The global spread of English is a seismic event in Man's history

The Times (UK) ^ | 1/15/05 | Matthew Parris

[Timedrifter]

I wish somebody would inform some of our own recent immigrants how english is in.

[llevrok]

Except in the USA where the Libs want to be a bilingual country so they can "feel" continental.

So move to Canaduh, already!

[jkid2]

English Rules

yeah I wish somebody would tell many of these new immigrants

[grandpiano007]

English is in? Yes, because America rules the World. OOH YEAH. But, in 20 years, Chinese will be in, and all of us here, will be telling our children, eat your rice with chop sticks, kid, don't you wanna fit in? Hell, by that time, we'll probably all know how to operate our remote control with chop sticks.

[Congressman Billybob]

And notice that the Democrats in the California legislature have just caused the firing of one of the most able, dedicated Democrats serving on its board of education. This man, who was appointed by Davis, was reappointed by Schwarzenegger.

The President of the Senate killed the nomination without stating his reasons. But the real cause was that this man realized that bilingual education is a failure -- and the Democrats in the legislature are still bought and paid for by the "edukashun" unions, who still support bilingual education as a job preservation device. To hell, of course, with the real needs of the children.

Congressman Billybob

Click for latest, "Social Security, AARP and Coots"

[Brian328i]

Reminds me of that TV show where the guy is in the restaruant, he gets done talking to waiter and then says something like he should learn english to be in this nation, and some liberal douche says, "I don't think so." or "No, he shouldn't."

[ddantas]

English is a awful language to learn. The pronunciation<->spelling rules are completely inconsistent, and the conjugation rules for verbs are a mess of special cases.
I'm not a bit fan of amazingly-difficult-to-learn Asian languages either.
It's a bit of a shame that an Latin-based language, like Italian, Spanish, or Portuguese, is not the predominant world language. Their grammatical rules are typically much more elegant.

[narses]

Universal language is one of those critical parts of human geopolitical growth. For well over 25 centuries, LATIN was that language. English has grown in the last 300 years to rival Latin.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

How do you plan to turn the tide?

[ultima ratio]

Lucky for us.

[ddantas]

Turn the tide? That's impossible--cultural dominance trumps language elegance every time. As long as America produces the world's movies, TV shows, and books, English will be the predominant language.

[Centurion2000]

Mandarin, which is a tonal language will be in ? No way :)

[xJones]

English has a great problem with being so un-phonetic. Looking words up in an English dictionary can be difficult at times since the spelling can vary so widely.

BUT, the great joy of English is that the nouns are genderless, and declension of verbs is minimal. Plus, English sentences normally start with the subject noun first, the verb second, and the details follow.

The Russian language, for instance, is very highly declined and every noun has a gender (all European languages are gender-concious). The subject noun can occur at the end of a very long sentence because you're supposed to take the gender and subsequent declension into account. It is laborious but relatively easy to translate Russian into English, but trying to fit English into Russian is hell (I took two years of Russian science translation in college).

Then there is the fact that English has outgrown the familiar and formal "thee" and "thou". German, for instance, has it's "du" und "Sie", as do so many other languages. English is highly functional - except for the wretched spelling defects - and borrows words freely from other languages. English can use nouns as verbs, as in "We're having a party" compared to "We're partying!" English is an evolving language, the most vibrant and word-filled on earth. And it's 26 letter alphabet is an infinite advantage over all the oriental pictograms.

[RayChuang88]

BUT, the great joy of English is that the nouns are genderless, and declension of verbs is minimal. Plus, English sentences normally start with the subject noun first, the verb second, and the details follow.

That's actually something influenced by the Romance languages, particularly the French language influence brought over by the Norman invasion of 1066. If we don't have the Norman invasion English would probably have evolved akin to other Germanic languages, especially in the use of noun cases.

[Between the Lines]

Hispanics angry over proposal to make English Arizona's official language

[Ciexyz]

English teachers everywhere are rejoicing at this development.

[Terpfen]

"The pronunciation<->spelling rules are completely inconsistent"

Those rules are situational. Example:
"Whose car is this?" "Who's going with you?"

"They're going to the store." "Hey, over there!" "Their car got towed."

Spelling is a speedbump, not a hurdle. There are plenty of native English speakers on FR who get their spelling and grammar wrong, but still get their point across.

[srm913]

I speak both Mandarin and Cantonese fluently, but let me tell you, they are both a BEAR to learn!
All my former students in China caught on to English far more efficiently than I caught on to Chinese.
Cantonese is particularly awful. A language with seven tones, in which the slightest change of inflection changes "go fishing" to "f--k fishes" or "My shoes are all wet" to "My vagina is all wet," along with no alphabet to use, makes me thankful for English's relative efficiency.
We have a lot to be thankful for.

[srm913]

I actually made those mistakes, BTW, to my eternal chagrin.