Posted on 10/28/2008 6:30:12 PM PDT by big black dog
If you want to flame me, you can do so rightfully, as I am posting this from the viewpoint of a casual observer rather than an a knowledgeable linguist.
But here I go:
The easiest items to adjust for are nouns. You just plug in a noun in one language for another. Perhaps there are are languages with "easier" nouns than English but I don't know why or how. However, this is not the problem.
The Romance languages have two difficulties. How to use the personal or impersonal "you" term. (In English it's left generic) It varies widely between cultures and it can be very easy to inadvertently insult somebody. And then there is the comparatively extremely complex conjugation of verbs compared to the English Language.
The complex symbolic languages of the Asian nations don't relate well at all (at present) to the Phoenician alphabet type technology in the world. Especially troublesome are preparing cost worthy machines that use this language.
I can't speak for or against the language and alphabet of the Cyrillic nations, but it is not something most of the world seems inclined towards.
Literacy in English should be stressed among all other languages.
Since nothing of much import is happening in the news you figured you spend your time on this, and then ask us to spend our time on it?
Okay then. Consider yourself ... En Fuego!
No flames, no questions, no doubt.
Just ask the Chinese. English is it.
english is not an easy language to learn.
but it is a bastard language, you can do with it what you will
; english expands continuously.
si.
The Chinese know this.
Mande usted.
why don’t we just use the language that every commercial pilot uses at every international airport
I didn’t ask you to do anything. Yet you you chose to anyway. If you think it’s a post without merit, why not just ignore it?
I think it’s the best because that’s what I understand. Sort of...
What, is this post costing you some money or something? Just walk on by if it bothers you.
Aitway, Iay ustjay iscovereday notheray anguagelay atay Iay peakspay. (man, that’s hard to type :-)
I’m warming to Esperanto...
English is flexible and can stay with the times, most other languages aren’t.
No or very little grammatical gender. I had German in high school and let me say this: I hate gender!
Very easily extended by adding foreign words or just creating words. Also, it is easy to change parts of speech just in case you want to verb a noun.
English negatives:
Very loose association between spelling and pronunciation. I took one conversational Spanish class and I can pronounce just about any Spanish word on sight (except for r and rr, never could get a Spanish r right). Just try to claim that in English. Some of that comes from English accepting words from anywhere and trying to maintain both native spelling and pronunciation, so you get spelling rules from all over the world.
Lack of some useful pronouns. I want separate singular and plural versions of you. Southerners use y'all for the plural. Or bring back thou/thee/thy/thine for the singular. I would also like a third person singular unknown gender so I have a word for a single person when he or she isn't known and I don't have to switch to "they".
Too much overlap of words. Is bow something that shoots an arrow, a loop of fabric or (pronounced differently) bending at the waist?
English is certainly the most used language in the world due to the influence of the British and later the Americans, Canadians, Australians, South Africans and Indians.
However, by no stretch of imagination is it an easy language. It is rife with contradictory spellings, pronunciations, grammar rules and has a terrible tendency to convert proper nouns to verbs.
After nearly 400 years of English on the North American continent we still have a majority of the population that says “Your Welcome”...
And don’t even get me started on “Hugh” and “Series” :)
I love my darling English language and would rather speak it than any other but I know she is a bastardly beast that only I (her true friend) can love
Indo-European is the most widespread language family and its languages combined have the largest number of speakers (since more than half of India speaks one of the Indo-European languages). Lithuanian is the modern language which is closest to the ancestral Indo-European language, so it would be a logical selection for international language. Of course the fact that relatively few people speak it may be a drawback.
Thou knowest that English once hath the properties which thou detesteth.
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