Why Do Americans Have Such Problems Learning Their Own Language? (legal, speech)

[jtur88]

There is also a Political Correctness element in America. School children that bring street-talk into the classroom are not corrected. It is tolerated because if the teacher tried to correct an Ebonics-speaking child, the teacher would be required to undergo sensitivity training, and the child would be assigned a grief counselor to help him deal with the discrimination against his minority culture.

[Visvaldis]

By mistakes made in English I was thinking of grammar, spelling, etc.
Mistakes such as not knowing when to use 'your' or 'you're'. 'Their', 'they're' or 'there'. I've met grown adults who don't know the difference between 'break' and 'brake'.
At the job one fellow (3rd shift) told me he has a problem 'staying woke'.
On the job we have to write reports. These reports contain phrases like 'they was...'; 'I done did...'; 'they have to do they job'; 'they done went...'.
Being unsure of plural or singular: 'When a man loves their woman'.
Not long ago I saw this on a t-shirt: 'If your a vampire, bite me!'

[Copanut]

In my area, Pgh, saying "I seen", is way too common.

[FlashM]

Originally Posted by yankinscotland

English has many exceptions to the rules. That's why it is so hard to foreigners to learn.

I don't agree. English is one of the easiest languages to learn no doubt. German for example is a way harder in terms of grammar. Not to mention of course such languages as Japanese, Arabic or Russian which are pretty hard to learn compared to English.

[Hillrunner]

"I seen tit when day took dat fing down. " or " Ima gotsa git mines fore day runs out of muple bacon." These are nothing but lazy speech patterns that many minoritys use because of being stigmatized as being white.If they choose to use proper speech in order to acheive a better life through having a proper grasp of the English language many are labeled as sellouts in their communitys which hinders ones ability to better ones self. For us to truly live together as one we should at least have a common language.

[jtur88]

Originally Posted by FlashM

I don't agree. English is one of the easiest languages to learn no doubt. German for example is a way harder in terms of grammar. Not to mention of course such languages as Japanese, Arabic or Russian which are pretty hard to learn compared to English.

You only think those are hard to learn, because you have to learn a new alphabet first. Mandarin Chinese is one of the easiest languages to learn basic communication. Malay/Indonesian and Swahili are also very easy.

German is hard to learn because, unlike English, so many words change according to how they agree with other words. English doesn't bother with any of that except highly regular plurals and fairly regular past tense.

English is a highly idiomatic language, which makes it very hard for a foreigner to learn. An entire phrase can have a meaning completely different from the sum of its words.

[Jason28]

Diversity is the biggest gap in unifying the language and only gets worse as more and more immigrants and illegals pour in. We have people from all over the world here and spanish is everywhere. In addition to that, we have massive slang differences between people say in Georgia and New Jersey which can make it nigh impossible for the two to comprehend what the other is saying. It also doesn't help things that we have no official language and I can just about guarantee you at some point, in the near future, spanish populations will vote in their own to start making individual states force that as the official language. If you think things are bad now with the english language they are only going to get worse...especially as technology keeps more kids out of books and on the internet/cell phone/video games.

[jtur88]

Originally Posted by Jason28

Diversity is the biggest gap in unifying the language and only gets worse as more and more immigrants and illegals pour in. We have people from all over the world here and spanish is everywhere. In addition to that, we have massive slang differences between people say in Georgia and New Jersey which can make it nigh impossible for the two to comprehend what the other is saying. It also doesn't help things that we have no official language and I can just about guarantee you at some point, in the near future, spanish populations will vote in their own to start making individual states force that as the official language. If you think things are bad now with the english language they are only going to get worse...especially as technology keeps more kids out of books and on the internet/cell phone/video games.

Another continuation of the bashfest against immigrants, who are out to destroy us and take our country away from us.

Actually, immigration and diversity have the opposite effect---they tend to unify and standardize a language, because when they learn it, they are taught the correct rules of grammar and usage. A Mexican immigrating to Georgia will speak English exactly the way a Mexican immigrating to New Jersey will. That, over time, will erase some of the difference between the languages of the two areas.

