More than 100 years ago, playwright Oscar Wilde, through the mouth of one of his heroes, said that England and America “today have everything the same, except, of course, the language.”

It turns out that, according to linguists, he was not far from the truth. However, recently the two languages ​​have begun to move closer together. Languages ​​change over time - some faster than others. Some languages ​​reflect changes in the world around them, highlights a new study published by the Royal Society of London.

Universal and historical factors have an influence, and languages, as scientists have found, change at different rates. The authors of the study used the Goole Books Ngram corpus database to analyze the use of words and expressions over the past five centuries in eight languages. They analyzed 8 million books, which, according to Google's own data, is approximately 6% of all published books. Google also scanned these books, thereby creating a corresponding database.

Linguists have always been aware of the differences in language changes, but this time a giant Google database was examined, which in its volume far exceeded all previous research objects. The group of scientists participating in this work turned out to be international in composition, which, paradoxically, caused it its own language problems.

The lead author of the study was Søren Wichmann, a Dane working at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. His co-authors were Valery Solovyov, a linguist from the Kazan Federal University, located in the Republic of Tatarstan in Russia, and astrophysicist Vladimir Bochkarev, also from Kazan, whose interests include languages.

This study was conducted at the Kazan Linguistic Laboratory.

The work was complicated by the fact that Vikhman does not speak Russian, and Bochkarev does not speak English. Wichmann's wife sometimes served as a translator. When she wasn't there, they used Google Translate, which wasn't always helpful.

In this study, participants analyzed written languages, which are more conservative in their forms, and did not study spoken languages, for which the necessary data have not yet been collected. They mainly looked at how often words were used.

Each verbal form was considered a separate word; For example, words like “park” and “parked” were counted as two different words.

The process they used is called glottochronology by linguists. Language is shaped by culture “One word that previously had a special meaning can acquire a broader meaning and replace another word that had an equally broader meaning,” Vikhman noted. Sometimes it's just a matter of fashion, sometimes external events influence it.

For example, in early English the word “hound” was used to refer to a dog. Today the word "hound" refers to a special breed of dog.

The reverse process probably occurs with the word “vodka”, which sometimes replaces the word “liquor” (alcohol).

“Any important change in society is reflected in the frequency of use of words,” Wichman emphasized.

According to researchers, in general, languages ​​change at the same rate, but this rate is usually measured in time periods such as half a century, unless something special happens, such as a war.

According to Vikhman During wars, changes in language vocabulary occurred more quickly as new words like "Nazi" were included and people began to think about things they had not thought about before the outbreak of hostilities, Wichman noted.

During the Victorian era, at the height of the British Empire and a very stable time for Britain, the language remained fairly stable. With the onset of unrest and chaos in the 20th century, changes in the vocabulary of the language began to occur more rapidly. Since about 1850, British English and American English have been the same - except that the British version was about 20 years behind. New words entered the lexicon of American English, but they appeared in Britain only 20 years later.

Then, starting in 1950, under the influence of the media, the two languages ​​began to move closer together. Today they are much more similar than before, Wichman noted.

I have always been interested in the question of why some languages ​​are more difficult for adults to learn than others?

According to researchers, our languages ​​contain what linguists call a “kernel lexicon,” a list of words that make up 75% of written language. If you know these words, then you can understand most of the literary works. These are also the words that are less susceptible to change even as the language itself changes.

The basic vocabulary of the English language contains less than 2,400 words. If you know them, then you can read 75% of the text. The basic vocabulary of the Russian language includes approximately 24,000 words. Although the English language has about 600,000 words in total, and Russian has only a sixth of this number, without knowing the 21,000 basic Russian words, texts written in Russian will be largely incomprehensible.

“The fact that a particular word may be in active use during a particular period does not mean that it must be new,” said Brian Joseph, a distinguished professor of linguistics at Ohio State University in Columbus.

For example, the word “cupcake” currently has a similar tendency in the English language. Sometimes words are combined, as is the case with the word “labradoodles.” Definitions are also changing. Some words in Shakespeare's time meant one thing, but we use them to mean something else, said David Lightfoot, a professor at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. The word "scientist" is present in the modern lexicon, but until the 19th century, people in this profession were called natural philosophers.

Sometimes changes in vocabulary can tell us more than we think.

