Polyglots or bilingual people whose first language was not English often list the language as one of the most difficult to learn.
English has many rules, but a multitude of exceptions to each rule and some pronunciations that defy every rule. It can also be very difficult for ESL learners to understand the idioms and phrases common in English-speaking countries.
And from one English-speaking culture to the next, the same word can have vastly different meanings.
While a casual conversation between someone from England, Australia, the United States, New Zealand, and Canada might involve minor misunderstandings because of differences in terminology, the same conversation will be incomprehensible for an ESL learner.
Even within the United States, terminology changes from region to region.
Reddit user RoseyBailey asked:
"Bilingual people of Reddit, what's an English word or phrase that was an absolute nightmare to learn or understand?"
Prepositions
"It's hard to know what prepositions to use."
"It's on a bus, on a plane, but in a car."
"In an hour, under an hour, over an hour, around/about an hour, after an hour, for an hour, on the hour, within the hour, at 12 o'clock, between the hours of 1 and 2, per hour..."
"They all mean different things!"
~ svenson_26
Pronunciation
"Nothing specific, but the fact that you can't ever know how to pronounce a word based on how it's spelled is just endlessly annoying."
"Although, it does make English really great in music."
"The whole 'pronunciation is just a suggestion' thing makes it very flexible. It's like playing with putty instead of Lego bricks."
~ strangeelement
"I was embarrassed in grade school when I pronounced 'plaid' the same as 'paid'."
"Then when I was told I was incorrect, attempted a 2nd time by saying it like 'said'."
~ mahnamahna22222
Silent Treatment
"Island was a hard one for me to wrap my head around."
"Maybe it's a loan word or originated from ye olde English, but it didn't follow the modern pronunciation rules that I learned, and it bothered me."
~ angelbelle
"It's quite clearly spelled island because it Is Land and everything around it Is Water."
~ KingofCydonia
"It's worse than that."
"Basically they reformed spelling ages ago, and island gained an S to align with isle (which has its S from the Latin insula)
If you look at old texts, island used to just be 'iland'."
~ Deolater
"That's also why 'receipt' has a 'p' in it."
~ Unistrut
Th-H-T-Th-H-T
"I am French Canadian. The giveaway to my Frenchness is the english word 'thunder'—no matter how I try, it still sounds like I say 'tunder'."
~ FuturAnonyme
"I used to work with a man who was from rural Quebec. Every Friday, he'd go with his friends to play 'ockey at the h'ice 'ouse."
"I understand the dropped h's, but the extra h really threw me at first."
~ funkme1ster
Two-fer
"I spent my childhood in the States before moving back to my home country, so I didn't really 'learn' English, it was just the first language I remember growing up with."
"One thing I noticed my school friends struggled with was phrasal verbs (e.g. 'go in' 'take out' 'grow up')."
"In our language (and many others) there's only one word for each verb. Think 'enter' instead of 'go in', or 'extract' instead of 'take out', or 'return' instead of 'go back'."
"For a total beginner, when you're trying to decode word by word, phrasal verbs—with 2 words forming a single concept—can be really confusing."
~ ezjoz
The Right Metrics
"Not the language specifically, but for a while, I thought inch was the English word for centimeter."
"I would get very confused when I followed YouTube tutorials that said to cut 4 inches, I didn't understand why my cut was so much shorter."
"Later, I thought I had figured it out, 10 inches makes a foot. Then I saw someone refer to themselves as 5 foot 11, and I got confused all over again."
"It was also only last year when I learned that 12 pm is noon, and 12 am is at night. Why does it not switch at 1?"
~ aWholeBunchOfKittens
An A** Act
"For the longest time, I thought that 'Get your act together' was 'Get your a** together'."
"I only learned the difference about 2 weeks ago. I’ve been speaking English for nearly 10 years now."
~ Equivalent-Letter357
"It kinda works though."
"We have 'get your sh*t together' and also 'Get your a** in gear' which means 'hurry up', but could also mean 'get your act together'."
~ jikt
They/Them Is So Much Easier
"It's not that some words are particularly hard, it's more about concepts that don't exist in your native language."
