How the fuck did so many of you manage to learn English through

>>69889097
lol

Arabics really easy m8. All you have to do is be born and raised in an Arabian nation

Because English is a really shitty language

>>69889264
this

>>69889264
why is it bad to be easy to learn but harder* to use at a higher level

(maybe not harder than every other language, but to be a perfect anglophone you do have to be comfortable with a bunch of silly rules and/or specific connotations)

>>69889390
dis nigga serious

>>69889429
tell me that it's a bad thing for a lingua franca language to be easy to learn and impossible to fuck up at a basic level

If it's any consolation OP I know absolutely nothing about Arabic grammer, nor English grammar, yet somehow the old noodle automatically generates coherent, properly structured sentences in either language.

This is because studying grammar never helped me, immersion and practice in both language environments did the trick.

>>69889475
lingua franca**

>>69889475
Nah, english is a fine lingua franca, really easy to learn.

But harder to use on a higher level than say, French? No.

>>69889595
i won't argue that i'm unfamiliar with high level french (only learned it so far in shitty american high school, now learning it in mediocre american university) but it's fairly easy to tell the difference between someone who has mastered english and someone who is just bretty good

>>69889647
I know. High level english is really easy to notice.

But it's still a really simple language, and you can only make it so complex.

>>69889475
Marked and unmarked features of language acquisition vary based on native language. Second language acquisition isn't as simple as anyone has suggested here. It just so happens that there are more unmarked features for most English learners.

I bet you don't have to learn arabic for any really pressing reason. I didn't either, wanted to learn it because of the exotic nature and it looks good on a transcript. When you have legitimate social motivations associated with language learning it can become easier. I encourage you to outline the most marked features of Arabic (VSO phrases, non existent phonemes, subject omission, etc) and to focus on those.

Arabic media is another beast though because there are many distinct dialects that aren't entirely mutually intelligible. Levantine arabic isn't the same as Egyptian, isn't the same as in Cairo, and certainly is very different from the 'standard' arabic you're probably learning.

>>69889750
yeah i agree

i think what i'm trying to argue (i'm really tired so i'm writing and thinking like a true american batriot) is that english has a lot of words, phrases, connotations, etc that aren't regularly used

i.e. there are 171,000 current words in oxford dictionary (not counting obsolete and/or derivative words) vs. 100,000 in le grand robert [according to google]

so in english you have a lot more choices and the word choice you use will depend greatly on your mastery of the english language, whereas in french it's much harder to follow perfect grammar (among other structural things i'm aware of)

>>69889862
i'm not OP

>>69889862
Meant to tag OP

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>>69889097
maybe learn a language with vowels in it

english is easy to learn because most other languages are alphabetical, not abjed (and the places that use idiograms (china+japan) have a second writing system they learn in school because of english anyways)

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>>69889097
immersion

>learn English through TV, movies, video games etc?

Very few, if any, most people had lessons, but used english media to practice. No one learns a language magically by watching tv.

>>69890350
> No one learns a language magically by watching tv.
That's where you're wrong kiddo
I could understand and speak english fairly well by the age of 12, got the writting part down via mmorpgs

>>69890100
The fuck is the difference betwee alphabets abjads etc?

>>69893688
Alphabet: letters representing both vowels and consonants.
Abjad: letters representing consonants only.
Abugida: letters represent consonants with a "default" vowel (usually /a/). Then you add more letters when the vowel is another than the default.
Syllabary: each letter represents a whole syllable.
Ideograms: each letter represents a full word, concept or idea.

Note Arabic is actually a "middle ground" between alphabet and abjad, since the long vowels are represented.

>>69889097
English is everywhere, Arabic isn't. You can't escape the former but you have to go out of your way to immerse yourself in the latter.

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>>69893688
>The fuck is the difference betwee alphabets abjads etc?
An abjad is a type of writing system where each symbol stands for a consonant, leaving the reader to supply the appropriate vowel.
also hebrew and arabic are the only abjads left

An abugida is a segmental writing system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as a unit: each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel notation is secondary. This contrasts with a full alphabet, in which vowels have status equal to consonants, and with an abjad, in which vowel marking is absent, partial, or optional.

funfact from the old movie "Stargate" where the main charicter says ancient egyptian is easy to speak once you learn the vowels, its a linguistical joke, since old egyptian is a abjad system, where there are no vowels (and its the reason its impossible to know what spoken egyptian sounded like)

>>69889097
why Arabic, just out of interest?

>>69893873
>>69893945
Very informative thank you for your time my dudes

>>69893984
You're welcome.

>>69893945
>where there are no vowels (and its the reason its impossible to know what spoken egyptian sounded like)
Not "impossible", just really hard. There are a bunch of loanwords and transcriptions in alphabets, you can draw comparisons with other Afro-Asiatic languages, and cull stupid hypotheses out based on Demotic.

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>>69889097
English is the current lingua franca.
Arabic, on the other hand, is a little-spoken Category V-difficulty language (i.e. you'll be spending years learning it)

>>69894720
sauce. Learning Thai casually. I want to see where it falls

>>69894775
http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty

Thai is Cat IV.

>>69889097
1. Most of people underestimate the time they learned the language before starting to understand native speakers.
2. It's much easier to learn the language as a kid or early teenager
3. English is much closer to vast majority of European languages

OP, you fell for the immersion meme. Nothing beats comprehensive input.

