The logic in the English language is null and void. Unlike German that is complicated yet splendidly structured or Russian that is just so hopelessly intricate, English may seem easy at a first glance. But it is not.
When someone just picks up the first English textbook and sets off on that undoubtedly marvelous journey to the land of the English language, first and foremost, there are articles. Rarely can an English sentence be built without articles. There is almost always a rule that gives a person the understanding whether or not to use an article in a certain situation and if there should be the definite article “the” or the indefinite article “a”. But do you see? We cannot content ourselves with just words; we need these tiny particles like a lamp needs electricity to work.
Once we are done (or we think that we are done) with these terrible sets of exceptions we move on to the next stage of our fascinating trip which is tenses. But truth be told, unfortunately, tenses do not function alone. In order to use them correctly, one would immediately need to learn three forms of irregular verbs, word order in different types of sentences and the cases of usage of said tense forms. Needless to say, it has been known for quite a long time, people knew it a long time ago and people know it now.
You would think that is all you need to know. Hardly so! Then abruptly you come across numerous complications like sequence of tenses, conditional sentences or passive voice. If you have the general idea of the English language, it is then understood that had these sequences not been invented way before it was made obvious that most people accepted the fact that these rules were crucial for understanding other people and would be crucial in the future, we would not have been able to communicate normally.
Alright, alright! No one would ever say or write something like this nightmare above.
But what about the pronunciation? We are taught the what-they-call-Classic British-English but having finished school or university we cannot understand a single word a Scotsman or an Irishman tells us. Yes, I do exaggerate, but our ears are only used to the slow unpretentious speech coming from that tape recorder so our brain does not perceive information any farther than everyday topics. Hence a language barrier. Not merely because of this but for the most part.
When we have finally overcome that accursed hurdle and are all set and ready to advance thither towards mastering English we realize how great the lack of our vocabulary is and how many words we do not understand while reading a text in English.
If you have just thought that you have gained every missing piece of knowledge, phrasal verbs are ready to crash in. Although there is almost always a long Latin substitute for any phrasal verb, spoken and everyday English still benefits from the usage of rather short and extremely functional phrasal verbs. We have to give in that leaving out phrasal verbs from our everyday life would mean putting up with the necessity of picking up more and more longer words that, on the contrary, would still enrich our language. Alas, phrasal verbs come in hundreds.
When you set off on that journey, it soon becomes obvious that there is probably no end. What do we stumble across again? That's right, prepositions. The English language has a tremendously large amount of prepositions and each of them may mean a different thing in various contexts. Say there's an airplane. We travel BY plane and when we are ON a plane (or on board) we can sleep or do something that we find entertaining - luckily, there are many opportunities to do that IN a plane.
And so your journey has finally come to an end. Or has it now? A-a-and pronunciation pops up once again. In your already fluent speech rich with idiomatical expressions and slang terms you start to notice those little gaps - so to speak - the sounds or vowels that you heretofore has not mastered. We strive to obtain the excellent pronunciation of words like “man” and “men” that sound nigh the same; or of homophones like “to”, “two” and “too” or “there”, “their” and “they’re” while still maintaining the fast speech tempo. Getting to know such complicated words as “otorhinolaryngologic” or “schizophrenia” we can say: “Yes, that is somewhat torturing”.
Pardon my tediousness, but then there are collocations that represent how words correlate to each other. You can easily be deceived into thinking that the language structures that are common in your mother tongue can be replicated in the English language. That is entirely wrong! You will never be able to “get” or to “acquire” a fortune but you surely will “make it” if you see the difference.
If any single one of you out there is still so eager to contradict the linguistic truth that learning a language equals to an endless process; if that is still a question for you whether or not the aforesaid is an exaggeration; if you keep insisting that you have mastered English and you are done with it... Wow! Read this article again, keep doing it in a cycle until every single thread, every single convolution of your brain is certain that you have been foolishly wrong. OR you can always quit it, you can always run from the truth shrugging, floundering and shaking your head when a native speaker asks you something. The choice is utterly up to you...