3 ms·
>i don't think he was deriding it. he just doesn't understand that 260M people speak it Right, I wasn't deriding anything. It was just an analogy comparing so
by jasode 12y ago
>i don't think he was deriding it. he just doesn't understand that 260M people speak it
Right, I wasn't deriding anything. It was just an analogy comparing something quantitative. I know Portuguese is spoken by many millions but it's still much less than 1 billion Chinese or English. I probably chose Portuguese at random instead of Swedish or Swahili because of the recent World Cup.
In any case, my point is that measuring economic reach of Portuguese in isolation as "inefficient" is absurd because there are other efficiencies of parenting (unrelated to whatever language they happen to speak) that wasn't counted.
- sergiosgc 12y agoYou did deride it, albeit without any ill intention. I also do not feel overly offended by your argument, which is not totally baseless. My comment, read with some distance, came out too harsh. It's just that the metric of speaker headcount/native economic power is not the sole metric for universal language selection, and it is one I do not think is the best. Headcount would have us all speaking mandarin, a language with little really global world reach, and really foreign to all westerners because of its tonal characteristic. English is probably the best option. Huge cultural reach globally via Hollywood, easy phonology and an easy grammar. If spelling could be simplified (or at least made sane) it'd be almost perfect.