In the popular Jeopardy! quiz show this week, law student Jack Weller, a top contestant, made an embarrassing mistake, but most Americans were sympathetic and ready to forgive him.

Under the category “Plurals That Don''t End in S,” he answered that "Meese" is the plural for "Moose." The correct answer is, of course, that the plural for moose is still moose, not "meese," even though the word for more than one goose is "geese."

English is a confusing language, even "smart" native speakers make mistakes. I still think Chinese is the hardest language, followed closely by English - but I only know these two languages! Maybe languages are hard, period.

English is not easy to learn, though compared to other Indo-European languages such as Spanish, French, German or Russian (I tried to learn these languages a little bit myself), I think it is grammatically easier for a Chinese speaker, for example, similar word order, and the lack of "gender" in nouns or verbs.

Still, it is a hard language even for native speakers, let alone nonnative speakers like us, due to its inconsistency. For example, while you add "s" to make most nouns plural (cup, cups), there are a lot of exceptions. Plural for goose is geese, for mouse it is mice, and for moose it''s still (yes!) moose.

In terms of verb tenses, if it is "sing, sang, sung," or "ring, rang, rung", why not "bring, brang, brung" instead of "bring, brought, brought?" If "sink, sank, sunk," why not "think, thank, thunk?"

Pronunciation wise, words can be spelled differently but pronounced the same (through, threw), or they can be spelled the same but pronounced differently (present tense of "read" sounds like "reed" but the past tense, still spelled "read", is pronounced "red.").

There is also the difference between British and American English. For pronunciation differences, they are difficult yet not surprising for us Chinese speakers, considering the huge differences in our own various dialects, yet the spelling (color vs colour, theater vs theatre, realize vs realise) can be confusing.

Just forget about the different words used for the same thing in the two different English "dialects," such as "gas" in America vs "petrol" in Britain, "trunk" (of a car) vs "boot," "watch your head" (public sign) vs "mind your head." You probably need to live in both countries to get used to these different words used in each country.

Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders and other commonwealth countries generally follow British English (at least in spelling), so while America uses "favor, labor," they use "favour, labour" in other places. But I wonder why there are "Labour" Parties in Britain, Canada and New Zealand, yet a "Labor" Party in Australia.