WHY IS ENGLISH DIFFICULT?

 

Hello guys, today I´m going to talk about why for some of us (latins) English is really difficult.

 Why does it sometimes cause so much work? I found an English school that works with

millions of students around the world and more than a million in Mexico, I checked some

reasons, why learning English can be a headache for Mexicans, I will give you five of them:

 

 

1. Spanish and English, from different language families

 

 

English is not a Romance language, but it is of Germanic origin, so it has vowel sounds that

we do not have. The Spanish system is made up of 5 vowels, while in English there are more

than twice as many vowel sounds.

 

 

2. Verbatim translations

 

 

The world of bad translations from Spanish to English, and vice versa, seems inexhaustible.

It is important to know that "once a day" does not translate as "eleven times a day" or that

"I am your father" does not translate as "is father."

 

 

3. Gender cluelessness

 

 

We Mexicans are entertained by seeing how the English suffer learning that “moto” is a

feminine word, or that “planet” is masculine, all despite its terminations.

 

 

But we also run into difficulties when we try to use our pronoun “su” in English, which ends

up being pronounced like “his”, “her” or “its”. This is an important thing to consider if we do

not want to imply that our girlfriend is a man, or that our father is actually a woman.

 

 

 4. Spelling and pronunciation walk on different sides

 

 

 English seems to lack rules for spelling and pronunciation. In Spanish, for example, the "a"

is always pronounced "a", without complicating our lives. On the other hand, in English the

 “a” may sound like “a”, as in the case of “Apple”, or “hey”, as in “ape”. And if the vowel is

combined with another, the pronunciation becomes even more complicated.

 

 

5. Historical arbitrariness

Many efforts have been made in the past to standardize the way of writing English. 

However, on many occasions the academics in charge of this ended up creating more chaos 

than necessary.

For example, in the 16th century they decided to insert a “b” in the words “dette” (debt) 

and “doute” (doubt) in order to better remember their Latin roots. Now we see them 

written as "debt" and "doubt", of course both "b" are silent.

Well, I hope you have found it useful…..

See you next trimester