Every judgmental person who criticizes non-native speakers learning English needs to watch this video. English is pretty rough. The basics are okay. In some ways, the language is simple, but the lack of logic and consistency is maddening.

@malokeytheallaround

2 жыл бұрын

After studying new languages, I will now never ever judge anyone for their broken English.

@eugenec7130

2 жыл бұрын

I fully agree. The exceptions to the rules (irregulars) and inconsistency in English are at the top of the world.

@ChineduOpara

2 жыл бұрын

@@malokeytheallaround Facts! Now that i am learning Spanish, I am FAARRRR more empathetic to my ESL students!

@laurencefraser

2 жыл бұрын

@@eugenec7130 turns out, in many cases, they're not actually Irregular (though some certainly are, but that's true in many languages) so much as the rules are badly formulated or explained. English is more logical and consistent than most people give it credit for... It's just hidden by the fact that English is also a lot more Complicated than people give it credit for. (Spelling suddenly makes a whole lot more sense once you understand how English stress works, for example... Too bad stress isn't actually Marked anywhere (probably the biggest failing of the English writing system, really) and native speakers aren't generally even taught that it's a Thing.)

@xXJ4FARGAMERXx

2 жыл бұрын

@@laurencefraser He Sings, He sung He Rides, He Rode He Slides, He slode? He -slided- , He _Slid_ He Goes, He go? He goed? He Gid? He _went_ Colonel = Kernel??? I've always pronounced like "Colony" but instead of -y at the end it's -el; /kɑlənəl/ One has a /w/ sound?? Why?? Shouldn't it be pronounced a bit more like "Own"? 1, 1st 2, 2nd 3, 3rd 4, 4th 5, 5th . . . 10, 10th 11, 11st? 11th . . . 20, 20th 21, 21th? 21st irregular prefixes, too. probable, improbable Capable, incapable. Ok so in-/im- = opposite of, right? Flammable = Inflammable? That's the same thing! English as a spoken language is 90% regular. But as a written language? It's more like 70% consistent.

As a dyslexic native English speaker, learning English spellings as a child was torturous. When I started learning German, it was a bliss. German is so phonetic in comparison and far more logical.

@MaoRatto

2 жыл бұрын

English has a bad habit of retaining historical spelling from different language families. As a native English, French has a worse writing system... Japanese for me was straight forward but got to remember the ideograph + sound.

@_the_ordinary_otaku_2325

2 жыл бұрын

German is pretty straight forward. It's probably the reason why it sounds so harsh. :D

@x0xTHLover4Lifex0x

2 жыл бұрын

Yes German is amazing. It's always pronounced the way it's spelled

@x0xTHLover4Lifex0x

2 жыл бұрын

@@_the_ordinary_otaku_2325 depends on who is speaking it 😂

@_the_ordinary_otaku_2325

2 жыл бұрын

@@MaoRatto It also depends on the dialect xD

The order of English adjectives is a beautiful example of how so much stuff is subconsciously acquired and how we do NOT consciously apply rules while speaking. No one could consciously apply that complex of a rule without have a 20 second pause in their speech.. Makes you wonder if any of language can really be explicitly learned, or if it's all subconsciously acquired.

@dianadevlin3717

Жыл бұрын

Good point

@richdobbs6595

Жыл бұрын

If I was a writer, especially a writer of science fiction, this seems like a great opportunity to mess with! Maybe just change the rule a bit, or completely turn it topsy-turvy.

@elainechubb971

Жыл бұрын

Yes and no--sorry to waffle! One acquires one's native language almost subconsciously, with a lot of input from a parent or older sibling, who'll often gently (I hope) correct a mistake. But acquiring another language in school, often over the age of 10 or 12, involves a lot of rote learning. I learned French for 7 years starting at age 11, Latin for 6 starting at age 12, German for one year (intensive) at age 16, followed by Old English and Middle English in university. All these languages have quite complicated grammar rules, such as gendered nouns, with case and number suffixes, complex verb systems with different conjugations, and so on. There is really no getting around consciously learning vocabulary, spelling, grammatical forms, word order, syntax, at least absent total-immersion courses! (Just as in learning one's native language, there are needed lessons in all of these aspects--little kids do not automatically speak intelligibly just through listening to their families and friends.)

@prestonage

Жыл бұрын

@@elainechubb971 Most second language teachers and linguists tend to agree that SLA (Second Language Acquisition) is done nearly entirely subconsciously, including grammar rules. This was promoted by Stephen Krashen. There has been criticism to the theories (a good synopsis of which can be read here: files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ669741.pdf), but it boils down to his theories being unfalsifiable, not remotely that they've been proven to be incorrect. The irony of this is that the entire idea of falsifiability being a tenet of science was put together in philosophy of science by Kuhn, which holds that the scientific method is whichever one works best at the moment, but could and likely will be improved upon in the future. For linguists and L2 teachers, Krashen's theories are the best we've got.. for now.

@slowanddeliberate6893

Жыл бұрын

When we are babies and know no language, we can easily pick up the language we are exposed to by our parents and the culture of the region by hearing phrases said over and over again, and then repeating them. This process is, at first, subconscious before we start going to school.

As a native English speaker, this was hilarious! I always knew that English was weird, but I had never really thought about just how weird it is. So happy I don't have to learn it as a second language. I've started to learn German, and so far I'm really enjoying it. I love how phonetic German is compared to English.

@tharrrrrrr

9 ай бұрын

I'm just as happy as you're.

@flixx82

9 ай бұрын

@@tharrrrrrr 😂

@tharrrrrrr

9 ай бұрын

@@flixx82 😁

@kevinjohnson1139

9 ай бұрын

English isn't that difficult, I started learning it when I was only 12 months old.😏

@tharrrrrrr

6 ай бұрын

@@kevinjohnson1139 😂

Anakin: English only has 26 letters. Padme: Ah! So the reading is easy! Anakin: ... Padme: The reading is easy, right?..

@ryangainey94

2 жыл бұрын

Finnegan's Wake would like a word with you

Q and queue are pronounced the same because it’s q’s turn to get pronounced; ueue are in a queue waiting for theirs.

@fukpoeslaw3613

2 жыл бұрын

☻

@xXJ4FARGAMERXx

2 жыл бұрын

Seriously though, if you want to know why the other letters are there, then here's why: Q is a letter. Qu is pronounced /ku/ because 's value is /k/ and 's value is /u/ Que is pronounced /kjuː/. Why? Shouldn't it be pronounced /kuɛ/? Well, that's because the is silent. "Well if it's silent then why is it there??" Well, the job of the silent -e is to turn the short vowels into long vowels. Example: "Cut" = /kʌt/ but "Cute" = /kjuːt/ The silent -e turned 's value from /ʌ/ to /juː/ "Rat" = /ræt/ but "Rate" = /reɪt/ The silent -e turned 's value from /æ/ to /eɪ/ "Not" = /nɑt/ but "Note" = /noʊt/ The silent -e turned 's value from /ɑ/ to /oʊ/ See? If a one vowel letter word doesn't end in a silent -e then you pronounce the word with a short version of the vowel, e.g. "Bit" = /bɪt/ but if it were to end with a silent -e then it would use the long version. e.g. "Bite" = /baɪt/ Ok, so the -e turned Que from /ku/ to /kjuː/ because the long version of is /juː/ Great, Next! Queu, how would that be pronounced? I personally say /kuɛu/, but you do you. Next! Queue, why is that /kjuː/ and not /kuɛuɛ/ ? Well, because the last -e is silent, and the first is silent. Why? Look at words like "Antique" and "pique" and then tell me. They could just as well be spelled "Anteqe" and "Peqe" but I digress. With those silent letters out, "Queue" becomes Qeu, and how is Qeu pronounced? Well, 's value is /k/, 's value is /i/, and 's value is /uː/. Saying /kiu/ with 2 syllables is hard, so what they did was make a digraph and pronounced it as /juː/ , such as in Europe /juːrʌp/ , and with that the new pronounciation instead of /kiu/ is /kjuː/! That's why!

@Liggliluff

2 жыл бұрын

This joke is weird since it doesn't make sense. Every word spelt phonetically will have all the sounds queued up and pronounced in order. This isn't something unique to "queue"

@LanguageCrafter

2 жыл бұрын

bah-tun-dizz

@fukpoeslaw3613

2 жыл бұрын

@@Liggliluff it doesn't make sense because it's a joke 🤷‍♂️

I'm a native spanish speaker from Argentina. I started going to English classes when I was 11, and by 16 I was at a C1 level. I only really learned from class the first two years. I tried reading Harry Potter in English after a year and a half of English, knowing it had a simple prose style and I already knew it by heart. I knew about 15-20% of the words I came across, deduced quite a bit from a learned instinct of how languages (and English specifically thanks to imperalism and it being everywhere), and understood enough from context and my memories that I read all seven of them without too much trouble. Ended up understanding about 60% of what I read, I think, but I didn't really care. The excitement of figuring out that a word was a different tense of a verb I knew, or in the same family as that noun I vaguely remember from a Beatles song, and finally understanding what "used to be" actually means in Yesterday, made me fall in love with learning languages. Now I speak fluent English, advanced French, intermediate german, plus some russian, hungarian, and hebrew. I'm 21. Learning languages is the most amazing experience ever. I remember playing music in English while in French class, and texting in Spanish. The feeling of mental exhaustion after challenging myself that way is incredible. Personal opinon: Reading does all the difference in the world. Surround yourself in your target language. Find what excites you about it, a new part of it to love. A sound, a sentence structure, an expression, the cultural relevance of a specific word, anything. Any excuse helps. Change your system language in your devices, use a browser extension that translates some words into your target language in every website you visit, talk to native people on an online platform (please be safe, don't share personal information online). Above all, have fun! If you're excited about it, everything feels different. Do you know the feeling of watching something in your target language and it all sounding like gibberish, and how it slowly starts to make sense as you learn? Isn't it one of the best feelings ever? P.S.: English *is* weird. In it's defense, all languages are. Just like people. The logic it has was pretty much made up after the fact to try to understand it better. They are not deliberately designed, and that's a huge part of what makes them so wonderful. Quite literally, full of wonders. Edit: correction, changed "C2" to "C1". I didn't remember which number C I got with the FCE and assumed C2 was the lower one, so I wrote that. It's the other way around

