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Hum but English has simpler features that make it easier to learn than most languages. Sure, the phonetic is hard and I'll always have an accent and people will

by xwolfi 2y ago

Hum but English has simpler features that make it easier to learn than most languages. Sure, the phonetic is hard and I'll always have an accent and people will always just guess my country at the first sentence I utter, but: - nouns have no gender !!!! - conjugation is extremely simple (only one variation for 3rd person singular for most verbs!!) - tenses are limited ! - vocabulary is 40% French-Latin and 60% Germanic, most of Europe and America can use the subset they prefer - the writing is latin, simple to learn, complete enough to describe well the sounds - the native community is immense, with a large interesting cultural body of work, making it interesting to learn - it's easy to start communicating but it can be extremely rich in higher levels of language: you start talking quickly and then can move to beautiful structures later: there is a quick reward and a long term reward There is nothing unfortunate it became default, there is simply no better lingua franca today. We could try Japanese or Chinese, Hindi or Spanish, but they all have way more quirks and way less qualities ! I strongly reject people saying that English became default by historical chance, it could have stayed French, moved to German or Spanish, it SHOULD be Chinese, but all of them are too hard for adults to learn as quickly as English and never as rewarding. Just think of the time it takes to learn an ideogram-based writing system, all that to end up able to read only communist propaganda or very old poetry for instance...

brettp 2y ago
Arguably English became the default by a very large historical chance: that Napoleon sold off his North American colonies - a huge swathe of what is now the United States - to finance his wars in Europe. At the same time that both France and England were sniffing around Australia, France again was distracted by its wars. Both the United States and Australia could very easily have been French speaking, and if they had been, I suggest we'd be having this discussion sur internet en français
- xwolfi 2y ago
  Sure maybe, but French, my native language btw, is inherently more complex, less rich in vocabulary, idiosyncratic in its habit to follow latin in writing but deviating from it in spoken form, it's just not as good as English so we're quite lucky at least. I feel it's hard for me to make spelling mistakes in English, which is not my native tongue, but VERY EASY to make them in French, that I studied and used for decades: there is an inherent beauty to English, in its simplicity, we should not dismiss. (yes I'm re-reading three times to make sure I didn't spell anything wrong lol)
brettp 2y ago
If you're arguing from simplicity, Mandarin actually has very simple grammar - much simpler than any of the other languages you mention (no gender, no inflections, no declensions at all), and learning to speak it is not as difficult as people seem to think. Learning their ridiculous writing system (which is morphosyllabic, not ideogram-based) is another question. The reason Mandarin is not an international language and English is, is because learning English as your L2 gives you the ability to speak to people in the United States and England and Australia and New Zealand and India and lot more besides, where learning Mandarin gives you the ability to speak to people in ... China (and even then, historically, only one small part of China).
- xwolfi 2y ago
  Yes, I live in Hong Kong now and I know the Chinese languages have ridiculously simple formal grammar (that doesn't mean their brain doesn't have to do complex inference - is it better not to say what you meant or simpler to just write it ?). The ridiculous writing system is indeed my problem with it - and the ridiculous variations in tones too but they swear it's easy if you're born in it... which is ofc the problem: a lingua franca works if adult merchants can learn it.
thaumasiotes 2y ago
> nouns have no gender !!!! English nouns have a person/nonperson gender distinction that requires agreement by relativizers. Compare: 1. The girl who I met yesterday 2. *The burger who I ate yesterday This gender distinction is hazily applied to the third-person pronouns he (person), she (person), and it (nonperson), which is why different people may see referring to babies with it as normal usage, or as grossly offensive.
- brettp 2y ago
  That's not grammatical gender. Most people can distinguish between persons and nonpersons and map that onto the correct pronoun or relativizer to use. But in German the girl you met yesterday is neuter, and the burger you ate yesterday is masculine, and you need to know that to form a grammatically correct sentence about them.
  - thaumasiotes 2y ago
    That is grammatical gender. Grammatical gender is a property inherent to words that requires agreement by other words. There's no other definition. Compare https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Inanimate_gender https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Inanimate_gender . You failed to distinguish the concepts even in your own terms; a girl is a person, and a burger isn't, and you need to know that to form a grammatical sentence about them.
    - brettp 2y ago
      The point is: grammatical gender (noun classes) are arbitrary. Even though a girl is a person the gender of a girl (das Mädchen) is neuter in German. You need to know that grammatical gender to form a grammatically correct sentence - you do in fact need to say "it" ("er") in your sentence referring to the girl you met yesterday. A girl is person and a burger isn't, but in German a girl is an "it" and a burger is a "he".
      - thaumasiotes 2y ago
kamaal 2y ago
>>There is nothing unfortunate it became default, there is simply no better lingua franca today. We could try Japanese or Chinese, Hindi or Spanish, but they all have way more quirks and way less qualities ! All of this is secondary, the real deal is more knowledge, especially useful knowledge is generated, and has been generated in the English language for a while now. If you want access to the knowledge ecosystem of the world, want to learn skills, trade, want jobs, want to do business you have to learn english. The other cultures just never caught on with this one simple thing. You have to make rationality, scientific temper and coherence the very foundational basis for your society. And then you need run these processes for long. Decades to centuries for your language to now become the carrier of knowledge. Until then other arguments are irrelevant.
- xwolfi 2y ago
  What are the other languages you speak fluently ? You're right of course, the diversity of English knowledge (and entertainment, sometimes as important) is dizzying and that's why I even learned it in the first place. But there's something strange with English knowledge: it's never quite deep. I find French materials are always a bit deeper, a bit more complex, we don't try to explain to 5 yo all the time, we don't always insist so much on the high level introductory stuff - we have a way to explain extremely complex concepts to more people I find. Just a feeling: when I want to explore I use English but when I want to dig I find more interesting stuff in French. It's very frustrating because I live abroad now, in Hong Kong, and only use English with my friends, partners etc. And sometimes I want to explain to them, give them something to read, but it's only in French because no English speaker ever tried to think to dig deeper, to give more perspective, to ask the right questions etc :D

