16 Things The English Language Can’t Do

I love the English language, but I must admit that there are some things that other languages do better.

I mean, does English give you a built-in compass? Does it help you show respect with one syllable or prove that something is true because you saw (not heard) it?

Here are 16 things you can’t do easily in English, no matter how hard you try! 

If you prefer watching videos to reading, hit play on the video version of this post below. Otherwise keep scrolling to read the post and find out the things English can't do.

#1 Missing Words

“I’m so furious, I’m lost for words!”

Ever heard that before? Next time you do, try suggesting the person learns Czech or Arabic. (Wait until they’ve calmed down first.)

Those are just two of many languages where speakers can describe complicated feelings with one word, thanks to all the emotion words at their disposal.

Imagine feeling the most terrible regret, grief and humiliation for something. Czech speakers can nail that with one word: litost.

And you know the feeling when you get so completely swept up in a song that you lose all inhibition? That’s tarab.

I reckon English could do with a few more emotion-words. Don’t you?!

#2 Clusivity

“Guess what! We’re going skiing in St Moritz next month!” Wow! 

Before you get too excited, let’s ask the all-important question. Are you included in the trip? 

Does “we” mean:

• Me and you?
• Me and someone else?
• Me and a whole group of people including you?
• Me and a group of others but not you?

In English, we have no way of knowing without asking more questions. 

If you were speaking Tagalog, there’d be no doubt. Your friend would use táyo (inclusive we) if you were joining them in St Moritz and kamí (exclusive we) if you weren’t.   

Many Asian and Pacific languages have clusivity built in, but I can’t think of a Western European language that does. 

Perhaps the Maori language does it best. Maori has a word for “you and I” – tāua and another for “me and him/her but not you” – māua.

Tātou means “all of us.” And even if “you” means “me and all of them, but not you,” you’ll be sure that’s the case when someone says mātou.

Maybe there’s a case for including more clusivity in English? It would certainly cut through the confusion. 

#3 Tone + Pitch Accent

Did you know there are 441 homophones in English?

Homophones may look different when they’re written down, but many of them sound exactly the same. Words like “to, two, too” or “their, there, they’re” catch out the best of us at times.

Some languages, like Thai or Mandarin, solve this problem by using tones to distinguish between words that would otherwise sound the same. 

For example, in Thai, the word mai has five meanings, depending on the tone.

Other languages, like Japanese, use pitch to convey meaning. The intonation falls on specific syllables, rather than the whole word. 

Do we need tones in English? It could get very confusing so, perhaps not. 

#4 Reduplication

“I know you like her. But do you like like her?” That sentence uses reduplication. It can sometimes be super useful, but it’s more creative wordplay than ‘proper English.’ 

Not so in Italian, Hebrew or Malay. 

In those languages repeating a word intensifies the meaning. 

Sometimes, reduplication creates a plural. 

So, in Malay, anak means “child” and anak-anak is “children”.

There’s even a Micronesian language called Pingelapese with triplication: Saeng (cries). Saeng-saeng (is crying). Saeng-saeng-saeng (is still crying). 

English speakers desperately want reduplication, so can someone please just add it to the rule book. 

#5 Echo Responses

Let’s think about this little Q&A: 

Question: “Is she not going out tonight?”

Answer: “Yes.”

You hear that sort of exchange a lot in English. But hold on! Did that mean “yes, she is going out,” or “no, she’s not going out tonight?” 

You can’t really be sure, can you? That’s why English speakers often ask positive questions in a negative form. For example, “Aren’t you hungry?” or “Isn’t she coming?” 

Or we ask tag questions— “You can come, can’t you?” 

They all sound OK if you’re a native English speaker but confusing if English is your second language. 

Finnish and Celtic languages take a different approach by using an echo response and echoing the question’s verb. 

Question: “Aren’t you hungry?” Answer: “I’m hungry.” (Or, “I’m not hungry.”) 

How about: “You don’t avoid paying taxes?” This question might seem ambiguous in English, but in Welsh, you’d answer – Nag ydw. (I do not) Problem solved!

Then there’s Japanese, which doesn’t have exact words for “yes” and “no” but uses agreement instead. So…Question: “Are you not going?” Answer: “That’s right.” (I am not going.) 

#6 Politeness

You can add fabric softener to your clothes. Why not add word softener to your language, too? 

It’s easy in Thai. Women end sentences with kâ, and men use kráp. Immediately you’re being polite. 

Thai people can also add the particle ná when they need to be assertive but don’t want to appear too demanding.

Take the phrase, Roh sak khroo (Wait a moment), which sounds harsh. Use Roh sak khroo ná kâ and Roh sak khroo ná kráp instead, and you’ll be silky smooth.

The Japanese take politeness to a whole new level. Japanese society values hierarchy and order, so using their honorific system shows your place in relation to the person you’re talking to.

It’s pretty straightforward; add a suffix like -san, -sama, -kun, or -chan after someone’s name. 

What an easy way to show respect.  

Then there’s the word “you.”

Romance languages (French, Italian, Spanish etc.) have formal and informal versions of “you”. You’d say tu to your partner in Spanish but usted to the company president. In French, you’d use vous with your boss and tu with your grandmother. 

In English, we say “you”to them all. Don’t you think that’s a little rude? 

#7 Question Particles

Wouldn’t it be handy to turn any statement into a question by adding a tiny spoken marker at the start or end?

In English, we’d say: “Kristy has dark hair,” if we were making a factual statement. But if we’re asking about the colour of Kristy’s hair, we’d have to rearrange the words: “Does Kristy have dark hair?”

Polish keeps things far more straightforward; you wouldn’t have to rearrange anything — you simply add czy in front.  

You could argue that we can do this in English, too, but it’s a little clumsy and doesn’t sound quite right!

