Why is it easier to learn English than Russian? Why is it so difficult for Russians to learn English.

13.01.2023 | Health

Probably, many of you have heard the following phrase: "English is very easy to learn to speak it, and very difficult to learn to speak it well." But we want to reassure you: this is just a joke. Is there any truth in it? Is it difficult to learn English? The coin has two sides, so we invite you to find out why English is considered easy and why it is also considered difficult. At the end of the article, we will give some interesting facts about the language and tell you how to cope with the difficulties that arise.

Why is English so easy

Everything is relative, isn't it? If we compare English with some other languages, we realize that it is quite easy. Admire the Chinese or Japanese characters, and the Arabic script is worth something ... No, compared to them, English is definitely a very simple language!

When I hear somebody sigh, “Life is hard”, I am always tempted to ask, “Compared to what?”.

When someone sighs: "Life is a hard thing ...", I always want to ask: "Compared to what?"

And now let's move on to the details. Why do we consider English easy:

English is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. And this is no coincidence, because it is considered one of the simplest and most logical grammar among European languages.
Relatively simple lettering, there are only 26 of them in the English alphabet. For comparison: there are more than 80,000 hieroglyphs in the Chinese language, and the number of strokes in one character can reach 30!
Quite a lot of words "migrated" from English to Russian. Even those who do not learn English automatically memorize several hundred words that are often encountered in life. For example, we are all familiar with the concepts of "businessman", "bestseller", "management", "price list", "office". Some words even seem to us “our own”, Russian.
Nouns do not agree with adjectives in gender, number, and case. For example: “tall girl” - “tall girl”, “tall girls” - “tall girls”, “tall boy” - “tall boy”. As you can see, the adjective "tall" does not change despite the change in the number or gender of the object.
The noun has only singular and plural and two cases. That is, you can say “girl” (girl) and “girls” (girls) - this is one case that names an object.
The second case is used when you need to say that something belongs to someone, for example: “girl's doll” (girl's doll). And if something belongs to many girls, then we move the apostrophe behind the letter “s”: “girls’ dolls” (girls’ dolls).
In all other cases, the word "girl" does not change. For example, you can give a girl her doll: give a GIRL her doll. You can talk to the girl: talk to the GIRL.
As you can see, dealing with cases in English is much easier than in Russian.

Why is English so difficult

There is also an opposite point of view: English is difficult, in order to master it well, you need to learn it for a long time. You probably have a question: how long to learn it and is it possible to “learn” it? We advise you to read the article "", it will answer your questions.

English, like any other language, is constantly changing: new idioms, slang expressions, words borrowed from other languages appear, and part of the vocabulary becomes obsolete and disappears from the spoken language. However, this is not the worst thing for students. Most students are afraid of grammar. What is difficult about it?

Time. It seems that there are a lot of them: as many as 3 tenses and each of them has 4 aspects, and if we also remember the passive voice ... Nevertheless, it is believed that English grammar is one of the most logical and simple. Do you know what is the most difficult thing in learning all these subtleties? Stop being afraid of them!
Articles. It is not always easy for a Russian person to understand why this cat is both “a cat” and “the cat”. There are no such difficulties in our native language. But nothing, and it can be dealt with!
Management of verbs. Verbs in English are used with different prepositions in different meanings. Since the control of verbs in Russian and English is not the same, students have to memorize them. For example, borrow smth FROM smb - borrow, borrow something At anyone. And how do you like such discrepancies: to approve OF smth - approve something, to depend ON smb/smth - depend FROM someone/something, to be popular WITH smb - to be popular At anyone.
The English language is full of paradoxes, you can read about some of them in the article “Paradoxes of the English language. Do you think English is easy? ".

And to make it easier for you to cope with the most common "difficulties" of English, use our life hack article "", from it you will learn how to easily get around all the "slippery places" in English grammar.

How to overcome difficulties in learning English. A few simple tips

Let go of fears and doubts. It is the fear of failure that stops us. Millions of people learn English, most often they are not geniuses, not linguists, they have an average ability for languages. Do not be afraid of mistakes, even carriers make them. We also do not always write correctly or speak Russian. However, this does not prevent us from communicating with people and understanding each other. Experience is the son of difficult mistakes, so don't be afraid to get this experience.
Try to find similarities in Russian and English. This will not only help you learn new vocabulary, but also broaden your horizons. For example, the word “talk” is very similar to the old Russian “interpret”, the word “child” is similar in sound to “child”, and the word “brave” is consonant with our “bravy”. And the word “humor” - “humor”, didn’t it come from the good old word “hilarious”? And “skate” - “horse”, it’s from the word “roll down”! Agree, it is much easier to learn English this way.
Study not only the textbook, but also fascinating supporting materials: videos, audio lessons, songs, films in English. In the social network, you can subscribe to the news of communities of English lovers. We advise you to pay attention to the blogs of language teachers and linguists, where you can find useful tips and subtleties of learning English.
If you have difficulty with some section of grammar, devote as much time as possible to it, use the studied material in communication with the teacher, classmates, foreigners. Bring skills to automatism.

The most interesting "difficulties" of the English language

Summing up, we cannot tell you that English is very simple and easy to learn in 1-2 months. But it is not at all as complicated as it seems at first glance. Yes, it has its own characteristics and "pitfalls", but these barriers can be overcome if there is a desire. Good luck with your learning!

There is an opinion that English is a very simple language and it is not difficult to master it. Probably, if this were true, then, even with all the disadvantages of Russian education, many would have mastered the language. But it's not. A very small percentage of people, graduating from school, and sometimes university, master English, at least at a basic level. And there are many reasons for this. Let's try to consider the main ones:

The ambiguity of the teaching system

There are a great many methods of learning English, as well as words in it, besides, new methods appear every year. However, upon closer examination, you realize that they are all similar to each other or basically have a similar idea. The main methods of language learning can be divided into 2 groups - classical and communicative. The communicative technique looks more interesting, but often our respected teachers do not miss the opportunity to add something from the classical language learning course to it. Namely, grammar. Of the minuses of the communicative system, it is worth noting the need to know the elementary rules of grammar. What about the classical teaching system - its main drawback is a huge number of boring rules, coupled with a significant lack of speaking practice.

Serious differences in the grammar of Russian and English

Russian grammar, and especially punctuation, is considered one of the most difficult in the world. But for native speakers it is not difficult to master it, it happens by itself. As for the grammar of the English language, here, first of all, there are differences due to the philosophy of the language. The main problems in mastering grammar arise with tenses, verbs, prepositions and articles.

There are as many as 12 tenses in English, against 3 in Russian, but we always use different particles and additional words to clarify the meaning. - For example "What are you doing now?" And "What are you even doing?". In English, there is a time for each case. - For example "What do you do?" And "What are you doing?".

As for verbs, this is the main wealth of the English language. There are many, many verbs. But the worst thing is not the quantity, but the fact that there are irregular verbs whose forms you have to learn, and verbs like "set", "get" and "way" that have many different meanings. For example, the verb “set” has 44 of them. And if you want to master spoken English at a good level, you will also have to remember phrasal verbs, of which there are many.

Next on the list are prepositions and articles. As for prepositions - nothing complicated, just some of them do not coincide with the use of prepositions in Russian. Phrasal verbs are also formed in conjunction with prepositions. But with articles it is more difficult. They simply do not exist in Russian, which means that we simply have nothing to compare with, find differences, etc. You will have to come to terms with this and master the rules for using articles, which is not so difficult to do. By the way, you will be forgiven for any mistake related to the use of articles, since some of the subtleties of their use are almost incomprehensible to a foreigner.

Imbalance of theory and practice in teaching.

For some reason, teachers in our general education schools put too much emphasis on the grammatical component. On the colloquial part remains 15 percent, at best. Dry grammar is boring, and with an insufficient number of examples, it is also incomprehensible. Schoolchildren have 2 ways - to cram or write off from somewhere. In universities, this situation is also not new. As a result, people who have spent an average of 10 to 15 years studying English cannot speak it.

We were all once small children and also mastered our native language. Without any rules, they just learned from adults, repeated, invented, experimented, etc. As a result, at the age of 6-7 years, having come to school, we could freely communicate without knowing any (well, almost any) rules. With English, it’s the other way around – we are first bombarded with grammar, and only then, maybe, we will start talking. No wonder we have a very high percentage of people who cannot overcome the language barrier.

All this sounds very frightening, but you should not be afraid. All the difficulties that we have considered are very easy to get around. To achieve a result, so that learning English is interesting and exciting, you need only 2 components:

1. Your desire and desire to master the language. Good motivation has never hurt anyone, set a goal and go for it.

2. Suitable teacher. If you are good with grammar, focus on practice. If you need to improve your grammar as well, find the right teacher who can give you the best combination of theory and practice.

Learn the language and enjoy your progress!

In order to do something, the first and most important thing is to believe that you can do it.

There is a good parable about a master and a student, it ends like this: "... And I also want to tell you a terrible secret, my boy. The fog does not fall on the ground to prevent your shot, the wind starts to blow not to take you away your arrow to the side, the hard bow was not created by the archer to make you aware of your weakness. All this exists by itself. It was you who decided that you could hit the target accurately under these conditions. Therefore, either stop complaining about the difficulties and start shooting, or pacify your pride and choose an easier target for yourself. A target at which you can shoot point-blank."

In learning English, it turned out like in a scary fairy tale: a lot of fog was thrown in, which scares away from starting to learn it. Various fantasies greatly slow down those who have already begun. There are three reasons for this:

1. Student inattention

What happens when you sit in class and instead of studying, write messages on social networks and hear only half of what the teacher said? Naturally, you remember no more than 10% of new information, and this gives rise to "dark spots" and serious gaps in your knowledge.

2. Disinterest of the teacher

Often a teacher is a hired worker, and it is important for him to just serve his hours and get paid for it. They are very cute, and the students love them, but what is the result? As a result, you have an understanding that in a year of study with such a “good” teacher you have hardly advanced in your knowledge of the English language, which means that English is very difficult!

3. Desire to get results right away

You are starting to learn the language using good, effective technologies and are already drawing pictures for yourself of how you easily chat in English. You start studying every day, but a lot of time passes - as many as 10 days - and you suddenly realize that you still can't speak English so easily and freely. This gives rise to frustration and fantasies about the titanic work that must be done to learn English.

To dispel the fog, here are 4 cool advantages of English over Russian that dispel all myths about the difficulty of learning it.

Benefit #1: There are no cases in English!

Just remember the Russian language: Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Instrumental, Prepositional. How many different endings do you need to know in order to speak Russian correctly! In English, this is not - you learned one word and that's it. An English noun can have an ending only when it is plural, and even then not always. There are a limited number of endings in English, and their application is very easy to understand.

This advantage alone covers a number of subtleties that at first, when learning English, seem difficult.

Benefit #2: English grammar is one of the best

I would even say one of the simplest grammars in the world. All situations that exist in life clearly fit into verbal formulas, and there are only 7 basic formulas.

"ABOUT! - you say. - Formulas! I don’t understand mathematics or physics from school.”

Do not worry: all formulas in English are approximately at the level of 3 + 4 and 7 + 8 in terms of complexity. If you got the answer 7 in the first example, and 15 in the second, then you will easily understand and master all the formulas of the English language.

Benefit #3: How many words have moved from Russian to English?

Matryoshka and vodka, and they are used extremely rarely. And hundreds of words came to the Russian language from English: lamp, class, car, situation, plan, engineer - the list is endless. It is said that we now actively use over 10,000 words borrowed from the English language over the past couple of centuries.

Thus, you already know a large number of English words. It remains to learn only the most necessary words and learn how to correctly use grammatical formulas in a conversation - and you will be happy that you were able to do it so quickly and easily.

Benefit #4: English is very easy

Words are formed in a banal way. Imagine that you come to the garden, see a berry, taste it and call it simply “black berry” (this is how the word blackberry [ˈblækbərɪ] is literally translated from English into Russian) - and for some reason we in Russian call it blackberry.

Or you come to visit a country house, and you are offered to sit not near the fireplace, but near the “fire place” - fireplace [ˈfaɪəpleɪs]. There are hundreds of such words - knowing this, you will easily understand English.

There's another cool thing about English that makes it quick and easy to learn, and that's the magic of conversion, the main hallmark of the English language. Do you want to know what it is and quickly learn how to speak English?

Come to me for a free online training "". In two hours of training, you will receive practical exercises, tips and tricks that have already helped hundreds of beginners to quickly speak English.

Learn English, because by learning we make the world a better place!

More than 100 years ago, the playwright Oscar Wilde, through the mouth of one of his heroes, said that in England and America "today everything is the same, except, of course, the language."

It turns out that, according to linguists, he was not far from the truth. Recently, however, the two languages have begun to converge. Languages change over time - some faster than others. Some languages reflect the changes taking place in the world around them, highlights a new study published by the Royal Society of London (Royal Society).

Universal and historical factors are influencing, and languages have been found to change at different rates. The authors of the study used the Goole Books Ngram corpus database to analyze the use of words and expressions over the past five centuries in eight languages. They analyzed 8 million books, which, according to Google's own data, is approximately 6% of all published books. Google also scanned these books, thus creating a corresponding database.

Linguists have always been aware of the differences in language changes, but this time the gigantic Google database was explored, which in its volume far exceeded all previous objects of research. The group of scientists participating in this work turned out to be international in composition, which, paradoxically, caused its own language problems.

The study's lead author was Søren Wichmann, a Dane at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Its co-authors were Valery Solovyov, a linguist at Kazan Federal University, located in the Republic of Tatarstan in Russia, and astrophysicist Vladimir Bochkarev, also from Kazan, whose interests include languages.

This study was carried out at the Kazan Linguistic Laboratory.

The work was complicated by the fact that Wichman does not speak Russian, and Bochkarev does not speak English. Wichman's wife sometimes acted as an interpreter. When it wasn't there, they used Google translator, which wasn't always helpful.

In this study, participants analyzed written languages that are more conservative in their forms and did not study spoken languages for which the necessary data had not yet been collected. They mainly paid attention to how often the words were used.

Each verbal form was considered a separate word; words such as “parking” (park) and “parked” (parked) were counted as two different words.

The process they used is called glottochronology by linguists. Language is shaped by culture “One word that used to be special can take on a broader meaning and replace another word that had an equally broader meaning,” Wichmann noted. Sometimes it's just a matter of fashion, sometimes external events have an influence.

So, for example, in early English, the word "hound" was used to refer to a dog (dog). Today the word "hound" denotes a special breed of dog.

The reverse process probably occurs with the word "vodka" (vodka), which sometimes replaces the word "liquor" (alcohol).

“Any important change in society is reflected in the frequency of the use of words,” Wichmann emphasized.

According to researchers, for the most part, languages change at the same rate, but this rate is usually measured in time terms such as half a century, unless something special happens, such as a war.

According to Wichman However, during the wars, language vocabulary changed faster as new words like “Nazis” were included, and people started thinking about things they hadn’t thought about before the outbreak of hostilities, Wichmann noted.

During the Victorian era, at the height of the British Empire and at a very stable time for Britain, the language remained fairly stable. With the advent of unrest and chaos in the 20th century, the change in the vocabulary of the language began to occur more rapidly. Since about 1850, British English and American English have been the same - except that the British version was about 20 years behind. New words entered the lexicon of American English, and in Britain they appeared only 20 years later.

Then, starting in 1950, under the influence of the media, these two languages began to converge. Today they are much more similar than before, Wichmann noted.

I have always been interested in the question of why some languages are more difficult for adults to learn than others?

According to the researchers, our languages contain what linguists call a "kernel lexicon", that is, a list of words that make up 75% of the written language. If you know these words, then you can understand most of the literature. These are also words that are less susceptible to change even if the language itself changes.

The basic lexicon of the English language includes less than 2400 words. If you know them, then you can read 75% of the text. The basic lexicon of the Russian language includes approximately 24,000 words. Although there are about 600,000 words in the English language, and Russian has only a sixth of this number, without knowing the 21,000 basic Russian words, texts written in Russian will be largely incomprehensible.

"Just because a particular word may be in active use in a given period doesn't mean it has to be new," said Brian Joseph, noted professor of linguistics at The Ohio State University in Columbus.

So, for example, at present, the word “cupcake” (capcake) has a similar trend in English. Sometimes words are combined, as happened with the word "labradoodles" (labradoodles). Definitions also change. Some words in Shakespeare's time meant one thing, but we use them to mean something else, said David Lightfoot, a professor at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. The word "scientist" is present in the modern lexicon, but until the 19th century, people in this profession were called natural philosophers."

photo: primuzee.ru

Sometimes vocabulary changes can tell us more than we think.

In recent years, the word "divorce" has become more common than the word "marry" (marry), Wichman noted. Here, perhaps even more tellingly, the word "information" (information) replaces the word "wisdom" (wisdom). Joel Shurkin is a freelance journalist based in Baltimore; he is the author of nine books on science and the history of science, and teaches journalism at Stanford University, the University of California, and the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

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Reading. Sometimes it becomes surprising why the Latin language has become dead, and not English. Whether business to read everyones de facto or memento mori. How it is written is how it is heard. The situation is quite different in English. For each vowel, there are about 7 reading rules and the same number of exceptions. What do you want? These are the islanders and their peculiarities of national reading. Even if four Englishmen are shown some new English word, each of them will read it in his own way. For in this language there are no rules for reading, only exceptions (as my student said).

This is how you learn, you learn i read in open syllable as [ah](for example, wife, like, price), and then you want to go skiing with an English friend in thin snow and invite him " Lec sky". Try to prove later that you don't need a balloon to fly through the sky. And all because ski is the exception that is read [ski]. As well as visa,give,minute (on this unfortunate word in general, as soon as the Russians with their associations do not refine themselves).

And at the same time (continuing the theme with the letter i) the word live can be read in two ways: [live], [live]. In the Russian understanding, this is beyond all understanding. However, the point is that Liv- it's just to live, but live- alive. That's it: just different parts of speech.

The tendency of the British to designate one sound with an insane number of letters is also their sweet national feature, which must be put up with. Indeed, why write f when to use ph. Now you can understand the Americans who turn night into nite and labor into labor.

Is it possible for mere mortals to learn all the rules? I can assure you that it is not available even for the British themselves. The only way out is to use transcription in the dictionary more often, communicate a lot in English and gradually accumulate baggage. One fine day you will notice that reading some words you already feel intuitively. If this happened - congratulations, the British are doing the same.

Verb tenses. The dream of English learners: the number of tenses of verbs is equal to the number of seasons. Basically, it is. If you multiply this number by 3. There are 12 basic tenses in English. And besides them, there are all sorts of mysterious Future-in-the-Past (the future is in the past). After such a joke by Zadornov about our untranslatable Russian turnover, “Old New Year” seems like baby talk. A little note: if you are a beginner, then for now, use the Scarlet O'Hara method: "I will not think about mysterious times now, I will think about tomorrow."

