I don't know John McWhorter, but is this the "second languages are hard" argument? I tend to get annoyed when people compare the relative difficulty of learning a language they spoke 1636518 hours vs ... 18 hours.
McWhorter is a linguist (as well as a political commentator). His argument isn't that English is easier because people already speak it natively. Instead, English lost a lot of its complexity (especially around suffixes) during the Viking invasions when it was taken up by adult speakers.
This doesn't mean that learning the language is easy--no language really is. And English has some things that make it harder to master, especially its very large vocabulary.
English's large vocabulary actually makes it easier as a second language.
Adults are really good at learning new words, but struggle with morphological and gender systems. Complex morphology seems to have some benefits that push languages towards including them, but are only sustainable when those languages are predominantly learned by children, who can pick up morphological complexity easily, not adults, who can't.
From a Slavic perspective, the really complex thing about English grammar is the sequence of tenses.
Having spoken English for almost 30 years by now, I am still not sure if "X has died" or "X died" is correct, or in which context.
But the other direction would be worse. Languages like Czech, with its 20+ classes of declension, must be a true nightmare for any English native speaker to learn.
> Having spoken English for almost 30 years by now, I am still not sure if "X has died" or "X died" is correct, or in which context.
Okay, strictly speaking, this is a distinction in aspect, not tense. But colloquially, tense, aspect, and mood are all referred to as "tense", especially since the conflation is present in most Indo-European conjugation patterns.
"X has died" is the present perfect. The perfect aspect is kind of like the past tense in that it is referring to something that has happened. Indeed, the past perfect ("X had died") is usually described as "the past of the past". But in keeping the tense in the present, the present perfect means that the past occurrence has relevance to the present. This can carry a few connotations. It can be a recent past, especially if you use "just" as an infix (c.f., "X has just died"). Or it can highlight the consequences of the event having occurred (e.g., "Our lord has died. What will become of us now?"). In any case, the speaker is drawing the listener's attention to the connection between past and present when they use the perfect aspect.
So which is correct? "X died" you would expect to find more in a biographical context or maybe a novel. "X has died" would be common in a news report, or someone informing you that a loved one died not too long ago. Which is more correct in a given scenario can usually be informed by the dominant tense in surrounding text; after all "X has died" is the present tense, despite conveying an action that happened in the past. If there's not enough text to dictate a tense, then it's often the case that either form will end up being acceptable--it just sets the tense that will be used.
A good guideline I've heard is that you say "X has died/eaten/gone" but "X died/ate/went this morning." So simple past if there is a specific time attached and present perfect if it's a general statement. More examples:
"Have you [ever] been to New York?"
"Did you go to New York last week?"
"Have you seen Star Wars?"
"Did you see Star Wars this afternoon?"
Might not work in every circumstance but a good rule of thumb.
The fact that I have to learn each word twice (how to write it and how to say it) - is.
I was learning German for 3 years at school. After the first month I had no problems with pronunciation. Now after almost 2 decades of not using it I can still pronounce any German word I see.
I've been learning English since I was 10 or so. I'm 36 now. I still have many English words I know (and use correctly in writing) that I'm not sure how to pronounce.
> I still have many English words I know (and use correctly in writing) that I'm not sure how to pronounce.
Do you mind sharing some examples? As a native English speaker, I'm so curious! Do you think that if you heard them without seeing the word you'd realize what the written form was? Or might there be words where you know the written form and the spoken form and don't realize it's the same word?
"Vocabulary" is one. I just checked it and I almost guessed right. I thought the u was more of an oo and the second a was ah not eh.
Parallel - for some reason the second a is eh not ah. Can't remember that, have to check it every time.
I play a lot of D&D over the internet in English and even as common word as "sword" is for some reason hard to remember. Every time I have to guess if the "w" is pronounced or not.
been == bin ? - the rules for that are just evil
> Do you think that if you heard them without seeing the word you'd realize what the written form was?
Sure, from the context if not instantly. I listen to a lot of English media with different accents (I watched the whole Big Bang and IT Crowd and I listen to Critical Role when I'm commuting).
> might there be words where you know the written form and the spoken form and don't realize it's the same word?
