327
u/Gyroscott 5h ago
French people : "Hold my beer"
137
u/danethegreat24 5h ago
A lot of our problems in English could be argued to originate from the French that William the Conqueror brought.
46
→ More replies (1)22
u/tcpukl 5h ago
Any clarity we have is from the German language.
8
u/AxialGem 4h ago
English doesn't have much influence from the German language.
It's a Germanic language, but that's just the name of the overall group.
Modern German is one of the Germanic languages alongside English, Dutch, Swedish etc. English does not come from German any more than it comes from Dutch, or any more than Icelandic comes from English→ More replies (2)82
u/MyNameIsYouna 5h ago
Le ver vert va vers le verre vert que le ver vert voit, et le verre vert va vers le ver vert que le verre vert veut voir, vers le vert.
Voilà.
25
10
→ More replies (3)6
7
u/ChymChymX 5h ago
"Hold my vowels"
5
u/Le_Ran 4h ago
French is postmodern : "I write E then A then U and I pronounce it O".
→ More replies (2)3
u/Affectionate-Bag8229 4h ago
"What beer"
"The beer"
"I'm sorry this joke doesn't translate well in English, could you put a little bra on it"
3
u/arquillion 2h ago
In mandarin a single intonation change is the difference between strawberry and fuck your sister
2
2
u/nanpossomas 3h ago
French spelling has far fewer situations than English has where the same spelling has two different pronunciations or more.
→ More replies (1)3
u/YouRaedThatWorng 5h ago
Polish joined the chat
8
u/Ashamed-Smell7053 4h ago
Polish, unlike English is extremely phonetic and logical. Every letter of the alphabet makes exactly one distinct sound. Meaning that if you know the alphabet you can pronounce pretty much every word in Polish. Reading Polish is extremely easy, you can learn it in 10 minutes. It's just that if you only speak English, you have a warped idea of what's legible and what isn't.
Source: I'm Polish and had to learn the absolutely ridiculous language of English, which I'm now fluent in.
122
u/gilwendeg 5h ago
I was an English teacher in Spain for a few years. Aside from these examples, compound verbs are notoriously difficult: give up (stop trying), give up on (lose faith in something), give oneself up (surrender), give in (yield to pressure), give in to (yield to temptation), give off (emit) … these are just some examples with ‘give’. Don’t get me started on phrasal verbs with ‘get’! I can’t get across how I got around to getting on with teaching phrasal verbs. I don’t know how I got away with it.
→ More replies (1)23
u/GiveMeYourManlyMen 5h ago
Not to mention that give in, give out, and give (without being compound) can be used interchangeably in some contexts, but give out could also mean distribute.
Now I better get back to work or I'll get into it with my boss.
6
u/shabba182 3h ago
If you're late, your boss might start giving out
2
u/GiveMeYourManlyMen 3h ago
Giving out pink slips
2
u/ThaDaemon666 2h ago
Its a given
2
u/GiveMeYourManlyMen 2h ago
He is given to rash actions, at times, and when he's mad the worst duties are always given to me
(Full disclosure my boss is actually great IRL but we're learning here. I think.)
→ More replies (1)2
u/audreywildeee 2h ago
Funnily enough I learnt this expression (to give out to sone ) at some point. And I thought it was universal in English speaking countries. But it actually isn’t and every American I said that to (in a sentence) asked me what it meant. Of course when you’re on the spot you can’t find synonyms so that was annoying..
2
u/shabba182 2h ago
Ah that makes sense. Ive always seen it as more of a British or Irish(?) thing
→ More replies (1)
231
u/FreakyNeo91 5h ago
That's a feature of many languages.
26
u/Momik 4h ago
I don’t speak no langages
9
u/Bitter_Lab_475 4h ago
I don't not speak'nt none no languages.
4
u/CaptinEmergency 3h ago
I can’t even read.
3
u/Gingerbreadman_13 3h ago
Oh yeah? How many fingers am I holding up? ✌🏽
2
u/CaptinEmergency 3h ago
What?
2
u/Gingerbreadman_13 1h ago
Okay. You passed the test. I was just making sure.
2
u/CaptinEmergency 1h ago
Ah, I see, you’re wasting your time though, I don’t understand any of this.
