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.
Mande usted.
why don’t we just use the language that every commercial pilot uses at every international airport
I think it’s the best because that’s what I understand. Sort of...
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
Thou knowest that English once hath the properties which thou detesteth.
Experts have long agreed that Volapük is superior in all respects!
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.
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.
Oh damn! Now I have to learn English.
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.