English was the first foreign language I learnt, and the first one I gained fluency in. Thus, it is only fair to talk about English second.
English
Geographical Extension
English is official language in 52 countries worldwide. It's spoken in England and Ireland, northern America (USA and Canada), most of the Carribean countries, Australia, New Zealand and others.
Spoken by
English is spoken by about 310 million native speakers and a vast majority of people around the world as second language.
Language Family and History
English belongs to the Indo-Germanic languages and is related to German and Dutch, among others. The history of the English language goes as far back as to the middle of the fifth century. The old English grammar is much closer to modern German than to modern English as it differed between three definite articles and four cases just like modern German does.
The old English language has been influenced by three different languages: the Celtic language which had been prevalent in Great Britain before the English language got there, the Latin brought to England by the Romans, and the Scandinavian language the Vikings brought with them when they invaded England. During time, the old English language changed gravely and lost about 85 % of its vocabulary due to the influences of other languages. Later, when French invaders came to reign the country, the English language "imported" many French words into their vocabulary. When literacy began to spread and books became known and common goods, many new words with Latin roots were "imported" to serve the needs. Nowadays, words from the old English, Scandinavian languages, Latin, French and the Celtic languages blend together to form the modern English vocabulary.
Grammar Difficulty
English grammar is quite easy compared to, for example, German grammar. There is only one definite article, there are no cases for the nouns except the genitive...however, the tenses give English learners constant headaches. If you take the progressive tenses and passive voice into account, English has a total of 28 tenses to learn!
Pronunciation Difficulty
The greatest difficulty for non-native English speakers is the fact that many letter combinations have several pronunciations. Even the same written word can be pronounced differently depending on its meaning or part of speech (e.g. read [ri:d] (infinitive/present tense) - read [red] (past tense/past participle).
Apart from that, due to the great geographical extension of this language, there are many variations of spoken English nowadays. The two main variations are British English (BE) and American English (AE), both of which have many different accents.
Special Facts
With BE and AE, next to lesser known varieties, there is no such as THE English language. All those varieties have the vast basis in common while some parts of the spelling and vocabulary may be different. Even some books are "translated" from BE to AE or vice versa, especially MG books set in a school environment like Harry Potter, because the vocabulary related to school between both varieties differs greatly.
Language ... the bridge of communication, the magic creator of worlds, the brush and paint of authors. Language is magic. It gives us power. It is something you just have to love.
I was quite lucky to have come to the US as a young child if only because I didn't struggle as my parent and so many others I know did in understanding American English. It is rather astonishing--and quite funny too-- to realize that we sometimes can't understand each other even when we are technically speaking the same language! Thanks for the "English" lesson. :-)
ReplyDeleteGlory, I know exactly what you mean! When I worked at the sales department for some time, we had our two English colleagues over and one of them gave me a phone number in England and told me, 'That's one of our clients; call him and ask him what he wants, he tried to call me earlier.' So I did what I was asked...OMG! I didn't understand a word! It was soooo embarrassing, and my colleague stood next to me and was cracking up all the time...he KNEW I would have a hard time understanding that particular accent...
ReplyDeleteI have worked in computer support for years and had to understand people from many other countries, where the English accent is really strong (Jamaica, Bahamas) and also to make myself understood to those whose natural language was not English (most of Central America).
ReplyDeleteI also spent 15 years in the USA, and it's really surprising how many differences there are over there.
The spelling is the most annoying, plus some of the pronunciation and poor grammar.
Some people spell words wrong because they spell them how they are pronounced. A prime example is "Potty", a toilet, which people pronounce "Poddy" and often spell it that way. In the same way people often pronounce "Saturday" like "Sadderday".
I got used to it, but still if anyone pronounces the word for a car as "vee-hickle" I see red lol :)
Hey Poddys,
ReplyDeletethanks for telling us about your experiences with this topic :D
Love,
Saoirse