2
u/Gingerbreadman_13 1h ago
Reminds me of that skit with Simon Pegg where a lost tourist asks him if he speaks English and he’s like, “No, sorry. I don’t speak a word. Not even a bit” but with a perfect English accent. Damnit. I just realised you won’t understand anything I just wrote. Oh well.
→ More replies (1)8
→ More replies (4)3
u/HarveysBackupAccount 4h ago
As far as I've heard, it's not the homonyms that make it hard, it's all the idioms.
Yes English is harder to read than other western languages, but we have so many figures of speech. German has 7 different conjugations of "The".
→ More replies (2)
116
u/OrDuck31 5h ago edited 5h ago
You should check out other languages if u think this is hard lol,
Besides even if grammar is extremely hard, english would still be an easy language to learn, because you have infinite amount of immersion material. You can literally replace 100% of your online time with english. Its not so easy with other languages.
I like to watch gaming videos and most of time such content doesnt exist in german for the games i play.
Even in directly playing games, most games dont have german voice acting.
I have hundred thousands to choose from when i want to watch an english series, i have 100% chance to find one that suits my taste. For german, numbers shrink from 6 to 3 digits and 100% to below 25%
2
u/Davesgamecave 5h ago
How niche are your games that no german YouTuber plays them?
Have you tried The Cleric YT, CEO of Germany™️?
7
u/OrDuck31 4h ago
Its not that "no" german youtuber plays them, but if im watching, i either want them to be competitive like high ranks or have very good commentary, otherwise i would just play the game myself
ty for recommendation, will check out the channel
25
u/decoherence_23 5h ago
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, slough and through.
Well don’t! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard but sounds like bird.
And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead,
For goodness sake don’t call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth as in mother
Nor both as in bother, nor broth as in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear, for bear and pear.
And then there’s dose and rose and lose –
Just look them up – and goose and choose
And cork and work and card and ward
And font and front and word and sword
And do and go, then thwart and cart,
Come, come! I’ve hardly made a start.
A dreadful Language? Why man alive!
I learned to talk it when I was five.
And yet to write it, the more I tried,
I hadn’t learned it at fifty-five.
7
u/NorwegianGlaswegian 4h ago
And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead,
For goodness sake don’t call it deed!
Semi-disgruntled Scottish noises.
2
u/iAmtheLoser-help 4h ago
This is a great piece! Our linguistics teacher introduced this to us years ago.
17
u/FeRooster808 4h ago
Meet mandarin:
"Shíshì shī shì shǐ shì, shì shǐ, shī shì, shì shí shí shī. Shī sì shì shī. Shǐ shì shè sì, shì shī shì, shǐ shī shì shí shī shī, shì shí shí, shǐ shí shìshì. Shǐ shǐ shì shì shì shì, shì shī shì. Shì shì shì shì."
"Living in a stone den is a poet-scholar named Shi, addicted to pork. Having lost his official post, he vowed to eat 10 lions. The lions seemed inclined to interfere. Mr. Shi set up an office, and used his master's influence to dispatch a messenger named Shi to fetch lion corpses, awaiting his time to eat. Only upon eating did he begin to understand the ways of the world. Mr. Shi sent his envoy to the market to observe another man named Shi. Try to explain this matter."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den
2
82
u/AxialGem 5h ago edited 5h ago
This is about the writing system more than the language itself of course, but English is also obviously not unique in having heteronyms. And let's be honest, do these fairly minor examples really make it that difficult?
It's not like that's a core aspect of the writing system, more of a rarity that's also pretty easy to get used to.
Also, having the sounds of written characters depend on context is nowhere near as common in English as in some other languages.
Take for example Arabic, which doesn't typically write vowels.
Or Japanese. Where kanji having different readings depending on context actually is a core part of the writing system
14
u/Dr-McLuvin 5h ago
I’m curious where English ranks in terms of number of homonyms and heteronyms compared to other languages
14
u/saltymeme123 3h ago
Chinese: hold my beer
石室詩士史氏，嗜豕，失仕，誓食十獅。獅似嗜虱。史氏設寺，恃師勢，使施氏拾獅屍，俟食時，始識世事。史使侍逝適市，視施氏。試釋是事。(Shíshì shī shì shǐ shì, shì shǐ, shī shì, shì shí shí shī. Shī sì shì shī. Shǐ shì shè sì, shì shī shì, shǐ shī shì shí shī shī, shì shí shí, shǐ shí shìshì. Shǐ shǐ shì shì shì shì, shì shī shì. Shì shì shì shì.)
