Why English is SO HARD to learn

That is hard!

Hey everyone, I'm Alex, thanks for clicking and welcome to this lesson on reasons why

English is difficult.

If you're watching this video, it's probably because you are studying English right now

and you might be having some challenges, or you were thinking about taking your English

to the next level, but you keep coming up against the same difficulties.

So, in this video, I want to do two things.

Number one: I want to make you aware of some of the challenges that almost every English

learner faces.

And number two: I want to give you some tips to help you deal with these challenges.

So, I'm not going to waste a lot of time with you guys today, so let's just start looking

at some of the reasons that English is a difficult language, but not an impossible one.

Let's go.

Spelling.

So, spelling is difficult in English because it is not phonetic.

This means that every letter in the English alphabet does not line up to one sound.

It does not represent one sound.

For instance, Pacific Ocean.

Every C in Pacific Ocean is pronounced differently.

It is not phonetic.

Though, through, thought.

O, ooh, ah.

"Ough" is pronounced differently in all three of these words.

Not phonetic.

You also have the problem of silent letters, like knock and knee, your knee here.

Now, the reason for this, the reason why English is not phonetic is because of its long history

of various routes and conquests of Germanic influences and Latin influences and Anglo-Saxon

influences and Norse influences.

There are been so many times that English has tried to be controlled by one group of

people, or changed in the dictionaries, that has created this kind of - bit of a mess.

So, in the example of knock and knee, for example.

These are Norse words that used to have the K pronounced in the past.

Now, what happened is the pronunciation changed at one point, but we kept the spelling the

same.

So, maybe it did used to be pronounced "kuh-nock" or "kuh-nee", but now it's pronounced "nock"

and "nee".

We just kept the spelling.

So, I get it.

It's difficult.

How can you deal with this challenge?

Number one: in 2020, spell check is a wonderful tool.

It's a wonderful thing.

So, whether you're using a word processing program, whether you are on your phone, you

probably have a spell checker, okay?

And it can tell you which words are not being spelt correctly as you're typing.

You can also identify which words you are consistently getting wrong and work on those,

focus on those.

If you write daily, which you're probably doing already, if you're using the internet

and looking up English content, this is something that will improve over time.

It doesn't happen overnight.

It does happen over time, though.

So, keep it up.

Don't give up.

Practice daily.

Use that spell checker and let's move on to the next one and see why English is so difficult.

Pronunciation.

Now, this is going to be a challenge, regardless of which language you're learning.

Everyone who is learning a new language has this challenge.

Some of the most common English challenges when it comes to pronunciation for new learners

are these two.

These are just two examples.

I'm not saying these are the most prominent challenges, but two of them that I noticed

in my years of teaching is the "th" sound and the "kt" sound when speaking in the past.

So, "th", like "th" and "the", and "kt" when you have verbs like walked and talked.

When you are conjugating regular past simple verbs.

So, what you need to know - and obviously there are regional pronunciations, which also

make English pronunciation difficult.

But what you need to know about this is you can find out what the unique challenges are

of your language when you're learning English.

So, if you simply, you know, look up on the internet.

English pronunciation problems for Spanish speakers, Portuguese speakers, Arabic speakers,

whatever you like, whatever language you speak.

And you can find out what the most common problems are for your language.

When you are learning English.

So, find out your unique challenges.

Focus on your unique challenges.

Step one to solving a problem is becoming aware that there is a problem.

Number two: how can you focus on your unique challenges?

Well, imitate other people.

Imitate people in movies, in videos, whatever you like.

And practice, of course.

And really, you need to focus more on being understood, not on being perfect.

So, when you're learning a language, the goal in the beginning, you know, you want to be

perfect.

You are very nervous sometimes, that someone will not understand you.

You're very nervous that you are making a mistake and that you don't sound good to the

person you're speaking to.

I understand this feeling.

I have it when I'm trying to communicate in French with people and sometimes they don't

understand fully what I'm saying, because I'm not pronouncing a word correctly.

However, what you need to do is don't worry so much about having 100% perfect pronunciation.

If you do say "I walk-ed to the store", I understand what you mean.

It's okay, alright?

Keep working on it.

Over the years, it will come, okay?

You'll be able to say, "I walked to the store".

But right now, if you're saying "walk-ed", it's fine.

People understand you.

They know what you're saying, even if the word sounds a little bit funny, that's not

a big deal.

Alright?

So, figure out your unique challenge.

Focus on them.

Keep practicing.

Don't worry about being perfect, worry about being understood.

Let's keep going and look at some of the other challenges you might be having when learning

English.

The amount of vocabulary.

So, English has the largest vocabulary of any language in the world.

Depending on what you're reading, who you're asking, how you count those words, the Oxford

dictionary, for example, has over 200,000 entries.

Now, what is good but also difficult about this is that most people, according to a flexographer

dictionary expert, use between 20,000 and 40,000 words in their daily life.

