Yes it seems, as many people have difficulties with it. Strangely enough most of those who have difficulties are native English speakers.
I am not a native speaker, but I am quite comfortable with the English spelling. Yes I make mistakes sometime, but most are because I am not paying enough attention.
I am of French origin, and I learned some English at school from age 11, but when I moved to Britain at age 22, I was not able to speak at all. After a couple of months, however, I was fluent enough to get a job as a shop assistant and after 6 months I had a job in an office.
Most of my compatriots do not speak English at all, some even refuse to learn it. I think , it is a mistake because, whether they like it or not, English is the international language at the moment and open the door to the rest of the world. If you speak only French, you can only communicate with other French , some Belgian and Swiss, and western African and the territories of West Indies and Tahiti. Ok it not bad, but with English you can do much more.
Many people ask : why is English pronounced so differently to what it is spelt?
They are many reasons. One of them is that there is one spelling, and many way of speaking ... Scottish or Welsh population pronounce differently from southern population, Americans differently from Australians and so on...It is a bit like Chinese, there is one spelling of Mandarin but many way of speaking it. (not as different in English so.
I don't have an answer why "women" is pronounced "wimmin". The word obviously come from womb-men (men with uterus).
I don't know why there are so many silent letters either ( comb - silent b - knife - silent k and so on)
As in French, I guess those letters are there for etymological reasons ( where words come from).
I have notice that many native speakers do not know when to use "to " "two""or too", for me is it easy but not for them...
I guess this is the way they have been taught ( or not taught) ....
Memory is a matter of making connections in your brain, if you connect "two-2" with "twelve 12" then you remember that the number 2 take a w - As for too ( also ) it is just to distinguish from to (to sing for instance).
There are some illogisms in English, yes for instance, I heard ( in a film on TV) "do not put a preposition at the end of a sentence"... It means that the sentence "where do you come from"...the preposition (from) should be at the start, like " From where do you come" . Who speaks like this ? nobody, so why is it considered by purists to be the correct way? I am baffled!
The English language is not regulated by an academy like the French language. It grows naturally, organically, just like a forest. And I like that, it makes it a free and natural language to speak. It evolves all the time too and has more words than any other language on Earth!
The dictionaries authors ar at the moment the arbiters of the correct spelling, but they themselves admit that they take their hints from the way the language is spoken and spelt by the majority of people which make the above statement redundant.
That is all for today
I d 'like your comments, wherever you are from.....(ha, ha)
Britt
Dublin
Ireland
email: brittdufour@gmail.com
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