@SpiritmanProductions

Жыл бұрын

What a wonderful comment. :-)

@pauleff3312

Жыл бұрын

@@SpiritmanProductions I can echo that too - it is a well thought out comment. I feel the same. But having learned French from a girlfriend I once had now more than 40 years ago, it took me to begin a Spanish adventure at the end of 2019 to ignite my interest in languages as a whole. What they are, where they come from, the convenience of corruption in spelling the pronunciation at that time the corrupting the pronunciation before changing spellings along with the creation of new words needed to convey newer ideas too. If I ever get close to speaking Spanish reasonably well _to match that of how my very rusty French always polishes up every time I go there for 3 days or more;_ I had wanted to learn Russian (but I may end up skipping this because of Mr Putin's behaviour) and try something like Korean and or Greek because I want to learn different scripts (lettering systems).... My problem is I'm now nearly 60 and my memory really is on the wain - but I will repeat that the idea of learning and trying to understand other languages gives the learner a perception on how other people think and how their specific language constrains their train of thought. Think of the way we say _we like something_ but Hispanohablantes have to say that _something pleases them_ they both do mean the same thing - but then again they don't!!!! The concept of liking something or being pleased by it are subtly different... But regardless of these differences, actually trying to get inside another population's mind and train of thought has always supported my idea that around the world human beings no matter our gender, religion or language have so very, very much in common as people. I cannot express how fortunate I feel to have by chance come across an advert on the internet locally at the end of 2019 which said "Would you like to learn Spanish?"

@SpiritmanProductions

Жыл бұрын

@@pauleff3312 I like the observation of the difference between "I like" and "it pleases me" (like "I am 50" v "I have 50 years"), but I doubt the sentiment behind them actually differs. My reasoning is that common phrases tend to be idiomatic, thus they are automatically uttered rather than consciously formulated. It is only users of a second language who initially have to think of the phrasing in terms of the semantic meanings of its words. With enough experience, that no longer applies and you're rattling them off like a native. :-)

@OmarLivesUnderSpace

Жыл бұрын

Хм, посмотрим, что ты скажешь на изучение японского >_>

@nick55j

Жыл бұрын

Wow very impressive! Your use of English is outstanding. I read your comment through once, then chuckled to myself and wondered if you had made any mistakes. I skimmed through quickly, no, couldn't find any. I reread it more carefully (simply for my own amusement) and YES I found one! You "make a difference" not "do a difference". Anyway, just saying.. Well done you 👏

As a Dane, one of my takeaways from this is that English could really benefit from adopting 'æ'. Instead of read/read, you'd have read/ræd. Would help with some of the missing letters. Not that Danish isn't missing letters. Most (if not all) Germanic languages have been missing letters to properly match sounds ever since adopting the Latin alphabet.

@roxxxydubois

2 жыл бұрын

English got real messed up by the Germans that printed the first bibles in English and didn't have the proper symbols in their printing presses.

@Uthwita

2 жыл бұрын

It used to, and it made the a sound like in cat, English lost a lot of letters over time, and it doesn't help that it switched from the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc.

@septanine5936

2 жыл бұрын

I also think it should adopt diacritics. Learning spelling would be easier, maybe

@AkumaNoKuroi

2 жыл бұрын

I mean, we used to have Yogh, Thorn and Eth, Ash... Buuut the Guttenburg Press kinda scrapped anything they couldn't makeshift to the 26 letters we currently have when converting from written form to printed form. Which is why we have Phoenix and not Phœnix, Aesthetics not Æsthetics (and -edo/-aedo, depending if US or Commonwealth English), Ye not The (as in "Ye Olde..."), Menzies not Menȝies (Ming-iss in Scots) - either letters got split apart, or they were substituted for similar-looking (in hand scripts) but different-sounding letters. And *yet* - English drops diacritics and accent marks and such from letters in order to make it easier to type with a standard 26-letter keyboard, whilst adding additional letters or reduplicating the letter in question in order to get across the different sound (eg: the Ō as in Japanese for "King"; 王 - can be written as "O", "Oh", "Ou" or "Oo" when translating) As it is; I had to dig up the non-standard characters from (Windows) Character Map and copy the ȝ from Wikipedia , and the 王 from Kamen Rider Wiki (specifically the Ohma Zi-O page) to get it right.

@hijodelaisla275

2 жыл бұрын

One of your takeaways is a Dane?

Also, don’t forget that English verb conjugations, endings and tenses are far simpler than many other languages!

@foxymetroid

2 жыл бұрын

True. Take a word like "work". If you ignore past/ future tenses, you just need to remember "work" and "works". Most verbs have just 2 forms for that tense and the s/es suffix is only added to verbs done by a third person, singular party. There are exceptions, like is, am, are, but those only require 3 forms to remember. To specify who's doing the action, you only need to add the noun or pronoun. Spanish? 7. You have the standard form and 6 forms to indicate who is doing the verb. And that's not getting into Spanish's numerous exceptions that have to be memorized. All that in a language that's supposed to be "simpler".

@Giraffinator

2 жыл бұрын

My only other point of reference is (very amateur-level) Japanese, in which, to my knowledge, there are 3 super common irregular verbs, plus a few others that might not show up as much. There's like 200 irregulars in English, which would floor my motivation as a learner, were I not already a native speaker. I tried looking up a few other European languages, and they all seem to have more than English, so maybe this is my silver lining when it comes to Japanese.

@jaimes.5314

2 жыл бұрын

Yeah, English is one of the easiest languages, that's a reason of it's popularity

@herrbonk3635

2 жыл бұрын

@@jaimes.5314 It's no "popularity", you are simply forced to use it.

@pequenaudtekno2909

2 жыл бұрын

English has nothing on Vietnamese. There's no conjugation at all haha. You have 3 markers before the verb for past, present and future, that's it. Also depending on context, people just use the present tense without the marker or *rồi after the verb mainly anyway. In comparison to French and Spanish, learning verbs in VN was the easiest thing I've learnt in any language

I'm 49 years old, and recently I discovered a passion for English and language learning in general. I studied English at school for three years, and I learned nothing but an endless list of useless grammar rules. So I used to hate English. As you correctly pointed out, it's complicated to memorize grammar rules or the other subtleties of a language, and in my humble opinion, it's even detrimental to the process of acquisition of a language. I've been studying English with the comprehensible input method for two years and not only my command of the language is skyrocketing but I have a lot of fun by reading and watching any kind of contents without the necessity to memorize those stupid grammar rules. So just by reading and listening all my spare time, eventually, I will use them naturally and without thinking. Last but not least, by studying English for some strange reason I'm learning a lot about my native language too (I'm italian by the way) and I love it.

@eugenec7130

2 жыл бұрын

Learning English is like playing soccer to me. First they fix so many rules in the game, but just as you start to kick the ball towards the goal posts, they (the native English speakers) shift the posts. So it ends up like a game played by the barbarians, no rules. I studied English because it was a language widely used in technology, but personally I hate English. I have spent at least 3 times more time to study English than Chinese (which the native English speakers complain as a hard language).

@hotlinesanzensekai7084

2 жыл бұрын

Ottimo, anch'io ho imparato l'inglese così e provo a fare la stessa cosa per migliorare il mio italiano.

@gianlucalombardi7928

2 жыл бұрын

@@hotlinesanzensekai7084 da come scrivi mi sembra che il tuo italiano sia già ottimo. Complimenti

@gianlucalombardi7928

2 жыл бұрын

@moonrise dreamer Thank you, I really appreciated your comment. Actually, my speaking skill is not as good as my reading and my listening skill. And I make a lot of mistakes too. But I don't care much. I think that learning a language is not a contest, but I dare say is more like a long stroll in a beautiful environment. I mean, I don't care if I'm still not fluent, eventually, I will be... In the meantime, I enjoy the journey

@donttryitjohn364

2 жыл бұрын

@@gianlucalombardi7928 You write very formally. It's not a bad thing but it is probably best you tone it down a bit especially when conversing with native speakers. Wish you the best 👍

I came to the US decades ago at age 4 speaking French and in six months was speaking English like all the other American kids. But, the French was gone, gone, gone. Except for one little detail - 'th' killed me and the word 'thief' was a hangup for years. In kindergarten, I was diagnosed as having a speech defect because of this 😀 This video is a delight, especially paired with "10 reasons ... ridiculously easy". I admire anyone trying to learn any new language and can't imagine making fun of anyone's efforts, especially with this crazy language. Way more fun to offer help.

@justinlavoie5110

3 ай бұрын

L’as-tu réappris? Does it mean your parents stopped speaking French to you?

As a French native speaker, I can confirm that English pronounciation and spelling are a true nightmare, but since I learnt mostly through reading books out loud and watching KZread videos, I guess I just picked up the spelling along the way. I still wouldn't have guessed the adjective order correctly though. I guess it's something for me to improve, then! Anyway, thank you so much for your fun and informative videos. I really love watching them, and I just love your method of teaching through stories. Thank you so much!