In recent years, the word “divorce” has begun to be used more often than the word “marry,” Wichman noted. Here is perhaps an even more telling example: the word “information” replaces the word “wisdom”. Joel Shurkin is a freelance journalist based in Baltimore; He is the author of nine books about science and the history of science, and he teaches journalism at Stanford University, the University of California, and the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

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Reading. Sometimes it is surprising why the Latin language became dead and not English. It’s either a matter of reading all sorts of de facto or memento mori. As it is written, so it is heard. The situation is completely different with the English language. For each vowel there are about 7 reading rules and the same number of exceptions. What do you want? These are the islanders and their peculiarities of national reading. Even if you show four English people a new English word, each of them will read it differently. Because in this language there are no reading rules, only exceptions (as my student said).

This is how you teach and teach that i read in open syllable as [ouch](for example, wife, like, price), and then you want to go skiing on thin snow with an English friend and invite him “ Lec sky" Then try to prove that you don’t need a hot air balloon to fly across the sky. And all because ski is the exception that reads [ski]. Just like visa,giveminute (in general, Russians don’t get so sophisticated with this unfortunate word with their associations).

And at the same time (continuing the theme with the letter i) the word live can be read in two ways: [live], [live]. In the Russian understanding, this is beyond all understanding. However, the point is that Liv- it's just living, and live- alive. That's all: just different parts of speech.

The tendency of the British to denote one sound with an insane number of letters is also their lovely national feature, which must be come to terms with. Indeed, why write f when to use ph. Now we can understand the Americans who turn night into nite and labor into labor.

Is it possible for mere mortals to learn all the rules? I dare to assure you that it is inaccessible even to the British themselves. The only way out is to use the transcription in the dictionary more often, communicate a lot in English and gradually accumulate knowledge. One fine day you will notice that you already feel intuitively reading some words. If this happened, congratulations, the British are doing the same.

Verb tenses. An English language learner's dream: the number of verb tenses is equal to the number of seasons. In principle, this is true. If you multiply this number by 3. There are 12 main tenses in English. And besides them, there are also all sorts of mysterious Future-in-the-Past (future in the past). After this, Zadornov’s jokes about our untranslatable Russian phrase “Old New Year” seem like childish babble. A small note: if you are a beginner, then for now use Scarlett O’Hara’s method: “I won’t think about mysterious times now, I’ll think about it tomorrow.”

Strictly speaking, you probably think that there are only three tenses in the Russian language? Was, is and will be - three in total (past, present and future). Now think again and try to explain to an Englishman "walked", "walked" And " came" What's the difference? All three verbs are in the past tense. However, the first verb is the simple past, the second is the continuous past, and the third is the perfect past. Hooray! It's the same in English!

Compared to reading, there is some logic in the tenses of English verbs. Past (Past), present (Present) and future (Future) are three strong points, as in Russian. Each of these tenses can be Simple, Continuous, Perfect and Perfect Continuous. You can determine which of them to use by the marker adverbs: for example, for the Past Simple such a signal beacon will be ago, last week; for Present Perfect - never, ever. And then - put the Murphy textbook in your hands and go ahead and do the exercises. In addition, do not forget to learn the table of irregular verbs like the “Our Father”, and you will have complete verb-tense happiness.

Articles. Everything is decent here. Thanks to the English for not inventing feminine and masculine articles, as in some other languages. You just need to distinguish the definite article from the indefinite article.

To do this, it is useful to remember that the article “a” comes from the numeral “one (one)”. And the article “the” is a variation of “this” or that (that, this). In general, delving into the past is very useful. Articles did not appear out of nowhere. It was just inconvenient to say one letter, one boy, etc. every time. In colloquial speech " one" quickly shortened to " a" This is how the article came into being, disturbing the minds of poor English learners. Same with "the". In colloquial speech that And this gradually turned into a capacious the. Accordingly, every time you can replace an article with a numeral one- used A. When can you replace it with a demonstrative pronoun? that or this, used the.

Example: you are sitting in a restaurant and want to drink a glass of wine to recover from reading English words. You can subtly hint to your date that you want to have one glass of wine (I want a glass of wine). Or you can brazenly declare that you want exactly the glass of wine that he is currently holding in his hand (I want the glass of wine!). It all depends solely on your upbringing.