I'm not saying they use those words every day, I'm saying that is the size of their

vocabulary bank.

Now, that seems intimidating, but let's look on the bright side.

Okay, if there are 200,000 words in the English language and people have a vocabulary of 20,000

to 40,000, most people only use about 10% of these words or up to 20% of those words,

if my math is correct.

Is my math correct in this case?

I think it is.

Good.

Alright.

The other good thing is you don't have to learn 20,000 words, okay?

You only need a few words to start a conversation.

You probably can already have an English conversation.

If you are listening to me now, if you're understanding what I'm saying, you are already

like, ahead of the game, okay?

You're already ahead of many people.

So, learn the vocabulary of your profession and of your interests.

If you really, really, really love board games, for example, learn the English vocabulary

for talking about board games, if this is part of your interests.

If you are a part of a community and you want to discuss these things.

Or video games, or anything like that.

If you are a marketer and you work in a specific industry and you want to market, learn the

vocabulary of marketing.

Focus on that, okay?

So that you can be competent and you can be confident in your area.

Conversation takes time in any language.

I don't want to, you know, downplay the difficulty of learning a new language, of conversing

in a new language.

It's tough, it's hard.

People aren't going to understand you sometimes.

But it's not impossible.

It takes times.

The journey of 200,000 words begins with a single step, and you're already taking it

by even watching a video like this.

Let's keep going.

Phrasal verbs.

So, English likes doing this weird thing where we add prepositions, which become particles

grammatically, to the end of verbs and creating new meanings, new definitions from that combination.

So, for example, we have literal phrasal verbs and we have a bunch of idiomatic phrasal verbs.

So, an example of a literal phrasal verb is "clean up", or "play around".

So, to clean up, just means to clean.

You can say, "Clean your room", "Clean up your room".

You can say, "I'm playing on my phone", "I'm playing around on my phone".

The meanings are exactly the same.

Why did we add the extra word?

Sentence variety, maybe?

Probably?

And then you have the problem of idiomatic phrasal verbs like "make out", which has many

different meanings.

So, you can make out someone's writing, you can make out with your boyfriend, girlfriend,

partner, which means to kiss passionately.

You can make out okay at the casino, which means that you did okay at the casino.

You made some money.

So, there are several challenges with phrasal verbs.

I probably don't need to go through all of them with you, as you are probably already

familiar with them.

So, how can you help yourself if, you know, you are wanting to learn phrasal verbs.

If you're wanting to overcome this difficulty.

Well, context can sometimes give you clues.

I emphasize sometimes.

Listen to how it's being used in the sentence.

Listen to what came before, what came after, and maybe you can figure out the meaning.

Figure out - mm, solve, find the solution.

My other suggestion.

I know some people, they buy books of phrasal verbs.

You can by a phrasal verbs dictionary and just and just study from the beginning, okay?

Like, from A to Z.

If this is your method, great.

Most people, I'd be very surprised if you got past the first three pages.

If you started like, from page one of a phrasal verbs dictionary.

My suggestion is to study phrasal verbs based on their context and not in alphabetical order.

So, what I mean by study phrasal verbs based on context is this: learn about phrasal verbs

in a given situation.

So, phrasal verbs that you can use in an office space.

Phrasal verbs that you can use with a particular sport, if you're interested in a sport.

Phrasal verbs that you can use at home.

So, pick a context and you can look up on the internet, like, tons of stuff.

Phrasal verbs for business, phrasal verbs for whatever the situation is, and go from

there, alright?

Basically, study them as they come up.

Study them as they appear in your life, the other ones that, you know, you're not studying

based on context.

And over time, you will pick up the language.

We used so many phrasal verbs in this part of the lesson for you guys.

Hopefully the context has helped you to pick up the meanings of those phrasal verbs.

Let's look at the next one.

The tenses.

So, English has twelve core tenses, and what makes this difficult, just like any other

language really, is that not every language has the same tenses.

So, for example, in Russian, the present continuous does not exist, at least not in the way that

it exists in English.

So, where the structure, you know, actually changes.

So, in some languages, you can use the present simple to talk about a habit and you can also

use the present simple to talk about something you're doing right now and the other words

in the sentence will tell you whether it's happening now or whether you're doing it on

a regular basis.

In English, you need to learn a separate tense for that, okay?

And I know there is, you know, some problem for some people with the present perfect,

with past perfect, with past perfect continuous, etc.

So, it's tough.

I get it.

It's a lot to learn.

Now, the positives.

You can use and listen to time markers, so here's a tip.

There are lists of words, there are time markers that usually denote the usage of a specific

tense, okay?

So, "while".

If you listen to the word "while", if you hear that word, normally you're going to hear

a continuous tense afterwards, a past continuous or a present continuous or - yeah, or a future

continuous, okay?

So, it could be anything like that.

If you hear the words "ever", or "never", your head should go to - present perfect,

okay?