@anonymouswhite352

Жыл бұрын

Funny as a native English speaker I think french pronunciation is really weird. But your numbers are definitely stupider then the English counter part I've been learning those recently

@sophieakot346

9 ай бұрын

Surely it is😀eg words like enough,tough, thorough, rough n many others.The way it is written is not how it is pronounced 🙏🙏

English may be difficult, but it can be taught through tough, thorough thought, though.

@RijuChatterjee

2 жыл бұрын

"but" is redundant. Consider phrasing your joke in two sentences, thus: "The English language is difficult. It can be taught though, through tough thorough thought."

@TheJadeFist

2 жыл бұрын

@@RijuChatterjee The but is fine, as it's in context of contradiction to the presumption of difficulty. The problem are the two commas interrupting unnaturally, it isn't a list of 3 things or more, nor are they sentence fragments.

@RijuChatterjee

2 жыл бұрын

@@TheJadeFist why would you need but in addition to though

@aisha1892

7 күн бұрын

@@RijuChatterjeeit's a contradiction😭😭

I’m proud of myself now. I literally knew everything you said in this video and I’m not a native English speaker ^^ I started to learn English about 8 years ago 😂

@carlosmarcelovellosowendt4598

2 жыл бұрын

Hail Lobster!

@malokeytheallaround

2 жыл бұрын

Good job!

@ChineduOpara

2 жыл бұрын

Congrats!!

@GaudyGabriev

2 жыл бұрын

I'm about to try and get a C2 Cambridge degree. Same as you, the fact that I knew everything that was going on here gives me a little more piece of mind xD I think English, as simple as it is when it comes to it's basic rules, pretty much just takes stupid amounts of hours of exposure to get it's details right. You can't just "study" it, you either hear and read it for thousands of hours or you'll be mostly screwed. Now this is true for any language, of course. You'll learn it best by exposing yourself to it, but the sheer inconsistency of english makes it particularly guilty of this.

@raymak1048

2 жыл бұрын

✓ I have been learning English since 2019🌷♥️

Wow. I’m a native U.S. English speaker and this made MY head spin! I feel very lucky that English is my first language and I really feel for people out there trying to learn it. ❤️

@Nouvellecosse

8 ай бұрын

It made me feel better too. I'm a native English speaker trying to learn Spanish after spending a few weeks in Colombia (how I discovered this channel). I felt kind of sad that I grew up with such a bland, vanilla language but it's actually more interesting than I realized!

@penaarja

Ай бұрын

Seen many videos bout many US says "I am speaking american" 🤔 what

@caitlin1142

11 күн бұрын

@@Nouvellecossei wouldn’t call the language of Shakespeare bland hehe 😉

I’m a native English speaker who is learning Spanish, what I’ve noticed is that Spanish spelling is very straightforward and the spelling rules are very consistent.

I don't think we should define a language's difficulty solely based on the language itself. English is hard, but it's the huge amount of it in media and everyday life that makes it far easier to learn than others.

@vaded2135

2 жыл бұрын

Couldn’t have said it better myself 👌

@kaydod3190

2 жыл бұрын

English is not hard, no matter if we use or hear it everyday or not. End of story.

@neilhunter5893

2 жыл бұрын

@@kaydod3190 aye, nae bother there hen. 😂

@swaggery

2 жыл бұрын

And speakers of it, plus tourists that are happy to help non-native speakers practice. As an English speaker find a in person source of even say Spanish, is very very difficult. So everything comes down to pure memorization for many that try to learn a different language.

@neilhunter5893

2 жыл бұрын

@@swaggery exactly. It’s so much easier to find an English speaker most places in the world.

Fun fact about that adjective order: depending on the adjectives, there may actually be some room to mess about. Compare "lovely little wolf" to "big bad wolf". The second one appears to violate the rule, but English speakers prefer this because the vowel sounds go from high to low

@WillayG

2 жыл бұрын

I was going to comment on this. When I teach order of adjectives to my students I try to give them some flexibility with the rule and have them read a lot or watch a lot of unsubtitled English speaking media so that they'll get a more intuitive understanding of what actually sounds more natural.

@Madchemist002

2 жыл бұрын

This rule (the vowel shift) appears in many phrases: "tik tok," "hip hop," "flip flop," etc. It is a more convenient order to pronounce words in. I believe it's called "Ablaut Reduplication."

@HenryLoenwind

2 жыл бұрын

With those wolves another rule may come into play. The one is "(lovely, little) wolf", the other "big (bad wolf)". "bad wolf" forms a new, compound word; so "bad" is not part of the list of modifiers in front of "wolf". You can do the same with other common phrases, e.g. an evil middle-aged nice old lady. This one even contradicts itself, but it works because "niceoldlady" is a world-like phrase with its own specific meaning.

@alangknowles

2 жыл бұрын

@@HenryLoenwind You mean like Miss Marple? I've always been suspicious that murders always occur when she's around. I think she hypnotises people into thinking they are the culprit.

@kokazon6522

2 жыл бұрын

As a native speaker, i think that a large part of that rule is what the speaker wants to emphasize, too

English was taught in my school as a reward, being able to communicate was a reward. we would be taught that English lessons were bliss. although, something struck me as a kid. i figured, since other kids couldn't speak that same language as me. i could teach them. i would teach them how i was taught, reading a book as a reward. reading English comics as i spell out the punctuation, and silent letters. they practically grew up speaking two languages. i had a friend for years, until he had to move back to Germany.

As a native Finnish speaker the English language is probably the hardest thing I have had to learn. Finnish language is made so you write what you pronounce and you pronounce what you read ... it is made in a way that if you write something in Finnish and then ask someone else to read it, they should read it exactly the same. So if you go listening any native Finnish speaker speaking English you might find out they are speaking the Rally English which basically means we try to pronounce the letter R on every word where it is. Also the meme comes from Rally where Finnish speaking English had strong R in their accent. Or so I think :D Never actually googled if this is just urban legend. Thus when starting to learn english we first have to forget everything we spend years learning -.- Oh so you don't pronounce the way you write? Well fuck me then I guess. I still make a lot of mistakes now and then. Which vs Witch Once vs Ones Than vs Then Or the latest I wrote Pilon when I meant Pylons. Everyone was super confused about that.

@hijodelaisla275

2 жыл бұрын

The English language is a Finnish?

@NichaelCramer

Жыл бұрын

The point is that while Finnish spelling *currently* may match pretty closely with how the its words are *currently* pronounced, as time goes on the pronunciation will drift. This is essentially unavoidable. It happens in all languages. (See, for example, John McWhorter’s book “Words on the Move”.) This is the primary reason why English spelling is so “out of synch” will English pronunciation. And, given enough time, the same will eventually happen with Finnish.

@xezzee

Жыл бұрын

@@NichaelCramer I don't think you speak, read nor write Finnish language at all when you make statements like "may match" what do you mean by that? the Current Finnish spelling is literally matching the pronunciation as the whole written system is build around that from ground up unlike English. While English *May* have been build originally from ground up we don't actually know, do we? It is also possible that English is based on Latina and thus the spelling would not be build from ground up to be matching the pronunciation. I have not actually googled much about this and that is my understanding that English is based on Latina and not how you pronounce the words. When you say " As time goes on the pronunciation will drift " and in reality it is already happening in Finnish language. I can go to Helsinki and propose we use bus but the people will think I'm insane for saying that we should take the next link or folding knife. (English = Finnish => Different Finnish Dialects) Bus = Linja-auto => Linkki => Linkka => Linkkari => Bussi => Pussi => Nysse => Dösä => Onnikka ... I have used Linkki and Linkkari and my friends were extremely confused when they heard Link and Folding Knife ... "Should we take the next Link?" "What now?" "Should we take the next folding knife?" "Are you ok?" There is also Finglish which is joke about English words used in Finnish like Bus used in Finnish is Bussi or how Tank would be Tankki and then we can say I drove a tank over a bus "Ajoin tankilla bussin yli" but that has double meaninig 🤔 Tankilla can also mean "While fueling" 😒I'm off topic... TL;DR: If the pronunciation of Finnish word drifts so will the Spelling.

@prplt

Жыл бұрын

Finnish isn't completely phonetic either tho (I don't think any language is) like for example some letters are pronounced as double but not reflected in the spelling (like tulepa is pronounced tuleppa or hernekeitto is more like hernekkeitto) also there's the problem that spoken Finnish is very different than standard written Finnish (like keltainen is pronounced keltane) btw where in Finland do you say "linkki"? I've never heard that one either😂

@xezzee

Жыл бұрын

@@prplt Linkki is used around middle Finnish. Linkka can't say. Linkkari I hve heard few times past 20 years...

So true about tones. When I first started learning Mandarin and was complaining about the difficulty of trying to figure out and remember the 4 main tones, I was quickly put in my place by someone who used "maybe" as an example of English's ludicrously difficult to learn use of tones. She used "maybe" as a single word answer to a question to demonstrate that simply by employing different tones/stressors on that one word she could say 1)Its a possibility 2)Its a strong possibility 3)Its possible but not likely 4)I know the answer but I'm not going to tell you 5)Its possible but I don't care 6)Its an extremely exciting possibility. It was hilariously good demonstration and I never complained about tones again.

@msjennable

2 жыл бұрын

Love this!

