What do you find most difficult about English?

[Evo]

Spelling, for dyslexics English is one of the worst languages to read and write.

Please post the study that you got this from, thanks.

 

[Evo]

Note that several of the hits on your exact "please read forum rules" search that use this phrase without a hyphen or a colon are sports aficionado forums. Sports announcers, professional athletes, and sports aficionados are the premier source for learning how *not* to use the language properly.

Years of e-mailing and posting online has ruined my grammar. I now post mostly in blurbs and misuse punctuation in order to express the emotion and inflection one would pick up on if they were listening to me. If my voice would have emphasized a word or phrase, I will make up something to let the reader know.

 

[Borek]

Please post the study that you got this from, thanks.

I may have problems posting a link to a study, especially one in English, but as far as I know it is true. Problem is, English is not transparent - that is, there is no easy and simple dependence between spelling and pronunciation. In general, the more transparent the language is, the easier it is for dyslexics - that's why dyslexia is a serious problem in English speaking countries (and Poland!), but is much less of a problem in places like Italy and Spain.

 

[D H]

I found quite a few, but given the huge (583!) number of citations, this appears to be the seminal paper on the subject.

Seymour PH, Aro M, Erskine JM., Foundation literacy acquisition in European orthographies, Br J Psychol. 2003 May;94(Pt 2):143-74.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12803812
Here's the abstract, emphasis mine:

Several previous studies have suggested that basic decoding skills may develop less effectively in English than in some other European orthographies. The origins of this effect in the early (foundation) phase of reading acquisition are investigated through assessments of letter knowledge, familiar word reading, and simple nonword reading in English and 12 other orthographies. The results confirm that children from a majority of European countries become accurate and fluent in foundation level reading before the end of the first school year. There are some exceptions, notably in French, Portuguese, Danish, and, particularly, in English. The effects appear not to be attributable to differences in age of starting or letter knowledge. It is argued that fundamental linguistic differences in syllabic complexity and orthographic depth are responsible. Syllabic complexity selectively affects decoding, whereas orthographic depth affects both word reading and nonword reading. The rate of development in English is more than twice as slow as in the shallow orthographies. It is hypothesized that the deeper orthographies induce the implementation of a dual (logographic + alphabetic) foundation which takes more than twice as long to establish as the single foundation required for the learning of a shallow orthography.​

 

[Evo]

I may have problems posting a link to a study, especially one in English, but as far as I know it is true. Problem is, English is not transparent - that is, there is no easy and simple dependence between spelling and pronunciation. In general, the more transparent the language is, the easier it is for dyslexics - that's why dyslexia is a serious problem in English speaking countries (and Poland!), but is much less of a problem in places like Italy and Spain.

It seems dyslexics have problems with their native language. I think the US misdiagnoses dyslexia more than any other country. A big scam here is getting your doctor to give you a note saying you are dyslexic in order to have more hours to complete the SAT, there was a thread here about it.

Dyslexic students have difficulty with their native language

http://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/about-dyslexia/schools-colleges-and-universities/modern-foreign-languages-and-dyslexia.html

And they have trouble with spoken language.]

http://articles.boston.com/2011-07-29/news/29830301_1_dyslexia-glenn-rosen-brain-processes-language

 

[turbo]

My wife is somewhat dyslexic. The crazy part is that she is very good at Scrabble, perhaps because you get to shift the tiles around to make the words look "right". Give her a rack of those wooden tiles and some colored squares for bonus points, and her spelling improves. It's pretty odd.

 

[turbo]

BTW, a fellow in my dorm was from Cambodia. He spoke English quite well. He seemed to have problems with differentiating "these", "those" and other words that denoted spatial or temporal separation (or lack of) though. I don't know why - he was pretty good with "a", "the", etc.

 

[qspeechc]

'Pyramid' is pronounced 'PI-rә-mid', and not 'peer-a-mid', in standard pronounciation at least. Why don't you just look in a dictionary?

My Concise Oxford Dictionary gives both 'talk to' and 'talk with' as correct, meaning 'have a conversation with'. It also has 'talk at' but with a meaning different from the ones suggested in this thread.

 

[D H]

Talking at, exemplified. "I am not a robot. I am a unicorn."

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Talking at, exemplified. "I am not a robot. I am a unicorn."

This should be moved to the philosophy forum.

 

[Galteeth]

Talking at, exemplified. "I am not a robot. I am a unicorn."

Ok, you guys do realize cleverbot is not actually an AI. This is the internet's greatest troll ever. It is a chat that randomly hooks you up with other cleverbot users and frequently switches the user you're talking to.

 

[fluidistic]

I may have problems posting a link to a study, especially one in English, but as far as I know it is true. Problem is, English is not transparent - that is, there is no easy and simple dependence between spelling and pronunciation. In general, the more transparent the language is, the easier it is for dyslexics - that's why dyslexia is a serious problem in English speaking countries (and Poland!), but is much less of a problem in places like Italy and Spain.

Then French is a nightmare.

 

[Moonbear]

I just came across this and it reminded me of this thread. http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2011/12/23/english-pronunciation/

 

[Borek]

I think the US misdiagnoses dyslexia more than any other country. A big scam here is getting your doctor to give you a note saying you are dyslexic in order to have more hours to complete the SAT, there was a thread here about it.

As if it was different here

I know of school heads who force their personnel to test children for dyslexia, so that they will have more time to write exams - in hope that will make school look better. And we are talking about kids in Polish primary school, up to 12 yo. What do we teach them?

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

I just came across this and it reminded me of this thread. http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2011/12/23/english-pronunciation/

As the Chinese say, English is a pictographic language.

 

[MarcoD]

Build vs built is still a major problem for me, so I tend to avoid it.

I never had a knack for languages, and one of my kids is dyslexic, so I guess it's in my genes.