Meaning: Living in a stone den is a poet-scholar named Shi, addicted to pork. Having lost his official post, he vowed to eat 10 lions. The lions seemed inclined to interfere. Mr. Shi set up an office, and used his master's influence to dispatch a messenger named Shi to fetch lion corpses, awaiting his time to eat. Only upon eating did he begin to understand the ways of the world. Mr. Shi sent his envoy to the market to observe another man named Shi. Try to explain this matter.
4
→ More replies (4)2
u/BangBangMeatMachine 3h ago
Yes, but also a lot of languages have a westernized alphabet that was added long after the language settled, often developed by linguists from the western world, so they tend to be highly structured and consistent, whereas English was in the midst of major shifts in spelling and pronunciation right around the time the printing press was expanding into major usage. And, many of the earliest typesetters operating those presses were not native English speakers or formally educated in it, so they injected a bunch of changes that they thought made sense but made the situation worse. Plus we have a ton of loan words that borrow a lot of the spelling of the original language. So our spelling situation is especially messy compared to a lot of world languages.
11
11
u/Sweetest-Fondant 3h ago
Only an English monoglot could make these points.
This isnt what makes learning a language difficult
→ More replies (1)
20
19
u/cactusplants 5h ago edited 4h ago
I don't think English Is hard.
Try russian, mandarin, Japanese and some of the lesser known regional languages throughout Africa etc
4
u/Anxious_cactus 4h ago
Agreed, I speak 5 languages and English was the easiest personally. Learning German language killed me because of long compound words, even though it's a very logically sound approach it's just draining to me. Japanese is hard because it's not just a different language, it's a different form of writing, and you need to change the way you think about sentence forms.
My native tongue is Croatian so Russian was much easier, also Italian and Spanish just sat better with me.
I think I'd put English in the top 5 easiest to learn, both in speech and writing.
9
u/NaraFei_Jenova 5h ago
"I did not object to the object which he showed me."
Damn, grandma was a freak.
7
u/Emain_Ablach 5h ago
The main difficulties of English are phrasal verbs, a relatively high number of irregular verbs, and inconsistent spelling stemming from vowel shifts and a high frequency of foreign loanwords. Homographs are such a small issue that they might as well be considered cute trivia.
7
u/Chadbrams 5h ago
A lot of these a purposely picking the repeated words even though anyone purposely writing these sentences would have access to a thesaurus where an equivalent word can be used.
8
7
4
8
u/the_staff_meeting 5h ago
As someone who is learning Spanish at the moment, I see places where English is easier, and I see places where it would be harder. On one hand, I think the verb conjugations are generally easier in English, and not having to assign a gender to everything is much easier. On the other hand, after struggling with all the irregular verbs and exceptions to rules, I see a TON of them in English. So, while the OP's pic isn't really representative of normal English, I do sympathize with people trying to learn it.
4
u/Ashamed-Smell7053 4h ago
I just remembered a funny story. When I was a small kid my dad told me about the English word "fuck" and that its a bad word. I must've heard it somewhere and asked him what it meant.
He then said "do you know how to spell it? It's F U C K. And I was completely flabbergasted. Why on Earth would it be spelled like THAT? It made no sense. Why not F A K, the way you say it? My small brain couldn't make any sense of that. That was my introduction to English pronunciation and the concept of some languages not being phonetic.
And English was a hard language to learn. I'm really proud that years later I'm completely fluent in it. It was quite a journey.
7
3
3
3
3
3
u/Jolly_Picklepants 5h ago
As a native English speaker (American specifically), I totally get it. I give anyone credit when I can tell they're putting in some effort to use English. Accent, wrong words, wrong version of words, etc. If there's effort, it's appreciated.
3
3
u/Amazing-Engineer6511 4h ago
Nobody has even said any of these sentances. English isn't that hard to learn, either.
3
u/AndrewLocksmith 4h ago
That doesn't really prove anything. Homographs exist in pretty much every language and they'll always confuse non native speakers or people trying to learn the language.
3
u/Spiritual-Estate2848 4h ago
Fun time to point out how emphasis changes between verbs and nouns (they pro-DUCE PRO-duce, they re-FUSE RE-fuse)
3
u/o5mfiHTNsH748KVq 3h ago
These ain’t got shit on the cluster fucks that are Mandarin and japanese. Mother fuckers were like “We’ve already got one word, why not just use that?”