@devonmatthews6443

2 жыл бұрын

So... It depends on the situation

@bestbigsistergs

2 жыл бұрын

This is actually amazing omg I never noticed we did this in English...You have me repeating "maybe" with those different tones & meanings lmao

@theEchannel_official

2 жыл бұрын

@@devonmatthews6443 You could use the same "maybe" stress example and apply it to the "so" you just used 🤔🤔😂

@devonmatthews6443

2 жыл бұрын

@@theEchannel_official Oh... I see

I'm an ESL teacher who has worked in six foreign countries, and while I agree with everything you say, I must admit that my students seem to pick up English quite easily. In fact, I've been told that English grammar is actually quite simple compared to their native grammar (specifically Latin-based languages and Thai, for instance). But yes, pronunciation is a bitch, which is why I have a job.

@lk6789

2 жыл бұрын

The basic grammar is fairly easier but actually understanding the language as a native speaker is harder. What an English person says and what a non native speaker thinks they mean is often not the same.

@septanine5936

2 жыл бұрын

It seems what English lacks in grammar complexity, it makes up for with stress, spelling, and phonetics.

@veroniquejeangille8248

2 жыл бұрын

English grammar is only easy at the beginning. The more advanced you get, the trickier it gets (e.g. simple tenses vs continuous: as a beginner, it looks pretty straightforward, in advanced learners' grammar book, it is a nightmare)

@lk6789

2 жыл бұрын

@@veroniquejeangille8248 Yes, that is what my students say. 'English is so so easy', then come the idoms, phasal verbs and the punctuation to name a few. Try this one - woman without her man is nothing.

@someguy1686

2 жыл бұрын

@@lk6789 ...pretty easy to understand. I've never had any problems understanding basic English. I guess it might be because I've grown up speaking English the way a native speaker would.

3:38 As a spaniard, I used to though the word "aesthetic" means ugly due to the fact that prefix -a is related to the opposite.

@remycallie

14 күн бұрын

That's because you're making the mistake of reading British English. :) It's "esthetic" in American English. Old English had this thing (from Latin?) of two letters joined together -- in this case A and E and they retained it in a lot of words. For example, they used to spell it "aeroplane." The way it was printed, the letters were actually joined.

I'm Polish. How I've learnt English spelling? Pretty much exclusively through memorisation on a word-to-word basis. I think after roughly 7 years of studying I started to get an idea about how to spell a word based on pronunciation (and vice-versa) but before that I would simply learn words from a list and whenever a word had an unexpected pronunciation, I would write it phonetically in Polish next to it.

As a native English speaker I remember being confused that "invaluable" meant "valuable" lol

@lisanarramore222

2 жыл бұрын

Good one!

@caseyadams1861

2 жыл бұрын

And "inflammable" means the same thing as "flammable".

@abelpalmer552

2 жыл бұрын

@@caseyadams1861 yes yes same vein

@Brindlebrother

2 жыл бұрын

Whoever came up with the word ingenious was a genius

@TheJadeFist

2 жыл бұрын

I can explain that one. It's so valuable to you, that you can't place a value on it, no compensation would be adequate, nothing can replace it. So 'it can't be given value', as opposed to it has zero value as one might try to read that word to mean. Now hell if I can explain 'inflammable' though, it certainly is able to be flamed. The prefix just has multiple meanings and not consistently distinguished by spelling, enflammable would have made more sense but I didn't make the rules.

I am Russian native. Also, know Belarusian, English, studied German at school. Tried Spanish, Korean, a bit of Italian. And honestly, I think English is much much easier than most of the languages. That's one of the reasons for the popularity of it.

@crappiefisher1331

2 жыл бұрын

amen

@liul

2 жыл бұрын

I agree, it's super simple

@cristianinternationaltrade9227

2 жыл бұрын

English is the easiest language. Hungarian, cantonese, mandarin, hebrew, greek or even your language russian(I'm learning it and I'm spanish native) those are difficult languages but english? It is a piece of cake😂😂😂

@williamsouza846

2 жыл бұрын

"That's one of the reason for the popularity" 🇬🇧 🇺🇸: Please, learn my language or maybe u will not be nothing 😌 no pressure 🤡🤡

@claudiakarl7888

2 жыл бұрын

I think the same. Of all the languages I‘ve learned, English was by far the most easy one.

Olly, you really are a gifted teacher in the way you explain stuff. I watched the "Why English is easy" film before this one and you have managed to give me a laugh and remind me of the complexities of English and just how hard learning it can be . Thank you for the entertainment value. I will share them both with some Hispanohablante friends. Your books are a good resource too, BTW, for anyone else reading - they are worth the investment.

Thank you for this video; I found it so helpful and insightful! ❤️

3:08 as a native Russian, I just watched tons of youtube videos, and eventually after ~10 years got to know pretty much every of those combinations. ps 'choir' was the most horrifying to me

@storylearning

2 жыл бұрын

Well done for the persistence!

@kevinekerr7284

2 жыл бұрын

As a native English speaker and musician, i am now for the first time in my life, questioning the spelling and pronunciation of 'choir' and am also horrified.

@whoeverest_the_whateverest

2 жыл бұрын

Same

@whoeverest_the_whateverest

2 жыл бұрын

P.S. 4:41 - well it's pretty same thing as in russian, you've just picked/concated the most striking example - same can be done in russian

@xXJ4FARGAMERXx

2 жыл бұрын

"Choir" should be Kwaayer and "One" should be wun!

English would be incredibly hard if we all weren't so sorrounded by music, literature, information etc. in English. Everyone who studies whatever (maybe except e.g. French philology, where all the educational material is in French) has to read scientific stuff in English. If you publish something scientific, it has to be in English. If you search for anything on the internet, you'll probably find more information in English than in other languages (except it's something country specific). Then there's music, the most radio stations worldwide play at least 30% of the music in English (some even 100%, also in non-English speaking countries). Regarding the sentence at the beginning of this video, it was clear for me how the right word order should be, but that's just because I've heard so much English before.

@lisanarramore222

2 жыл бұрын

Exactly. Take away all the English you've been hearing in music, movies and the internet all your life, and it becomes a whole new ballgame.

@dkwhattouseasusername1012

2 жыл бұрын

Its great that English is my 2nd language and its one of my strong points but bruh Chinese is so hard, I can communicate using it with no problem but reading and writing are just so hard...

@vaded2135

2 жыл бұрын

Exactly!!

@kaydod3190

2 жыл бұрын

No, it will still be easy

@kaydod3190

2 жыл бұрын

@@lisanarramore222 No, it will still be easy

English is my second language, but ever since middle school it's always been there in my life. All my daily activities were centered around it. Games, music, shows, manga, KZread... Now I'm in college studying English and see what you talked about happening to most students in my class. I was really fortunate to learn the language that way and spare myself so much troubl. I'm thankful to whatever it is that drove me towards that path.

I’ve learned English as a 3rd language to a fairly good degree, but phrasal verbs can still be tricky sometimes. Like I’ve only recently learned what it means to ‘be stood up’

The best way to learn English spelling is to not get caught up in the rules and simply read it and listen to it as much as possible. Eventually, your brain will automatically write "though" without even thinking about the excess of consonants. It's easier said than done, but that's ultimately how native speakers learn. Bonus tip: As Olly said, many native English speakers struggle a lot with spelling, so don't stress too much about it.

@youtubedeletedmyaccountlma2263

2 жыл бұрын

They struggle with spelling? Wait till they touch French. The French makes even more no sense 🤣

@nebroskitheraut6705

2 жыл бұрын

Yes! I learnt the language gradually as a kid. I used to watch Hollywood movies when I was a kid right from the 1st standard (maybe even before that!). When I was in the 3rd standard I could understand every single sentence that the actors said on TV. I picked up the American accent on the way too. In the 6th standard a British show called Horrid Henry aired and I picked up the accent so quickly! I think that I picked up the language so fast because I was a kid, and also because of the various outlets that I was exposed to. Now I feel like I have gained some extra advantage over my peers who can't speak the language comfortably, because they feel bored and unexcited when they try to watch an English show, or watch an English YT video. They only watch YT videos where the YTbers speak our native language. But, the problem is that there aren't that many YTbers providing useful info to help them learn new knowledge (because they are mostly vloggers or Mukbang eaters) , and as a result they don't gain as much info as I do from the English side of YT. I used to pride myself over being the most fluent English speaker in my class, and even today I still am! I didn't have to bother learning the grammatical rules that the teacher gave to us, because the correct sentences just form so naturally in my head. On the other hand, the classmates of mine who were not so fluent just crammed up the grammatical rules and formulas. All because I watched some random English movies in my childhood. Lol

@user-mrfrog

2 жыл бұрын

@@youtubedeletedmyaccountlma2263 Despite some complicated rules, for example past participle agreements with pronominal verbs, French spelling is 85% regular! Still a lot of exceptions! :( But English orthography is only about 65% regular. I am presently learning Icelandic and while declensions are a pain in the neck, its spelling is quite consistent! This proves that all idioms have their strong and weak points!

@jasondean88888

2 жыл бұрын

Something that helped me was trying a language with a totally different alphabet (hence why I'm hear). It stopped me from trying to assign incorrect meaning to symbols that looked familiar. The next thing I did was only write left handed. Literally start from scratch like a 5 year old and learn all new muscle memory. Next thing I did was to compare it more to learning physics. Thinking of it like some different version of English made it harder. Much easier just to say "I have no idea what the rules are hear and I'm going to just have to trust my teacher on whats what until I know enough to ask an intelligent question."

