10 Reasons English is Ridiculously Hard

In this video, I dive into the many strange facets of English that make it a truly strange and challenging language. Fasten your seat belts, folks; it's gonna be a bumpy ride!

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⏱ TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 - English is WEIRD!
00:46 - Strange English Sounds
01:42 - Strange English Spellings
03:21 - Strange English Vocabulary
05:11 - Strange English Contractions
05:59 - Strange English Plurals
07:09 - Strange English Vowels
08:40 - Strange English Synonyms
09:22 - Strange English Phrasal Verbs
09:56 - Strange English Borrowings
10:24 - Strange English Word Order

[MichaelPhillipsatGreyOwlStudio]

Every judgmental person who criticizes non-native speakers learning English needs to watch this video. English is pretty rough. The basics are okay. In some ways, the language is simple, but the lack of logic and consistency is maddening.

[TheLiverX]

Anakin: English only has 26 letters.
Padme: Ah! So the reading is easy!
Anakin: ...
Padme: The reading is easy, right?..

[hrmIwonder]

The order of English adjectives is a beautiful example of how so much stuff is subconsciously acquired and how we do NOT consciously apply rules while speaking. No one could consciously apply that complex of a rule without have a 20 second pause in their speech.. Makes you wonder if any of language can really be explicitly learned, or if it's all subconsciously acquired.

[kevinb]

As a dyslexic native English speaker, learning English spellings as a child was torturous. When I started learning German, it was a bliss. German is so phonetic in comparison and far more logical.

[viktoria]

I am Russian native. Also, know Belarusian, English, studied German at school. Tried Spanish, Korean, a bit of Italian.
And honestly, I think English is much much easier than most of the languages. That's one of the reasons for the popularity of it.

[flixx]

As a native English speaker, this was hilarious! I always knew that English was weird, but I had never really thought about just how weird it is. So happy I don't have to learn it as a second language. I've started to learn German, and so far I'm really enjoying it. I love how phonetic German is compared to English.

[Tg]

So true about tones. When I first started learning Mandarin and was complaining about the difficulty of trying to figure out and remember the 4 main tones, I was quickly put in my place by someone who used "maybe" as an example of English's ludicrously difficult to learn use of tones. She used "maybe" as a single word answer to a question to demonstrate that simply by employing different tones/stressors on that one word she could say 1)Its a possibility 2)Its a strong possibility 3)Its possible but not likely 4)I know the answer but I'm not going to tell you 5)Its possible but I don't care 6)Its an extremely exciting possibility. It was hilariously good demonstration and I never complained about tones again.

[Pining_for_the_fjords]

English may be difficult, but it can be taught through tough, thorough thought, though.

[tywinderbaum]

I'm a native spanish speaker from Argentina. I started going to English classes when I was 11, and by 16 I was at a C1 level. I only really learned from class the first two years. I tried reading Harry Potter in English after a year and a half of English, knowing it had a simple prose style and I already knew it by heart. I knew about 15-20% of the words I came across, deduced quite a bit from a learned instinct of how languages (and English specifically thanks to imperalism and it being everywhere), and understood enough from context and my memories that I read all seven of them without too much trouble. Ended up understanding about 60% of what I read, I think, but I didn't really care. The excitement of figuring out that a word was a different tense of a verb I knew, or in the same family as that noun I vaguely remember from a Beatles song, and finally understanding what "used to be" actually means in Yesterday, made me fall in love with learning languages. Now I speak fluent English, advanced French, intermediate german, plus some russian, hungarian, and hebrew. I'm 21. Learning languages is the most amazing experience ever. I remember playing music in English while in French class, and texting in Spanish. The feeling of mental exhaustion after challenging myself that way is incredible.

Personal opinon: Reading does all the difference in the world. Surround yourself in your target language. Find what excites you about it, a new part of it to love. A sound, a sentence structure, an expression, the cultural relevance of a specific word, anything. Any excuse helps. Change your system language in your devices, use a browser extension that translates some words into your target language in every website you visit, talk to native people on an online platform (please be safe, don't share personal information online). Above all, have fun! If you're excited about it, everything feels different.

Do you know the feeling of watching something in your target language and it all sounding like gibberish, and how it slowly starts to make sense as you learn? Isn't it one of the best feelings ever?

