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Which is the best [human] language to learn?

• evincarofautumn 15y ago
  The point made about Chinese is harsh, but basically valid. I’m a Mandarin Chinese language minor, and I’ve been studying it for a couple years now; it’s really just the writing system that’s difficult, because it’s so heavily memorisation-oriented. The syntax, morphology, and phonology are way simpler and more uniform than English. Even my peers with the most pronunciation difficulties had little trouble with tones. (It’s mainly the affricates and some vowels that cause trouble.) If China were to move to a further simplified writing system (as Korea has already done with Hangul), then sure, it would remove barriers for foreign learners. But it won’t happen, for basically the same reason that English spelling reform won’t—the orthography is fairly standard across dialects, and nobody is willing to accept “breaking” changes. Now, as for French…I’ve spoken French since I was little, and speaking it lets me understand Spanish and other Romance languages rather well. But I think perhaps I would be better off knowing Spanish, because French pronunciation differs so much from the Romantic norm. You’re much less likely to be understood speaking French to a Spanish speaker than you are speaking Spanish to an Italian speaker. So my votes are for English, Mandarin, and (some variety of) Spanish.