@septanine5936

2 жыл бұрын

Fr. I stopped associating spelling with pronunciation long ago. It's saved me lots of stress, but I'd say I do rely on auto correct quite a bit

English might be very easy to learn and get a basic grasp of but it's so incredibly nuanced at the same time. It really is more than the sum of its parts. The basic building blocks might be simple to get but to really sound like a native you have to understand (or rather feel) some very bizarre and abstract unspoken and sometimes incomprehensibly complex rules overlaying these basic blocks. It's almost like a whole veil of higher logic is just mysteriously floating over the language changing flavor, meaning feel seemingly at random.

@shaunmckenzie5509

2 жыл бұрын

This could be said of every language

@Luboman411

2 жыл бұрын

I see you're talking about our old, illogical friends that permeate all English--phrasal verbs. When I learned about these as a native English speaker, I was totally blown away. They're deep-set in our language, but they're crazy weird and illogical to learn. There are thousands and to be completely fluent you must know a huge number of them. However, they make no rhyme or reason. Yet native English speakers use them all the time, throw them out nonchalantly and still understand them so well. Phrasal verbs really are a "veil of higher logic that is just mysteriously floating" there.

I'm Norwegian, but I grew up with an abundance of American and English movies and TV shows, so I learned how to pronounce things in a very natural way. As I got older, I pretty much only read books in English, so I learned to spell things correctly, alongside learning grammar and studying vocab at school since I was 5. I don't think my situation is super uncommon. Especially in Norway, we learn English so early and have such easy access to English-language media that it really isn't that hard to learn it.

As a native English speaker, I never really thought about these things and took most of them for granted. Some parts were eye-opening. Great video.

Despite all this weirdness in English, I keep hearing from language students that when they go abroad everyone wants to speak English with them instead of their target language.

@BecciBuck

2 жыл бұрын

Yes, this is definitely a thing. At least, I experienced it in Korea. And it was hard to convince them to speak Korean to me sometimes, since their English was often better than my Korean. 😖 So we’d just say (in Korean), “Please, speak in Korean. I need practice.” People there were very kind and patient, too, and usually accommodated if we put it that way. But this was a thing we ran into, and we would oblige and take turns a bit, if someone really wanted to practice their English.

@BecciBuck

2 жыл бұрын

@@M86KIA absolutely! That’s why I’d usually humor someone who really wanted to practice their English too. It actually didn’t happen *very* often. Most people in Korea were excited to hear a foreigner speaking Korean, even if it was just simple things. But there were at least a few times each month where someone kept speaking to me in English. We spoke to hundreds of people each month, possibly even 100/day some days. So a few/month is not really very many. There was only one person in my 15 months there who absolutely refused to speak to me in Korean.

@notaname8140

2 жыл бұрын

As an English speaker in France, I found that most people were like this, but I had several situations where I asked someone (in French) if they speak English and I would just get "non, pardon", then when I said (still in slightly broken French) "sorry my French isn't very good, I'm Scottish", I would get "aaah Scotland!" and all of a sudden they could speak perfect conversational English lol

@spaceowl5957

2 жыл бұрын

> native English speaker in France Run

@notaname8140

2 жыл бұрын

@@spaceowl5957 lol, most people were fine with me, especially once they realise I'm not English or American lol

When I was in school in Ireland, I would constantly complain that Irish was very difficult because of it’s inconsistencies. I never realised that the language I was speaking in when complaining was exactly the same if not worse.

@Eli-ou8sq

2 жыл бұрын

I'm learning Gàdhlig and the VSO word order as well as the lenition threw me off a lot

@nono7105

2 жыл бұрын

@@Eli-ou8sq Ugh, that would be terrible. I tried learning Korean but along with sounds that are completely unintelligible, the SOV order really pissed me off. The correct way is SVO. If you're language doesn't get that right it ain't worth learning.

@tamanegi8985

2 жыл бұрын

@@nono7105 but for Koreans it would be weird to learn a language that is SVO no? There is no correct or incorrect languages - I know you were probably being sarcastic with that comment but still lol

@nono7105

2 жыл бұрын

@@tamanegi8985 No, I wasn't being sarcastic, and no, it's not a matter of which method you were raised with. It's a matter of common sense. The verb describes a relationship _between_ two things; the subject and the object. So it should go _between_ those two things. Obviously. If your language does it another way it's doing it wrong.

@tamanegi8985

2 жыл бұрын

I grew up speaking both English (SVO) and Japanese (SOV), so from someone who does both, it make sense either way. The language you grow up speaking can wire your brain to think it’s the most logical and natural sounding but it’s not necessarily true for everyone. While word order is very important in English, it’s not so much in Japanese bc the language has a thing called particles which mark the role of each word (subject, object, etc.)

I can only applaud your "learn by context" approach. I felt I learned more watching non-dubbed movies than I did in school. I always "felt" what might be correct instead of being able to tell you why by definition or exact grammatical rules, Plus vocabulary tests where it just said "word a -> translated here" I really sucked, but when I had to use the exact same word in a sentence it was there immediately

Interesting analysis video! Thanks for uploading!

I’m a native russian. I’ve been studying english for almost 12 years. Now I’m learning spanish and french. I can say that spanish and french have crazy grammar, not as crazy as german language has haha. But spanish and french are way more difficult than english for me

@devstark

2 жыл бұрын

потому что английский очень легкий

@amaza888

2 жыл бұрын

As a native French-speaking person, even I think French is difficult! I'm also guessing that I would find the Russian language incredibly difficult to learn. 😅

@secretkeeper9262

2 жыл бұрын

@@amaza888 french for me is very difficult. it looks for me like something really strange. you know, you can easily read in spanish and quite understand it, even if you have a2 but french no.. i think it’s so beautiful and it sounds really cool but why so difficult??😡 I’m trying hard and i hope that I could do it. regarding to russian, yes, it’s also very difficult language and i’m lucky to know it. there are some things in grammar (i don’t know what it’s called) that spanish and french don’t have but actually german has😫🙌🏼

@secretkeeper9262

2 жыл бұрын

@@amaza888 generally speaking i’m not from russia. ukraine is my home country. the official language here is ukrainian but all people know russian. and in some regions we speak russian. so, i’m also lucky because i know to languages by default:)

@kaydod3190

2 жыл бұрын

@@amaza888 French isn’t difficult. It’s a category 1 language. Calm down, your pushing it.

I agree that English has some weird grammar and pronunciation, but I still feel like it is easier compared to other European and Asian languages. For example, I think German is way harder. You have three genders Der, Das, Das with no clear rule on which noun is which gender. You also have Dative, Genitive and Accusative which changes the meaning of the sentence. Hungarian is also tough to pronounce as it has many unique sounds and the grammar is tough. And Japanese has two native alphabets with Kanji. Japanese also has particles that don't exist in English. I even think Spanish is more difficult as it has two genders with irregular verb conjugations depending on what tense you use. I think any language is tough to learn, but most Europeans start learning English very early and that gives them a huge advantage over English speakers who start learning in Middle or High School.

@devstark

2 жыл бұрын

exactly, this is the dumbest video i've seen in years. english is beyond easy. having spelling and grammar exceptions is not even kind of an exclusively english thing. almost every single point in this video can be easily explained by any native speaker with a 2nd grade education. not to sound pretentious but i'm sick of people calling english a difficult language. it's beyond false. same idiots that complain about spanish being hard (despite maybe being the easiest language in the world)

@Interprestor

2 жыл бұрын

@@devstark But English DOES have a real statistically proven problem with inconsistent spelling. It's far more inconsistent than most European languages whereas Finnish and Spanish are on the other side of the spectrum. The video does have an (often made) point. Grammatical gender is also ridiculous and completely arbitrary though, and don't get me started on German noun cases. The absolute worst.

@MouseySky

2 жыл бұрын

@@Interprestor Yeah, I'm a (teenage) native english speaker and I still struggle with spelling because it's so inconsistent

@harrypadarri6349

2 жыл бұрын

It’s a misconception that cases make learning a language more difficult. Some systems are quite complex like in Russian or, the extreme case, Finnish. The set of cases in German is fairly small. Only dative might be a bit confusing. There is even a genitive case in English. (English’s only case) If a language has an accusative case for example, it simplifies a lot. “I mean them” is straight forward. “I mean they” - not so much. A lot of features of the English language are intuitive to native German speakers. I found the lack of cases one of the confusing features. And verb tenses in English are quite weird. Going, it goes, it doesn’t go,it is going, it went, it didn’t go, it has gone, it has been going…

@sharraleigh

2 жыл бұрын

I learned German in university, and I asked my professor: "Why is it 'der Wagen' but 'das Auto'? They both mean car? Why is it neutral in one and masculine in the other?" Basically, nobody knows why. It's just the way it is.

I think English is easy to learn because we are exposed to so much English content everywhere, especially on the internet resources for learning are easy to come by and anyone can access them. Compared to other languages you need to really search

I learned English through watching KZread, not at school wich is amazing that languages can be learned through observing and listening (I live in South-Africa and my home language is Afrikaans a sister language to dutch wich in return is related to English so that made it a bit easier to learn I actually started speaking English when I was 7 yet it wasn't the best English you'll hear that's for sure...)

Actually, verbing is something that exists in most languages, and it's a feature human beings really need. In Hebrew and Arabic we have a "root and structure" verb system, each verb consists of 3 letters (sometimes also 4 or 2) which carry the core meaning of the verb, and it is "poured" into an appropriate structure which carries the rest of the information (1/2/3 person, male/female, singular/plural, temporal tense). This allows us to easily create new verbs without "breaking the language". For example, "to google" -> the root "G.G.L" (ג.ג.ל) -> "legagel"(לגגל) "to send an SMS" -> "S.M.S" (ס.מ.ס) -> "lesames" (לסמס)

@cmolodiets

2 жыл бұрын

but in other languages you can tell a verb from a noun even if the noun is actually derived from the verb

I'm an ESL teacher. Been teaching Adult English in China for 10 years. This is a great video. Well explained and engaging. Thanks.Subscribed. Cheers.

