What was the most difficult point for you when you learned English?

What was the most difficult point for you when you learned English?

Me
Articles(a, an, the)
I'm still struggling for them lol

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for me its all the french words that have an opposite meaning in english

Hardest for me while learning japanese was not to GET NUKED X---DDDDDDD

Which ones

the retarded bastardized foniks they have where words are spelled entirely different than how theyre pronounced.

english is a good merchant language tho

none, what a stupid and easy language
t. not a native speaker

Spelling. I still have trouble with words like "guarantee", "disappointment", "embarassment", and "Fahrenheit".

preservatif

There was a pretty major vowel shift (basically, words retained their spelling but not their pronounciation) a few centuries after those damn Normans raped the beautiful language of Beowulf. This shift brought us both the language of Shakespeare and countless headaches for those trying to learn it.

Did you actually study Japanese? What was the hardest part other than kanji? :D

The spelling wasn't standardized until hundreds of years after Shakespeare

pffff, nobody ACTUALLY knows how to spell Fahrenheit, who gives a shit, just write F.

t. native speaker

Fahrenheit is a German name.

Everywhere I go I see news outlets shilling the idea that Japan's birth rate is abnormally low, and that the cause is a combination of regressive gender roles and sexual withdrawal/inversion. That Japan is in a birth crisis is a truism that's repeated endlessly, on the BBC, on the NYT, on Reddit, on Youtube, and even here.

Let's be totally clear: Japan's 1.3 birth rate is totally on par with other OECD countries. We don't have reliable data for the indigenous populations of Western Europe, but estimates suggest that native-born Western European women have a birth rate of 0.9-1.1, LESS than Japanese women. Western European nations have a 1.4 average birth rate, but that includes foreign-born citizens and non-citizen migrants.

In other words, Western women have even fewer children than Japanese ones, but the crisis is masked by migrants having 3-4 children each.

The reason that Japan is singled out by the media, and that this meme persists, is obvious: Japan is alone among developed nations in rejecting migration. The conclusion, either overt or hidden of every "Japanese don't breed LOL anime faggots/ sexist patriarchy/ etc." statement, is that Japan should start importing shit-skins en masse.

Every time you repeat the meme, you're eroding the integrity of Japan's borders. Loyal Japanese are fighting tooth and nail to prevent a flood of migration that will erase them from the pages of history far more thoroughly than the death of the boomers will. Help them in their struggle by correcting anyone who spreads the vile meme of deviant Japanese reproduction.

Japan's birth rate is fine. The boomers don't need to be replaced. Their death will herald lower house prices, more space, more comfort for everyone, as the population stabilises around 90m. Japan's future is bright, provided they don't flood their country with foreigners.

You can help in this struggle by using your head, and criticising the meme where you see it.

the listening part because of how many accents there are and words don't correspond to how they're written and prepositions

Getting time and energy to want to practice it, i'm lazy to be honest
Somebody here speak Mexicano?

Formulating sentences with two or more subjects...

I still struggle with On and In

>I'm on london?
>I'm in london?

This is also where i am struggling.
I'm at a uni
OR
I'm in a uni

>you are IN London

ON could be used like
>i'm ON i don't know Franklin Street

And AT
>I'm AT the Library

past tense, i still don't get it

It depends on the context

I'm in the Uni
At soccer fields
Sitting on the grass

Also, if a word starts with a vocal, you don't use A
You use AN

An ant
An elephant

A Cocodrile
A train

articles and th sounds

Here is a video to understand it better
Hope I helped you

youtu.be/sN5H7YTo_IQ

>tfw the Normans butchered this beautiful language

youtube.com/watch?v=zfaEGU45lKA

trying to relearn it
almost completely dropped the language after high school and welp, now i've forgotten most of the grammar
even managed to forgot most of the vocabulary somehow

Yeah, today's spelling is quite different to the variety of the past.

based Mexican :D

Also the problem of "a or an" is ok. What i meant by the topic is when i should use " a " or " the". Yeah i know "the" can be used for a word which is already mentioned. However, you know there are many usage for "the" other than that.

It's hard for those whose mother tong doesn't adopt articles such as Japanese and Russian : (

>struggling to learn a language you are being paid to teach
Grim.

Why would a Chinese person care about Japans future?

Time and time again, yet another German unleashes an abomination upon the world.

>I'm in London
>Have you been to London?

