Welcome back to the Learn English Podcast, the podcast teaching English in context so you can learn naturally.
On today's episode, I want to focus on the aspects of the English language that actually makes it easy to understand.
Now you might be thinking easy to understand, there is no way English is so difficult.
And I know there are aspects of the English language like those infamous phrasal verbs that make it really hard to learn as a second language.
However, there are also a lot of aspects of English that make it easy, a lot easier to learn than other languages, for example.
If you have been studying for a while, you might feel like you're losing your motivation.
You might feel like you're not getting anywhere.
And I want to help with this motivation.
I want to celebrate these parts of English that make it easy for a learner and to help give you a little boost of motivation to keep going on your English journey.
So on today's episode, I'm going to discuss a list of reasons why English is easy compared to other languages.
And with that, let's begin.
Now before we start, I want to remind you that in the description of this episode, you can find the vocabulary list of the words and phrases that I use.
That way you can incorporate them into your learning system and start using them in conversations yourself.
Reminder to use all of the resources that you have so that way you can improve your vocabulary and your fluency and your overall English abilities.
The first reason that English is easier compared to other languages is the nouns.
Now in other languages, nouns can have gender.
I will tell you as someone who has been learning Spanish as a native English speaker, this is still a little bit confusing to me.
I don't understand why nouns have gender.
But if you speak a language where that is the case, where nouns have gender, when you are learning English, you don't have to worry about that.
You do not have to worry about the different gender for every noun because that doesn't exist.
Nouns are just nouns, they don't have any gender, and you don't have to change articles based on the gender that they are like you do in other languages.
You also don't have to conjugate the nouns which we would call declensions.
There are no declension tables in English.
Again, if you are a speaker of a language that has that, you know that the nouns can change depending on if it's a subject of a sentence, if it's an object of a sentence, what the context is, and the noun can change depending on all of those different variables.
In English, the nouns don't change.
It does not matter if a noun is a subject, an object, or what's going on in the sentence structure.
The noun just stays whatever the name is.
That makes it a lot simpler because you don't have to learn all of those different declension tables.
No gender, no declension.
The nouns are very straightforward in English and that makes it a lot easier to learn.
The second reason that English is easy is because of the articles.
This is related to nouns not having gender.
Because our nouns do not have gender, we do not need to change the articles based on the gender.
There are just three articles in English.
The, if you're talking about a specific thing, such as the book, A, if you're talking just in general about nouns, such as a book, and N, which is A with an N after it, depending on what the first sound in your noun is.
Unlike in some languages where you have to change the article based on gender because nouns are gendered, that doesn't exist in English.
For example, in Spanish you have, el en la as your articles, depending on what the word is, what your noun is.
In English, that doesn't exist because our nouns again aren't gendered.
You also do not need to change the article depending on if the word is singular or plural.
For example, we can say the books, the lamp, the lamps.
The still stays as the article.
It does not matter if we have a book, a single book, if we have multiple books, if we have a single lamp, if we have multiple lamps.
We can still use the same article, and we do not need to change it.
That makes it a little bit easier when you are speaking because you don't have to think ahead of time if what you are saying is singular or plural.
Again, if you come from a language where that exists, you know that your articles changed depending on how many things you have.
The third reason why English is easy to learn is because the adjectives do not change.
Adjectives do not change depending on gender of the person or thing that you are describing, and they do not change whether the thing is singular or plural.
You just have to know one adjective, and you can use it in a number of circumstances.
For example, if I want to say that a dog is smart, it doesn't matter if it's a male or female because I just use the same word, smart.
If I'm talking about a person, again, it doesn't matter if they're male or female.
The same word, smart.
If I talk about a group of students, it doesn't matter that I'm talking about one student or a group.
Again, I would just say the students are smart.
The dog is smart. The dogs are smart.
The people are smart.
The person is smart.
It's still the same word.
I do not need to change it, depending on what I'm describing.
You also do not need to change job titles or some type of description for a job depending on what gender the person is.
Again, I know I'm sorry that I keep relating this to Spanish, but it's the only other language that I know, so I have that as my only reference.
When you're talking about Spanish and you are seeing a medical professional, you would say doctor or doctora, depending if the person is male or female.