by xwolfi 2y ago

brettp 2y ago

Arguably English became the default by a very large historical chance: that Napoleon sold off his North American colonies - a huge swathe of what is now the United States - to finance his wars in Europe. At the same time that both France and England were sniffing around Australia, France again was distracted by its wars. Both the United States and Australia could very easily have been French speaking, and if they had been, I suggest we'd be having this discussion sur internet en français

xwolfi 2y ago
Sure maybe, but French, my native language btw, is inherently more complex, less rich in vocabulary, idiosyncratic in its habit to follow latin in writing but deviating from it in spoken form, it's just not as good as English so we're quite lucky at least. I feel it's hard for me to make spelling mistakes in English, which is not my native tongue, but VERY EASY to make them in French, that I studied and used for decades: there is an inherent beauty to English, in its simplicity, we should not dismiss. (yes I'm re-reading three times to make sure I didn't spell anything wrong lol)

brettp 2y ago

If you're arguing from simplicity, Mandarin actually has very simple grammar - much simpler than any of the other languages you mention (no gender, no inflections, no declensions at all), and learning to speak it is not as difficult as people seem to think. Learning their ridiculous writing system (which is morphosyllabic, not ideogram-based) is another question. The reason Mandarin is not an international language and English is, is because learning English as your L2 gives you the ability to speak to people in the United States and England and Australia and New Zealand and India and lot more besides, where learning Mandarin gives you the ability to speak to people in ... China (and even then, historically, only one small part of China).

xwolfi 2y ago
Yes, I live in Hong Kong now and I know the Chinese languages have ridiculously simple formal grammar (that doesn't mean their brain doesn't have to do complex inference - is it better not to say what you meant or simpler to just write it ?). The ridiculous writing system is indeed my problem with it - and the ridiculous variations in tones too but they swear it's easy if you're born in it... which is ofc the problem: a lingua franca works if adult merchants can learn it.

thaumasiotes 2y ago

> nouns have no gender !!!! English nouns have a person/nonperson gender distinction that requires agreement by relativizers. Compare: 1. The girl who I met yesterday 2. *The burger who I ate yesterday This gender distinction is hazily applied to the third-person pronouns he (person), she (person), and it (nonperson), which is why different people may see referring to babies with it as normal usage, or as grossly offensive.

brettp 2y ago
That's not grammatical gender. Most people can distinguish between persons and nonpersons and map that onto the correct pronoun or relativizer to use. But in German the girl you met yesterday is neuter, and the burger you ate yesterday is masculine, and you need to know that to form a grammatically correct sentence about them.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  That is grammatical gender. Grammatical gender is a property inherent to words that requires agreement by other words. There's no other definition. Compare https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Inanimate_gender https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Inanimate_gender . You failed to distinguish the concepts even in your own terms; a girl is a person, and a burger isn't, and you need to know that to form a grammatical sentence about them.
  - brettp 2y ago
    The point is: grammatical gender (noun classes) are arbitrary. Even though a girl is a person the gender of a girl (das Mädchen) is neuter in German. You need to know that grammatical gender to form a grammatically correct sentence - you do in fact need to say "it" ("er") in your sentence referring to the girl you met yesterday. A girl is person and a burger isn't, but in German a girl is an "it" and a burger is a "he".
    - thaumasiotes 2y ago

kamaal 2y ago

>>There is nothing unfortunate it became default, there is simply no better lingua franca today. We could try Japanese or Chinese, Hindi or Spanish, but they all have way more quirks and way less qualities ! All of this is secondary, the real deal is more knowledge, especially useful knowledge is generated, and has been generated in the English language for a while now. If you want access to the knowledge ecosystem of the world, want to learn skills, trade, want jobs, want to do business you have to learn english. The other cultures just never caught on with this one simple thing. You have to make rationality, scientific temper and coherence the very foundational basis for your society. And then you need run these processes for long. Decades to centuries for your language to now become the carrier of knowledge. Until then other arguments are irrelevant.

xwolfi 2y ago
What are the other languages you speak fluently ? You're right of course, the diversity of English knowledge (and entertainment, sometimes as important) is dizzying and that's why I even learned it in the first place. But there's something strange with English knowledge: it's never quite deep. I find French materials are always a bit deeper, a bit more complex, we don't try to explain to 5 yo all the time, we don't always insist so much on the high level introductory stuff - we have a way to explain extremely complex concepts to more people I find. Just a feeling: when I want to explore I use English but when I want to dig I find more interesting stuff in French. It's very frustrating because I live abroad now, in Hong Kong, and only use English with my friends, partners etc. And sometimes I want to explain to them, give them something to read, but it's only in French because no English speaker ever tried to think to dig deeper, to give more perspective, to ask the right questions etc :D