The pronunciation is a mess.

>I'm in the Uni
I'm at the university now, where are you?
>At soccer fields
Kids playing in soccer fields during the long daylight hours of summer.
>Sitting on the grass
Sitting in the long grass, watching the world go by.

Also the pronunciation is difficult af
Japanese has only 5 vowels while American accent has 12

I still struggle understanding what people say, it's not that bad but i can't watch an entire movie without subtitles

Preservative

the grammar

>struggling for them
nice english faggot

Words that have a lot of meanings, like 'get' and others that are normals words and grammatical shit like "do", "will"...

Also this, I can differentiate them while hearing but I can't pronounce some of them

This

(ignore the 2nd tagged post)

I still fuck up with "then" and "than". In Dutch it's just "dan".

That actually does sound epic

thiis what we call preservatif, got it ?

>WE
That’s what all euros call it m8
Just not *nglos for some reason

*gets condom*
Mine just has "Ribbed" printed on them.

I'm a native speaker, but it's probably prepositions, including within phrasal verbs.

> confusing "then" and "than"
but aren't their meanings a bit too distant?

>天然?乳??避孕?
Lmao

Yes, but we use the same word for it in Dutch so I have to look it up every time.

what does it says ?

Than is ONLY used for comparisons. That's it. Then for everything else.
I have a bigger dick than you, my mum is thinner than yours.

That's Chinese, not Japanese, it just says the same shit. Natural rubber latex condom.

What does 月交 mean ? Sex?

Spelling and pronunciation mistakes

For example spelling "pronouncing" as "pronuncing". Or pronuncing "why" like the Italian "vai".

My problem is that I also want to use 'then' with comparisons. I really have to think with that word. If I talk English irl I don't think about it because I just have a silly accent that makes every 'e' and 'a' sound alike in English, so I never get corrected on it.

But thanks for that image in my mind, I won't forget it now.

My Chinese isn't the best, I'm only fluent in English, but Google says there doesn't seem to be a Chinese meaning.

Would and Could.

it took me a whole month.

Didn't you study Chinese as a mandatory subject in Singapore?(∵)

Yes, since I'm Chinese I have to take ten years of it. But that doesn't mean my Chinese is great, I can speak it but with lots of hesitation and my vocabulary is poor.

This. I’ve been learning English since I was 6, and been immersed in it since I was like 12 through the internet, and yet I still can’t pronounce things like “the” for shit.

vocaroo.com/i/s0RpfLyPp86t

Still much better than the Japanese who are virtually monolinguals

...

personally i dont give a fuck about pronunciation...
i think phrasal verbs are very difficult

In Polish (and most of other slavic languages) "this" and "it" are both translated as "to"
And I'm often really confused about it and don't know which one should I use in particular situation

bump

Phrasal verbs are a bitch. It helps to think of the phrases as a separate word entirely rather than trying to translate it literally.

You're all dumb. English is super easy.

scorch the leaf

A simple, perhaps too simple, way to deal with articles is to remember that

- 'a' and 'an' come from 'one': a number of things
- 'the' comes from 'this/that': demonstratives

and they may be exchanged with no loss of meaning, e.g.

- Give me a pen
- Give me one pen (and I do not care which pen it is)

- I ate the apple
- I ate that apple (the apple which is in front of us both, or which we have discussed previously)

'On' technically means 'on top of', but frequently does not mean so. When speaking about towns/cities, it is always 'in'.

> I am in London.

When speaking about streets/roads, it is always 'on'.

> I am on Franklin Street.

But when 'in the street', it sometimes means in the middle of it, where cars usually drive.

When speaking of buildings, it is 'in' or 'at', with no difference in meaning:

> I am in the library.
> I am at the library.

But with certain buildings, like school, university, or a workplace, 'at' can also mean 'engaged in' or 'attending'.

> I am at university (I am in a building of the university, or attending university generally).

'Get' is a very over-used word which foreigners tend to hate as it is not used properly by most native speakers. (Mostly Americans.)

> I got warm
> I get this problem

should actually be

> I became warm
> I understand this problem

'Could' is the past tense of 'can'.
'Would' is the past tense of 'will'.

But the difficulties arise with certain conditional sentences, where the past is used to signify a contrafactual state (it's the same in Latin).

> I would be happy, if I were rich.
> I could be happy, if I were rich.

Contrafactual since I am not currently rich.