In English, that doesn't matter.
You just say doctor.
You do not need to relate the title to the person's gender.
Again, that is something that is part of the English language and that makes it easy.
It doesn't matter when you are trying to describe something, a person, an animal, whatever noun.
It does not matter the gender.
It does not matter if it's singular or plural.
You just use the same adjectives.
Now, the fourth reason why English is easy is the verbs.
I know that might come as a shock.
You might be screaming right now, phrasal verbs, modal verbs, verbs are terrible.
I know that's true, but when we just talk about straightforward verbs, action verbs, the conjugation in English is so simple.
When we're talking about the past tense, all you have is one conjugation.
For example, if we are talking about people who ran in the past, we can say that I ran, you ran, we ran, they ran, he ran, she ran, everyone ran.
There is one verb conjugation, and you can apply it to all of those different instances.
Talking about yourself, other people, groups of people, groups of people that include yourself, individual people, everyone, everyone uses that same verb conjugation.
Now, I know there is a slight difference when we are talking about the present tense, specifically when you're talking about the third person singular present tense.
But again, the verb conjugation is very simple.
All you have to do is add one S, and then you get the conjugation for that third person singular in the present tense.
For example, if we are talking about presently running, we can say that I run, you run, we run, she runs, he runs.
Again, just adding that S is the only thing we need to do for that verb conjugation.
This is a lot more straightforward than other languages.
Romance languages, Germanic languages, a lot of other languages use multiple verb conjugations.
That does not exist in English, so even though we do have irregular verbs like other languages do, even though we do have phrasal, modal verbs which make it more complicated, if we're just focusing on verbs by themselves, the conjugation is really straightforward.
You do not need to learn all of the conjugation tables like you do with other languages.
Another part that's easy with the verbs in English is that there is no subjunctive tense.
You do not need to worry about whether the thing that you are talking about is a hypothetical situation if it's something in the future that might happen or if it's something that is actually going to happen or happening currently.
In English, there is a slight little bit of subjunctive when we are saying what we would do if we were in the position of another person.
For example, if I were you, I would take that job promotion.
There's no difference in the verbs that follow were.
So if you are learning English, you don't have to worry about a subjunctive, and that's one less thing that you need to study.
The next thing that makes English easy is that English borrows from so many languages.
If you are a Germanic language speaker, if you're a Romance language speaker, if you're a Greek language speaker, you have such an advantage.
There are so many words that are based off of those languages.
We have words that are based in Greek, in Latin, that have Germanic roots, and if you are a speaker of those languages, you have a lot of cognates.
Cognates are words that sound or look similar between languages.
For example, if you are a Spanish speaker, there are so many words in English that are similar to the word in Spanish that you get a huge vocabulary boost.
Now, I will say that this is very language specific.
If you are a Mandarin speaker or a Japanese speaker, it doesn't really exist.
It's not as easy for you.
But if you are one of the ones who speaks Greek, a Latin -based language, a Germanic -based language, you have such an advantage because of that huge vocabulary boost.
Having cognates makes it easier for you to understand new words, even if you haven't heard them before, even if you don't know the meaning.
If you hear them and they're similar to the words in your language, that can help with your listening comprehension.
You can be more likely to understand a new word if it's similar to a word from your language.
This can help you and really aid you when you are trying to learn English.
The sixth reason why English is easy to learn is the informality of the spoken language.
Now, of course, when you are talking about written language, there can be differences in formality, but with spoken English, we tend to be pretty informal, especially here in the United States.
Of course, if someone has a particular title like doctor or officer or captain in the military, you would use that title when you're talking to a person.
If you don't know a person and it's a customer service relationship, for example, let's say that if you are someone who is working at a store and you have a customer who is coming and purchasing something, then you can say, sir, miss or ma 'am to address them.
But besides that, that's pretty much the only difference in the formality when you're talking to them.
You really don't pick too different a vocabulary.
You really don't change.
We don't have verb conjugations based on the person, as we already mentioned.
So you don't need to worry about that.
In other languages, you do have to conjugate your verbs based on who you're speaking with, but in the United States, you don't.
If you just say their title or if you say, sir, ma 'am or miss, that's enough to make the conversation formal and show respect to a person.
