Why English Is Hard to Learn?

Specially for our visitors seeking fun for their students who struggle with learning English

Try reading out the following sentences:

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail of the windmill.
18) After a number of injections my jaw got number.
19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple.
English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. And French letters…?
Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.
We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?
If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth?
One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices. So 1 ibex, 2 ibices?
Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend, that you comb through annals of history but not a single annal?

If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught?

If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.

In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?

Ship by truck and send cargo by ship?

Have noses that run and feet that smell?
How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

How can overlook and oversee be opposites, while quite a lot and quite a few are alike?

How can the weather be hot as hell one day and cold as hell another?
Have you noticed that we talk about certain things only when they are absent?

Have you ever seen a horseful carriage or a strapful gown? Met a sung hero or experienced requited love?
Have you ever run into someone who was combobulated, gruntled, ruly or peccable?
And where are all those people who ARE spring chickens or who would ACTUALLY hurt a fly?
You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race (which, of course, isn't a race at all). That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

And why, when I wind up my watch, I start it, but when I wind up this essay, I end it.

Consider this idea.

Learning Chinese for an English speaker is made more difficult because the Chinese neither have tenses nor definite or indefinite articles. Simplification of one language can be a severe obstacle to those who have more complex forms.

So for the French to abandon complex forms of verbs to express tenses and who have to abandon genders for nouns to learn English....

For Germans to have to cope with only one word for 'the'...

Get the point? Yes, less can sometimes really be more - a lot more than we will ever truly comprehend.

I once asked how the French decided on the gender of each noun. Was there a sure and certain way to know? I represent a French example:

is the longest word in ‘common’ usage in the English language (45 letters)

How many ways can you pronounce "OUGH"? The answer is EIGHT. Think about it.

OO as in THROUGH

OFF as in TROUGH

UFF as in ROUGH

AW as in THOUGHT

OW as in BOUGH

OH as in THOUGH

UH as in THOROUGH

UP as in HICCOUGH, ah yes that is the correct spelling, hiccups are for the Americans.*

English has taken words from all over the world to include into its rich tapestry.

Pyjamas and the drink called Punch from India.

Chop Chop, or hurry up, from China.

Scoff, meaning to jeer at, from old Danish: scoff, meaning to eat greedily, from the Dutch schoft or, when it means good food, there is an allusion to the great Escoffier.

Tea from India by way of China – chai – or is it the other way round? Londoners talk of a cup of ‘char’.

In English there is so much of other languages that all the world will surely recognise something from their native tongue.

Often, when struggling to find the French word, simply saying the English word with a French accent will work very well. You should try an English accent with a French word and see how often it works in reverse.

Learning English is an ongoing process.

As soon as another person in another country learns to speak English then English is again changed.

Travellers who speak English bring home new words and the language changes again.

Every new edition of the Oxford English Dictionary has new words from technology or slang or imported from another language.

We have no English Academy to protect us from changes or adoptions. We even change the meaning of our words according to time and custom.

e.g. Decimate and Sophisticated.

Decimate used to mean the destruction of one in ten. Now many people use it to mean the destruction of nine out of ten.

Sophisticated used to be a pejorative term to describe falseness and pretence, now it means suave and polished.

Absolute Proof of our crazy pronunciation.....

Take the unusual word 'GHOTI' - how do you pronounce that?

Well let's break it down:

Use the GH as in rough and you get an F

Use the O as in women and you get an I

Use the TI as in station and you get SH

So....... it spells FISH!!!

No, that's just a little joke, but it could be possible with our amazing range of sounds from all the varied forms of word construction and pronunciation.

Enjoy English in the sure and certain knowledge that it will always change, certainly break every rule of grammar or syntax and will never cease to surprise you.