English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

Growing up, speaking US English natively, I never realized how messed up English is. Then I learned Spanish (and lived in a Spanish speaking country for 2 years). Wow. Now that is a sane language. Once you learn the alphabet and a few pronunciation rules you can read anything in Spanish correctly. Try doing that with English. Ha!

This has become even more reinforced as I've helped my children learn how to read English. Trying to explain to a child why a certain word is pronounced the way it is, even though it looks nothing like how we are pronouncing it, usually falls back to "that's just the way it is" unless I want to try explaining to them the niceties of Old French/Latin, Old English, Old Germanic, the great vowel shift, etc. Eh, that's just the way it's pronounced.

There are so many people who already speak Spanish and it is such a nice sane language that I think it is a real shame that it did not become the universal language.

Contrarian perspective here:

English is not my first language, but I have come to deeply appreciate the idea of a common language that people share so that we can all work together regardless of where in the world we are.

Knowing more than one language adds lots of value, because each language offers different modes of thinking and conception. But also having one common language adds an insane amount of value, because now you can both win by having the capability to exchange ideas with people that otherwise might not happen and the opportunity cost is unpredictable.

(Example - German and Japanese teams use a universal language as a common language to work together on a groundbreaking energy project. That collaboration might not have otherwise happened due to language barriers. But if both parties learn a "Universal language" as a collaborative base, we can all gain advantage from that product of that win-win scenario. )

As an Italian programmer working and living in the UK for the last 10 and counting years, I can feel the pain.

I'm at the point that I can have a technical conversation with all my colleagues without issues, but when moving to more mundane subjects, I have difficulties following the conversation. As many, I have learned most of my English vocabulary by reading (I'm at the point that I can read a book written in English as well as an Italian book, and I vastly prefer to read in the original language when I can), but that means that I do not know the pronunciation of most of the words.

Also when going out of London (where 50% of the population is not native and the natives, especially in professional environments, are used to deal with us non natives), I really have an hard time understanding the various accents.

Funny thing: In my experience people with English as a foreign language all have a pretty much a common subset, the operational part of the English language. We non-natives also have an instinctual understanding which words and structures are more "advanced" and we can tone our language down to simpler structures when we feel that the audience needs it.

In effect, non-natives are good at communicating in English with other non-natives.

Whereas native English speakers occasionally mix in "difficult" words and grammar, thus making themselves less understood in the company of non-natives. Additionally, while most American accents are easy, many British accents range difficult to really difficult to understand, even for someone who's spent decades in international teams speaking English, but mostly with non-British.

I remember one workshop, listening to talks by Chinese, Finnish, German, Indian, Russian, Swedish etc. speakers. The one native British presenter was the only one with whose talk I really had to concentrate, and maybe I missed some of the details.

This can put native speakers (especially those with difficult British accents) to a disadvantage in international teams. People will not understand everything they say, but will probably be too shy to ask for clarification.

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20161028-native-english...

https://www.ft.com/content/26692848-f59b-11e5-96db-fc683b5e5...

I'm relatively comfortable with the English language but I absolutely loathe having to use it every single day. Whether it's the bland style found in newspapers, the opaque style found in scientific articles, the fake let's-pretend-we're-best-friends used by some technologists and younger journalists, or the long-winded and contrived style used by most of HN and reddit and technical blogs in general, all of it turns me off. (No offense, folks, I'm sure I'm no Joyce either.)

I guess it wouldn't annoy me so much if my job and social circles (many of them involving foreigners who don't speak my native language) didn't require me to consume so much of it. There's so much subtlety, nuance and "color" that's lost in a conversation where both participants aren't speaking in their native language. Even if both are relatively good at it.

Then there's the issue of native English speakers who seem to be only very dimly aware that other languages exist and think that everyone speaking their language fluently is a given. (This shapes a lot of current politics, such as language policing or the whole 'pronouns' issue - I'm mentioning it because antirez was the center of a controversy for not changing terminology that's loaded for Americans only). And many native speakers think the less of people who struggle with English, even unconsciously.

