I was born in Tatarstan in Central Russia in the town with ethnic composition of about 45% Russians 45% Tatars and some percents of other. Everybody here knows Russian perfectly but many Tatars still use Tatar language so I had Tatar friend who didn’t speak Russian until 5 because his family speaked only Tatar between themself. Tatar language has no grammatic gender not even on English level “he\she”. And my friend made mistakes in gender agreement from time to time even when he was a teen.
 
So if you didn’t learn a language as your mother tongue before 5 there’re chances that you’ll will make mistakes even if you’ll speak this language 95% of the time for your whole life.
 
Some people migrate to other country for some reasons and live in local language environment for many years but they never reach fluid level. Their limit is somehow explain themself so the locals will understand them. Because if you don’t have in you head the special “foreign language learning” section you’ll not learn any foreign language at good level even in 20 years.

@Beltar  
Anything worth learning takes time and effort. In my case I set aside the time to study and do the course (if you want to consider Duolingo a course), the problem is I didn’t really use it, didn’t really do much with it and thus kinda lost it. I still know some words and basic Spanish but not enough to sustain a convo.
 
Now I’m mostly sticking to learning coding languages as I think I’d actually use it.

The sad true is that learning any foreign language is very hard. Even the esiest one.

@Beltar  
I will concede this point, I tried learning Spanish only to kinda abandon the effort (more due to lack of interest on account of not really needing it enough in my everyday life). I still stand by English being complex and stupid at times, though I’m sure it’s not an issue exclusive to the language.
 
Either way, I’m an uncultured American who can’t even speak my native tongue sometimes.

 
In fact English is very simple language. I guess the simplest in Europe. And I suppose it became international not only because of Britain Empire but because of it’s simplicity too so most of people can learn it enough for basic communication. And beening an international simplifies it even more.
 
English has rather stupid orthography and too complex tense system and that’s all. It has near rudimental morphology (-ed ending for past tense or -ing ending for present continuos and etc.) and only 2 cases (Nominative and Possessive) I guess English-speakers who never learned other languages don’t even know what is case-system. But German has 4 cases, Russian 6 (some people would say 7 or even 8), Hungarian 34, I read about one language in Dagestan with 44 or 46 cases (linguists can’t decide for sure). English has no grammatical agreement the thing that can explode the brain of any English-speaker if (s)he would try to learn Russian where adjective must have the same case, grammatic gender and number as it’s noun.
 
And English is very unprecise because of rudimental morphology it has very limited mechanism for adding additional meaning or accent to the words and because English words can have extremally wide meaning and threfore easilly gain new meaning. The word “site” f.e. as a place of something. “Crash site”, “consraction site” and etc. When Internet was invented it got new meaning as a place in Internet. In Russian such thing just don’t work because the words are more precise so the new thing must get the new word or named with a combination of existing words.

@dracon2002  
Yes

@ZhaoZoharEX  

 

 
Śmieje się po polsku

@Background Pony #2BC4
 
I’m gonna echo James Rolfe on word pronunciations, they’re pretty bullshit.
 
English as a whole is pretty stupid really. Between the Latin, Germanic, French, and Greek influences, it’s evolved into a language that has so many complexities, borrowed words, patterns, grammar rules, exceptions to those rules, it can be surprisingly difficult to learn if you’re not a native speaker. And even ifen ya is lots native speakers not talk English good.
 
That being said, the history of how English got to be where it is happens to be quite interesting. Look up the Norman conquest for example.

@ZhaoZoharEX  
The same one who made sure the word “lisp” had an obvious “s” sound🤨
 
Trivia: most language with trilled Rs describe people who can’t do the sound with words that feature a trilled R. People are just mean!

@Ironwolf
 
@dracon2002
 
pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
 
And no I have no idea how to pronounce that

@dracon2002  
…how the heck…what..huh?! XD

@Ironwolf  
Palindrome - word or phrase being this same word or phrase when you read it backwards. xD

@dracon2002  
Wait what? XD

@ZhaoZoharEX
 
Aibohphobia – fear of palindromes xD

@ZhaoZoharEX  
Asking the real questions in life right here!  
xD

@ZhaoZoharEX  
XD

“What kind of sick jerk identifies the fear of long words as ‘Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia’?”

I like to think that they literally crossed town just to ask her this.

@FR.com  
omg your right XD

I just realized the typewriter literally have 2 button

XD

@Beltar  
It’s “aunt” in german.

So they still didn’t invent computers or at least typing with magic?
 

 
English is not my native but My Lingvo dictationary says: (esp. among those of French or German origin) a mature or elderly woman who is related or well known to the speaker (often used as a respectful form of address)

Hmmm… What does tante mean?  
My guess is that it’s probably mean aunt right?

Oddly wholesome