English - Easy to Learn, Hard to Master!

My old Canadian buddy, Dr. Richard Tam, sent me this in a recent email. I guess, like playing the piano, English is one language that is easy to learn but difficult to master. I would like to remind readers that I am not a linguist. Being able to speak a few languges does not make me a linguist, because I have never studied linguistics at all. However, I like to analyse the different languages, eg. French, Tamil, Hindhi, Korean, Malay and Japanese in my own funny way to help me remember and understand the languages.

English is like a sponge, absorbing words from other languages. This is probably why Singlish gradually comes about. The problem with English is that many of the rules are made, only to be broken. I guess it is this uniqueness that makes the language so challenging and interesting. Read on....



"Is English an easy or difficult language to learn? Well, one thing is
certain.
You can never know how a word is pronounced by looking at how it is
spelled.

Here is a poem for your amusement:

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through,
Well done! and now you wish perhaps
To learn of less familiar traps?

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead: it's said like bed not bead,
And only Scotsmen call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat.
They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.

A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there's dose and rose and lose,
Just look them up; and goose and choose.

And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go, and thwart and cart.
Come, come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I'd mastered it when I was five!