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> I live in France and I'm at loss on what a gallon is. ... probably a hidden fine for the sin of using strange units Strange units, as opposed to strange lang

> I live in France and I'm at loss on what a gallon is. ... probably a hidden fine for the sin of using strange units Strange units, as opposed to strange languages. Since language is far more important than measurement, the French should obviously abandon their entirely unnecessary national language and adopt either English, Spanish or Mandarin as a logical standardization improvement. As French will continue to perpetually decline in importance and use globally, I propose that French is a failed language and it would be wise of France to get out in front of that unstoppable trend and drop their national language sooner than later. Overall English is clearly the best choice as a standard, as it will be adopted by more people this century than any other language as the global population swells toward 10 billion. Mandarin would be a solid second choice, however China's population will rapidly contract and the globe isn't in a hurry to adopt Mandarin given it's particularly difficult to learn. The vast inefficiency of Europe having and intentionally maintaining three dozen major languages is of course silly. Approximately half of the people in Europe can't communicate with eachother effectively because they share no common language. It's a very backwards approach. One might suggest that people can speak multiple languages and that that resolves the matter (it doesn't, the vast inefficiency of time, money & effort dedicated to maintaining failed non-English languages remains). However in that vein, it turns out you can utilize multiple measurement systems as well, as the US very commonly also uses the metric system where it matters to do so. The sole reasonable counter argument, the language-is-culture argument, applies exactly the same for non scientifically critical measurement references in the US. For example using yards, or feet which are tightly bound to US culture (from media to sports to history to routine conversation).

jraph 5y ago
OK, French is a bit weird. I'll take your English. A bit quirky, but manageable. No genders. Usually. That's neat. Quite concise. I can do this if you meet me halfway through. There's this color/colour centre/center thing where it does not know how it should be spelt (spelled? Screw your irregular verbs especially if they don't know whether they are irregular), but whatever. I will not comment on your phrasal verbs. But we can do nothing about its pronounciation. Sorry. A catastrophe. Nothing that can be fixed. Spanish is very regular in its pronounciation, so let's use that instead of English's. Or German, actually it might make more sense to use it for pronouncing English, a germanic language. As for the vocabulary, I'm fine if we keep English's. It's ours anyway.

jraph 5y ago

OK, French is a bit weird. I'll take your English. A bit quirky, but manageable. No genders. Usually. That's neat. Quite concise. I can do this if you meet me halfway through. There's this color/colour centre/center thing where it does not know how it should be spelt (spelled? Screw your irregular verbs especially if they don't know whether they are irregular), but whatever. I will not comment on your phrasal verbs. But we can do nothing about its pronounciation. Sorry. A catastrophe. Nothing that can be fixed. Spanish is very regular in its pronounciation, so let's use that instead of English's. Or German, actually it might make more sense to use it for pronouncing English, a germanic language. As for the vocabulary, I'm fine if we keep English's. It's ours anyway.