Why do so many english native speakers claim that english is the hardest language to learn?

Ummm...English has 26 letters...not 24..

I agree with you; I think it's absurd for native English speakers to think or say that English is more complicated than another language. Every language is complex. Furthermore, spelling is not language; it's just a written approximation of language. My gut feeling is that English speakers want to believe their language is somehow more "difficult" than others so that they can feel superior, and I expect most people to disagree with me. My native language is English.

I would agree that the claims are wildly exaggerated, though I would question some of your arguments. Gender tends only to be an issue when starting from a language that lacks them, as it seems to be conceptually bizarre. At the same time, it's wrong to say all nouns have the same gender. Instead, gender is generally neuter, while anything with an inherent gender is granted one (you would never refer to a goddess as it, for example, but always she), even if that is only because of a specific context (such as when dealing with pets). Then there are the cultural references to gender, such as ships being female (albeit in certain contexts). I also don't see how you can claim German is more complicated grammatically that English. The only points of note really are verbs with transitive ideas acting intransitively, and so taking indirect objects (helfen, zB). Similarly, if you can learn the varied pronunciations of ough, I can't see how beginning nouns with a capital is in any way difficult; if anything, it makes it easier - spielen (infinitive) is clearly different from Spielen (gerund), while playing could be the gerund or an adjective. This is not necessarily a difficult thing to learn, but it might add complications for some people. Conversely, with the same pair of morphological tenses (present and past), English forms a much wider range of syntactical ones with more specific meanings, the misuse of which (while rarely causing actual misunderstanding) sounds clumsy in the extreme (the number of times I've heard Germans in particular using the perfect continuous instead of a simple perfect is considerable). If you're going to include vowels with umlauts as separate letters, then why not all accents? In that case, English can have all vowels with diaereses (written like umlauts), while e with both acute and grave accents are also found; all are increasingly rare, but not unheard of, giving you at least 33 letters by you're own definition. I will repeat that I don't disagree with you; English grammar can be recreated without really knowing what's going on, and any problems of accent and spelling are found in every language the world over. What I do disagree with is poorly thought out and at times contradictory invective about something that frankly doesn't matter. Yes, in giving this answer I am being highly hypocritical, but such is my wont.

It's because they can't get to grips with it themselves. How many times a day do we see English speakers here on Y!A fail to tell the difference between simple words in their own language? Words like: lose and loose than and then does and dose its and it's your and you're there and their no and know to and too They are just making excuses.... and they get stroppy if you correct them.

Hello, Simply because far more often than not, these people who claim this have really never studied another language. Me wish talk you hospital where? Still understood. You can't do that in other languages. Cheers, Michael Kelly

So you asked a question and answered it. Why are you here? EDIT: LOL @ 24 Letters. Can't Rant right.

I agree completely! and it's so funny because it's almost exclusively native speakers who claim that, and I mean what do they even know about learning the language? english is my second language, and I find it so much easier than spanish, which I'm studying as well. in spanish you have all these verb conjugations and different tenses, which english lacks to a very high degree. I guess it's some monolinguals' way of justifying knowing only one language, sorta like "oh yeah I only know one, but at least it's the hardest language to learn!". having said this, I've seen this tendency among native speakers of other languages as well. I'm swedish, and from time to time I come across swedes who claim that the swedish language is the hardest to learn. swedish is not hard to learn either, but I would say probably harder than english.

English is a very easy language to "pick up" and speak badly. It is a very difficult language to master. This is why, say a Frenchman can learn to speak English in a year. The problem is that 30 years later he still sounds like a beginner. Keelie: You claim to speak 5 languages. Yet all your questions are in English. Why no questions in French or any other language that you are "fluent" in? BTW, English has 26 letters in its alphabet - not 24.

Okay well I feel kind of offended being called a moron... I am a first language English speaker. Yes I am one of the believers of English being one of the hardest, if not THE hardest to learn. But I am taking Spanish right now to be fair there... But let me explain some. 1.) These are people's opinions I believe. Just like it is your opinion. Also doesn't everybody learn differently? 2.) Well English is a very complicated language if you are learning it (NOT as your first). A few examples: 1.)Homophones: Through, threw To, too, two Etc. 2.) Our punctuation. 3.) Irregular verbs Those were just a few It's just a complicated language... Sorry