Even as a native speaker English spelling is hard. I was working on reading with my son last night and hit the word "love". Pause, and think about that word and its pronunciation. Well, he starts la-a-v-eh, and I correct him "the e at the end isn't pronounced", and later we get to 'make', ma-ah-k, Mac!, And I tell him, "no, this word has a long a, Ā, eh, because...of the e at the end" -_-, "but only sometimes."

Then we hit 'night'. Ni-eye-ga..."no, no", I say, "gh" in the middle of a word isn't pronounced. Luckily the book didn't have "though" and "thought" in it.

English pronunciation and spelling are basically no more related than second cousins at this point. I can't imagine having to learn to pronounce it simply by reading it.

That's only the German bit of the language, the French bit is subtly different, and then the Greek bits work just a little bit differently as well.

Then there are native American loan words, usually as place names, that weren't regularized (or maybe they were but aren't anymore?). Is there another word with a gh pronounced like the first pair in Youghiogheny (j ɒ k ə ˈ ɡ eɪ n i)(yock-a-gain-y)? I think it's probably via Scottish? But I'm not sure.

I had problems visualising things, when reading it in English. Many years ago, when I started working on enterprise applications, I would come across terms like "Provider" which I would read about and then forget. I guess I could not make simple connection between the technical term "Provider" and the real word abstract noun. This made understanding simple design patterns or abstractions harder. A lot of times when you know the literal meaning of a technical word and can visualize it in your head, understanding the related concept becomes a lot easier.

In college, some friends and I learned a little bit of Esperanto just for the sake of it. It was amazing how fast we learned it and were able to have simple conversations.

However, it’s a mainstream idea that artificial languages are always going to fail because geographically separated people will create dialects and “ruin” the language. It’s a bummer, because Esperanto is really useful (and there might be other artificial languages even better!).

> NEVER learn a new word without learning what is its sound.

Would that I had learned this earlier. Native english speaker, but I grew up reading voraciously from quite a young age. This meant that though I got a big vocabulary and context as to the appropriate uses of a word, I would have difficulty pronouncing them and often come up with something completely wrong. I'd go and look words up in the dictionary, as taught by my parents. Unfortunately, I was not aware of the meaning of the IPA symbols, let alone how to decipher them; they looked to me as foreign script might to another. It was rather amusing for friends and family, but rather humiliating for me.

I speak/write ~english, ~italian and spanish, and if I have to arrange them by 'coherence' it would be english-spanish-italian.

>> Italian is phonetically one of the simplest languages on the earth

The fundamental importance of the double-consonant and its pronunciation is very difficult for non-italians. Same goes for V and B sound differences.

I agree that English for an Italian is a nightmare. Did you know that Italians can't pronounce the english 'H'? Like in 'hate' they will pronounce 'ate'? That's for starters. You can guess some text was written by an italian if you find something like "that task is an hassle".

Spanish is as difficult as Italian, but it has more rules that are useful when reading/writing (Italians: if I don't know how Modena and Milano are pronounced, where do I put the accent?), but spanish has also a lot of exceptions that are difficult to learn and remember.

English is perfect for tech stuff. Short, concise and clear.

I picked up a hobby about a year ago that has distinct regional differences around the world with people in different regions doing things quite differently and communicating almost exclusively in their own languages.

There's enough commonality that you can follow things, but it's pretty hard to understand the specifics if you don't speak the same language.

I've been using Google Translate to bridge the gap and while the translations miss all kinds of things, it's close enough that I can understand the important things and am able to even participate, though not at the level I can in English.

There are people saying that there are essentially multiple Internets, split by language barriers. I wasn't quite sure what to make of that argument, other than it kinda made sense to me, but my personal experience through my hobby definitely made me realize it's most definitely true.

I don't think it is only English, I find this happens with native speakers of other languages as well. They fail to accommodate their language to fit the people listening to them.

