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Many years ago there was an article in the Economist about the global ubiquity of English. Apart from the political history of the British Empire and American
by JackFr 7y ago
Many years ago there was an article in the Economist about the global ubiquity of English. Apart from the political history of the British Empire and American hegemony, one of the broad reasons for its success was that no one really cares if you speak it poorly.
- bryanrasmussen 7y agoSurely people care, but people are able to understand you or will try their darndest. This ability to understand is completely missing from Danish, for example, because (I believe) of the many different vowel sounds and other pronunciation quirks - the result is if you do not speak Danish well most Danes will shut down trying to understand you. Thank God for English in that circumstance. Indeed my teacher used to joke that the most common phrase in Danish is "Hvad siger du" (what are you saying) because it is so difficult for Danes to even correctly understand each other - a funny Norwegian video on this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk