Simplicity of English

[Paul Frank]

> Rudolph C Troike
> >Whoever it was commenting on how easy English is to learn
> hasn't had to do
> >it as a second language, or taught ESL. Compared to most
> languages, it is
> >one of the most complicated, inconsistent, exception-ridden
> linguistic
> >systems on earth.
>
> As I understand it, you are absolutely right on the
> inconsistencies and difficulties--if one wants to speak and write the
> language fluently. But isn't it true that a basic knowledge of English
> goes a long, long way? Further, than, say, a basic knowledge of
> Chinese? One need not even congugate "to go" and "to be" correctly
> to be understood.

In my subjective and unscientific opinion, a basic knowledge of spoken
Chinese goes further than a basic knowledge of spoken English. Or put
another way, it's easier to acquire a basic knowledge of spoken Chinese than
of spoken English except, of course, for speakers of languages that are
closely related to English. I've lived in China and met many foreigners who
picked up basic Chinese on the fly. Chinese grammar is highly analytic and
easy to learn, regardless of whether your native language is inflected or
not. I've heard linguists maintain that all languages are equally difficult
and complex. Not being a linguist, I don't agree. For an English speaker,
and even for a German or Russian speaker, it is much easier to acquire a
smattering and a bit more than a smattering of Chinese than of Japanese. I
would not be surprised to learn that the English phrase "long time no see"
is a calque from Chinese, because it sounds odd in English and would be
perfect Chinese grammar, although a literal translation of the Chinese
equivalent would be "good long no see" (hao jiu bu jian). As is well known,
Japanese is a highly agglutinative language. Its grammar is very regular
compared to, say, French, but it is very difficult nonetheless. Having
studied both Chinese and Japanese in an American school (Harvard), I can
testify that after a semester of Chinese, American students can say a lot
more in that language than in Japanese. My guess is that in a year it's
easier for an English speaker to learn to speak half-way correct basic
Chinese than half-way correct basic French. However, although in ten years
of study an English speaker can acquire a very good knowledge of many
different registers of French, acquiring a very good knowledge of spoken and
written Chinese is impossible for all but the most linguistically gifted of
English speakers, no matter how long they apply themselvs to the language.
In sum, Chinese is an easy language to learn to speak, despite the
well-known problem of the tones. In many parts of China, people get the
tones wrong when speaking Mandarin anyway, because their dialects have a
different tonal structure, but they still make themselves understood with
people from far-away provinces. However, I don't agree with Rudolph Troike
that Chinese characters are easy to learn. I've been reading Chinese every
day for twenty years and still come across characters I don't know, even in
newspapers. Even native speakers of Chinese find it difficult to learn to
read and write Chinese. Correct me if I'm wrong: I once read that Chinook
Jargon was an analytic language used as a lingua franca by speakers of
highly inflected languages. If this is correct, it would suggest that
analytic languages are easier to learn, despite their strict word order.

Paul
________________________________________
Paul Frank
Business, financial and legal translation
>From Chinese, German, French,  Spanish,
Italian, Dutch and Portuguese into English
Thollon-les-Memises, 74500 Evian, France
paulfrank at wanadoo.fr or franktranslation at aol.com