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>"Globish English" Yes yes. I English speak very easy. I English hear too very easy. Easy understand. Can talk each other good just simple words. English very

>"Globish English" Yes yes. I English speak very easy. I English hear too very easy. Easy understand. Can talk each other good just simple words. English very good. *Ahem* Basically, the built-in error correction functionality in English is bloody phenomenal. Literally anyone with a passing understanding and skill in English can use it to communicate effectively. This feature is seldom seen in most other languages let alone lingua francas.

Veuxdo 3y ago
> This feature is seldom seen in most other languages let alone lingua francas. Source? On it's face this doesn't sound plausible...
- TaylorAlexander 3y ago
  Yeah this could just be a property of most human languages.
- bubblematrix 3y ago
  Source? How does it not sound plausible?
- kergonath 3y ago
  It sounds like someone who’s never learnt any other language and is high on freedom propaganda. It’s more than not plausible, it’s laughable.
lukev 3y ago
You are are literally describing a "lingua franca" here. And there's no evidence that English is special in it's ability serve as a lingua franca. In previous eras, other languages held this role (e.g, French, hence the term "lingua franca"). The dominance of English can be far more certainly attributed to the geopolitical dominance of english-speaking nations...
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  Agree with your main point, but Lingua Franca doesn't refer to French but to "Mediterranean Lingua Franca", an actual trade language of its own which was a mix of a bunch of things. It had that name because it was "the language of the Frankish" (traders) but what they (eastern sea/Muslim traders) meant by "Franks" was any western European. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Lingua_Franca https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Lingua_Franca
- junofan 3y ago
  What evidence are you looking for? No despot on Earth has managed to stamp it out, unlike countless other languages. You can say things like lingua franca and everyone knows what you’re talking about. There aren’t any pronouns that depend on social status. It’s got a phonetic alphabet. It’s just a natural choice for commerce and knowledge-sharing.
  - lukev 3y ago
    Evidence? I was the one asking for evidence. I question the (very dubious) claim in the post I was responding to, that English is inherently suited to a role as a lingua franca. Also, separately, your counterclaims are kind of... untrue? None of them are true of (e.g.) Mandarin which definitely served as a lingua franca for the ancient far east.
  - oefrha 3y ago
    You need to provide evidence that “built-in error correction functionality in English is bloody phenomenal” compared to other languages, because you can communicate with simple words and broken grammar just fine in every language I know. > Yes yes. I English speak very easy. I English hear too very easy. Easy understand. Can talk each other good just simple words. English very good. Pretty easy to “translate” that to a broken yet still understandable version of other languages.
  - kergonath 3y ago
    > No despot on Earth has managed to stamp it out, unlike countless other languages. Any evidence of a language being stamped out by a despot? > You can say things like lingua franca and everyone knows what you’re talking about. Considering that the phrase is Latin, I am not sure what your point is. > There aren’t any pronouns that depend on social status. And many other quirks that are as alien to a native Japanese speaker than this is to you, however. > It’s got a phonetic alphabet What? Are we still talking about English here? FFS. > It’s just a natural choice for commerce and knowledge-sharing. It’s really not. Like all languages that ended up in similar situation (e.g. French, Arabic, Mandarin, or Latin), it is a combination of good old fashioned imperialism and commercial links.
unethical_ban 3y ago
I'll take a guess. It's been a while since I've looked for ally at another language. But English has fewer cases of verbs, and a more rigid sentence structure. We have more special cases of past tense verbs and weird pronunciation, but I think it's easier to duck up and still make sense in English? Maybe.
- twixfel 3y ago
  English famously has relatively complex verb conjugation. What we don't have are cases (only a few words decline). German has cases for example, but much simpler verb conjugation.
  - acjohnson55 3y ago
    By complex, I assume you mean highly irregular?
    - twixfel 3y ago
      I think I was being vague in my terminology. I wanted to say more broadly that German verbs are generally simpler than English ones because there are fewer tenses and aspects. There are however a greater number of strong verbs in German than in English.
      - acjohnson55 3y ago
        I'm not familiar enough with German to evaluate. But when I think of Spanish, you've got 6 conjugations for every tense, and a whole bunch of different tenses. That makes for many dozens of different inflections, just for verbs. English, by contrast, only has 8 regular inflections, across all parts of speech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflection#Examples_in_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflection#Examples_in_English English does have a rich ecosystem of compound verbs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_verb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_verb), but if this is taken to be part of the complexity of English verbs, I don't know how this stacks up to other languages.
Naijoko 3y ago
many languages have this feature. For example Russian or German. You can put in the words, with most words missing, in any order and somehow someone will get it. France cant do this. Why... I dont know why. Maybe because the are more desciptive.
- adev_ 3y ago
  > France cant do this. Why... I dont know why. Maybe because the are more desciptive. I would bet that a part of it can probably be blamed more on Parisian being Parisian than on the French themselves :)
- kergonath 3y ago
  > France cant do this. Why... I dont know why. Maybe because the are more desciptive. Oui oui. Je français parle très bien. Je entends français très bien aussi. Facile comprendre. Peux parler entre nous très bien juste mots simples. Français très bon. Is just as understandable as the English original. French is much more forgiving than German in that regard, with a more flexible sentence structure. German and Russian the advantage of declension, which is a redundancy mechanism to indicate the role of a noun, but it’s an advantage over English just as much as over French. Also, it’s something a non-native will get wrong most of the time initially, so it’s not really helpful to help understand broken German. Basically, I don’t think this is right and I tend to agree to “ many languages have this feature”, although I would say “most”.
  - watwut 3y ago
    Declention makes it harder to learn the language tho. Keeping fixed words order is waaaay easier then keeping all those suffixes correct.
  - jackjeff 3y ago
    I agree French could do this as well as English. In fact, many Creole language derived from French have this kind of simplified French structure as a core feature
- danjac 3y ago
acjohnson55 3y ago
English is mostly unique in its vocabulary size. We have redundant words for nearly every concept. We often shift registers by using different vocab--Latin-origin words for more formal/respectable registers. The ability to speak it in broken fashion and be understood is not unique.
cmrdporcupine 3y ago
English actually has terrible "error correction" on account of extensively using word order to indicate grammatical constructs, rather than inflection. You move the order of words around and it gets an entirely different meaning. Plus its orthography is ridiculously inconsistent, and a learner is never sure if they've got the right pronunciation when looking at a word because it's been caked over with N layers of different systems (Anglo-Saxon + Norse + Norman French + Latin + Greek etc)

