Yes, it IS!...along with the words spelled differently and pronounced the same. (She threw the ball through the window.)

Yes, it amazes me how anyone can learn English if they weren't born into it.

I remember an old I Love Lucy show where Ricky was reading a story and running into those types of problems. Hilarious.

Gadgets, I also remember that episode & Ricky said were teaching the baby Spanish where 1 word has 1 meaning.

I've tried learning French & Spanish. I found it most difficult because each word is either masculine or feminine.

OMG, and don't get me started on dogs in Spanish. 1 boy dog is perro. Female dog is perra. But thing get tricky when you talk about a mixed batch of male & female dogs, I think it's mucho perros.

And japanese? Having to learn words & pictures. My stepdad & grandparents are Japanese. I need a new post on this.

yup, I had it way easier to learn German... after all, I could speak it when I was two. LOL.... Now, with English being my second language, I have to wonder often.... and I am very self conscious when I type a mistake.

Moni

Affect is a verb. Effect is a noun. The noisy crowd affected his ability to hear the music. When the painter finished rolling the green paint, the effect made the room look like pea soup.

There they are with their English books.

Somewhere around here I have a copy of The Tough Coughs As He Ploughs the Dough, by Dr. Seuss.

Many European languages have a large number of the following - words not pronounced how they're spelled considering normal phonics for that language, similar sounds with different spellings, words that sound the same, or very similar but having different meanings, etc., It's not unique to English.

Most of the sentence with UP would communicate the same thing without the up.

Love the 'UP' essay, ourhighland home.

Well, here in Michigan we go UP to the UP!

Sheila_joyce, both affect and effect can be nouns or verbs depending on usage. I think that's one reason people find them difficult to remember. The effect of changes effected by the government is incalculable. The boy's lack of affect affected how people viewed the boy.

An easy way to remember Affect and Effect is that Affect is the Action and Effect is the End Result.

Mamapinky, you could even say, "They're there with their English books" :-)

English is a melange of many different languages, each with its own spelling and pronunciation rules. This is a big part of the problem (apart from less rigorous teaching of English in schools these days :-( ).

Another interesting (or upsetting to some) is that English varies depending on the country of use. In England, a truck is a lorry; an elevator is a lift; the hood of an auto is a bonnet. In Scotland and central Canada, the word "about" is pronounced "aboot". US english has picked up some Mexican-Spanish words such as lariat, corral, and palomino. I don't know if these words are in common usage in other english speaking countries.

Your list made me think of Sheldon in Pictionary on Big Bang Theory. When Penny says polish, small p! and he realizes she's right.

I remember "i" before "e" except after "c". But science doesn't count.

And seize the day!

I've heard that before, that we Canadians say "aboot" for about. I can honestly say I've never heard it pronounced like that.

You probably don't, Jasdip, it's often very subtle but if your ear is tuned in for it you can hear it. :-)

And we haven't even BEGUN to discuss how English is SPELLED...that is another fine kettle of fish to be in!!

Thank God for spell check!!

I remember the old "i" before "e" except after "c" OR when sounded as "A" as in "neighbor" and "weigh". Which would mean the town where I grew up would, instead of _____ Heights, would be _____ Hates. Which actually might have been kind of Freudian back in those days.

And Jasdip, my friend, I know well that not all of Canada says "oot and a-boot" (though a small portion do), a lot of Canada pronounces it "oat and a-boat", as they do on The Red Green Show, which I guess would mean in The Great White North, an "oat house" would have a crescent moon on the door, while on the farms around here, an "oat house" would be called a grainery, eh? :)

effect vs. affect

Effect and affect are often confused because of their similar spelling and pronunciation. The verb 2affect usually has to do with pretense (she affected a cheery disposition despite feeling down). The more common verb 3affect denotes having an effect or influence (the weather affected everyone's mood). The verb effect goes beyond mere influence; it refers to actual achievement of a final result (the new administration hopes to effect a peace settlement). The uncommon noun affect, which has a meaning relating to psychology, is also sometimes mistakenly used for the very common effect. In ordinary use, the noun you will want is effect (waiting for the new law to take effect) (the weather had an effecton everyone's mood).

