Language Complexity, re: French & English

[OptimistPrime]

(Moved from French language exam at Level B2 - within 5 months)

Originally Posted by JoeDRL

@OptimistPrime:
No I am not biaised because I'm talking from experience.
I did intensive english (all afternoons we were talking exclusively in english) at fifth grade up to high school. My english was pretty good after that, I could have a complete and fluid conversation with a native english person without problem and mistakes. Compare that to learning the same "level" of grammar in french, it's nothing.

Just to clarify, I wasn't making any comment as to whether French actually is easier, on average, for an English-speaker to learn or vice versa. I was just pondering out loud whether people are naturally biased toward thinking that their native language is more complex than a foreign language that they're learning. I apologize if it came across like I was casting aspersions on the integrity of your claim.

Originally Posted by JoeDRL

The thing that will always make us seem like we don't speak english well is the accent we keep

So far I've done all of my language exchanges with French-speakers via e-mail, so I don't think their accent has influenced my opinion of their English-learning abilities.

Originally Posted by JoeDRL

Anyway, not to make a language warfare here, but grammaticality, french is much more complex, in my opinion, than english. With the differentiation of genders and all the exceptions, even we have difficulty writing good french!

Yeah, I wasn't trying to start a war, either. In my opinion, they're comparable in terms of complexity, albeit in different areas. But you have more experience with English than I do with French, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

Originally Posted by JoeDRL

Have a wonderful day!

Likewise.

Originally Posted by aelle

I actually think that French should relatively easy to learn as a native speaker of English, compared to other romance languages or to non indo-european languages. French and English share a lot of vocabulary and etymologically related words.

That's my view, as well. Obviously, the question of which language is easiest for a given person to learn is a very individual one that will depend on many factors, and it can't simply be boiled down into terms of which language is easier, on average, for an Anglophone to learn. However, if we were talking strictly in those terms, my highly unscientific opinion would be that French is right up there in the top 3, at least.

Originally Posted by aelle

Grammar is a b*tch, sure, but that's easy if you have an analytical mind. Grammar is nothing more than a complex set of algorithms.

Indeed.

Originally Posted by aelle

Compare that to phrasal verbs - simple base verbs, simple prepositions, radically different and unpredictable meanings. Call up / call off / call out. Jerk out / jerk around / jerk off. Drop off / drop in / drop by / drop out. Get across / get along / get around / get off / get out / get by / get over / get up... Talk about subtlety!

Not to mention the tense system: present, present perfect, present progressive, present perfect progressive, et cetera...

Originally Posted by aelle

I apologize for pointing this out, but I think many non native speakers who claim English is easy and lacks subtlety don't actually speak it very well. The more I study it, the more complex and rich it becomes.

Cool.

[Criseyde]

I think English is a lot more complex than French. I'm a native English speaker and I studied French formally for seven years. French is difficult at first, there's quite a learning curve (especially re: pronunciation), but after a while it's reasonably logical (even though I certainly wouldn't claim that I was ever fluent). English, on the other hand, has a really mixed history: it's a Germanic language, with Germanic patterns, but the Norman conquest brought in a ton of French (Latinate) vocabulary. Then there was the 18th century, where English grammarians tried to structure English like Latin, and as a consequence we have a lot of Latin grammar rules that don't really make sense in a Germanic context (eg "don't end a sentence with a preposition").

Spanish was the opposite of French, for me. Really easy at first, and then it heads for the hills. I'm not sure why that is; I didn't study it long enough to really analyze that.

I'm really glad that I don't have to learn English as a second language, honestly. It has the largest vocabulary of any language in the world, and a ridiculous number of idiomatic expressions.

English spelling and pronunciation is really hard too, because the letters change pronunciation depending on... whim, really. This is again because it's a Germanic language that took on a lot of Latinate characteristics. English has about 40 phonemes, but only 26 letters; it was originally written in runes (Futhark!) but later adopted the Latin alphabet. So there's not a letter for every sound, and we don't even use accent marks the way a lot of Latinate languages do.

