4 ms·
It's not easier to learn because of grammar or vocab, but simply due to network effects. If you want to learn it, whoever you are, and wherever you live and wha
by nullsense 6y ago
It's not easier to learn because of grammar or vocab, but simply due to network effects. If you want to learn it, whoever you are, and wherever you live and whatever your mother tongue is there is the highest possible chance on average that you can access people who speak English, find high quality reference materials, and find native media that interests you.
If you run those considerations through all possible language pairs it's easy to see that these are the main factors that influence difficulty. Grammar, vocab, and pronunciation are a distant second.
- soldehierro 6y agoThat was the point I was trying to get at, that liguistically there's nothing "special" about English, as many people, as you can see in this thread, would claim. That's not to say there isn't a huge disparity between English and pretty much ever other language on the face of this earth, but we can ascribe it all to factors of history rather than any lingusitic factor. Once you establish a lingua franca, it tends to self-reinforce its position.