Non-native English speakers: did you learn American or British English?

I am an American, but I find things like this fascinating so wanted to add my thoughts. Throughout school, we were constantly told by our English teachers that American English is more complicated to learn than British English. This was due in part to the regional variations and dialects, but also because of sentence formation. I am not sure how accurate that is as I only have a knowledge of American English to go on, but just thought it was interesting.

 

American! Although, I should say either because of the internet or whatever, I was confused with words like mustache/moustache and grey/gray, since I saw both.

 

I learned American English. Actually, my teachers said that we could write ''with or without a u'', but if you speak French, you know that ''ou'' makes the ''oo'' sound and it screws with your head. That's why I always prefered the American spelling. Things like ''armour'' or ''neighbour'' look weird to me.

 

We were taught British English but I've always used American English because of its simpler pronunciation and influence from the media. I have British friends and sometimes they use typically British expressions which I have no clue what they mean.

 

I can't remember where I saw it, but I remember hearing that English is the hardest language in the world to learn if it's not your native tongue. I don't know if that meant British or American English. But with English being my first language I always thought that was interesting. If I remember right, the report also said that Chinese is the second hardest language to master.

 

My spelling is British English and for the rest, I kinda use both American words and British words.

 

Interesting. I always thought that English is the easiest language to learn. First off, we can hear and read English almost anywhere, because it's so widespread around the world. Just by that you can learn passively a lot. That also means there is a large amount of skilled teachers, that are easy to reach. Also, at least for me personally, English is very simple by itself. It has pretty easy rules to follow, no sounds that are too hard to pronounce (I only sometimes struggle with "th"), mostly fixed order of words in sentences, easy conjugation, and simple declension and no cases (and some smaller things like a very limited system of diminutives). For example, in my native language we have 7 cases, that means nouns, adjectives, pronouns and numerals can have up to 14 forms (but usually have less)... in English, for example word "road" has only 2 forms: "road" and "roads" ... whereas in Czech, I can say this word in about 11 different forms.. "cesta, cesty, cesto, cestám, etc..." (road, roads, calling at road, to roads) And there are different patterns for making them for various words. I'm used to it but I think it must be very confusing for someone to learn. English would be much harder to learn with such a system.

 

I think part of the reason English is so hard to learn is because so many words have more than one meaning. For example, "I read a new book today." "I want to read that book." Then there's words that have total different meanings but are pronounced the same way. Their, there, they're. Also there's words like rode, and road. Pronounced the same but different meanings. You also have the slang from every different dialect. I mean some foreign people would think I had a herd of deer when I say I have 50 bucks. There's also the spellings. I mean how often do you see a word spelled with a "ph(phone for example) that has an F sound? We also have words with silent letters. Mnemonic, sarsaparilla, knock, and so on. Then there's words, that even as a native English speaker, I don't get. Colonel is a major one.

 

Yeah the English spelling is pretty ridiculous and illogical sometimes. About these words that are spelled the same.. yeah that can be a bit confusing, but we can mostly get the meaning from the context.
But I'm pretty sure there are other languages with plenty of words with different meanings. Like in Czech: list (sheet of paper / leaf), los (moose / lottety ticket), kolo (wheel / circle / bike / round), and many more..

Also a lot of languages have various dialects, with their own slang words.

In terms of silent letters, just look at French They have silent letters almost everywhere.. and they have even a letter that they never spell (H)

 

Lol, it's not the first I've heard of it, but I can't see how that'd be true. I'm a language student and English is the easiest language I've learned. Spanish has more verb tenses (including subjonctive, which anglophones have no clue about). German has cases plus the weird syntax. Slavic languages have 7 cases. French has the past participles and the mute letters that make no sense. Chinese has the ton of symbols to memorize as well as 4 tones and the classificators.

Honestly, the hardest thing I can think of about English is the pronunciation, and even if you butcher that, it's usually not that hard for people to understand you if they try hard enough.

 

Same

 

70% American; 30% British

 

Doesn't change that saying it's the hardest is pushing it... a lot. I'm curious to see how they evaluated that. English is probably the most learned language worldwide and its difficulty depends on your first language. A Chinese person will have more trouble with English than a French person will because of how different the grammar and syntax are.

 

I learned British English

 

I don't know. The two weren't really separated. Sometimes we were told that some words were spelled differently but the only thing that mattered was to just learn English in general. I have been told that my English is just clean school English. Not British or American. It's just English of a non native speaker who has never lived in any English speaking country. I don't get to speak English that often but when I do I just try to spell everything as clearly as possible. I have been told that I am easy to understand. But please never try to make me say squirrel. I physically can't.

For a long time I couldn't even tell a difference between British and American accents. I still can't sometimes and I can't spot an Australian either. In here people speak very differently depending on which part of the country they are from and I sometimes can't even notice that and people sometimes get confused with me because I speak like I have been all over the place. I have but not recently enough. I don't know if I just don't care or if my brain is lacking some basic language functions.

 

Pretty much a mix of both. Depended on what teacher we had (and damn, did we have a lot of different English teachers). When it comes to spelling and word choice, I usually stick to the British; colour, favour, biscuit. But when speaking, American English sounds just a tad bit better.

 

American English. I'm from Brazil.

 

In school we have learned primarily british english since it is closer to us geographically. We have however learned the american words and spelling later on.


Though most of my english was probably learned passively through reading, so now it's probably a weird garbled mix of both.