Quote:
Originally Posted by crich70
They say that English is the hardest language to learn because we have borrowed so many words from other languages.
|
We've been a host family for foreign language students for some years now. It varies from student to student, and also depends on their native language, but I've found the two things that are most troublesome are
1) The definite and indefinite article. Knowing that one often needs to use 'a' or 'the' and then understanding which of them is needed is very difficult for many of our students.
2) The numerous past, present and future tenses used in English, especially the conditionals.
And then there's non-language, cultural things. Of which the big one is 'please' and 'thank you'. My wife often says to them, that in polite English there are only two answers to a question: "Yes, please" or "No, thank you".