@storylearning

2 жыл бұрын

Cheers Michael!

This guy is a gem oif a find. Love his approach and presentation. He’s a language whiz without pretense. Looking forward to more!

Thank you for sharing! I am learning how to teach these youngsters and this helps

As a native English speaker, I’m also very glad I never had to learn English. As for UK vs American spelling, don’t worry about it, both are acceptable. I learned to spell by reading and writing. A lot.

@eugenec7130

2 жыл бұрын

Could native English speakers standardize the British and American English please? It is a pain in the ass for the non-natives to learn both the variations. (The word "ass" is fully acceptable in American English but is rude in British English?)

@ShawFujikawa

2 жыл бұрын

@@eugenec7130 Getting half a billion people to agree on one set spelling and pronunciation for certain words is impossible, lol. Ass can be pretty rude in both dialects because it can be used as an insult in both American and British English.

@mimthyss

2 жыл бұрын

@@eugenec7130 ass can be rude in both variations. It depends more on context than country. "Ass" referring to a donkey isn't offensive, but if you say "you're such an ass." Thats an insult. Or if you say "damn, girl, you have a fine ass!" Thats sexual harrassment. Lol. Basically, with things like that, I would just recommend avoiding it unless you're aiming for an offensive tone

@pontosanaz6485

2 жыл бұрын

@@eugenec7130 its rude in both, stooped

@surlyogre1476

2 жыл бұрын

Ah! But you _did_ learn English. You just don't _remember_ learning it, or *having to* learn it. (All human beings have to *learn* their native language... you started as soon as you were born (maybe even earlier.))

Literally the way they teach pronunciation is the "sound it out" rule, where you say how you think it is pronounced, to then be corrected by your teacher

Ollie (get it "Olly"? Lol), what an absolutely great upload. Thank you for the great information and for also (not also for) making it so entertaining! I have a hard time laughing at comedy shows or movies and I think I've laughed more here then I have in the last 10 comedy movies I've seen. Thanks

Fascinating. I stumbled across this video while looking for a short (plus-minus 5 minutes or so) video to show to my grade 5 classes next year, and just got sucked in. While I already knew most of what you mentioned (mostly thanks to Alan C. Davies's THRASS course), it was still a total trip to hear it all set out so logically. (And I'm now SO aware of how I'm writing!) I'm a native English speaker (white South African) who teaches English as a "home language" even though two-thirds of the kids I teach are actually learning it as a second, third or fourth language! So I try to find ways to help them feel better about their "lack" of English skills. (Try to pronounce a q sound as in the name Manqoba or the 'hl' sound as in the name Nhlanhla - both from indigenous South African languages - and you get a good idea of how people struggle with English.)

Honestly, ‘hard’ is a word I would never use to describe English. I’m Italian, and I can assure you that it is far harder than English (for instance, instead of “do, did, done”, we have “fare, faccio, ho fatto, feci, facevo, facessi, facendo, fatto. All of these but three change, sometimes almost completely, according to the person and the number of the subject), and yet Italian is not among the hardest languages to learn. As you can see, even if I still make some mistakes, I am kind of fluent in English, and I have never really studied it. It‘s an easy language to learn and understand, the only exception being the many different accents, that’s really confusing.

@user-is7xs1mr9y

2 жыл бұрын

I'm a native Spanish speaker and even I find Italian hard lol. I agree, English is definitely not hard.

@stylesheetra9411

2 жыл бұрын

@@user-is7xs1mr9y there is this quote about every romance language being easy to learn if you already native in one. Biggest BS I ever heard

@elosoderusia4598

2 жыл бұрын

@@stylesheetra9411 Honestly I feel like that’s only true for Spanish and Portuguese speakers…

@RijuChatterjee

2 жыл бұрын

You probably qualify as a "native" English speaker, then, in that you learnt it through exposure at a young (

@DavidBonelo

2 жыл бұрын

ha! noobs, in spanish we have: hacer haciendo hecho hago haga, hagas, haga, hagamos, hagáis, hagan haz hice, hiciste, hizo, hicimos, hicisteis, hicieron hiciera, hicieras, hiciera, hiciéramos, hicierais, hicieran hiciere, hicieres, hiciere, hiciéremos, hiciereis, hicieren haré, harás, hará, haremos, haréis, harán haría, harías, haría, haríamos, haríais, harían ... 🤣

Tbh I've learned all these rules by watching an awful lot of tv series and movies so it never occurred to me that English could be really hard to learn in some cases because it all came naturally to me with the magic of immersion. The immersion has been so deep to the point that I can understand a lot of words, phrases and expressions in English but if you ask me to translate some of them to my own mother tongue I'd be unable to. XD

What I find amazing, is that you've realized and formalized all these rules about English structure, that I do indeed use and follow, but didn't realize myself.

one thing that’s important to remember about why english is actually not as hard as you would think based on how confusing the grammar, vowels, etc. are, is that unlike some languages, it is usually somewhat easy for a native speaker to figure out the proper meaning even if you mess up. You won’t sound natural or fluent, but it’s not like Thai where messing up the tone could lead to a complete lack of understanding.

English is my second language and I've never struggled with it it's so easy. I know a lot of foreigners from different countries and they all speak English just fine. I think the reason why people are so good at it is because English has a huge influence on media all over the world. We absorb it as children.

Fun side note: words that can mean its own opposite-like weather (to weather/endure a storm and to erode something)-are called Janus words, named after the Roman god with two faces pointing opposite directions. Whenever I get discouraged about my Spanish or hit a rough patch in French, I'm always glad I don't have to learn English.

@DanGR023

2 жыл бұрын

English is still easy anyway because of its grammar, non native speaks indeed outnumber native speakers, and there is a big diversity among them: Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Russians, Europeans, Latinos, Africans, Arabians etc.

@Pantology_Enthusiast

2 жыл бұрын

TIL about janus words. Thanks!

@worldoftancraft

2 жыл бұрын

@@DanGR023 in most languages the majority of grammar can be replaced with just correct ans primitive words' order.

@ChineduOpara

2 жыл бұрын

Janus words? More like... Anus words, amirite fellow ESL teachers??? 😂😂✌🏾

One thing that has always perplexed me is people either forgetting, or not knowing, that English has dialects as well. Get someone speaking Appalachian English with someone not familiar with that type of English and watch the fireworks.

I encountered English as my first foreign language in fifth grade, but I cannot remember much of my first year of learning (I am in my fifties now, so it has been a while). What I do remember is that I enjoyed English enough to read progressively more demanding magazines and novels over the course of the next years, and that I watched TV shows with English dialogue, crappy as they were. Terry Pratchett holds a special place in my heart to this day. In essence, I exposed myself to written and spoken English as much as possible, and I believe this imprinted much of what "sounds right" or "looks right" in my memory. I did of course study vocabulary and grammar, but in the end there is no subsitute for immersing oneself in how native speakers handle their language in order to get the hang of the weird edge cases and exceptions. The one thing that eludes me still is punctuation, and I usually throw in a few commas and hope for the best. I am also lucky in that I simply enjoy natural and artificial languages as a general concept, and I am fully aware how important Noam Chomsky's work in linguistics was for my own field (i.e. Computer Science). Languages are amazing.

This video got me thinking. All these things were things I once struggled with, but now I don't even think about them anymore. It became natural to me. English is not my mother tongue and in school I was really bad. I improved only by reading a huge amount of exciting books. And when KZread came around with videos as well, but first and foremost with reading stories.

As someone who learned English as a second language, I find tenses the most confusing thing about English (other than spelling/pronunciation, but those are things that you can get used to). It's a lot like writing an unoptimised "if and else" code with a specific tense for every possible scenario instead of a set of simple rules that can account for them.

@eugenec7130

2 жыл бұрын

Tenses are useless. There are no tenses in most languages, for example Chinese.

@mpanmi3927

2 жыл бұрын

I also learned english as I second language as well and what I have found really helpful is watching a lot and I mean a lot of english movies with subtitles and if I have a problem with tenses I just go with what fells right from the movies I have watch

@worldoftancraft

2 жыл бұрын

@@mpanmi3927 that famous movie's lexic. Which is made to be understood by everyone. Without good writing, speaking and cunning constructions

@WillayG

2 жыл бұрын

I'm curious, could I ask what your first language is and what tenses give you the most trouble? Also, your English seems pretty awesome to me. 👍

@ChineduOpara

2 жыл бұрын

Ah, fellow software developer?

i just tried the ''i never said he stole my horse'' with stressing each word but in Polish and came to a conclusion that in Polish not only can you also change the meaning of the sentence by stressing a different word but you can also say these in many other forms adding to complexity, especially if its someone learning Polish because some of those make perfect sense in Polish but none at all in other languages

10:03 - LOL 😂😂 Love the analygy made!

I'm 13 years old and I know how to speak my native language (Nepali) and English, both to extreme fluency, and after watching this video, I'm proud of myself. 🤓

@zypheox

2 жыл бұрын

That's amazing!

@robman2095

2 жыл бұрын

Do many people in Nepal learn English to an advanced level? We seem to get a lot of Nepalese students in Australia for a country with a relatively small population like Nepal.