Irregular Verbs. Yes, in fact, it would be strange to expect that the British would make their life easier by subjecting everything to certain rules. It's so interesting when the most frequently used English verbs do not have a simple -ed ending. This makes it easier to confuse a foreign guest. Let him try to guess what went- this is actually go in the past tense, and ate- This eat. Any student can remember the hated tables with irregular verbs. Alas, the only way out is to learn the list. Total - 270 verbs. Now there will be something to do in your spare time. One verb a day - a year has already passed.

Laziness. Get to know the main difficulty in learning English. In fact, there is nothing difficult in English, except for the peculiarities of reading. Someone complains that there are too many pretexts. Yes? Read Shakespeare in your free time, highlighting the prepositions with a pencil. Then do the same with Pushkin's works. The next item will be the phrase you wrote down in your diary: “I spent days counting the number of prepositions in Shakespeare. For a week I counted the number of prepositions Pushkin used. I thought a lot. I decided to choose English as my native language.”

In general, the English language really has a fairly coherent grammatical system. Trying to find something complex in it, foreigners decided to focus on tenses and irregular verbs. Indeed, you have to find fault with something.

I still remember our same partner from the UK. When I first talked to him, at the end of the negotiations he softly asked: “Why so complicated?” If only my teacher could hear how our British colleagues communicate. Yes, she would have given it a bad mark long ago. And they like it. For example, while at the airport you are typing out the phrase “Could you tell me please where the bus station is?” with horror in your eyes, an Englishman will have time to drink a cup of tea, check his watch with Big Ben and, after smoking a pipe, say “there”. You will be treated more favorably if you simply say, “Bus? Where?" Rest assured: you will be escorted to the very stop.

Hence the moral: everything ingenious is simple. In this sense, English is a leader compared to many other European languages. Don’t be lazy, communicate, read, study, sign up for English courses in the end - and you won’t have to make hay.

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There is an opinion that the English language is very simple and mastering it is not difficult. Probably, if this were true, then, even with all the disadvantages of Russian education, many would master the language. But that's not true. A very small percentage of people, graduating from school, and sometimes even university, master English, at least at a basic level. And there are many reasons for this. Let's try to look at the main ones:

Ambiguity of the teaching system

There are a great variety of methods for learning the English language, as well as the words in it, and new methods appear every year. However, upon closer examination, you realize that they are all similar to each other or have a similar idea at their core. The main methods of language learning can be divided into 2 groups - classical and communicative. The communicative method looks more interesting, but often our respected teachers do not miss the opportunity to add something from the classical language learning course to it. Namely grammar. Among the disadvantages of the communication system, it is worth noting the need to know basic grammar rules. What about the classical teaching system - its main drawback is a huge number of boring rules, coupled with a significant lack of speaking practice.

Serious differences in the grammar of Russian and English languages

Russian grammar, and especially punctuation, is considered one of the most complex in the world. But for native speakers it is not difficult to master it; it happens by itself. As for the grammar of the English language, there are primarily differences due to the philosophy of the language. The main problems in mastering grammar arise with tenses, verbs, prepositions and articles.

There are as many as 12 tenses in English, versus 3 in Russian, but we always use different particles and additional words to clarify the meaning. - For example "What are you doing now?" And “What are you even doing?”. In English there is a tense for each case. - For example “What do you do?” And "What are you doing?".

As for verbs, this is the main wealth of the English language. There are a lot of verbs. But the worst thing is not the quantity, but the fact that there are irregular verbs whose forms you will have to learn, and verbs like “set”, “get” and “way”, which have many different meanings. For example, the verb “set” has 44 of them. And if you want to master spoken English at a good level, you will also have to remember phrasal verbs, of which there are many.

Next on the list are prepositions and articles. As for prepositions - nothing complicated, just some of them do not coincide with the use of prepositions in the Russian language. Phrasal verbs are also formed in conjunction with prepositions. But with articles it’s more difficult. They simply don’t exist in the Russian language, which means that we simply have nothing to compare with, find differences, etc. You will have to come to terms with this and master the rules for using articles, which is not so difficult to do. By the way, you will be forgiven for any mistake related to the use of articles, since some of the subtleties of their use are almost incomprehensible to a foreigner.

Imbalance of theory and practice in teaching.