Leicester and queue. But these are famous enough that I remember them now. I obviously won't be able to give you examples that I still haven't realized ;)
> been == bin ? - the rules for that are just evil
Actually, the rules are rather simple. They all have to do with unstressed syllables in English: unstressed vowels are reduced to /ə/ or /ɪ/ (the latter is what comes to play in your been -> bin use). Stress rules in English are not simple compared to other languages, and I can definitely see where non-native speakers might get confused.
One downside of the schwa reduction rules is that it can trip you up when you realize that you need to spell a word with a reduced vowel and you're not sure how it's actually written, because every vowel can be reduced to /ə/.
Dr. Seuss has a lesser-known book called The Tough Coughs as He Ploughs the Dough (based on the observation that none of these -ough words rhyme -- the /tʌf/ /kɔfs/ as he /plaʊz/ the /doʊ/). (And yes, that's not even all of the sounds that are spelled by -ough, like /-u/ in "through".)
In Polish the mapping letters->sounds is pretty simple, and nobody asks kids to pronounce a word (because anybody can do it after learning the general rules for a few weeks).
But the mapping sounds->letters isn't as obvious, because there's some tech debt there (ch == h, ó == u, rz == ż or sz depending on the preceding letter).
So if you know how the word sounds you're not always sure how it's spelled, but if you know how it's spelled you always know how it sounds.
So, the good news is that lots of native English speakers don't know how to pronounce things either. Of course I know how to say all the words I speak frequently and hear others using - but if I use a word I haven't heard there's a risk I'll say it wrong. You just learn not to worry about it (the biggest problem really is when you unconsciously try to correct somebody else and realise you've got not basis for your assumed pronunciation).
For example I'd seen adenovirus written down, but never heard it said out loud, I was describing the vaccine I'd had to friends, one of whom works in medicine (a doctor, but not of medicine) and she corrected my pronunciation because she's used that word plenty of times so she (presumably) knows how to say it correctly.
Even for a completely native immersed speaker, there's just no clue in English how to correctly say a completely new word you've only seen written down, so you're at no disadvantage there. For "real" words there may be an etymological clue, but those aren't reliable. In fiction it's anything goes. Hearing fictional words I've read pronounced out loud in movies is as weird for me as seeing the (inevitable) transformation of a woman described as plain in the books into a beautiful Holywood actress...
It's obviously a bigger problem with some common English words - either where they are actually two separate words with different pronunciations but the same spelling, or worse, one word but with different stress patterns. But once you've got a fair-sized vocab the new words you're learning won't have that sort of weirdness.
It's definitely true that if you're not confident pronunciation can really be an obstacle, fortunately the huge vocab helps again - a (non-English native but UK citizen) friend of mine will carefully choose to talk about liking the "seaside" never the "beach" because she's concerned she'll manage to make people think she said "bitch". She has a few other words like that, in each case English provides convenient alternatives.
> never the "beach" because she's concerned she'll manage to make people think she said "bitch".
Is her native language Spanish?
It's really cool how you can have "blind spots" depending on your native language. To me, the difference between beach and bitch is huge, because my native language uses short and long vowels extensively, and there are tons of words that only differ in a single vowel length.
But at the same time, I have other blind spots in English. For example, I have to make an effort to remember to use sounding "s" and "j" where appropriate, and the lack of those is a dead give-away for identifying Swedish English speakers.
She could also be French, or a speaker of any other romance language, or really any language that doesn't have the vowel [ɪ]. For speakers of such languages, "beach" and "bitch," as well as "sheet" and "shit," can be very hard to distinguish from one another.
Yeah it's amazing how bad people are at this without practice (including myself). Reading complicated / unfamiliar words aloud is a key skill in reading quizbowl questions (a type of trivia). Often these questions will have pronunciation guides to help but even then it can be a slog for some people. I've actually found TTS better than all but the most experienced readers for this task.
I don't know why but a lot of people my age do worry about it and get very uncomfortable guessing at a pronunciation of a new word. Doubly so for names. I guess it's an insecurity thing? I have no problem just going for it, with a little question tagged on or just an upward tone if I'm really unsure.