Very good explanations, thanks a lot user.

>'Get' is a very over-used word which foreigners tend to hate as it is not used properly by most native speakers. (Mostly Americans.)
Wait what? "Become warm" sounds too cumbersome, same for "get sth" in the sense "understand".

>struggling with English

Why is ´an´used as the article for the word ´ukrainian´, if the word starts with a vowel?

what do you mean

You've got to look at the pronunciation of the word
Ukraine starts with a y sound
Just like a university, etc and also like how it's an hour and not a hour because the h is silent

>"I'm driving 'in' my car right now, where are you?"
>"I'm 'on' the train".
>"Wait, you're riding on the top of the train?"
>"No, no. I'm actually inside the train, that's just how english works, senpai".
Inconsistent piece of shit of a language.

ukrainian is pronounce jukrainian, therefore it's "a ukrainian"

Thanks. It always annoyed me.

how is it in Portuguese? in Italian it is normal to say "sono IN macchina" but "sono SUL treno", although saying "sono IN treno" wouldn't be wrong or unusual(while saying "sono SULLA macchina" would definitely imply being on top of it)

I struggle to memorize all the tenses; that is, I struggle to memorize what makes past tense past, a continuous tense continuous etc. but know where and how to use them.

*Inconsistent, piece of shit language.

You have to look at the general use of it. You don't ride inside of a horse or a wagon, you ride on top of one. Similarly, you are specifying you are inside of the vehicle, nothing else. If you were a passenger, you could say "I am being driven (in a car)".

Because you basically fit yourself inside a car and fasten your belt.
But you fucking run inside a train, it has a floor that you can walk on top of so you're ON a train or bus
git gud, senpai

In Soviet Russia they used to call it rubber item №2.

embarrassment

ignore the autist, вaня

We use 'no' in both cases, which is similar to 'en' in spanish.

Alright, smartasses how does this rule apply to abstract cases like:
"I found the answer to this problem on a forum".
"You're a fucking faggot in my opinion".
"What's your opinion on this matter"?

It may sound 'cumbersome', but it's correct. 'Get' means 'receive'.

> I got an apple
> I received an apple

> I received warm
is nonsense.

>tfw it's basically the same language with a different sound
It boggles my mind that some danes struggle with english

False friends, i hate them

This. Even Germans who speak decent English sometimes say "handy" instead of "mobile phone", because it's the word we use in Germany.

This. In French:

>pain = bread
>coin = corner
>cave = cellar
>librarie = bookshop
>hasard = chance
>actuellement (now) is not the same as actually
>éventuellement (maybe) is not the same as eventually
>physicien = physicist
>reste = stay
>sensible = sensitive
>phrase = sentence
>issue = exit
>bras = arm
>blesser = hurt
>monnaie is not the same thing as money
>envie = want, not jealousy
>location = rent
>raisin = grape, not just dried ones.

So if a German offers me a handy we aren't thinking of the same thing?

What was number one?

>no
You forgot to mention "no" is the contraction of "em o" meaning "in/on the".

If you mean on top of the train, you'd have to say "em cima do comboio" ("do" meaning "de o"), just like English.

But "em" mostly means "in". Sometimes when you want to be specific you just say "dentro de" ("inside of").

>tfw it's basically the totally different language from mine
>False friends are words in two languages that look or sound similar, but differ significantly in meaning.

Thanks it's a very interesting idiom. I've become a bit smarter than before

>"I found the answer to this problem on a forum".
>"You're a fucking faggot in my opinion".
>"What's your opinion on this matter"?
Those follow the general rules of phrasal verbs, which are almost arbitrary at their worse, and in my experience are the hardest stuff about English.

You have logical ones like "cut" vs "cut off" vs "cut through" which you don't really have in Portuguese.

But stuff like "sit down" and "stand up" feels oddly redundant, until you learn that "sit up" and "stand down" also exist, and then those sort of make more sense.

From a Portuguese perspective "sit up" would have to be "get up from laying".

This is all fine and dandy, but then "set" comes along and throws logic out the window "set about", "set for", "set up", "set off" make no logical sense beyond just memorising.

This "putting two words together" is English's blessing and curse. Even "put together" would be explained as "join" or "construct" in Portuguese, and thus we Romanoids end up with more specific words in a not-as-expansive gramatical structure. Makes poetry great, explaining stuff to detail not as much.