English seems so different:
Jay Doubleyou: why is english so different from other languages? part one: vocab
It has a lot to do with its history:
English is basically a Latin vocabulary superimposed on a Teutonic syntax. As a result you have a language with few commonalities to any single competing language.
Roughly 60% of English words can be traced back to Latin. Rough 40% can be traced back to ancient Hebrew. There is some overlap, but fully 90% of all English words can be traced to those two languages.
English syntax though can be traced back to ancient Assyria via German. Both English and German syntax are derived from a mixture of Assyrian, ancient Hebrew, and some other languages of the ancient Middle East.
Because of the massive mixtures of cultures since 700 BC, English is a unique language in that it is not directly derived from any single source.
Why is English so different from other European languages?
In fact, English is just a simplified mixture of other languages:
Because Middle English was a hodgepodge mélange of Old English (a Germanic tongue) and Norman French (a Romance language), it seems like Middle English was actually a kind of pidgin or creole.
historical change - Is English actually a pidgin or creole? - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
Old English varied widely from modern Standard English. Native English speakers today find Old English unintelligible without studying it as a separate language. Nevertheless, English remains a Germanic language, and approximately half of the most commonly used words in Modern English have Old English roots. The words be, strong and water, for example, derive from Old English. Many non-standard dialects such as Scots and Northumbrian English have retained features of Old English in vocabulary and pronunciation.[7] Old English was spoken until some time in the 12th or 13th century.[8][9]
In the 10th and 11th centuries, Old English was strongly influenced by the North Germanic language Old Norse, spoken by the Norsemen who invaded and settled mainly in the North East of England (see Jórvík and Danelaw). The Anglo-Saxons and the Scandinavians spoke related languages from different branches of the Germanic family; many of their lexical roots were the same or similar, although their grammars were more divergent.
The Germanic language of the Old English-speaking inhabitants was influenced by extensive contact with Norse colonizers, resulting perhaps in cases of morphological simplification of Old English, including the loss of grammatical gender and explicitly marked case (with the notable exception of the pronouns). English borrowed approximately two thousand words from Old Norse, including anger, bag, both, hit, law, leg, same, skill, sky, take, and many others, possibly even including the pronoun they.[10]
History of the English language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
English started out as a pidgin. It is a composite of a few languages. It grew to a creole and then developed into a language. Most pidgins do not deal with the complex parts of the languages (rarely masculine, feminine, neuter, simpler conjugation, etc.) and just deal with the rules necessary to make your thoughts understood. Languages that grow from a pidgin will add their own rules or include the rules from the languages they developed from, but for the most part those rules are a lot simpler than the rules from the original languages.
syntax - Why is English so much more simplified than other, similar languages? - Linguistics Stack Exchange
There's quite an academic debate on this:
Middle English creole hypothesis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Here's a good overview:
Grammar - Verb/Tense: In one respect English verb grammar is easy. It does not have a large number of inflections such as exist in French or Russian. For example, there are only 4 forms of the regular verb to ask:ask, asks, asked, asking. On the other hand, English does have a large number of possible tenses (verb forms); and their designations are not always helpful to the learner. The past simple tense, for example, can be used to talk about the future: If I won a lot of money, I would buy a new house. Many languages do not have a continuous tense form, so English learners may make mistakes such as: I had a bath when the phone rang.
Indeed, the most significant problem for learners is to decide which tense (verb form) is required in English to correctly express the meaning that they wish to convey. More on this.
A further feature of verb grammar that causes difficulties is the correct choice of modal. Modal verbs are heavily used in English to convey shades of meaning in the areas of compulsion, ability, permission, possibility, hypothesis, etc. For example, learners have problems understanding the difference between: He must have done it and He has had to do it.
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Grammar - Other: Not only are verbs largely uninflected in English, but also nouns, pronouns and adjectives. The articles and other determiners never change their form*. This makes it much easier to avoid mistakes in English than in, say, German which has large numbers of inflections in the various parts of speech.
Meaning in English is conveyed largely by word order. In the following sentences we know who is biting whom by the order of the words: The dog bit the man. / The man bit the dog. Compare this with German. Because German is a highly inflected language, a more flexible word order is possible. So, Den Hund biss der Mann translates as The man bit the dog.
Word order in English sentences becomes significantly more difficult when indirect objects or adverbials are added to the standard Subject-Verb-Object syntax. Most learners of English have problems ordering words correctly in longer, more complex clauses.
The article system is another feature of English grammar that causes some students enormous difficulties; particularly, of course, those whose native languages do not use articles.
Language differences - The English language
Although it can be very interesting to compare English with, say, Chinese. Do you see any similarities with your langauge?
Language differences: English - Chinese
From an English-speakers perspective, there are 'difficult' languages. How do these compare with yours?
Most Difficult Language To Learn
... And there are the 'easy' languages:
Easiest Foreign Languages To Learn - Business Insider
A very interesting thread here discussing differences in the tense system. How would you compare your language?
English Tenses (Compared to Other Languages) | Antimoon Forum
It's not just tenses. Do you know the differences between these? And do you have these features in your languages?
Tense–aspect–mood - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For a bit more academic stuff:
Time flies like an arrow.… Fruit flies like a banana.
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