P.S.: English *is* weird. In it's defense, all languages are. Just like people. The logic it has was pretty much made up after the fact to try to understand it better. They are not deliberately designed, and that's a huge part of what makes them so wonderful. Quite literally, full of wonders.

Edit: correction, changed "C2" to "C1". I didn't remember which number C I got with the FCE and assumed C2 was the lower one, so I wrote that. It's the other way around

[Aakkosti]

Q and queue are pronounced the same because it’s q’s turn to get pronounced; ueue are in a queue waiting for theirs.

[mrslobster]

I’m proud of myself now. I literally knew everything you said in this video and I’m not a native English speaker ^^ I started to learn English about 8 years ago 😂

[fannybaud]

As a French native speaker, I can confirm that English pronounciation and spelling are a true nightmare, but since I learnt mostly through reading books out loud and watching Youtube videos, I guess I just picked up the spelling along the way. I still wouldn't have guessed the adjective order correctly though. I guess it's something for me to improve, then!
Anyway, thank you so much for your fun and informative videos. I really love watching them, and I just love your method of teaching through stories. Thank you so much!

[gianlucalombardi]

I'm 49 years old, and recently I discovered a passion for English and language learning in general.
I studied English at school for three years, and I learned nothing but an endless list of useless grammar rules. So I used to hate English.
As you correctly pointed out, it's complicated to memorize grammar rules or the other subtleties of a language, and in my humble opinion, it's even detrimental to the process of acquisition of a language.
I've been studying English with the comprehensible input method for two years and not only my command of the language is skyrocketing but I have a lot of fun by reading and watching any kind of contents without the necessity to memorize those stupid grammar rules. So just by reading and listening all my spare time, eventually, I will use them naturally and without thinking.
Last but not least, by studying English for some strange reason I'm learning a lot about my native language too (I'm italian by the way) and I love it.

[frozenmadness]

English would be incredibly hard if we all weren't so sorrounded by music, literature, information etc. in English. Everyone who studies whatever (maybe except e.g. French philology, where all the educational material is in French) has to read scientific stuff in English. If you publish something scientific, it has to be in English. If you search for anything on the internet, you'll probably find more information in English than in other languages (except it's something country specific). Then there's music, the most radio stations worldwide play at least 30% of the music in English (some even 100%, also in non-English speaking countries). Regarding the sentence at the beginning of this video, it was clear for me how the right word order should be, but that's just because I've heard so much English before.

[pauldobosh]

I came to the US decades ago at age 4 speaking French and in six months was speaking English like all the other American kids. But, the French was gone, gone, gone. Except for one little detail - 'th' killed me and the word 'thief' was a hangup for years. In kindergarten, I was diagnosed as having a speech defect because of this 😀

This video is a delight, especially paired with "10 reasons ... ridiculously easy".

I admire anyone trying to learn any new language and can't imagine making fun of anyone's efforts, especially with this crazy language. Way more fun to offer help.

[stephenwodz]

I'm an ESL teacher who has worked in six foreign countries, and while I agree with everything you say, I must admit that my students seem to pick up English quite easily. In fact, I've been told that English grammar is actually quite simple compared to their native grammar (specifically Latin-based languages and Thai, for instance).

But yes, pronunciation is a bitch, which is why I have a job.

[robinbruce]

English might be very easy to learn and get a basic grasp of but it's so incredibly nuanced at the same time. It really is more than the sum of its parts. The basic building blocks might be simple to get but to really sound like a native you have to understand (or rather feel) some very bizarre and abstract unspoken and sometimes incomprehensibly complex rules overlaying these basic blocks. It's almost like a whole veil of higher logic is just mysteriously floating over the language changing flavor, meaning feel seemingly at random.

[helleunderlienkristensen]

As a Dane, one of my takeaways from this is that English could really benefit from adopting 'æ'. Instead of read/read, you'd have read/ræd. Would help with some of the missing letters. Not that Danish isn't missing letters. Most (if not all) Germanic languages have been missing letters to properly match sounds ever since adopting the Latin alphabet.

[ichliebebaeumeweilbaum]

I don't think we should define a language's difficulty solely based on the language itself. English is hard, but it's the huge amount of it in media and everyday life that makes it far easier to learn than others.

[lcarliner]

Also, don’t forget that English verb conjugations, endings and tenses are far simpler than many other languages!