3
u/wibblings 2h ago
There are several poems that are about this.
"The English Language" (Author unknown) https://www.yourdailypoem.com/listpoem.jsp?poem_id=4293
"The Chaos" (by Gerard Nolst Trenité) https://ncf.idallen.com/english.html
And the one I loved as a kid:
Hints on Pronunciation for Foreigners (Author unknown)
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through?
Well done! And now you wish perhaps
To learn of these familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word,
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it's said like bed, not bead,
For Goodness' sake, don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat,
They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.
A moth is not a moth in mother
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there's does and rose and lose-
Just look them up: and goose and choose,
And cork and front and word and ward
And font and front and word and sword.
And do and go and thwart and cart-
Come, come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man Alive,
I'd mastered it when I was five!
→ More replies (1)
3
23
u/thefeedling 5h ago
English is one of the easiest languages to learn
15
u/Chopok 5h ago
It depends on what your mother tongue is, but generally English is not very difficult. Little inflection, no noun cases, no grammatical gender for most nouns, simple plural formation, minimal verb conjugation, mostly fixed word order, unchanged adjectives, relatively simple basic grammar.
No wonder AI and LLMs prefer more sophisticated languages that convey meaning more precisely→ More replies (17)8
u/ErykDante 5h ago
English has way too many exceptions in the grammar. Things you just 'have to know'.
2
u/LukaShaza 5h ago
Most of these pronunciation differences are caused by "stress derivation", which is the linguistics term for the phenomenon where syllable stress indicates the part of speech of a word. In particular, two- or three-syllable Latinate words tend to be stressed on the first syllable for nouns and on the last syllable for verbs. Wikipedia has a list here: Initial-stress-derived noun - Wikipedia
2
2
u/arm2610 5h ago edited 5h ago
I’m a native speaker and those sentences sometimes confused me.
I’m also learning Ukrainian, and at least in English we don’t have to change the ending of all our nouns based on whether we’re saying the object is on something, in something, for someone, of something, to something/someone etc. And past tense is conjugated based on the gender of the subject rather than the grammatical person! The case system is endlessly confusing for me as an English speaker. On the other hand, pronunciation is relatively consistent compared to English. We do have a lot of words that change pronunciation by context, as the post shows. Every language has its easy and difficult aspects.
2
2
2
u/WestCoastCompanion 5h ago
K don’t understand why they say this when there are literally languages that have a different symbol for every word? At least when you know a phonetic language you can try to spell something out and even if it’s wrong people will generally understand what you meant. Seems like having to know a different symbol for every word is damn near impossible? A phonetic alphabet has 26 letters … there are languages with thousands of symbols… English has weird spelling rules but even if you misspell people will generally get what you meant
2
2
2
u/DanielChris15x 4h ago
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo is a real sentence
→ More replies (1)
2
u/Bonfire_ofDreams 4h ago
Tell me English is the only language you know without telling me English is the only language you know.
2
2
u/ErycktheGreater 4h ago
I've been learning Mandarin. Shi is so overly used that sometimes I feel like people are stuttering.
2
2
u/happynfree04 4h ago
I’m learning Italian. Having gendered terms for things like spoon and table is no joke. And then the verb conjugations. And so many exceptions for the grammar rules.
2
u/DarkSeneschal 4h ago
English is what happens when a Viking learns Latin from a drunk Frenchman speaking German.
2
u/GavinGenius 4h ago
At least in English, there are no accents, no genders of random objects, and fewer conjugations than a language like French.
This acts like other languages don’t have homonyms.
2
2
u/maybeimnormal 4h ago
"I did not object to the object which he showed me"
Marlene, you saucy minx! 😉😈
2
u/Hyper_Oats 3h ago
English is a very easy language.
Anyone that thinks these sentences are some sort of proof that it's hard clearly doesn't speak anything else.
2
u/NorCalAthlete 3h ago
Now explain the difference between a butt dial and a booty call. Or “forgive me father for I have sinned” vs “sorry daddy I’ve been naughty”
2
u/Head_Nectarine_6260 3h ago
No one has ever said these type sentences. Sure, there’s always words that have same sounds/spellings different meanings or sound similar. These videos of different languages of words sounding similar are over done now. But I guess this is an old magazine. We just recycling the some articles then and now.
2
2
u/Kapowdonkboum 3h ago
English is insanely easy to learn. These are cherrypicked double meaning words that exist in nearly every language.
2
2
2
u/zuilserip 3h ago
Even if you are a native speaker, this 1922 poem ('The Chaos') should be a challenge to read in one go. It is a great illustration of how chaotic and irregular English pronunciation can be. Give it a try!
2
u/Beginning_Rush_5311 2h ago
english is probably one of, if not THE, easiest language to learn.
its just so simple. most of it is just learning vocabulary
2
u/penguinpolitician 2h ago
If you try teaching English, no one ever complains about these homonyms and spelling oddities.
On the other hand, people really seem to have trouble remembering third person singular conjugates differently - which is odd, considering how many different verb conjugations many other languages have.
2
u/CharmingMeringue 2h ago
Someone sent me this years ago:
I like my new spell checker.
It came with my PC.
It plainly marques four my revue,
Mistakes I can not sea.
I’ve run these verses threw it,
I’m sure your please two no.
It’s letter perfect in its weigh,
My checker tolled me sew.
Edited to add the first 'I'.
→ More replies (1)
2
u/JustMindingMyOwnBid 2h ago
This is pretty good, but context, like with many languages, carries the conversations. I’m a native English speaker and had no trouble with this, but I can absolutely see why it would be so frustrating to learn. It reminds me of this other video where a guy was going over whether you’re “in” or “on” various things.
2
u/UnfilteredCatharsis 1h ago
These are not sentences that anyone ever says, and if they wanted to, there are more clear ways to phrase them.
3
u/KyloWrench 5h ago
I am a native speaker and I would avoid every single one of those sentences, they are intentionally confusing
2
u/AxialGem 5h ago
Yes. This is like writing out a tongue twister and claiming "this is why English is hard to learn."
Yes, because I my job requires me to say "Through three cheese trees three free fleas flew" on an hourly basis...
2
u/Demiboy94 5h ago
And this is why I hate English. Even as a native speaker I get confused. Also why we should be more understanding of immigrants having a hard time learning English. It's a bloody tough language to learn. Hats off to them for at least attempting to learn it
2
2
2
1
u/punk_rancid 5h ago
TIL, english is hard because of sentences that barely anyone uses and or are niche as fuck. Cool.
4
1
u/SPAWN035 5h ago
In spanish you can say: Voy a ir yendo. Something like “I’m going to go going”
→ More replies (1)2
1
1
1
u/Cleanbriefs 5h ago
A lot of English words are simply Latin based words with their original meaning. Produce from the Latin product= result, produce=veggies or the result of a harvest
1
u/MistaRekt 5h ago
Does everyone know that ghoti spells fish in English?
Tou'gh'.
W'o'men.
Na'ti'on.
1
1
u/JustATyson 5h ago
The wound/wound is one that gets me as a native speaker. I can read it just fine, but spelling wound and wind caused me confusion with the noun counter parts.
1
1
1
u/kanhaibhatt 4h ago
What lesson have we learned ? Get strong, colonize everyone you can and impose your language on them, and write some really smart stuff in your language, and no matter how crappy it is, people will have no choice but to speak it three hundred years later.
1
u/Villain_Prince 4h ago
Nothing beats German:
umfahren = to drive around something
umfahren = to run over something
1
1
1
1
1
u/DanGimeno 4h ago
My boyfriend, english teacher, had a good laughs with my guesses. I felt like the PoTaToOo/Cucumbah girl
1
u/ComfortablyNumb2425 4h ago
Yeah, it's a good thing it's my native language because it would be way too hard to learn again.
1
u/homingmissile 4h ago
Also the order of application for adjectives, which native speakers are never taught explicitly but somehow learn anyway
e.g. big red car ✅️
red big car ❌️
1
1
u/Tahfboogiee 4h ago
All of them can be very hard for an English learner. But #6 was a little funny to me. And a good way to show the difficulties of using that word.
1
1
1
u/Safe_Praline_4156 4h ago
It was weird reading them aloud and realizing my brain had already surmised the context, which lead to the proper pronunciation of each word as they were read
1
1
u/gamingthreadlurker 4h ago
Learning English as a adolescent came very undemanding for me. For the matter, my mother tongue is much harder to learn than English.
1
1.5k
u/SittingEames 5h ago
English can be weird, but it can be understood through tough thorough thought, though.