[OptimistPrime]

Originally Posted by Criseyde

Spanish was the opposite of French, for me. Really easy at first, and then it heads for the hills. I'm not sure why that is; I didn't study it long enough to really analyze that.

Just yesterday I read a great little article by Laura K. Lawless about that very topic.

[Criseyde]

Originally Posted by OptimistPrime

Just yesterday I read a great little article by Laura K. Lawless about that very topic.

Oh, that's interesting.

I wonder how much easier French was for me because I started studying it when I was 9 years old. I think that probably did make a lot of it easier to pick up. By contrast, I started studying Spanish at 15.

Things like c'est/il est never confused me, nor did savoir/connaître, nor the distinction between passé composé and imparfait. I did have trouble with ne... [fill in the blank]: pas, jamais, plus, BAH! And "il y a" always gave me fits when I had to conjugate it differently. Perhaps those were gaps in my study. I became intuitively good at some things (like I "just knew" what to use without thinking about it), but struggled with other small things.

[ssandra]

One of the reasons why for me English is the easiest language to learn is because it is everywhere.

It is very easy to be exposed to English from a young age, especially in the Netherlands (where tv has subtitles for English programs and movies).

Spanish is more difficult after a while because of the different grammar when you get to more advanced levels. I don't know of any other language that I already knew (sort of) that has 2 different past tenses and a separate tense for things that might be but aren't.
Added to that all the irregular verbs, the changes in ending depending on if you talk about a female or a male, etc. and it becomes VERY complicated to speak Spanish perfectly for a non-native speaker.

[OptimistPrime]

Originally Posted by Criseyde

Oh, that's interesting.

I wonder how much easier French was for me because I started studying it when I was 9 years old. I think that probably did make a lot of it easier to pick up. By contrast, I started studying Spanish at 15.

Cool. I didn't start studying French until I was 17, myself.

Originally Posted by Criseyde

Things like c'est/il est never confused me, nor did savoir/connaître, nor the distinction between passé composé and imparfait. I did have trouble with ne... [fill in the blank]: pas, jamais, plus, BAH! And "il y a" always gave me fits when I had to conjugate it differently. Perhaps those were gaps in my study. I became intuitively good at some things (like I "just knew" what to use without thinking about it), but struggled with other small things.

At the moment, I think the things in French that I find the most challenging are: position of adverbs; knowing whether to use an infinitive verb or a noun; remembering to use special masculine forms before a vowel or mute H (cet, bel, etc.); à/en/dans subtleties; and zero article vs. partitive article vs. definite article.

Originally Posted by ssandra

One of the reasons why for me English is the easiest language to learn is because it is everywhere.

Yeah, I think one of the reasons I like French is that I can find a lot of resources for it (and in it) in the U.S. Unlike, say, Danish.

Originally Posted by ssandra

It is very easy to be exposed to English from a young age, especially in the Netherlands (where tv has subtitles for English programs and movies).

I don't know much about Dutch (its phonology scared me away from ever wanting to learn it ), but I've heard that linguistically it's one of the closest relatives to English. Did you find that there were many helpful similarities between the two when you were learning the latter?

Originally Posted by ssandra

Spanish is more difficult after a while because of the different grammar when you get to more advanced levels. I don't know of any other language that I already knew (sort of) that has 2 different past tenses and a separate tense for things that might be but aren't.

Hehe, that description reminds me of French.

[newmark]

Originally Posted by ssandra

One of the reasons why for me English is the easiest language to learn is because it is everywhere.

It is very easy to be exposed to English from a young age, especially in the Netherlands (where tv has subtitles for English programs and movies).

This is definitely an advantage of learning English. For some languages it's hard to find any decent learning materials and almost impossible to find interesting films.

[newmark]

Originally Posted by Criseyde

I think English is a lot more complex than French.

In some ways, but French is grammatically more complex. I'm learning Portuguese now, and it's another grammatically complex language. Ah.. learning Chinese was so easy compared to this.

Chinese is grammatically the simplest language I've learnt (in other ways it's very hard), Portuguese and Spanish are the grammatically the most complex I've studied. I think English is somewhere in the middle. Grammatically speaking