@lalitthapa101

2 жыл бұрын

@@robman2095 most schools in urban areas teach in english although many teach in Nepali too. So basically,a Nepali who has gone to school can understand basic level English. The reason why Australia is a hotspot for Nepalis is cause its seen as a good destination for education and jobs.No filter Nepal is poor so many students and people migrate to other countries for jobs.

@StanbyMode

2 жыл бұрын

Maithili's better

I love the English language and I had a lot of fun learning it. It changed my life completely and I don't remember having had problems with it 🤔 But I'm a native German speaker, so I guess that's the reason behind it.

@laurencefraser

2 жыл бұрын

English being a Germanic language, speakers of other Germanic languages (such as German) have less trouble than most, though not none.

@jackfordon7735

2 жыл бұрын

@The505Guys German grammar is much more difficult than English, plus Germans get the added bonus of being bombarded by English language pop culture all the time, so don't sweat it

@herrbonk3635

2 жыл бұрын

My language (Swedish) is even closer to English in most respects, but I still find English hard as hell. Not only the crazy irregular (french) spellings, but also all those meaingless syntactic distinctions, mainly on verbs (like seem/seems, is/are, do/does, and so on).

Loved this 👍

One of the best videos on the english language that I have ever seen.

As an Indonesian the hardest part when I learning English was the tenses. Because in our language tenses is doesn't exist, then to adjust with that condition was really challenging.

Love this video 😂 I'm brazilian and I'm comfortable with english now, but I remember stressing over the inconsistencies of the language plus the false cognates when I first started learning it

"I never said he stole my horse." Great demonstration on how word stressing gives a multitude of nuance, subtext, and connotation to one simple sentence.

Omg the ending blew my mind, best channel EVER !!!

ESL teaching is a monumental task. I've learned more about grammar teaching than I ever learned as a native speaking English student.

Whenever I get frustrated with insane rules in my target language, I always have to remind myself that English is just as crazy.

Thank you! I'd never thought about the ordering of adjectives before a noun, though I must have unknowingly learned it as I grew up. I'd certainly have done a double take had it been "The Old Little Lady from Pasadena".

I think this is such a great video if you're studying a language which most people here probably are. I'm studying Japanese as a native English speaker, and the concept of understanding there isn't a direct translation word to word is important. However, if you understand the language, it works in the same way from my experience. There's a certain meaning behind the words that is very different than your native language. Well, English vs Japanese is a good example of it being very different. English vs Spanish is pretty similar.

This video made me understand why people like the idea of Esperanto being the lingua franca. The specific adjective order has got to make so many English language learners want to cry or pull their hair out.

@WesolyArbuz

2 жыл бұрын

I love the idea. Time is the most precious asset. It would save us trillions of hours if the lingua franca was easy. However, we would have to agree on this to make it happen. The idea of Esperanto convinced me a long time ago (something like 18 years ago) yet I haven't learn it. There is much to do in life. At this stage Esperanto would be just a passion for me - with no real utility cause it's not widespread enough. For this reason it's not my priority and I keep learning English. Hopefully in something like 10,000 hours of English input I'll be able to say I'm handling it pretty well... I'm not kidding. An adult has rather above 100,000 hours of exposure to their native language. If I get somewhere close to that level within one-tenth of the time I will be quite satisfied. So far I have approx. 1000-1500 hours of English acquisition behind me (if you count schooling ages ago) and I need to make use of translator and dictionary to put together these few sentences. I spare about 1,5 hour daily for this goal, that is 500-600 hours yearly, so at this rate in fifteenish years should be fine... ;) but I'm gonna pick up the pace and get there in 5-10 years. Now you can feel why I dream of Esperanto as a lingua franca. I'm not complaining about learning English - once you've switched to [massive] input approach, it's quite fun. Just it demands enormous amount of patience. With Esperanto it could come 10 times quicker. There is huge difference between 1 and 10 years of learning... PS I don't want to discourage anyone with the large numbers above. My aim is to speak English not much worse than my native language (otherwise the numbers would be a few times lower). I'm just trying to be realistic in my assumptions and to remember how long it takes native speakers to master their language. A lot of persistence to all language learners. Good luck. :)

@bofbob1

2 жыл бұрын

Personally I support using a constructed language as lingua franca (but not esperanto tbh) not because English is hard, but just out of a principle of equality. If you look at the financial benefits this state of affairs creates for English-speaking countries and the financial costs for non-English-speaking countries, we're talking trillions of dollars. That and it forces people who just want to learn a lingua franca to also learn about a culture they may have no interest in at all.

@WesolyArbuz

2 жыл бұрын

​@@bofbob1 ​ You are right. The equality aspect cannot be overlooked. My learning hours perspective can be easily converted to the trillions of dollars you have mentioned. In this case, we can treat time as a perfect, stable currency which cannot be devaluated or we can convert it to USD for illustration purposes. Let's take, for example, US average hour wages of 26.15 USD, multiply by a billion people trying to learn English (it's just a simple illustration) and, let's say, 3 thousand hours to learn English decently. So it's 3 trillion hours times 26.15 USD = 78.45 trillion dollars. It's definitely a matter of trillions. If using of a constructed language we would achieve similar level of fluency in one-tenth of the time, we would simply save something like 90% of our costs as a whole and in addition we would benefit from easier, better cooperation. In my opinion, the biggest obstacle is an early stage of popularization of a constructed language, as long as the main reward of learning it remains personal satisfaction (lack of broader benefits). Once critical mass is achieved, it would be downhill from there. I would imagine the critical mass to be tens of millions of people. Esperanto is stuck at around million. The hope for such ideas may be the power of the Internet but so far it is dominated by English and further supports its domination. Will the idea blossom online? Will there be millions of people willing to learn without tangible benefits? Maybe the next generations of politicians will be more sensitive to these issues? (I don't like to count on politicians for anything but I put the emphasis here on "the next generations" cause I see more sensitivity and wisdom in the youth.) After all, Esperanto was not so far away from being made an official language of the European Union - one policy initiative of this magnitude could completely change the course of events. Concerning the question whether Esperanto or other constructed language: I'm flexible. I don't put emphasis whether a new lingua franca would be 9 or 11 times better than English. It can be even 8 times - I'm on for it. :) I just know that arguing about which artificial language is the best would enormously reduce the chances of any of them succeeding. So I'd rather support the most popular one and focus on saving 90% of the costs without getting into discussions of how we could save 92% or which one is the most equal of equals, etc. What doesn't change the fact that I remain open to other options and such ideas are close to my heart.

@l.p616

2 жыл бұрын

I am learning Esperanto and I loved the language but there a lot of things Esperanto should do better but it's really easy I can know the exactly pronounce of a word I never seen before just reading and make new adjectives just with the knowledge of ones I already learned for exemple If you know nothing about English how would you know that the opposite of "easy" is "hard"? With esperanto you just have to put the affix "mal" "Facila" that means easy become "malfacila" that means hard etc however there things I deslike in esperanto meanly the writing which I think a bit ugly

@mattstrigo815

2 жыл бұрын

@@l.p616 Saluton

I already knew tone and emphasis placement were important, however, you've just made me think twice about the great importance it has in the English language. As a native speaker learning another language and who has been corrected by a speaker of the language I'm learning, I could not quite hear what I was doing wrong. You have fine-tuned my perspective.

Thank you for the opinion, size, age, shape, color, origin, material, purpose breakdown. It's brilliant. I will be making note of this and teaching it to my children.

Cheers, Olly. Terrific video.

To be honest I think that for a large of the world, grammar is actually the most difficult part of English. As an extreme case, I live in China, interact with a lot of Chinese English speakers, and I am not exaggerating when I say it *extremely* rare to meet a Chinese person, even one with great pronunciation, vocabulary, etc. who doesn’t still regularly make errors in verb tense, usage of definite/indefinite articles, etc. Another example would be Germans frequently failing to correctly use continuous present tense.

@SoulAcid1

2 жыл бұрын

I am not getting it. Because I am german? :D

@kit922

2 жыл бұрын

@@SoulAcid1 auf deutsch: ich gehe = In english: I go OR I am going But "I go" in context would be "I go regularly" or "I go to the store on Tuesdays" or "I go to school at 8am" etc. "I am going" is what you're doing right now, so in context it's "I am going to school (now)". However, unfortunately, the "I am going" formation can also be used like the future tense, "I am going to school tomorrow", which is basically synonymous with "I will go to school tomorrow". This is more common than the future tense ("I will") when talking about the near future (e.g. I am having a baby in 9 months vs I will have a baby one day). The last way I can think to use this form is to say you are in the process of doing something that takes a long time, for example "I am going to the top of mount Everest" said by someone who is walking at the bottom of the mountain. Other examples of each, this time with the verb "to run": I run for the cross country team I run 1 mile every morning He runs at least one marathon per year You run faster than she does We run together every day They run in gym class I am running to the store right now I am running in tomorrow's race You are running too slowly! Are you running with me tomorrow? He is running away He is running after school today We are running on the beach We are running in the race tomorrow They are running home They are running in the race next year To show the difference again, I'll use "to earn": I earn about 32k each year (regularly happens, happens on a scheduled basis) vs. I am earning my degree (*in process*) vs. I am earning a lot of money (*happening right now*) vs. I swear, i am earning $100,000,000,000 this year! (*happening in the near future*) Another one, "to try": I try my best each day, I am trying my best right now, I am trying to get accepted to university next year, I am always trying to improve

@SoulAcid1

2 жыл бұрын

@@kit922 You don't get the joke, right? "I am not getting it" is continuous present tense.