For some reason, teachers in our secondary schools place too much emphasis on the grammatical component. At best, 15 percent remains for the conversational part. Dry grammar is boring, and with insufficient examples, it is also incomprehensible. Schoolchildren have 2 options left - cram or copy from somewhere. This situation is also not new at universities. As a result, people who have spent an average of 10 to 15 years studying English cannot speak it.

We were all once small children and also mastered our native language. Without any rules, we simply learned from adults, repeated, invented, experimented, etc. As a result, at the age of 6-7 years, when we arrived at school, we could communicate freely without knowing any (or almost any) rules. With English it’s the other way around - first we’re bombarded with grammar, and only then, maybe, we’ll start talking. It is not surprising that we have a very high percentage of people who cannot overcome the language barrier.

This all sounds very scary, but there is no need to be afraid. All the difficulties that we have considered are very easy to get around. To achieve results so that learning English is interesting and exciting, you need only 2 components:

1. Your desire and desire to master the language. Good motivation has never harmed anyone, set a goal and go towards it.

2. A suitable teacher. If you are good with grammar, focus on practice. If you need to improve your grammar, find a suitable teacher who can give you the optimal combination of theory and practice.

Learn the language and enjoy your success!

Many of you have probably heard the following phrase: “The English language is very easy to learn to speak, but very difficult to learn to speak well.” But we want to reassure you: this is just a joke. Is there at least some truth in it? Is it difficult to learn English? There are two sides to the coin, so we invite you to find out why English is considered easy and why it is considered difficult. At the end of the article, we will give some interesting facts about the language and tell you how to cope with the difficulties that arise.

Why is English so easy?

Everything is learned by comparison, isn’t it? If we compare English with some other languages, we will realize that it is quite easy. Admire the Chinese or Japanese characters, and the Arabic script is worth it... No, compared to them, English is definitely a very simple language!

When I hear somebody sigh, “Life is hard,” I am always tempted to ask, “Compared to what?”

When someone sighs: “Life is hard…”, I always want to ask: “Compared to what?”

Now let's move on to the details. Why we think English is easy:

• English is one of the most widely spoken languages ​​in the world. And this is no coincidence, because it is considered one of the simplest and most logical in grammar among European languages.
• A relatively simple design of letters; there are only 26 of them in the English alphabet. For comparison, the Chinese language has more than 80,000 characters, and the number of strokes in one character can reach 30!
• Quite a lot of words have “migrated” from English to Russian. Even those who do not learn English automatically memorize several hundred words that are often encountered in life. For example, we are all familiar with the concepts of “businessman”, “bestseller”, “management”, “price list”, “office”. Some words even seem “our own” to us, Russian.
• Nouns do not agree with adjectives in gender, number, and case. For example: “tall girl” - “tall girl”, “tall girls” - “tall girls”, “tall boy” - “tall boy”. As you can see, the adjective “tall” does not change, despite changing the number or gender of the object.
• The noun has only singular and plural numbers and two cases. That is, you can say “girl” (girl) and “girls” (girls) - this is one case that names the object.

  The second case is used when you need to say that something belongs to someone, for example: “girl’s doll” (girl’s doll). And if something belongs to many girls, then we move the apostrophe behind the letter “s”: “girls’ dolls” (girls’ dolls).

  In all other cases, the word “girl” does not change. For example, you can give a girl her doll: give a GIRL her doll. You can talk to a girl: talk to the GIRL.

  As you can see, dealing with cases in English is much easier than in Russian.

Why is English so difficult?

There is also the opposite point of view: English is a difficult language, in order to master it well, you need to study it for a long time. You probably have a question: how long does it take to learn it and is it possible to “learn” it? We recommend reading the article “”, it will answer your questions.

English, like any other language, is constantly changing: new idioms, slang expressions, words borrowed from other languages ​​appear, and some vocabulary becomes outdated and disappears from the spoken language. However, this is not the worst thing for students. Most students are afraid of grammar. What's so difficult about it?