Strictly speaking, you probably believe that there are only three tenses in Russian, don't you? Was, is and will be - a total of three (past, present and future). Now think again and try to explain to the Englishman "went", "went" And " came". What is the difference? All three verbs are in the past tense. However, the first verb is the simple past, the second is the continuous past, and the third is the perfect past. Hooray! It's the same in English!

Compared to reading, there is some logic in the tenses of English verbs. Past (Past), present (Present) and future (Future) - three strong points, as in Russian. Each of these times can be simple (Simple), long (Continuous), perfect (Perfect) and perfect long (Perfect Continuous). You can determine which one to use using marker adverbs: for example, for Past Simple, such a signal beacon will be ago, last week; for Present Perfect - never, ever. And then - Murphy's textbook in your hands and go ahead to do the exercises. In addition, do not forget to learn how "Our Father" is a table of irregular verbs, and you will have complete verbal-temporal happiness.

Articles. Everything is fine here. Thanks to the British for not inventing feminine and masculine articles, as in some other languages. You just need to distinguish between the definite article and the indefinite.

To do this, it is useful to remember that the article "a" appeared from the numeral "one (one)". And the article "the" is a variation of "this" or that (that one). In general, digging into the past is very useful. Articles did not appear out of nothingness. It was just inconvenient to say one letter, one boy, etc. every time. In colloquial speech one" quickly shortened to " a". And so the article arose, disturbing the minds of poor English learners. Same with "the". In colloquial speech that And this gradually turned into a capacious the. Accordingly, every time you can replace the article with a numeral one- used A. When can you replace it with a demonstrative pronoun? that or this, used the.

Example: you are sitting in a restaurant and want to drink a glass of wine to recover from reading English words. You can gently hint to your date that you want to skip one glass of wine (I want a glass of wine). Or you can brazenly declare that you want exactly the glass of wine that he now holds in his hand (I want the glass of wine!). It all depends on your upbringing.

Irregular Verbs. Yes, in fact, it would be strange to expect that the British would make life easier for themselves by subordinating everything to certain rules. It's so interesting when the most commonly used English verbs do not have a simple -ed ending. It's easier to confuse a foreign guest. Let him try to guess what went- it's actually go in past tense and ate- This eat. Any student can remember the hated tables with irregular verbs. Alas, the only way out is to learn the list. In total - 270 verbs. Now there will be something to do at your leisure. One verb a day - a year has already passed.

Laziness. Get to know the main difficulty in learning English. In fact, there is nothing difficult, except for the peculiarities of reading, in English. Someone complains that, they say, there are too many pretexts. Yes? Read Shakespeare in your free time, underlining prepositions with a pencil. Then do the same with Pushkin's works. The next item will be the phrase you wrote down in your diary: “The day counted the number of prepositions in Shakespeare. For a week I counted the number of prepositions in Pushkin. I thought a lot. I decided to choose English as my native language.

In general, the English language, indeed, has a fairly harmonious grammatical system. Trying to find something complicated in it, the foreigners decided to focus on tenses and irregular verbs. In fact, there must be something to complain about.

I remember the same our partner from Great Britain. When I first spoke with him, at the end of the negotiations he gently asked: “Why so complicated?” My teacher would have heard how our British colleagues communicate. Yes, she would have put a deuce a long time ago. And they like it. For example, while you at the airport will display the phrase “Could you tell me please where the bus station is?” with horror in your eyes, the Englishman will have time to drink a cup of tea, check the clock with Big Ben and, having smoked a pipe, throw “there”. You will be treated with more sympathy if you simply say, “Bus? Where? Be sure: you will be escorted to the very stop.

Hence the moral: everything ingenious is simple. In this sense, English is ahead of many other European languages. Don't be lazy, chat, read, learn, sign up for English courses in the end - and you won't have to do haymaking.

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