@lagavulin7194

2 жыл бұрын

I'd say you are right about the pronunciation part. When it comes to grammar however, every single European language (except for maybe Swedish) is more complex and complicated than English. It just seems complicated for people who speak languages where conjugation and tenses aren't a thing (such as Mandarin and other Asian languages) What makes you think that present continuous is a problem for Germans? The conditional clause appears to be more of a challenge in my opinion.

@lagavulin7194

2 жыл бұрын

I am going/I am looking.... is pretty straightforward and doesn't pose much of a problem. Some might say that this tense does not exist in German, but this is actually not true. "Ich bin am Essen" (for example) is the frequently used equivalent of "I am eating", it just happens to be a rather colloquial way of saying it. This is the reason why German speaking people don't really struggle with this tense.

Oh, and I definitely had not heard the word “schwa” before about a year ago. I had no idea what that was, though obviously, I’d encountered them probably thousands of times as an English speaker. How did I learn that word? I helped my oldest with his online 2nd grade school work. They literally teach that word and what schwa sounds are now. They also teach a concept of “vowel flexing” in phonics programs now. So if you say the word with the sounds you think the vowels should make but it’s not a word you’ve heard before, try “flexing” (or using a schwa) and see if that sounds better. 😧 English is hard, and reading English is difficult for even native English-speaking kids to learn.

@darkcreatureinadarkroom1617

2 жыл бұрын

Native Spanish speaker here. Your comment brought flashbacks of learning the rules for accent marks as a kid, and fiddling with words to try and determine where the stress is in each word and if and where the accent mark should go. And it was vocabulary I already _knew_ because, well, everyday usage. I wonder how Spanish learners do it.

Very useful video; very well done

As a German I always liked English from the beginning. All the inconsistencies you mentioned never really occurred to me. The th sound was the most difficult and I still struggle with it sometimes. I really find any other language much more difficult. French for example has so many „round“ sounds that sound similar but are not really the same („en“ vs „on“ for example). English pronunciation is much closer to German. And grammar isn’t something I do that often since leaving school 20 years ago, so it doesn’t bother me. Great Video again ☺️ BTW: I love your accent ❤

God! I totally enjoyed your video! I felt identified with every single word you said about English learning students. My native language is Spanish and I've been learning English for many years, and I still struggle with phrasal verbs, pronunciation, and almost everything you said in a certain level. 😂 It was really funny, a friend of mine sent me this video as his native language is English, then I saw your name and I couldn't remember where I'd seen it before, I HAD READ ONE BOOK YOU WROTE ABOUT HOW TO LEARN FRENCH WITH STORIES. Now I need to say thanks to you because it helped me to improve my reading and writing skills. I feel that I can deal with any accord du participe passé. Aaaah gracias. Me suscribo a la de YA. ♥️

Yes!! I ran into these often with Korean missionaries I served with and in the English classes we’d teach in the community. I’m *not* a linguist or even an expert in the English language. Just a native speaker. And there is *so* much I’d never thought of before. It gave me so much empathy. I actually think it’s easier for English-speakers to learn Korean, because Korean is so much more consistent, than for them (or any non-native English speaker) to learn English. I no longer snicker at anyone who makes little mistakes. I’m *floored* by anyone who learns English at all! But I’d never considered word order before. That and the “I never said he stole my horse” bit… 🤯 I never realized how much intonation changes the meaning of a sentence in English. I thought you were messing with us with that for sure…until you demonstrated it.

@eugenec7130

2 жыл бұрын

I am a Chinese who have learned English. Yes, you hit the bull's eye by saying that it is easier for native English speakers to learn Korean (or any other Asian language) than otherwise. The reason behind this is that there is simply too much "rubbish" (obsolete and impractical usages) accumulated in English. Unless English goes through an overhaul or a spring cleaning to get rid of its mess, it is forever a hard language to learn.

@robogamer2023

2 жыл бұрын

@@eugenec7130 Oof, You got that right buddy. Well for starters english is a language you can learn only by using. Especially with native speakers. English is a language more about knowing what to do than having consistent rules. I'm not a native speaker myself. I'm a native Hindi speaker Although I've been exposed to english since childhood as almost all schools in India use English as a medium of instruction

@WillayG

2 жыл бұрын

As a native English speaker who has learned Korean to an advanced level and continues (slowly) to learn I feel the need to disagree with what you said about Korean being easier. The basic grammar is more straightforward for sure but I do feel that certain things in Korean make it quite difficult as you advance. I actually used to feel the same as you but the more I learned the harder it got. Honorifics for example; you just kind of have to know how you should conjugate verbs based on who you are talking to and about. And you kind of need to know what you're suppose to call everyone based on your relationship with that person, and it's kind of awkward to ask what they want to be called. This is just one example and Koreans are usually very forgiving and encouraging of any effort to speak their language but after a certain level it gets quite difficult to get everything sounding natural. Pronunciation is another thing. I've heard so many native English speakers try and fail at pronouncing Korean words because we tend to be very lazy with our vowels. Myself included. Other things like hard consonants and final consonants seem to be a lot of trouble too. I'm not contacting you as such, I do think the basic grammar is quite easy and fun for beginners to get into but there are things I feel that make it just as challenging as English and I just wanted to add my two cents for whatever it's worth.

I'll use this video with my English language students. Thanks!

I just speak english and always love videos like this bcuz it points out things i never noticed that make no sense. The "to dust" one REALLY got me.

"English is the world champion of borrowed words". You clearly haven't studied Albanian, 93% of its words are borrowed 😅

What a fun video. It makes me feel so much better to be an English speaker while trying to learn German.

The engagement ring thing is fabulous! I'd never even thought about that, but so true. My English Is Difficult example was always the 'trailing negative'. "That's a nice house isn't it." or "She aced that assignment didn't she". In most (european at least) languages, that is expressed with a simple 'no' or 'nicht wahr' (es una linda casa, no?), whereas in English you have to think of the (often implied) auxiliary verb and apply a contracted negative on that verb. That is why this inflection is increasingly drifting (as all languages do) to simply, 'innit'

I think what makes English such an efficient lingua franca is that you can be full of errors in your sentence structure and people still understand you. Plus words that sound the same are usually so far away contextually from eachother that people dont get confused. Whereas like I've seen almost identical words in other languages mean something like wife and grandma. So you say "I kissed my wife" but you actually missed one letter and now you've kissed your grandma. I dont feel like that happens in English as much, its more forgiving for mistakes. Not to mention because so many people speak it, if you arent good at it, than someone has probably already heard your flavor of English and figure out what you're saying.

Im Croatian and I got the English pronunciations pretty flawlessly just from watching and reading a lot of stuff in English from an early age.

Aunque tienes una forma muy suave y agradable de platicar en inglés, me encantó escucharte hablar en español de repente. 😉

@holahola9849

2 жыл бұрын

@William Hancock ¡Genial! El español es un idioma hermoso, aunque, al parecer, algo complicado para los no nativos. Como decimos en México: "¡Échale ganas!" ¡Saludos! 😊

@ourtube1128

2 жыл бұрын

@@holahola9849 holaa, llevo cuatro meses estudiando español. Este idioma me da entusiasmo mucho, ¿podemos estar de acuerdo en que el español es buenísimo sí? :D

@pablobond_vzla

2 жыл бұрын

@@ourtube1128 ¿Solo llevas cuatro meses estudiando español? Te felicito. Lo haces muy bien 👍

@lilie5111

2 жыл бұрын

Dejo de aprender español porque me casó. A mí me gusta el idioma pero después de muchas horas me di cuenta que aprender español me cansó.

@holahola9849

2 жыл бұрын

¡Así es,@@ourtube1128 ! ¿Ya tienes tu palabra favorita en español? "Querétaro" y "apapachar" han sido escogidas, en distintos momentos, como las palabras más bonitas de mi idioma natal. La primera es el nombre de una de las ciudades más bellas de México, y la segunda proviene del náhuatl y significa darle cariñitos a alguien, mimar. 💕

I started learning English wen I was in kindergarten as my 2nd language, yet got to this level only in the last 4 years I'd say. (English is my 3rd language but is not going to be the last) Also compared to Russian and Latvian its so different yet easier for me to use since its more used in social media compared to Latvian( my native) and compared to how much Russian content i can find.

I noticed you're very good at connecting your videos. You caught me twice lol

How I learned it? Through mistakes and corrections. First my teacher, then people online. I used to spend countless hours in chatrooms, forums and games with text based interactions and I did request to be corrected if they caught mistakes and while at times it was embarrassing or frustrating it was super helpful. Pronunciation I got a lot of help from singing to instant feedback where I sound differently from the singer, and to make things intuitive I watched so much TV from both the US and the UK. Supernanny? Study time. Friends? Study time. Lord of the rings? Study time. Jamie Oliver drowning his healthy food dishes in olive oil again? Study time. If it was on and could be listened to I absorbed it. I must say documentaries are surprisingly useful because docu-narrators are very clear spoken and speak kind of slowly and the images give context.

I've learned English as a second language at about the age of six, my mother tongue being Lithuanian. Compared to my original, rule-oriented, complex, Baltic language I cannot tell you how many times I've unsuccessfully tried to convince American English speakers what a slippery language it is to learn. But the same slipperiness makes English such a wonderful playground for slang. As for spelling, the French and Dutch aren't that far behind English. Their locals must have ambushed every Latin spelling missionary attempting to teach a logical corresponding symbol to sound.

Great video!!!

Lovely, lively video, thank you! I just wanted to mention that the vast bounty of vowels in English is a good thing! Just think of them as, well... "bonus vowels". ;D