So, probably present perfect in those scenarios.

The other thing is these twelve tenses, it sounds like a lot, but really there is a consistent

structure.

You basically have 4 x 3.

So, what I mean by that is you have a simple, a continuous, a perfect, and a perfect continuous

in the past, the present, and the future.

Alright?

So, think of just four - sorry, three boxes where you have present, past, future, and

each of those has the same consistent tenses, right?

You have a present simple, you have a past simple, you have a future simple.

Present continuous, past continuous, future continuous, and so on.

And the structure is consistent, alright?

So, they all follow similar rules.

Just sometimes, some of these auxiliary verbs change.

But once you learn those auxiliary verbs, it's not so bad.

Okay?

Finally, www.engvid.com has lessons on all of these tenses.

So, if you have questions about them, you can check out those videos, check out those

lessons and grow in confidence in your understanding of them.

Now, tenses is not, you know, they're not something you're going to learn in a day.

They are not something you will learn in a week.

They are something that you'll have to experiment with, play with, play around with, if you

will, if you remember the previous room where I talked about phrasal verbs.

And you will get it just with more practice.

I know you're saying, "Okay Alex, practice, practice, practice."

That really is the secret sauce, okay?

The secret sauce to everything is practice, if you're learning any type of skill.

Secret sauce, Alex?

Yeah, it's an English phrase.

We say "the secret sauce" to something.

It's like the thing that makes something happen, right?

The secret to make it happen.

Alright, we have one more difficulty and one more tip for you guys, so let's check it out.

Last but not least, we have articles.

So, in English, we have "a", "an", "the".

Three articles.

Now, the reason that articles are so difficult for many learners is because some languages

simply don't have them.

So, I know this is a problem in particular for many Asian students.

I've had Japanese students, Korean students, and not only Japanese and Korean or Asian

in general, but people from South America, parts of Europe.

It's tough, because there are so many rules to articles.

The most basic one is, you know, if you're dealing with something singular, if it starts

with a consonant sound, use "a" or "a".

If you're dealing with a vowel sound at the beginning of a noun, use "an", right?

So, "an elephant", or "a chair", for example.

I mean, you also use them with adjectives like "an attractive man" or something like

that.

And then you have the definite article, which also has a ton of rules attached to it.

So, it's - it's tough, because there are tons and tons and tons of rules on top of the basic

rules.

And even the rules have exceptions.

So, for example, the basic rule is with lakes, I know it's very specific, but like, with

lakes, typically you just say, "Lake" and you give the name, right?

So, Lake Huron, Lake Ontario, Lake ____.

But then you have, like, The Great Salt Lake.

Why?

Why are we putting "the" there?

Is it because it's "the great"?

I guess, right?

So, you have some exceptions.

Most countries don't use an article.

There are some that do, and not in all cases.

So, some people still call Ukraine "The Ukraine".

Or, you have "The Congo", for example.

But you have China, Canada, Brazil, Vietnam, Cambodia, many countries that don't use any

designation or don't use any article at the beginning of their names.

Now, despite there being all of these rules and exceptions to the rules, there are some

good things about articles in English and I'm going to give you a tip on how you can

deal with these challenges that I've described.

So, number one: English articles are gender-neutral and gender neutrality is part of the English

language in general, so what's great is "the, the, the, the".

It doesn't matter if the noun that you're dealing with is masculine, if it's feminine,

if it's singular, if it's plural.

For the definite article "the", it never changes.

So this makes learning the gender-neutral article "the" that much easier in English.

Next, most of the rules, despite their being a lot of them, despite their being a lot of

exceptions, most of them are clear.

So what you have to do is learn those basic rules and then deal with the exceptions as

you go.

This is a tip for almost any language, not just English.

Learn the basics, learn the rules, and then deal with the exceptions as you go.

Depending on how much time you have - those of you who study books of exceptions, fantastic,

you're an inspiration - but most of us will probably learn as we go.

Alright, so in this video, we have looked at some of the reasons that English is difficult

for English learners.

So I hope, number one, I've been able to raise your awareness of why you might be struggling,

why you might be having some difficulties with learning English.

But number two, I also hope I've been able to encourage you, to give you some positive

energy and to give you some tips and strategies that you use to help you deal with these difficulties.

And if you want to test your understanding of everything that we've discussed here today,

as always, you can check out the quiz on www.engvid.com . While you are on www.engvid.com and you're

having some difficulties, maybe with phrasal verbs, maybe with articles, maybe with something

else I've discussed here today, I can almost guarantee you we have a video that addresses

the topic you are thinking of.

We have over 1500 lessons now, which is absolutely incredible when you think about it.

Alright.

You can also subscribe to me on YouTube.

Make sure you click the bell to receive notifications so you never miss a video, and also check

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there waiting for you.

So, until next time, thanks for clicking and take it easy, guys.

Peace!