But then you can just go on talking as you normally would.
That's also true in American work culture in the United States.
Unless you're working for a doctor, unless you're in the medical field or in the police field or military, we don't usually use titles when we're talking to our bosses.
For the most part, bosses are on the first name basis with their coworkers, and it would be very strange to call your boss Mrs.
X or Mr. X using that Mr.
or Mrs. Miss part. That would be very strange.
It would be very odd for an American to do that.
That feels very cold.
That feels very rigid, as we would say, which means that you don't have a very close relationship.
That's just not what the culture usually is in the United States.
I've had bosses that I've always called on their first name basis.
They greet everyone with their first name, and that's pretty normal here in the U .S.
I know that's different than other countries talking to my students who are learning English.
They have a formal relationship.
They have a formality that they use when they talk to their boss, and that just does not happen here in the U .S.
We also don't have that when we're talking to an older stranger.
For example, if you are talking to an older person, a stranger that you don't know, but someone that you meet on the street, you could say, sir, you could say, ma 'am, to address them.
But again, that's pretty much all you're going to do when you change your language to speak with them.
When we're talking about older family members, you wouldn't show that.
You would not use, sir.
You would not use, ma 'am, or an older person in your family.
Again, that would be extremely odd.
You might say grandmother.
You might say grandpa.
You might say aunt or uncle if that's their relationship to you, but you would not use other formal language when you're speaking to them.
Again, I know that's different from other languages.
For example, my Korean students and my Japanese students have talked about the formality that they have in their language, and that just doesn't happen, especially here in the United States.
Americans are kind of known as being informal, as being a little bit closer to people when they talk to them, not having those levels of formality, because that feels like you're putting a barrier between you and another person, and we just don't do that.
So if you're learning English, especially if you're learning American English, or you're living in the United States, another less thing that you have to worry about.
The last reason why English is easy has to do with the amount of resources that are available.
If you are learning English as a second language, you are so lucky because you have the world of resources in front of you that you can use to try to learn English.
I have talked on previous episodes about the importance of input.
Input is reading and listening to a foreign language, and if you are learning any language, it is important that you read and listen as much as you can on a daily basis.
Having greater input leads to greater abilities in that foreign language.
If you want to know more about that, you can look up videos with Stephen Krashen and Steve Kaufman.
They're both proponents of the input strategy to learn a language, and I will leave links in the description of this episode, so you can check that out if you're more interested in it.
However, I will say that Stephen Krashen, he is a linguist.
He is someone who studies how people acquire languages, and that is one of the biggest parts of his research is that having more input leads to greater comprehension and greater abilities in that language.
Therefore, it's extremely important that you have resources to learn English, that you have material that you're interested in, that you like engaging with, so that you can stay motivated and keep learning.
If you are learning English, you can use almost any resource you want.
Go on YouTube, go on social media, look at books, look at movies, TV shows.
There are so many that are in English that can fit almost any interest.
Are you a person who really likes science fiction?
There's a whole realm of science fiction movies, TV shows, podcasts, books that you can use.
Do you like exercise?
Follow a fitness influencer on social media.
Watch fitness videos on YouTube.
Are you a person who likes knitting and painting and crafting?
There's whole communities online.
You can go on Reddit, you can go on YouTube, you can have any interest in the world, and I guarantee you there will be content about that interest in English.
There are also so many resources that are specific for people who are learning English as a second language.
There are beginner resources, graded readers, intermediate podcasts like this podcast, and intermediate resources that will give you vocabulary lists.
There's advanced content.
There's native level content.
There's so much that you can pull from and that you can use as you progress on your journey to learning English.
You start with beginner resources, then intermediate, then advanced, and hopefully get to native level content that you can understand and fully interact with.
I hope this episode helped you think back about your English journey and remember what is easy about English.
I know it's difficult to learn English as a second language.
There are a lot of parts that make it difficult, but it's important to keep our motivation up and to be grateful for the things that do make English simpler and easier to understand.
When you get to that intermediate and advanced range, it is easy to lose motivation, so I hope that this episode helps you keep your motivation up, be a little bit more grateful on your English journey, and I know that with continued work you will be able to reach fluency.
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Until then, keep learning English!
