Why English Isn’t So Hard
People sometimes ask me “Why is English so hard to learn?”
In this podcast episode, I give 7 reasons as to why English isn’t so hard. It could be much worse!
I should point out that if you are struggling with English, that’s completely normal! Don’t feel discouraged. My aim today isn’t to make you feel bad about your situation, but to encourage you to think positively about learning English.
Reasons
No Genders 🚻
Unlike many European languages, nouns don’t have genders. You don’t have to worry about saying “El” or “La” — all nouns use the same “the”.
Example: The cat, the dog, the table — all use “the”.
Little Conjugation 🔤
There isn’t much conjugation. “I went”, “she went”, “they went” — “went” always stays the same!
Example: He went home. We went shopping. They went early.
Tenses Don’t Matter (Much) ⏳
Some advanced tenses, such as past perfect or future perfect, aren’t used often — many learners don’t use them and still communicate fine.
Even without using tenses at all, people can still understand you!
Same Nouns and Verbs 🧩
Many English nouns and verbs are the same — sometimes with a small pronunciation difference.
He has produce. He produced that item.
He has a bike. He biked to work.
I have flags behind me. I flagged down the taxi.
Tiny Alphabet 🔠
English has only 26 letters and 44 sounds — much simpler than languages like Chinese, which have thousands of characters!
Example: You can learn the entire alphabet in just a few minutes.
Cognates 🌍
Cognates are words in different languages that share the same origin — and English has many of them!
Example: “Family” (English), “Familia” (Spanish), “Famille” (French).
Popular and Free 💻
English is one of the most popular languages in the world — there’s an almost infinite amount of free content online to learn from.
Example: Podcasts, videos, and courses (like this one!) are all easily available.
⭐️ Transcript
What do you think is the easiest thing about English?
Comment your thoughts below.
Comparing English to Arabic, English is easy. In Arabic every thing have gender even the furniture, so you should determine the gender of the sofa before you saying ” that sofa”
Gender is so confusing! I suppose that’s one reason why Arabic is one of the hardest languages to learn