English has no shortage of exceptions to “rules” (sometimes the rule only seeming such because it applies to the subset most frequently used rather than the whole set of whatevers). English’s most common verbs are irregular. That’s not necessarily too crazy (be, have, do/make are often weird in most languages because they resist change the most since they are most used). We have all kinds of things that aren’t “correct” (prescriptive view) that native speakers get wrong all the time. “I have went” rather than “I have gone” is one that grates to me, but I accept that language changes. A lot of verbs are also losing their endings and patterns and gradually going to the dominant ~ed ending where previously they did not (Tom Scott has a good video on this).
If you task your male dogsitter to give your dog a treat while you are away and somebody asks you whether your pet is taken care of during your vacation, you can say: “Don’t worry. When I return, the bone will have been given by the man to the dog.”
Then by that metric, Chinese must be incredibly easy. Simple genders, no articles, simple grammar, no verb conjugation whatsoever, very simple tenses. Probably the easiest language out there!
Pronunciation is still incredibly difficult unless you are immersed in it. I’d argue that it’s legitimately one of the most difficult languages to pick up in a classroom simply because of how completely different it sounds in the real world versus on tapes.
I didn’t list all possible difficulties. Chinese have this never ending list of very complex characters and probably more subtility that I don’t know of. If it is close to Japanese though, yes the grammar doesn’t seem complicated compared to European languages.
Chinese grammar seems to me to be simpler than Japanese, though I studied Japanese for about a year and have lived here speaking the language daily (primary language at home) for the better part of a decade and have only scratched the surface on Mandarin.
That’s the only hard thing about English. Many other languages have this difficulty plus many more (gender, tenses, complex rules, exceptions…).
English has no shortage of exceptions to “rules” (sometimes the rule only seeming such because it applies to the subset most frequently used rather than the whole set of whatevers). English’s most common verbs are irregular. That’s not necessarily too crazy (be, have, do/make are often weird in most languages because they resist change the most since they are most used). We have all kinds of things that aren’t “correct” (prescriptive view) that native speakers get wrong all the time. “I have went” rather than “I have gone” is one that grates to me, but I accept that language changes. A lot of verbs are also losing their endings and patterns and gradually going to the dominant ~ed ending where previously they did not (Tom Scott has a good video on this).
English word order is also pretty weird.
“The man gave a bone to the dog”, “The dog was given a bone by the man”, “The bone was given by the man to the dog”, etc etc
These are all valid sentences* expressing the same thing.
*They may not be gramatically correct, I am not a grammar professional
edit: I had forgotten that you can also do that in other languages
I don’t think that’s very specific to English, I could write the same subject swap in French, Spanish and maybe Japanese.
Yeah, we can do it in Japanese. Particles change. Passive voice and subjunctive mood can also be done without too much trouble.
If you task your male dogsitter to give your dog a treat while you are away and somebody asks you whether your pet is taken care of during your vacation, you can say: “Don’t worry. When I return, the bone will have been given by the man to the dog.”
It’s not like you can’t say that in french.
They have almost a hundred ways to conjugate each verb too (even if there are about a hundred groups).
English is a walk in the park compared to French IMO.
Then by that metric, Chinese must be incredibly easy. Simple genders, no articles, simple grammar, no verb conjugation whatsoever, very simple tenses. Probably the easiest language out there!
Pronunciation is still incredibly difficult unless you are immersed in it. I’d argue that it’s legitimately one of the most difficult languages to pick up in a classroom simply because of how completely different it sounds in the real world versus on tapes.
I didn’t list all possible difficulties. Chinese have this never ending list of very complex characters and probably more subtility that I don’t know of. If it is close to Japanese though, yes the grammar doesn’t seem complicated compared to European languages.
Chinese grammar seems to me to be simpler than Japanese, though I studied Japanese for about a year and have lived here speaking the language daily (primary language at home) for the better part of a decade and have only scratched the surface on Mandarin.