If you put the word “Only” anywhere in the sentence “She told him she loved him”, it would make sense regardless of where you put it, and with different meanings being born from it as well. Based on your perception, that is either incredible or very scary. English is a magical language with an incredible history. With origins from a variety of languages such as Anglo-Norman, it should come as no surprise that the “exceptions to the rule” sometimes form lists as long as the rules themselves.
When there, their, and they’re all sound the same, or pear/pair, or peak/peek, we completely understand how people might be too frightened to study English. We don’t want to lie about the difficulty of the English language, but every language has its own difficulty too! When Westerners visit other locations for work, they will often try their best to pick up a few words, too often to their own demise. Here is a list of other languages that are difficult (maybe even more!) to learn.
- Vietnamese – There are sounds in the Vietnamese language that are not in the English alphabet. As such, it is incredibly difficult to learn once you hit a certain age.
- Bahasa Indonesia – As with French, Spanish and other languages, the rolling of the tongue does not come naturally to Native English speakers.
- Mandarin/Cantonese – When you start introducing tones to the language, you can easily say the wrong thing. For example, Cantonese has 6 tones, which means that “Ma(1)” (Mother) and “Maa(5)” (Horse) is hard to distinguish for someone who didn’t grow up with the language. It is best not to meet someone’s mother and accidentally greeting them with “Horse”.
- Arabic – Without comparison, Arabic has the most difficult writing alphabet for someone who is not well versed in the language. All of it looks like a single line with a few dots here and there. If there is a language that throw people off without ever trying, it would be Arabic.
As you can see, languages around the world all have their ups and downs. Depending on your native tongue, some languages will appear easier (English/French, Japanese/Chinese), but all have their own challenges. As such, you shouldn’t worry about the difficulties, but the benefits that comes with learning the languages.
Indogro teachers have no delusions that English is a difficult language, even for Native English speakers. As such, they teach with patience in their hearts and minds. It is not just about getting the knowledge to excel in every test, but to carry the knowledge forward to practical situations and later on, to the workplace and friendships you attend to.
