Why the English Language is the Best International Language

[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.

[Revolting cat!]

Experts have long agreed that Volapük is superior in all respects!

[FrdmLvr]

I met an Austrian woman on a train going from Melk to Vienna about 10 years ago. She realized I was American and struck up a conversation with me. She was studying for her PhD in English at the University of Vienna, and explained to me that English was the most versatile language for expressing oneself because of it’s extensive vocabulary, and the way sentences are structured. She said there is a word for just about any idea or feeling one could want to express.

I guess the Brits knew what they were doing.

[quadrant]

And the idiocy of assigning masculinity or feminine to inanimate objects.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

You are correct that English is very difficult to learn, but because of multiple sources, including especially German, French and Latin its vocabulary gives it enormous power and flexibility. The number of users is of course in a class with Only Chinese and Spanish.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

A lot of effort was put into Esperanto as an international language.

After all that effort, how many people speak it as their first language, or even second.

[Fiji Hill]

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".

I insist on using "he" or 'his" as the third person indefinite pronoun. While it may be politically correct to use "they" or "their"--as in "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs"--it strikes me as ungrammatical.

[BfloGuy]

Despite the criticisms from some of our esteemed and deep-thinking fellow-Freepers, I think it's an excellent question. The widespread adoption of English as a universal language is not, however, due to any characteristic of the language itself, but simply to America's (and England's before it) power in the World.

English is a very complicated and difficult language to learn. I'm glad I was born into it. If we were to adopt a common language that was easy to learn, we'd have chosen Esperanto or even Latin.

Lucky for us, English won.

[DBrow]

Four?

[oldbill]

Oh damn! Now I have to learn English.

[Fiji Hill]

English also has an advantage in that the alphabet contains no diacritical marks, which makes it computer-friendly. As far as I know, the only other European language that uses a latin alphabet free of diacritical marks is Dutch.

[KarlInOhio]

I like English for the simple fact that our sentences are structured in such a way that the listener knows what's going on up front. Not so with other languages, German, for example.

Mark Twain: Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.

[mlocher]

Literacy in English should be stressed among all other languages.

I agree with you, but for much different reasons.

For centuries the English speaking nations have consistently been the engine for the global economy. This includes the US and UK, but to a lesser extent Australia. Anyone that wants to participate in the English speaking nation's growth, needs to speak the language of the English to do business with them.

It is an application of the Golden Rule, "Them that has the Gold, makes the Rules."

[mlocher]

(man, that’s hard to type :-)

You had me going for a minute.

[sobieski]

Since English is the result of Celtic, Latin, Danish (Vikings), German (Anglo-Saxon) and French (Norman, another group of Vikings) it is more akin to a pigdin than a language. A pigdin is a language that is common among people who work together but speak various languages. One advantage is the noun-verb-noun structure w/o the declensions common in Slavics, Latin and German.

[Fiji Hill]

I had German in high school and let me say this: I hate gender!

One of the most difficult problems in learning German is the neuter gender, to which about a third of all the nouns belong. I believe most, if not all romance languages have only a masculine and a feminine gender, which simplifies learning.

Another problem facing English speakers learning German is that one cannot always determine a noun's gender by looking at it. In Russian, which also has three genders, one can almost always determine a noun's gender by its spelling, although "type two" masculine and feminine nouns, which end in a consonant followed by a soft sign--such as the feminine noun "bezopastnost'" ("Security"--the "B" in "KGB")--can sometines pose problems for learners.

[Fiji Hill]

And don’t even get me started on “Hugh” and “Series”

How about "loose" for "lose"?

[Greysard]

Many people already commented that English is not as easy as it seems to a native speaker. To many foreign nationals (Chinese, Japanese and other East Asians) English pronunciation is an impossibility; when they speak English it's a pain to decipher their speech. No grammar training will help here - the art of pronunciation of language-specific sounds is cast in stone in childhood, and can be partially corrected only by full immersion into the foreign language for many years.

I know a few foreign languages, ranging from "quite decent" to "can read with dictionary". English is the easiest among many European languages; however I heard lots of good about Spanish, though I do not speak it yet (but I listen to spanish radio in the car.)

If I were to guess, Esperanto, being an artificial language, will eventually become the common language. The reasons are many, particularly because Esperanto has no legacy, and every word is built like a machine part - from pieces, by simple rules. For example (from Wikipedia:)

ruĝaj domo kaj aŭto (a red house and [a red] car)
mi farbis la pordon ruĝan (I painted the red door)
mi farbis la pordon ruĝa (I painted the door red).

Simplicity of the language may eventually make it globally useful. This hasn't happened yet because English is currently the standard for world business, and it's not easy to switch to something else. The switch has to have good reasons, and complexity of English is not enough. But, for example, if China or Japan (or any other country with an incomprehensible language) becomes the world leader then the world may choose Esperanto as an international language. But they also may want to keep English around, it's kind of simple, as long as you don't plan to write a novel.

There is one more way for Esperanto to take off - literally so. If we live long enough to see human colonies on other planets, these colonies are likely to consist of people of various nationalities. Selecting a language of one group as a primary will cause obvious tensions in the colony. Selecting a neutral language will be fair to everyone. As an additional benefit, multiple colonies (in asteroid belt, for example) will have one common language, which is good for trade and mutual assistance.

[SAJ]

So does Russian, principally by the very same appropriation of other languages' words as does English. To shave: native Russian, bruitcya, or, adapted, ''shavovat' ''. (shrug),. Who cares?

Hell's bells, every English or French speaker knows several hundreds of words of modern Russian due to this linguistic practice, even if said speaker is unaware that he does know them. Salat, restoran, stadion, limon, kafye, all mean exactly what you think they do, among hundreds of other words.

Note: I have transliterated, above, 'ui' for the Russian letter 'uri' here, as well as a simple '' ' '' for the Russian letter whose name is pronounced ''myakie znak''. If this is not a suitable transliteration to Russophiles, my apologies. Deal with it.

What's your point here? EVERY useful modern non-ideographic language grows in the same way...just some more quickly than others. The languages that deal, and will deal, most efficiently with the inevitable order-of-magnitude expansion of new (especially technological) terms will be the languages that will be adopted by more and more people in future. This lets out, for example, French from the concept of usefulness going forward, btw; the Academie still attempts to prohibit the ''evils'' of Franglais.

Bloody dinosaurs.