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English is simpler than French (Discussion)

oLahav said – Tue, 27 May 2008 21:01:34 -0000 ( Edit Link )

I don’t actually know any French, so I can’t comment… but from what I hear French has so many exceptions to every grammar rule, it’s really hard to grasp it all. English has a few exceptions, sure, but not as many (most of the time at least).

I actually always thought English is a pretty simple language (I’m not a native speaker, so I get a say). You can go nuts with high vocabulary, and the perfect tenses are unnecessary, and the spelling sometimes makes little sense (GH!), but it’s not too bad. And French spelling is way worse… sometimes I look at a French word and try to pronounce it with 15 syllables, when it actually only takes one and all the Os and Us and Xs are just for show.

So, which one is nicer? English or le francais? (or is it la francais?)...

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Author: oLahav; Authority 712

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cesheppa said – Thu, 29 May 2008 13:49:50 -0000 ( Flag Edit Mark / Unmark Best Link )

English is interesting because it’s formed from MANY languages; I think all languages are like that (well all living languages.) a bit, but English (to me) seems a bit more of a mix than most. So a word often follows the rules particular to the language it came from. But of course there are exceptions all over the place (ie i before e except after C, but not in beige); I think exceptions are another thing that all living languages have, because a word gets imported from elsewhere, or the regular formation was awkward or hard to pronounce or something…

I think the easiest language to learn is the one (or are the ones) your parents have been speaking to you since you were laying in the crib barely able to focus on them. Everything else is a bit harder, but I’ve heard once you learn a second, the third is easier, the fourth easier yet, etc etc….

Ooops I accidentally agreed. Maybe I should be disagreeing…
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serjo said – Thu, 05 Jun 2008 03:25:27 -0000 ( Flag Edit Mark / Unmark Best Link )

I’m pretty fluent in written french but I cannot speak it, I don’t know why.I can read and write but it’s too difficult to understand when someone speak it to you even personally. As a Brazillian I can understand spanish very well, even so, I never studied spanish. I think english is the most easy language to learn although its roots are completely different from my native language (portuguese). It’s ironic that french has the same roots of the portuguese language and I find english easier to learn.
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Nina said – Sat, 23 Aug 2008 14:28:31 -0000 ( Flag Edit Mark / Unmark Best Link )

I think any language is simpler when youve grown up speaking that language, and so are other languages that your native language is deeply rooted in. Like my native language (which is an irony, because i speak English better than my native language), which has quite a number of words deeply rooted in the Spanish language and a mix of other Asian languages. So for me, its a cinch to learn Spanish since ive been basically hearing Spanish words that use the same meaning in my language
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lucyinthesky said – Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:03:30 -0000 ( Flag Edit Mark / Unmark Best Link )

I think French is a pretty easy language to learn. The language sounds really beautiful. There are a lot of words in the French language which are easy to identify because they look so similar to English, and I find that the pronunciation is pretty intuitive. At least with French, the various tenses are pretty consistent in the way you conjugate them…in English, there are a lot of exceptions which can throw people off as well. I guess any language is hard to learn if you’re not familiar with it.
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1. oLahav said – Tue, 04 Nov 2008 14:50:04 -0000 ( Flag Edit Link )
  
  The pronounciation is intuitive??? Come on, that statement makes no sense. They ahve unnecessary letters that don’t get pronounced at all, and sometimes they combine the letters into one weird vowel, like eau becomes just an o. And all the letters at the end of the word aren’t pronounced unless the next word starts with a vowel… French is about as unintuitive when it comes to pronounciation as it gets.
  
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