Veuxdo 3y ago

> This feature is seldom seen in most other languages let alone lingua francas. Source? On it's face this doesn't sound plausible...

TaylorAlexander 3y ago
Yeah this could just be a property of most human languages.
bubblematrix 3y ago
Source? How does it not sound plausible?
kergonath 3y ago
It sounds like someone who’s never learnt any other language and is high on freedom propaganda. It’s more than not plausible, it’s laughable.

lukev 3y ago

You are are literally describing a "lingua franca" here. And there's no evidence that English is special in it's ability serve as a lingua franca. In previous eras, other languages held this role (e.g, French, hence the term "lingua franca"). The dominance of English can be far more certainly attributed to the geopolitical dominance of english-speaking nations...

cmrdporcupine 3y ago
Agree with your main point, but Lingua Franca doesn't refer to French but to "Mediterranean Lingua Franca", an actual trade language of its own which was a mix of a bunch of things. It had that name because it was "the language of the Frankish" (traders) but what they (eastern sea/Muslim traders) meant by "Franks" was any western European. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Lingua_Franca https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Lingua_Franca
junofan 3y ago
What evidence are you looking for? No despot on Earth has managed to stamp it out, unlike countless other languages. You can say things like lingua franca and everyone knows what you’re talking about. There aren’t any pronouns that depend on social status. It’s got a phonetic alphabet. It’s just a natural choice for commerce and knowledge-sharing.
- lukev 3y ago
  Evidence? I was the one asking for evidence. I question the (very dubious) claim in the post I was responding to, that English is inherently suited to a role as a lingua franca. Also, separately, your counterclaims are kind of... untrue? None of them are true of (e.g.) Mandarin which definitely served as a lingua franca for the ancient far east.
- oefrha 3y ago
  You need to provide evidence that “built-in error correction functionality in English is bloody phenomenal” compared to other languages, because you can communicate with simple words and broken grammar just fine in every language I know. > Yes yes. I English speak very easy. I English hear too very easy. Easy understand. Can talk each other good just simple words. English very good. Pretty easy to “translate” that to a broken yet still understandable version of other languages.
- kergonath 3y ago
  > No despot on Earth has managed to stamp it out, unlike countless other languages. Any evidence of a language being stamped out by a despot? > You can say things like lingua franca and everyone knows what you’re talking about. Considering that the phrase is Latin, I am not sure what your point is. > There aren’t any pronouns that depend on social status. And many other quirks that are as alien to a native Japanese speaker than this is to you, however. > It’s got a phonetic alphabet What? Are we still talking about English here? FFS. > It’s just a natural choice for commerce and knowledge-sharing. It’s really not. Like all languages that ended up in similar situation (e.g. French, Arabic, Mandarin, or Latin), it is a combination of good old fashioned imperialism and commercial links.