Principal/principle, stationery/stationary....so many I can't even begin to count. Bet all the high school teachers are cringing right about now, eh?

It reminds me of an I Love Lucy episode. Ricky was reading a book to Lucy and there were a lot of words that had "ough" endings. Ricky was mightily frustrated by the end!

That reminds me of Weird Al's Word Crimes.

"The Story of English" series, a BBC/PBS production, was a bit too long (I petered out after 8 episodes, LOL) but the first five were really fascinating. Hosted by Robert MacNeil back in 1986 (he was on the Lehrer-MacNeil Newshour on PBS), It's a terrific historical journey detailing how English acquired so many foreign words and in the process, invigorated itself.

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/story-of-english/

English is like politics: Just when you think you understand it, you don't.

I had a similar conversation with one of the Spanish teachers at school. She was describing how students often try to translate Spanish to English, word for word. Like in Spanish the phrase to dust is literally remove the dust.

I always get advice and advise mixed up haha ! I don't even know what is the difference between miss and missed.... English is hard and it is challenging for non native speaker like me

This trip down memory lane reminds me of many *missing* members of the KT. <sigh>

"When in doubt, sound it out". That was always the answer I got. HU...that would fit

you..those two words sound entirely different. Ice and ise. And... Miss...I can miss, I will miss...

Missed...I've already missed. all in the "tense". Present, future and past ,etc.... LOL Elementary

School is harder than they promise us.

None of us are born knowing how to speak English, or any other language. We have to learn just like we learn to walk, feed ourselves, etc.. I doubt if English is harder to learn than other languages, but people often seem determined to prove me wrong ...lol .

I wouldn't even attempt to learn Welsh. From what I can tell, nothing in the Welsh language is pronounced like it's spelled.

Woodrose, there’s a delightful book called Travels in an Old Tongue, Pamela Petro’s memoir of traveling the world seeking out Welsh-speaking communities. They are there, in far-flung places like Patagonia!

"I doubt if English is harder to learn than other languages,"

I believe English is hard to learn than other languages because there is so much irregularity and ambiguity in grammar, spelling and phonetics, pronunciation, and word definitions. I can only speak about other European languages I have any degree of familiarity with - all of these factors are more consistent and predictable in the other languages. Just as one example, I believe the number and prevalence of homophones and homographs, examples of both of which are confusing to learn and keep straight, is much greater in English than in other languages.

Here’s an example of the difficulty of the English language. It’s easy to make mistakes on the usage of the words lay, lie, lied, and lain.

Lay, Lie, Lied, Lain: When Do We Use Which?

https://www.britannica.com/story/lay-lie-lied-lain-when-do-we-use-which

Jewelry or jewellery?

Both are correct. The former is American English and the latter is used in Britain and Australia. Canada uses both.

@Anna, that's a good one. Lots of people get lay and lie wrong. I was also thinking of hung and hanged.

Another error I see constantly is with "it's" and "its." People don't realize that "it's" is always the contracted form of "it is" or "it has"...period. No apostrophe with "its," the possessive pronoun.

If you think English is hard, try learning Russian. You'll then see how simplified English is in comparison.

Of course most Russians do not speak grammatically correct Russian, and so it is difficult for them as well. Also, much of Russian is idiomatic, and so a lot of things have to be learned by phrases. For example, to say it is raining, you say "идет дождь", which literally means "rain is taking a walk."

The formal grammar is more complex than Latin, with more declensions, cases, and more complex verb conjugation. Also Russian has three genders, like German, but German only has four cases while Russian has six. In addition, much of Russian (like English) is irregular, meaning that even if you know the rules, one third of the time they will not apply.

The one thing that is easy about Russian is its pronunciation - it does follow rules, although sometimes it is always possible to tell from a spelling. "e" has two pronunciations, "eh" and "yo" and you cannot tell which is correct unless it is indicated by an umlaut over the "e", but this is not used except in grammar books to teach the language. Portuguese also is not pronounced exactly as it is spelled.

If you want to use a simple language, learn Spanish.

Seen on this forum almost daily is people using an apostrophe for plural words.