what i want to know is if english is actually as hard to learn as they say bc some people say it's extremely hard because it's so irregular and has elements from so many other languages, and some other people say that's basically a meme. and the people i know who learned it as a second language did so so long ago that they no longer really have any conception of how difficult it was, at least among those i've asked
@monorail i only know feedback from people whose first language is Japanese, because my friend has worked as a English‐language tutor for Japanese speakers, but what i’ve heard is:—
1. spelling is really hard; english spelling makes no sense
2. articles (a/the) are extremely difficult to get right. knowing when to use them and which one to use is one of the hardest parts of speaking English (for people from languages which don’t have them).
i think Europeans don’t like English because most European languauges are kind of samey and English isn’t really all that similar to French (compared to other Latin languages) or German (compared to other Germanic languages). but that’s a European bias towards European languages which wouldn’t be true for speakers from anywhere else.
