The hardest language in the world?

Originally Posted by Spike

Wow. No. That is completely false. The funny thing is, people from other countries that came here can distinguish between than/then, there/their/they're, and avoid many other common errors that people that were born here commonly make.

I think it may be due to the fact English, for native speakers, is first learned phonetically in early childhood while people from abroad learn it when they're already capable to actually understand the difference. Just a thought. =/

And I'm still surprised so many native English speakers mention English. I was also sure French would be cursed a lot more for it's use of genders and pronounciation.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Hello_Kitty

yeah, in france, in games like who wants to be a millionaire, an impossible question pops up "which of these words is masculine?", usually people fail at these questions

You know, people never mention it, but I just realized at least Spanish and Italian do the same exact thing, aka giving genders to objects and animals.

Dunno why French gets picked on about it when everyone agrees Spanish is apparently so easy to learn. =/

la casa / el castillo = la maison / le chateau = the house / the castle
el gato / la vaca = le chat / la vache = the cat / the cow

etc ...

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Aaaah very true. It does make things a lot easier. Although I couldnt even explain it, there is some sort of phonetical coherency with noun genders in French though. Any French person can tell you if a word *sounds* feminine or masculine, with a certain error rate, of course. But yeah, nothing as obvious as what Spanish has.

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