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English is one of the most commonly spoken languages in the world, and it's the language of the country with the largest economy. It's also a germanic language,

English is one of the most commonly spoken languages in the world, and it's the language of the country with the largest economy. It's also a germanic language, so even though it's probably tougher to learn than other languages, it wouldn't be as difficult as Mandarin.

StavrosK 9y ago
> English is one of the most commonly spoken languages in the world For now. > and it's the language of the country with the largest economy. Also for now. > It's also a germanic language, so even though it's probably tougher to learn than other languages, it wouldn't be as difficult as Mandarin. I'm trying to avoid being snarky at the false dichotomy.
- TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
  > For now... Also for now. Why else would you learn a language? You wouldn't learn it for the past and you wouldn't learn it for the future. English is widely spoken right now, and so is useful to know. > I'm trying to avoid being snarky at the false dichotomy. I suppose I could have been more clear. Part of the utility of English is that it's spoken by the Western superpower, the US. By speaking English, that makes your country's economy interact with the US's economy easier. You could learn other superpowers' languages as well like China's and Russia's, but for other Germanic languages, it's much easier to learn English than Russian or Mandarin.
  - schoen 9y ago
    Heh, I thought you were addressing a much more abstract consideration about the global average difficulty of learning languages based on both their relatedness to other languages and their internal complexities are irregularities (see my reply elsewhere in the thread). I didn't realize you were actually thinking more about economic and political considerations. Edit: I feel like many people do learn languages "for the past" or "for the future". For example, many people study ancient languages partly to learn about ancient cultures and ancient history, while many Mandarin learners in the U.S. through the 1990s and 2000s said one motivation was that "China is going to be more important in the future" or something to that effect.
  - stevekemp 9y ago
    > Why else would you learn a language? Because you have a foreign-partner, or because you've moved countries? (Though I appreciate neither of those would be super-common.)
- schoen 9y ago
  So, there is the State Department's classification of languages by how easy they are to learn for English speakers, which shows a wide variation. https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Language_Learning_Difficulty_for_English_Speakers https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Language_Learning_Di... Of course, this classification is explicitly meant for native English speakers and includes the degree of relatedness to English as a contributing factor. I don't know if someone has done research about the average difficulty of each language as L2 considered across everyone in the world, but clearly there will be some that are easier and harder on average, considering factors such as unusual phonemes, non-alphabetic writing systems, irregular orthography, irregular inflections, presence or absence of inflections, similarity of sentence structure to most common sentence structures, and so on. Chinese probably has advantages as L2 due to the lack of inflections but disadvantages due to the extremely difficult writing system and (maybe?) tones -- just because I think most languages worldwide are not tonal. English has advantages due to the alphabetic writing system and disadvantages due to irregular verbs, irregular orthography, and some relatively unusual phonemes. Also, a lot of non-Chinese speakers already speak languages that are related to Chinese and/or share part of their writing system with Chinese, while a lot of non-English speakers already speak languages that are related to English and/or share part of their writing system with English. Anyway, we need to look into this a lot more before just saying that one language is a clear winner, but the idea is not at all meaningless and should in principle have an answer. Although clearly there will be some people who will be at a huge advantage or a huge disadvantage in learning any given L2, which is, again, a big part of what the State Department ranking is showing (not just the inherent ease or difficulty of learning each of these languages in the abstract).
  - StavrosK 9y ago
    That's an interesting resource, although, as you say, it measures more "how close this language is to English" than "how easy it is to learn for everyone". I agree with your entire comment, though, there is probably an answer for "which language is easiest for a group of X languages speakers to learn?".
  - kawera 9y ago
    Another aspect to consider is how many languages a learner already speaks. Mandarin is far from simple but I'm having a relatively smooth ride learning it as my L6.

StavrosK 9y ago

> English is one of the most commonly spoken languages in the world For now. > and it's the language of the country with the largest economy. Also for now. > It's also a germanic language, so even though it's probably tougher to learn than other languages, it wouldn't be as difficult as Mandarin. I'm trying to avoid being snarky at the false dichotomy.

TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
> For now... Also for now. Why else would you learn a language? You wouldn't learn it for the past and you wouldn't learn it for the future. English is widely spoken right now, and so is useful to know. > I'm trying to avoid being snarky at the false dichotomy. I suppose I could have been more clear. Part of the utility of English is that it's spoken by the Western superpower, the US. By speaking English, that makes your country's economy interact with the US's economy easier. You could learn other superpowers' languages as well like China's and Russia's, but for other Germanic languages, it's much easier to learn English than Russian or Mandarin.
- schoen 9y ago
  Heh, I thought you were addressing a much more abstract consideration about the global average difficulty of learning languages based on both their relatedness to other languages and their internal complexities are irregularities (see my reply elsewhere in the thread). I didn't realize you were actually thinking more about economic and political considerations. Edit: I feel like many people do learn languages "for the past" or "for the future". For example, many people study ancient languages partly to learn about ancient cultures and ancient history, while many Mandarin learners in the U.S. through the 1990s and 2000s said one motivation was that "China is going to be more important in the future" or something to that effect.
- stevekemp 9y ago
  > Why else would you learn a language? Because you have a foreign-partner, or because you've moved countries? (Though I appreciate neither of those would be super-common.)
schoen 9y ago
So, there is the State Department's classification of languages by how easy they are to learn for English speakers, which shows a wide variation. https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Language_Learning_Difficulty_for_English_Speakers https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Language_Learning_Di... Of course, this classification is explicitly meant for native English speakers and includes the degree of relatedness to English as a contributing factor. I don't know if someone has done research about the average difficulty of each language as L2 considered across everyone in the world, but clearly there will be some that are easier and harder on average, considering factors such as unusual phonemes, non-alphabetic writing systems, irregular orthography, irregular inflections, presence or absence of inflections, similarity of sentence structure to most common sentence structures, and so on. Chinese probably has advantages as L2 due to the lack of inflections but disadvantages due to the extremely difficult writing system and (maybe?) tones -- just because I think most languages worldwide are not tonal. English has advantages due to the alphabetic writing system and disadvantages due to irregular verbs, irregular orthography, and some relatively unusual phonemes. Also, a lot of non-Chinese speakers already speak languages that are related to Chinese and/or share part of their writing system with Chinese, while a lot of non-English speakers already speak languages that are related to English and/or share part of their writing system with English. Anyway, we need to look into this a lot more before just saying that one language is a clear winner, but the idea is not at all meaningless and should in principle have an answer. Although clearly there will be some people who will be at a huge advantage or a huge disadvantage in learning any given L2, which is, again, a big part of what the State Department ranking is showing (not just the inherent ease or difficulty of learning each of these languages in the abstract).
- StavrosK 9y ago
  That's an interesting resource, although, as you say, it measures more "how close this language is to English" than "how easy it is to learn for everyone". I agree with your entire comment, though, there is probably an answer for "which language is easiest for a group of X languages speakers to learn?".
- kawera 9y ago
  Another aspect to consider is how many languages a learner already speaks. Mandarin is far from simple but I'm having a relatively smooth ride learning it as my L6.