• Time. It seems that there are a lot of them: as many as 3 tenses and each of them has 4 aspects, and if you also remember about the passive voice... However, it is believed that English grammar is one of the most logical and simplest. Do you know what is the most difficult thing about learning all these subtleties? Stop being afraid of them!
• Articles. It is not always easy for a Russian person to understand why a cat can be both “a cat” and “the cat”. There are no such difficulties in our native language. But it’s okay, you can deal with it!
• Control of verbs. Verbs in English are used with different prepositions and have different meanings. Since the control of verbs in Russian and English is not the same, students have to learn them by heart. For example, borrow smth FROM smb – borrow, borrow something for a while U anyone. How do you like such discrepancies: to approve OF smth - to approve something, to depend ON smb/smth - depend FROM someone/something, to be popular WITH smb - to be popular U anyone.
• The English language is full of paradoxes, you can read about some of them in the article “Paradoxes of the English language. Do you think English is easy? "

And to make it easier for you to cope with the most common “difficulties” of English, use our life hack article “”, from it you will learn how to easily get around all the “slippery spots” in English grammar.

How to overcome difficulties in learning English. A few simple tips

• Cast aside fears and doubts. It is the fear of failure that stops us. Millions of people learn English, most often they are not geniuses, not linguists, they have average language abilities. Don't be afraid of mistakes, even native speakers make them. We also don’t always write or speak Russian correctly. However, this does not prevent us from communicating with people and understanding each other. Experience is the son of difficult mistakes, so don’t be afraid to gain this experience.
• Try to find similarities in Russian and English. This will help not only learn new vocabulary, but also broaden your horizons. For example, the word “talk” is very similar to the old Russian “to interpret”, the word “child” is similar in sound to “child”, and the word “brave” is similar to our “brave”. And the word “humor” - “humor”, didn’t it come from the good old word “humor”? And “skate” - “horse”, it’s from the word “to roll down”! Agree, it’s much easier to learn English this way.
• Study not only the textbook, but also fascinating auxiliary materials: videos, audio lessons, songs, films in English. On the social network you can subscribe to news from communities of English lovers. We advise you to pay attention to the blogs of language teachers and linguists, where you can find useful tips and subtleties of learning English.
• If you have difficulties with any section of grammar, devote as much time as possible to it, use the studied material in communication with the teacher, classmates, and foreigners. Bring your skills to automaticity.

The most interesting “difficulties” of the English language

To sum it up, we cannot tell you that English is very simple and can be easily learned in 1-2 months. But it is not at all as complicated as it seems at first glance. Yes, it has its own characteristics and pitfalls, but these barriers can be overcome if there is a desire. Good luck with your studies!

Learning English, like any foreign language, is associated with a number of difficulties. Where do these difficulties come from and can they be overcome? This vital question for any person learning English will be discussed.

Reason one: differences in mentality. It is obvious that the worldviews of a Russian and an Englishman are very different. Accordingly, language, as one of the embodiments of the national worldview, is mastered along with new views on life, which can be quite useful, but requires additional effort. Differences in linguistic pictures of the world are especially visible in folk wisdom - proverbs and sayings, which quite often cannot be adequately translated. For example:

The proof of the pudding is in the eating– To find out what the pudding is like, you have to taste it (literal translation).

Reason two: differences in the articulatory base. When teaching pronunciation, a good teacher will certainly pay attention to those sounds that are atypical for the Russian language. It is these that you should spend time working on. For example, English [r], which is pronounced differently than Russian [r]. Another stumbling block is interdental sounds, which many Russian speakers, especially adults, are simply embarrassed to pronounce.

Reason three: different grammatical systems. The English language differs from Russian in the absence of a developed case system. However, this is offset by numerous aspects and verb tenses. The English language is strong in verbs, the forms of which Russian speakers have to learn for quite a long time, since often there are no similar differences in our native language. For example, the Russian sentence:
I wrote a letter
Can be translated in three ways if there is no context
I've written the letter. or
I wrote the letter. or
I had written the letter.
And the more exercises you do on using and comparing tense forms, the stronger your knowledge will be.

Reason four: syntactic differences. In the Russian language such wonderful phrases as “Evening” are possible. Unlike Russian rules for constructing sentences, English syntax does not allow such gems, but requires the mandatory presence of a subject and predicate.

So our “Evening” in English will be “Night was falling”. The word order in interrogative sentences and the use of auxiliary verbs require special attention.
These are the main difficulties that prevent native Russian speakers from learning English. Now that you know what to pay attention to when working on your English, you will achieve good results and your Russian language will not interfere with your English.

Read more about the problems of learning English and ways to solve them on the So-Easy speaking club website!