MyDoorsAreOpen
Bluelight Crew
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2003
- Messages
- 8,549
^ Depends what your first language is.
Dutch people don't seem to have much trouble picking up English.
I never found idioms all that much of an obstacle to learning foreign languages -- they're just extended pieces of vocabulary, that you memorize as one chunk of meaning.
I imagine one of the most maddening things about learning English must be the fact that the spelling and pronunciation rules are so inconsistent.
Also, when I dated a native Chinese speaker, she complained that we have WAAAY too many synonyms, and too many ways of phrasing the same statement. She said (and I only half agree), that Chinese tend to have only one word for any concept, whose etymology is rather straightforward and logical. Furthermore, she said there are not nearly as many ways to phrase the same statement as there are in English, and she felt that the line between lying and telling the truth was much clearer in Chinese. It annoyed her to no end when English speakers would dress up a statement with fancy words to make it appear to say something other than what it essentially said.

I never found idioms all that much of an obstacle to learning foreign languages -- they're just extended pieces of vocabulary, that you memorize as one chunk of meaning.
I imagine one of the most maddening things about learning English must be the fact that the spelling and pronunciation rules are so inconsistent.
Also, when I dated a native Chinese speaker, she complained that we have WAAAY too many synonyms, and too many ways of phrasing the same statement. She said (and I only half agree), that Chinese tend to have only one word for any concept, whose etymology is rather straightforward and logical. Furthermore, she said there are not nearly as many ways to phrase the same statement as there are in English, and she felt that the line between lying and telling the truth was much clearer in Chinese. It annoyed her to no end when English speakers would dress up a statement with fancy words to make it appear to say something other than what it essentially said.