hard actually.

[Dipso]

[ironopolis]

Saying any language is easy or difficult is just such a ridiculous thing to say. Easy or difficult to whom? Ease or difficulty of learning a foreign language is so dependent on the learner's own language background. Hence, to Dutch or German speakers English must be easier than it is to Japanese people. But for Koreans, Japanese is generally much easier to pick up quickly than it is for most with a western European language background.

I think furious hit the nail on the head further up the thread. People coming out with this nonsense about Japanese being the most difficult language in the world (or extending their theory to "English is easy") are just really trying to say "we, and only we, have learnt Japanese, so that means we're cleverer than everyone else too".

My favourite response to this kind of crap is to ask if they've ever tried Korean, which must be easy for Japanese speakers, having such similar grammar and structure. Amusingly often, the answer comes back in the negative, because it's "too difficult". One of those great "whoosh" moments, when no further comment is necessary

To be fair though, I don't think the Japanese are the only ones guilty of this. I've heard similar stuff in Korea about Korean, and I'm sure it happens elsewhere too.

Having said all that, it would be a fair point to say that the sheer variety of acceptable forms of English and the enormous range of study materials available for learners of it could be used to support an "English is easy" claim. But I don't think that's what many of the people saying it are really thinking.

[Vince]

I've heard from many sources that spoken English is considered to be among the most difficult languages to learn as a second language, because of the the variance in pronunciation (i.e. bough, cough, through), the extent to which it's influenced by other languages' words, the large amount of exceptions, etc.

I have no attachment to how difficult, pure, logical, or whatever else my language is. I've heard my share of people's flimsy comparisons of the properties of their language to another, and their prevaricating about how it indicates that "my culture is more intelligent than yours; therefore, I'm more intelligent than you."

[Odango]

[japanman]

[quote="GambateBingBangBOOM.

South Asian languages that are in Indo-European family might be a little easier, I guess- I've never learned any.[/quote]

With my little experience of south asian languages that are a part of the indo-European group, they are pretty difficult.. From my limited experience of Hindi I found it very difficult, both the pronunciation and the grammar, which has a m/f system where the gender must be remembered for each word. So it's a bit more tricky than learning German or French, i guess.