I always wonder what it is that prevents people from switching to a more standard version of the language, is it not obvious the message is getting lost? is it some sort of pride in the accent? lack exposure to foreigners?. I've experienced this many times in Spanish, English and German.

One of the best things I did that boosted my English level was playing WOW at a young age.

I though English was difficult until I had to learn German

Knowing a language is not just being able to read/write but to be able to talk. It's a completely different level: you pass from 'turn based' to 'real time'. To learn languages nothing beats immersion and is even more difficult when you lean toward introvertion. You don't need perfect grammar but you do need to be able to "tame" the language.

I have gained some fluency in three foreign languages and I can now say I'm not surprised by the long tail anymore. Gendered nouns or inconsistent prepositions are only the start of it. If you get angry at arcane pronounciation rules, what are you going to make of the huge body of phrases found in every language? Learning any language well takes a lot of effort. And initial tribulations like pronounciation don't affect the overall effort much.

The international version of English is shaping up even without a governing body. And I do expect children in traditionally English-speaking countries having to take classes in it to make themselves understood. It would be nice if some warts could be removed in the process. But no authority with enough pull exists. We'd need a WEO setting standards and nobody wants that badly enough.

One advantage that English certainly has is a very rigid, predictable sentence structure. I come from Russian - a language where words can be rearranged in many possible orders while being not only grammatically correct but also stylistically valid (also with slightly different accents and meaning). The fact that putting words in different order is just a mistake (and not originality) was completely alien to me, but now I enjoy it a lot, because it makes the language so much easier.

And prononcuation of English is, of course, a special hell - but one that you very quickly get over with, once you start systematically watch movies and tv series with subtitles instead of dubs. And what other language has as much movies, tv series, music and videogames other than English, through the whole 20th century and up to this point?

I'm someone who's experienced the reverse issue--I'm a native English speaker who's moved to a non-English speaking country. Interestingly, in the tech scene here anything written is still done in English, to the point where people will give lectures in the local language using English slides.

I'd echo a lot of the sentiment antirez has; it's harder for me to be my extroverted self here, and reading complicated documents is hard enough that I often ask someone else to translate them to English. But I expect those issues to go away after a while of living here.

I think that the key to solving these language problems is exposure. Many Scandinavians that I've met attribute their countries' strong grasp of English to not having dubbed movies--they have to watch it in English with subtitles.

“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary.”

— James Nicoll

> The fact that people from different English speaking countries have issues communicating is already a big hint about how odd is English phonetically.

Is this a fact? I wasn't under the impression that there is a general problem of communication among UK/US/Canada/Australia people. Maybe with some of the more extreme Scottish accents? Or former African colonies with very thick accents?

In any case, the comparison with Italian is moot if the issue is with foreigners learning the language. It's great if all Italians understand each other's accents, but this doesn't say anything about whether learners of "school Italian" understand Sicilians. Or whether foreign learners of the "school dialect" of German would understand my Eastern Austrian.

I spent four years in Italy and during my time there I found that I could speak very simple, yet passable Italian just by substituting English words for Italian ones - from an eastern-European perspective up to a certain level the grammar was pretty much the same.

Which makes it all the more surprising that Italians in general were hesitant to speak English, with the notable exception of my 74 year old neighbour, who picked up some phrases specifically to communicate with me.

Some of my friends back in Poland often express frustration with the fact that they had to learn English, since they don't see it as something strictly related to their work.

Native greek speaker. Learned english before becoming an adult, as most people do here, because the greek language is mostly useless if you are doing business with foreign parties (e.g. tourism or multinational companies). Learned italian as an adult. I agree with antirez that pronunciation isn't difficult, but there are some challenges to a non-native speaker.

The writer ends with

>My long term hope is that soon or later different accents could converge into a standard easy-to-understand one that the English speaking population could use as a lingua franca.

I suspect the opposite has happened and will happen.

When populations become fluent in English they decide that their accent is a valid way of speaking English, so stay hard to understand to other populations.

A thread from 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10641246

Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6314628