unethical_ban 3y ago

I'll take a guess. It's been a while since I've looked for ally at another language. But English has fewer cases of verbs, and a more rigid sentence structure. We have more special cases of past tense verbs and weird pronunciation, but I think it's easier to duck up and still make sense in English? Maybe.

twixfel 3y ago
English famously has relatively complex verb conjugation. What we don't have are cases (only a few words decline). German has cases for example, but much simpler verb conjugation.
- acjohnson55 3y ago
  By complex, I assume you mean highly irregular?
  - twixfel 3y ago
    I think I was being vague in my terminology. I wanted to say more broadly that German verbs are generally simpler than English ones because there are fewer tenses and aspects. There are however a greater number of strong verbs in German than in English.
    - acjohnson55 3y ago
      I'm not familiar enough with German to evaluate. But when I think of Spanish, you've got 6 conjugations for every tense, and a whole bunch of different tenses. That makes for many dozens of different inflections, just for verbs. English, by contrast, only has 8 regular inflections, across all parts of speech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflection#Examples_in_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflection#Examples_in_English English does have a rich ecosystem of compound verbs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_verb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_verb), but if this is taken to be part of the complexity of English verbs, I don't know how this stacks up to other languages.

Naijoko 3y ago

many languages have this feature. For example Russian or German. You can put in the words, with most words missing, in any order and somehow someone will get it. France cant do this. Why... I dont know why. Maybe because the are more desciptive.

adev_ 3y ago
> France cant do this. Why... I dont know why. Maybe because the are more desciptive. I would bet that a part of it can probably be blamed more on Parisian being Parisian than on the French themselves :)
kergonath 3y ago
> France cant do this. Why... I dont know why. Maybe because the are more desciptive. Oui oui. Je français parle très bien. Je entends français très bien aussi. Facile comprendre. Peux parler entre nous très bien juste mots simples. Français très bon. Is just as understandable as the English original. French is much more forgiving than German in that regard, with a more flexible sentence structure. German and Russian the advantage of declension, which is a redundancy mechanism to indicate the role of a noun, but it’s an advantage over English just as much as over French. Also, it’s something a non-native will get wrong most of the time initially, so it’s not really helpful to help understand broken German. Basically, I don’t think this is right and I tend to agree to “ many languages have this feature”, although I would say “most”.
- watwut 3y ago
  Declention makes it harder to learn the language tho. Keeping fixed words order is waaaay easier then keeping all those suffixes correct.
- jackjeff 3y ago
  I agree French could do this as well as English. In fact, many Creole language derived from French have this kind of simplified French structure as a core feature
danjac 3y ago

acjohnson55 3y ago

English is mostly unique in its vocabulary size. We have redundant words for nearly every concept. We often shift registers by using different vocab--Latin-origin words for more formal/respectable registers. The ability to speak it in broken fashion and be understood is not unique.

cmrdporcupine 3y ago

English actually has terrible "error correction" on account of extensively using word order to indicate grammatical constructs, rather than inflection. You move the order of words around and it gets an entirely different meaning. Plus its orthography is ridiculously inconsistent, and a learner is never sure if they've got the right pronunciation when looking at a word because it's been caked over with N layers of different systems (Anglo-Saxon + Norse + Norman French + Latin + Greek etc)