Non-natives: what do you think about English language?

Originally Posted by Divest

What's a common language?

Also, I thought english was one of the harder languages to learn?

German, French, Italian and Spanish, the most teached ones at schools around the world.

And english is indeed the easiest language I ever encountered, anyone can learn alone with a dictionary at their side, sure you wont be excellent at grammar or sentence estructure, but with a bit of practice, you can cover that, sorta.

Proof of that, me, I started translating games when I was 8 for the fun, and to get to know the story a little better and not just play the game and got hooked up in the language, today, 18 years later, got somewhat better, just can't speak well without butchering pronunciation, it's easier to practice writing because of the internet and all.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

The same word meaning several things and the other way around isn't hard, it just takes a while to get used, still beats the crap out of learning any latin based languages like french or portuguese, the estructure of english is simple, has very few rules and even if you have no idea how to use verbs and nouns, you still don't make an ass out of yourself speaking.

English isn't a walk in the park, that's for sure, but is not on the top 5 hardest languages to learn either.

EDIT: By the way, thats my opinium considering the person who's trying to learn make some effort and is already familiarized with roman alphabet, I'm pretty sure that for anyone who uses something else, english would be a pain in the arse to learn.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Tafer

It doesn't matter how much I hate this language (and how much I suck at it), I have to say it is quite simple in comparison to other languages I have studied.

HOWEVER, I do have some serious problems with the annoying pronunciation (full vs fool for example) and that the writing doesn't tell you all the time the correct pronunciation of certain stuff.

Stupid English.

I think only mandarin, arabic and a few african dialects can be more annoying than english when dealing with pronunciation.

Heck, you know eye sounds like aye, but you still needs to butcher it because you rarely, if ever, speaks it out loud.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

And thats why I say english is easy, the same word meaning a lot of things, at least is the same word, is not like you have to pronounce the same word different for every meaning, tonal languages like arabic or chinese can be a pain because of that.

A friend of mine was saying something that in an african dialect, the same word has a peaceful meaning (meaning to clean) and a more harsh meaning (meaning to break, kill, etc) it only depends on a small alteration on the pronunciation, and good forbids a mother gets angry with their kids on bath time.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?