[ChrisC]

Originally Posted by FlashM

I don't agree. English is one of the easiest languages to learn no doubt. German for example is a way harder in terms of grammar. Not to mention of course such languages as Japanese, Arabic or Russian which are pretty hard to learn compared to English.

With language learning, it's not so much the ease or difficultly of the rules that make it easier or harder to learn. It's the exceptions to the rules.
If English followed it's own rules, it would indeed be one of the easiest, if not the easiest to learn. It does not follow it's rules very consistently, however. A pity.

For many language learners, consistency is far more important than grammatical simplicity. For instance, as a learner, if you learn that 'mi' means 'I' and that the ending on a verb is always -as for present tense and learn the verb 'parloli' means to speak. You now know I speak--mi parolas. Now, you learn that the verb for 'to be' is 'esti,' you AUTOMATICALLY know how to say I am--mi estas. If you then learn that the verb ending for past tense is always -is, you AUTOMATICALLY know how to say I was--mi estis. If the system is completely consistent with no exceptions, you can actually form sentences without actually ever having heard the specific tense of the verb, because you know the pattern.

English could be like that. The patterns are there. But it isn't. There are patterns and if they were only consistently followed, learning English would take weeks and months rather than years. Our brains pick up on patterns much more readily than rote memorization of seemingly random material.

So, a language that is very complex grammatically can actually be easier to learn--especially for those who don't remember random information so well, but remember patterns and logic very well. Take for instance Turkish. Turkish is a language with basically no grammatical exception to the patterns. It is a very complex agglutinative language, but once you learn a grammar pattern, you can count on it being that way consistently throughout the language. This, in my opinion, is far more important than structural simplicity.

I've been messing with languages for quite some time. It's never the structure that makes a language hard for me. The grammar comes easily. It's the exception to the rules that make it seemingly impossible at times. For instance, Norwegian. The grammar structure is actually easier than English in many ways, not to mention that it's very 'English-like' anyway. But, the rules are commonly broken in Norwegian also. This makes Norwegian a rather hard language for English speakers to learn... even though it's very close to English.

Think of French if you've ever studied that. Was it the grammar patterns that made it hard? No. The grammar rules are quite often easier than Spanish. In fact, nearly the same. The thing that makes French hard is the same thing that makes English hard: too many broken rules and a spelling system that is a shamble. French is very close to Spanish, but is quite a bit harder to learn for the student. Why? It's because Spanish, although not without it's grammatical exceptions, is far mor consistent and logically spelled.

If I didn't know English and didn't know Spanish, I would far prefer to learn Spanish based only on ease of learning. It's just far more consistent. Consistency in grammar and spelling is what makes a language easier to learn first; grammar difficulty is a secondary consideration.

Ideally, a language is both consistent and grammatically simple. My favorite language for ease of learning is Esperanto. It beats English hands down. It's 100% regular and has extremely simple and portable grammar structure. I'm out of practice now, but I learned Esperanto to a basic conversational level in about 6 weeks. Other languages that I've worked on, with the exception of Spanish, I still don't know well enough to hold a comfortable conversation although I can read some of them fairly well (Norwegian, French, Gaelic, Irish, Scots, Icelandic).

In my opinion, English is a language that could be extremely easy to learn and use, but is 'ruined' by all of the exceptions to the patterns and rules. And we won't even talk about the spelling system (that pi**es me off just to think about it).

[yankinscotland]

Originally Posted by ChrisC

With

Ideally, a language is both consistent and grammatically simple. My favorite language is for ease of learning is Esperanto. It beats English hands down. It's 100% regular and has extremely simple and portable grammar structure. I'm out of practice now, but I learned Esperanto to a basic conversational level in about 6 weeks. Other languages that I've worked on, with the exception of Spanish, I still don't know well enough to hold a comfortable conversation although I can read some of them fairly well (Norwegian, French, Gaelic, Irish, Scots, Icelandic).

Am curious how you are differentiating between Gaelic, Irish and Scots? Are you referring to Scots Gaelic or to Lallans - Lowland Scots?