"For example, I had a lot of trouble with he/she, simply because in my native language, there are no gendered pronouns."
"So you don't need to think about a person's gender at all."
"It's really hard to suddenly start keeping list of who is what gender so that you get the pronouns right."
~ eternalityLP
Off And On
"Why, when an alarm goes on, does English say it goes off?"
"It's clearly not off anymore, it's on."
"What do you mean it went off‽‽"
~ CatL1f3
"We also turn it off after it's gone off."
~ amusingmistress
"The sound goes off, as in, the sound goes away from where it is coming from."
~ chrisp0188
"But that makes even less sense!"
~ Overthemoon64
UGH, ugh...
"Taught, thought, though."
~ BenPanthera12
"The pronunciation of tough, through, throughout, thorough, trough, thought, are all different!"
~ Specialist_Heat_1480
"English is complicated, but it can be understood through thorough thought, though."
~ zxcvbn113
"Through tough thorough thought, though."
~ newnrthnhorizon
"Though the thorough, taut, and tough teacher would've taught that thought to tots with an 'although' instead of a 'but'."
~ Philix
"It ought not, but this made me laugh enough to cough."
~ MohawMais
Articles Of Confusion
"When the f*ck do you use 'the'?"
"I’m now a fluent English speaker, but I still can’t explain this to my parents."
~ astine
"The name 'definite article' is a bit of a hint as to what it is—it points to a specific thing that is known or defined, as in it's supposed to be clear which specific instance of that noun it's referring to."
"If I'm talking about 'the cat', that means I'm referring to a specific cat and I know which cat I'm talking about (and I'm probably expecting you to know as well), whereas if I say 'a cat' that's also a singular cat, but either it's not any specific cat or if it is, I don't know which one (or it doesn't matter), and I'm not expecting you to be bothered with which specific cat it's about either."
"Which is also why if you as a listener or reader don't know which cat I'm talking about, 'the cat' is immediately confusing, because I'm implying a specific, known cat. The same doesn't hold for 'a cat' because all you need to know in terms of context for that to make sense is that it's a cat."
~ Yamitenshi
"Depends on what country you live in. In the United States, you'd say you're 'going to the hospital' or 'to the university'."
"But in most English-speaking countries, you'd say you're 'going to hospital' or 'to university'. No 'the' required."
~ MMohawMais
Not Literally
"'Screwed the pooch' doesn't actually mean to have intercourse with a canine."
~ MedSurgNurse
Unnecessary
"The word necessary."
"To this day, I still can't spell it correctly without using Google."
~ DolceFulmine
Who Says This?
"This one is silly. I was playing DnD with my ex and his Army friends. First and last time I’ve ever played. My first language is Spanish. There was another wife who was German."
"My character is going down a corridor. I’m told I see an elbow running right. Using my imagination, I assume it’s like an enemy’s elbow, so I choose not to continue down the corridor."
"Later, they’re all pissed off at me because we’re getting ambushed or something, and if I had continued down the corridor, the exit was to the right. Elbow as in bend in the corridor."
"Not a body part. I don’t know if this is English as a second language issue or not speaking military terms issue."
"German wife was very defensive of my decision because she interpreted it the same as I did."
~ SnooBunny
"In the US south, one might refer to that as a dog leg. When I moved here I was hella confused."
~ Overthemoon64
Headscratcher
"To this day I still can't wrap my head around 'to come undone'."
"I've been learning English for over three decades now."
~ triculious
"Yet you can wrap your head around 'wrap my head around'?"
~ the2belo
"Sh*t, this is a weird one that has me thinking... 'We came under attack' and 'The sail has come loose!'."
"Usually 'come' indicates a direction of travel, but in these cases it doesn't other than a rapid transition from one state of being to another.
"I'm a native English speaker, and I'd never really thought of this. Fascinating!"
~ lord_fairfax
"Somewhere, at some time, we truncated the words 'become' and 'became' for this usage."
"If you read the phrases as 'We became under attack' and 'The sail has become loose' and 'I have become undone', they make sense."
~ MohawMais
What English words or phrases do you find particularly puzzling?
