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 Engli
sh 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 comp
ared to other languages and with that let's [Music] 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 conversation ations 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 nou
ns 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're 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 sence 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 havi
ng 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 an with 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 fo
r example in Spanish you have L and 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 single 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 describing and t
hey do not change whether the thing is singular or plural the 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 dog 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 m
edical professional you would say doctor or doct 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 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 re
ason 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 c
onjugation 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 conjugatio
n 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 do even t
hough 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 so
mething 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 fro
m 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 Engli
sh 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 doesn't really exists 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 i
f 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 informality but wi
th 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 beside
s that that's pretty much the only difference in the formality when you're talking to them you really don't pick too different of vocabulary you really don't change we don't have conjugations B 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 f
ormal 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 co-workers and it would be very strange to call your boss Mrs X or Mr X using that Mr 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 close relationship and 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 in the US I know that's different than other countries talking to my students who are learning English the
y 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 US we also don't have that when we're talking to an older stranger for examp example if you are talking to an older person uh 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 t
alking about older family members you wouldn't show that you would not use sir you would not use ma'am when you're talking to a grandparent 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 ano
ther 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 crashion and Steve Kaufman they are 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 Steph crash and 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 language therefore it's extremely important that you have resources to learn English that you have material that you are 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 show
s there are so many that are in English that can fit almost any interest are you 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
to 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 sources 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 beginn
er 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 a reminder that if you are liking this podcast if it is helping you learn English and it's helping you improve your English abilities please consider leaving a rating on whatever app you are using to listen to this podcast on you can also recomme
nd us to a friend or family member tell them how this podcast is helping you and help us grow and reach a larger audience you can follow us on social media at learn englishpod the website is learnenglish pod.com and remember to like And subscribe so you don't miss our next episode when it comes out next week until then keep learning English
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