5 ms·
It's both, I think. Basic grammar is fairly easy and succinct. But then there are 60K phrasal verbs (stand up, stand down, understand, stand under, stand over,
by aristus 18y ago
It's both, I think. Basic grammar is fairly easy and succinct. But then there are 60K phrasal verbs (stand up, stand down, understand, stand under, stand over, but never "overstand") and special cases, connotations, figures of speech, etc.
It's difficult to explain to a learner why it is technically correct but not usual to say "This is my election for lunch", or why a "hot chick" goes to college while a "hot chicken" is dinner.
- shard 18y agoBeing fluent in both English and Chinese, I would have to say Chinese grammar is much easier than English. There are no irregular verbs or pluralization, and very few tenses. The difficulty in going from speaking English to Chinese is vocabulary memorization and pronunciation, but that's true for going from Chinese to English as well.