Mandarin has a super easy way to make simple queries, too. Just put the ne article after what you’re asking about.

That’s handy for asking bounce-back questions when learning the language. E.g., to add to a discussion on climate change, you say Amazon and turn it into a question just by adding ne. Easy, eh!

#8 Copula vs. Locative “Be”

Scratching your head over this one? Copula and locative are grammar words for multiple forms of the verb “to be.” 

Portuguese has the words ser and estar which make it crystal clear whether to be is temporary or permanent.

If you’re talking about location (temporary) you use estar. So, Eu estou aqui (I am here). But for permanence, the Portuguese have the verb ser. Eu sou britânico (I am British).

In English, we use “I am” for them all. There’s no distinction between “I am doing”, “I am at” (both temporary) or “I am being” (which is permanent.)

On the other hand, it’s much easier for the Irish. The Irish language has two words for “I am” — tá and is.  

So, you could say Is rinceoir me when telling people that dancing is your profession, but Tá me ag an rince when you’re at the dance. No room for confusion there! 

I think copula and locative-be words would be helpful in English, too. Don’t you? 

#9 Null Subjects

“It’s raining!” 

So it is. But what exactly does “it” mean? Without getting into too many technical details, “it” is a subject pronoun in this sentence. But do we need “it”? In English, yes, we do.

“Raining” by itself just sounds strange. Not so in Italian, where you drop the “it” and just use the verb Piove (is raining).

Of course, it’s not just Italian that works this way. Albanian, Arabic, Greek, Hindi, Romanian, and Tamil don’t need it, him or her. In all these languages, the pronoun is coded into the verb conjugation so you can get straight to the point. 

#10 Evidentials

Evidentials are markers attached to seeing-type words that give listeners proof you have to back up your statement. 

That could be visual evidence (you saw it happen.) Ego evidence (it happened to you.) Sensory evidence (you heard it from the other room.)

You could be making an assumption, quoting an expert or passing on gossip from your next-door neighbour (who may or may not know what they’re talking about.)  

You probably already know that English doesn’t use evidentials, but are there any languages that do?

Yes. Many languages in the Amazon basin use evidentials to show the level of proof you have for your statement.

The Tariana language has many ways to say, for example, “José played football.”

Evidentials strike me as a feature that would benefit all languages. 

#11 Time-Independence

In English, you automatically reveal the timeframe whenever you use a verb. 

Past, present, future, continuous… Tense is the location of a word in time. It always conjugates to tell your listener approximately when ‘it’ happened. 

For example:

“I made a video.” We can’t tell from this simple sentence whether I made the video yesterday or last year, but we do know it happened in the past. 

“I’m making a video” implies the present tense (I’m doing it now.) Whereas “I will make a video” tells you it hasn’t happened yet, you plan to make that video sometime in the future. 

But what if you want to avoid putting an action into any time-space? It’s impossible in English, but not Chinese, because Chinese verbs only have one form. 

#12 Hyper-Specific Tenses

Speaking of tenses, the Kikuyu language of Kenya is unbelievably precise.

For example, it has three past tenses, depending on how long ago something happened.

Such a tense-rich language must make it pretty easy to explain things. 

#13 Absolute Directions

Most languages have words to show direction — left, right, north, south, etc. But one Australian Aboriginal language uses extraordinarily precise cardinal (or compass) directions. 

In this language, north, south, east and west combine with prefixes and suffixes to form dozens of new direction words. In fact, a single direction word can even tell you things like the distance to where you’re going and its proximity to nearby landmarks.

If every language was that accurate, we might even put Google Maps out of business.

#14 Synthetic Future Tense

English almost always adds an auxiliary verb like “will” or “am” to the main verb to form the future tense.

“I will be writing a new book this year”,for example, or “I am going on holiday next week.” 

In Spanish, however, you can say cantará, meaning “I will sing”. And in Italian, instead of “I will be writing”, you’d say scrivero. 

The Romance languages have an inflectional or synthetic future tense. You just add a suffix to the end of a word, and voila! You’re in the future (tense.)  

#15 Distributive Numbers

You may have noticed that English uses more words than many other languages. 

Case in point: distributive numbers. I guarantee that every school kid has heard this phrase at some point: “One at a time, please!”

In English, we need five words to keep the kids in order. A Japanese teacher uses one word — Hitorizutsu (one person at a time.) Meanwhile, the Turkish just tack a suffix to the number. So, iki (two) becomes ikiser (two each.)

These are called distributive numerals, words that answer how many times each or how many at a time. English speakers rarely use distributive numerals. The only ones that come to mind are singly and doubly — and when was the last time you used one of those?

#16 Whistled Words

If you ever get lost hiking in the mountains with no phone reception, you’ll probably wish that English had this final feature.

Whistled words. 

I kid you not. From the Amazon jungle to the Bering Strait, there are 70 places where people can whistle their language. It’s a fantastic way to communicate at a distance.

Even today, some people still whistle-speak daily, but sadly they’re becoming increasingly rare in the modern communication age.

Things English Can't Do

So, there are 16 things that English can’t do. But of course, there are many more things that English does really well. Like storytelling! 

Teaching language through story is what we do here at StoryLearning. So if you want to learn another language, you’re in the right place. Get a free 7-day trial of the StoryLearning course of your choice.

Olly Richards

Creator of the StoryLearning® Method

Olly Richards is a renowned polyglot and language learning expert with over 15 years of experience teaching millions through his innovative StoryLearning® method. He is the creator of StoryLearning, one of the world's largest language learning blogs with 500,000+ monthly readers.

Olly has authored 30+ language learning books and courses, including the bestselling "Short Stories" series published by Teach Yourself.

When not developing new teaching methods, Richards practices what he preaches—he speaks 8 languages fluently and continues learning new ones through his own methodology.