the most difficult thing in English is...
what do you find the most difficult thing in the English language? what was difficult for you to learn, to understand or remember?
To understand! Its the biggest poblem for me!
But it depends on human,sure)
I must say everything was difficult. The hardest part for me (when I started learning the language) was Grammar (Tenses) and the amount of words that needed to be learnt. Boy! I think there are more words in English than in Russian. Then moving those new words from your passive vocabulary to your active vocabulary is another challenge which can only be solved by having lots of practice.
I have always liked English as far as I remember. I had ups and downs. The best way to progress at the beginning is memorising whole pages of different texts! By heart! Then let your mind do all the working for you in the future. Your brain will be capable of finding that right word at the right time during a conversation.
My advice to anyone studying English. Set up goals and take one day at a time. Baby steps. Short term goals. Long time rewards.
You're right, Svetlana, English has more words than any other language. Russian, I think, is second.
Although I'm a native speaker, I have difficulty 'un-learning' some of the nasty linguistical habits I picked up from my teenage years. E.g. I try and say 'fewer people' instead of 'less people', and put prepositions at the end of sentences less often.
It seems remarkably difficult for people to type three full stops when trailing off a sentence. If you wish to convey the concept... the concept of... I think you get the picture - you must only use three full stops. More is just rude, and less is just wrong.
Will Vernon,
And what sort of prepositions do you put at the end of sentences?
Sorta - Where are you at?
"Where are you at?" is American slang, and is 100% WRONG! I think it sounds absolutely atrocious, so please, don't use it! That said, people in Cornwall (small, Celtic region where I'm from) say "Where are you to?" / "Where's it to?" Rather hypocritically, I don't mind this!
Prepositions at the end of sentences - I'm referring, of course, to subordinate clauses:
I know the person you're talking about
...should be...
I know the person about whom you're talking
...or...
I don't have anything to work with
...should be...
I don't have anything with which to work
Please do not worry about me! I would not even dare to say "Where are you at?". I think this sort of language belongs to gangsters or young hooligans who wear hoodies. I belong to neither of the group. :-)
So, if I understand you properly it is not correct to say:
I don't have anything to work with
and I should say
I don't have anything with which to work
instead... It will be very difficult for me to "relearn" ))
Does it sound very much wrong when I use the first variant?
By the way, the most difficult for me is sequence of tenses when talking about something complicated.
Elena
'I don't have anything with which to work' is, grammatically, correct. But I think you'll find the majority of native speakers will say 'to work with'...I'm just trying to teach myself to speak 100% grammatically correctly, as I'm a real language geek!
And yes, tenses can be a real bitch. There's no real way of getting around it apart from studying and practising with native speakers...
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