Is it ìle tableî, or ìla tableî in French?
Man, learning a language is really, really hard.
I know that language, and you will too!
Hey everyone, Iím Alex, thanks for clicking and welcome to this lesson on some reasons
why English is not that difficult and maybe even easy.
So, there are many languages that have some different rules, different conventions, just
different ways of working that make them really challenging.
Now, English has these things too.
You can probably mention many, many reasons why English is something that is very challenging,
very difficult, and detestable maybe, even, depending on who you are.
But today, I want to tell you why English is actually easy in many ways, when you compare
it to other languages that maybe you know or that you have studied in the past.
So, letís not waste any time and letís find out why English is not so bad.
Number one: gender neutrality!
Thank you, English!
Now, gender neutrality affects a lot of different things.
So, number one: adjective conjugation.
This is wonderful.
All subjects, one adjective.
This means Iím cold, youíre cold, heís cold, sheís cold, itís cold, weíre cold,
theyíre cold.
You donít have to conjugate the adjective at all!
One adjective, all subjects, it doesnít matter.
Now, this differs from many languages such as Polish, such as French, for example.
So, you can be very grateful for gender neutrality in English.
Number one: adjective conjugation.
This is a pretty great part about learning English, because it reduces the amount of
vocabulary that you have to memorize.
Letís look at more gender neutrality in number two.
Verb conjugation, okay.
This is great.
Subjects do not affect how you conjugate a verb in English, with one exception.
So, I did say all subjects, only exception, third person present simple excluded.
Iím going to get back to that.
So, in the past simple, in the continuous, in the present perfect, the past perfect,
it doesnít matter which one you use.
Yes, they have a different verb form.
You might be using the past form or the past participle form, but the subject does not
change the verb.
For example, past simple ñ I ran, you ran, he ran, she ran, it ran, we ran, they ran.
Ran, ran, ran, ran, ran, ran, ran!
Ah, it feels so good.
You only have to memorize one simple past verb when youíre learning how to speak in
the past in English, or learning the present perfect in English.
Again, the only thing you need to remember when it comes to subjects affecting the conjugation
of a verb is the third person present simple.
Thatís it.
Just add an ìsî.
I run, you run, we run, they run.
Okay, he runs, she runs, it runs.
Thatís it!
Itís so beautiful.
Itís so easy.
Ah.
Letís move on to number three.
Definite article ñ the.
One definite article.
No ìlo, la, leî like French, for example.
And Spanish is similar, right?
Think, yeah.
So, in English, you have the man, the woman, the men, the women.
Male, female, singular, plural.
English doesnít care, it doesnít matter!
Youíre ìthe, the, the, theî.
You donít have to even worry about it.
Itís so great, so, so, great.
Letís keep going.
Number four.
Alright.
Noun conjugation.
This is pretty cool too.
Now, many languages share this trait with English, but let me tell you about Polish
a little bit, okay?
So, in English, ìI have a kitchenî, ìIím in the kitchenî, ìThis is a kitchenî.
Kitchen, kitchen, kitchen all day long.
In Polish, you would say, [Ö] Itís ñ you have to conjugate nouns.
In English, this does not exist.
A kitchen is a kitchen is a kitchen forever and ever, okay?
The only exception you have to remember when conjugating nouns is plurals, add ìsî, right?
One kitchen, two kitchens.
For possessive, add ìísî.
The kitchenís stove, whatever you want to say there.
Not a great example, but I think you get it.
So, noun conjugation.
One noun.
Donít have to conjugate it.
Itís pretty good.
Number five.
Resources are everywhere!
Now, depending on how you feel about cultural imperialism and linguistic hegemony, this
is a good thing or a bad thing.
However, it doesnít change the fact that English is everywhere.
Whether youíre looking at books, movies, listening to music, searching the web.
If you are watching videos, if youíre on www.engvid.com , English lessons, English
learning materials are freely available to everyone.
This is not the case for some languages, where you have a very limited number of resources
that you can use.
Speaking of www.engvid.com , did you know that on www.engvid.com we now have over 1,500
videos that you can use to improve your English for free?
I have over 200 videos alone!
So, check it out because Iím telling you, resources are everywhere.
You can learn this language with the help of all of these free, wonderful resources
that are readily available to you.
That is pretty great.
Oh, whatís that?
Oh yeah, thereís one more.
Number six.
The alphabet.
Regardless of where you are in the world, if you are watching this video on the internet,
you are probably already familiar with the alphabet.
It is everywhere and itís only 26 letters, which is wonderful if youíre learning a language
for the first time.
Especially if you compare it to some other languages in the world that have more letters.
For example, Khmer (Cambodian), which has the most letters of any alphabet in the world,
has 74 letters.
Very impressive, right?
Difficult to learn if youíre starting from scratch and youíre not a native-born Cambodian.
So, Russian has 33 letters.
Arabic has 28 letters, only two more than English, but you know, 26 is still a little
less.
So, because English is everywhere, the alphabet is everywhere.
Youíre probably already familiar with it, which gives you an advantage immediately when
youíre starting to learn it.
So, Iíve given you six reasons why English is easy.
Iím not saying itís the easiest language in the world, okay?
I know there are difficult things about English, and I will cover those in another video.
The purpose of this video is to grow your confidence by letting you know, ìYou know
what?
There are some things that make learning English kind of fun, kind of easier than learning
another language.î And I just want you guys to feel good about yourselves and to feel
good about learning along with me and learning along with all the www.engvid.com teachers
and all the amount of resources that you have available to you on our website and in the
world, basically.
So, if you want to test your understanding of this material, your comprehension of everything
I have talked about today, as always, you can check out the quiz on www.engvid.com , where
we have, like I said, over 1500 videos.
1500!
I donít know how to ñ 1500!
I think thatís right.
And check those out.
And check me out on YouTube, subscribe to my channel, hit the notification bell, go
to Facebook, go to Twitter, search for ìAlex EngVidî and youíll find me there too.
Until next time, thanks for clicking and good luck with your studies.