When foreigners say 'I learned English from runescape and movies' then they leave out the part where they had formal English lessons in schoo each week additionally.

8 to 10 hours a week is a great pace, OP, keep at it! Though, 3 months is just not a long time span when talking about learning foreign languages

>>69894775
Thai writing and their redudant letters are worse than English

>>69889097
arabic is diglossic. are you watching fusha or something? wtf lol

english is at least mutually intelligible everywhere

>>69895035
> When foreigners say 'I learned English from runescape and movies' then they leave out the part where they had formal English lessons in schoo each week additionally.
Tbh We only had english from the 9th grade up and by that time I was already speaking english 24/7 on the internet with my gaming clan mates

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>>69895035
If you think I cared enough to read the grammar section of my English book or paid attention to what my teacher said: You're dead wrong.
That said, I guess I also forget the fact that it probably took years to get fluent and that I was a teen when I became bilingual. So you've got a point there, Hans.

>>69894919
>2. It's much easier to learn the language as a kid or early teenager
Not necessarily... the main advantages are that you have more time to learn and you're usually more eager to try the new language (and less self-conscious about pronunciation).

On the other hand, as an adult, you can understand the grammar better. This is really useful, since you don't need to do so much trial-and-error anymore.

>>69895035
Maybe in Germany.
School lessons are often a bad joke and were doubly so in the 90s. I've had 3 years worth of German in school and all I can say is "Eins Zwei Polizei".
Thankfully now we have a mandatory foreign (read: English) language exam around the age of 15-16 so the teachers will actually have to do something. Other languages are still fucked though.

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>>69895035
>When foreigners say 'I learned English from runescape and movies' then they leave out the part where they had formal English lessons in schoo each week additionally.
if thats anything like our french and spanish lessons, we learned the same thing from kindergarden-8th grade
8 or 10 colors
how to count to 100 (well, how to count to ten, and the names for 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, ectera)
days of the week
hello, goodbye, and where is the bathroom

they dont even teach sentence structure until highschool, and in highschool you only take a foreign language class if you sign up for it (aka you have a reason to want to learn it (or youre an immigrants kid who wants a blowoff class that will be an easy A))

but then again its all useless because once you know english you can get to work studying the most important language of all

>>69889097
because english is easy, even more if you watch movies with subtitles, play educative games as a child, etc

>>69889097
its a fucking meme,everyone who actually knows the language took lessons

>>69889097

You have to push yourself through it, through sheer force of will.

To me, what helped the most was that local tv was garbage and that I used to think people in other countries would like me. Now that I fluently speak English, Russian, German, French, Portuguese and Japanese I know for a fact that nobody does.

>>69895234 I agree.

>>69889097
English are for low level mass consumers, so it's easy to learn.

Tô put it simple:

>middle school english
>games
>more games
>High School english
>songs
>words that are similar (car, carro, bola, Ball, anything that ends with TION u just change it to ÇÃO)

Easy as fuck.

>>69889097
>How the fuck did so many of you manage to learn English through TV, movies, video games etc?

cuz there neets that stayed home watching american movies and shows and playing english vidya for literally 8+ hours a day. if you fucking watched chinese shows for 8 hours a day you would learn chinese

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You are aware of the dialect situation right? Hopefully you are not studying MSA and then trying to understand movies in say Egyptian?

Do any of you cunts just type in English online but not use it anywhere else? I know some Finn autists who know English but refuse to speak it over a mic

>>69889097
>for 3 months now
Could be your problem. Also, I'm pretty sure you can't be as immersed into Arabic culture as we are into American culture.
Also do you guys mind sharing your ressources to learn Arabic?

>>69890350
I did by playing games

>>69898136
i watch memri a lot to help learn it
tons of fun

>>69893982
He's getting ready for bresident muhhamad in 2020

>>69898011
>Do any of you cunts just type in English online but not use it anywhere else?
outside of 4chan/occasional tourist asking for directions? no, why should I?

>>69889390
English has fewer strict grammar rules
There is definitely a difference between people who have mastered English and those who haven't, but the real noticeable difference is between native speakers that develop their skills among other native speakers and ESL speakers.

There are certain rules and vernaculars that aren't documented and aren't easily teachable that make this difference noticeable.

>>69896716
>I fluently speak Russian

лмao шoтo нe вepю

>>69899416
That's memo-ukrainian dialect tho.

>>69889097
Of course it doesn't make sense. You're learning formal Arabic, but you're watching TV shows that speak in region-specific dialects.

>>69898761
I don't know, I think when we're talking levels that high, it completely depends on the individual. Take Nabokov or Joseph Conrad, for example: both wrote more articulately and with a better grip of nuance and shades of meaning than most actual natives.

>>69890100
Modern persian isnt actually abjad at all. Not anymore.

>>69899483
Those that study the language and can manipulate syntax and diction and all to craft a very precise thought is truly impressive. But I imagine that's true for any language.

Those were just observations as a native speaker. And again it's probably true for any language.

In some ways you could argue that English is harder to master because it's easy communicate the gist and lose the nuances even if the words spoken literally mean something different. Though I don't know very much about other languages.