http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language

English is the Germanic language that originally developed in England. English is probably the third or fourth most popular world language in numbers of native speakers (322,000,000 in 1999), but the most popular second and learning language in the world

The principal invading Germanic tribes were Angles, Saxons and Frisians. Their Anglo-Saxon dialects developed into Old English. Although the most commonly used words today derive from those early Anglo-Saxon roots, its vocabulary was greatly influenced over time firstly by Danish invaders who spoke Old Norse, and then, to an even greater extent, by Norman invaders who spoke French.

For over two hundred years, the Norman French rulers governed and ran the church, educational and court systems in French, and French was the language of the aristocracy. As a result, English changed from its roots to such an extent that Modern English speakers cannot understand Old English. It lost most of its word inflections and gained a great deal of French vocabulary. Why English ?

Because I am a lazy sod. I say English is the easiest language to learn. That the British-Empire once ruled 1/4 of the world, that has an impact. But it wouldn't be enough to get me to learn English.

I don't say, that my English is good, it is just way better then my Italian.

No other language is as easy to learn as a second language. If one of the slavic languages would be the most spoken language, I would shiver with horror. Not because I have anything against slavs or the slavic languages. It's just, slavic languages are too dam difficult to learn. And Latin just can't be learned at all.

Any objections or does anyone agree ?

By the way:

great deal of French vocabulary I love that part.

1- there is no grammar is Chinese. One rock, many, still, rock. No past, no present perfect, no past present continous perfect, no nothing.

2- 1 per 5 earthlings have Chinese origins.

3- Every words carry meaning. Like hepatitis B is called "type B liver disease" instead of "hepatitis B". Algebra is called "replace numbers" instead of "algebra". Arthrapod is called "jointed limbs animals" instead of arthrapod (what the hell is that?).

It's only the beginning of the narrow path ahead :shake:

Contrary to common opinions English isn't easy. At least it's not easy to learn and speak fully correct fluent English at native speaker level.

And Latin... Well, Italian is very easy if you know Latin. Mainly because you already understand most things and only have to learn wording your thoughts in that language. I don't know if that works vice versa too, but with some determination... ;)

Yago -- Let me ask you this: How much has German changed over the last 1000 years? Would a Modern Swiss or German understand German that old? I have always wanted to read Dante in the original Italian. But when I asked an Italian instructor, he informed me that no one speaks the same Italian as Dante spoke some 700 years ago.

I actually did a class in middle English. It was a Chaucer class and the text (Canterbury Tales) was entirely in middle English. We did not work with a modern translation at all. It was very different. But one really gets a much better sense of the poetic achievement of Chaucer, which is lost in the modern. I've heard the opening to the _Comedy_ in Italian. My sense is that the same is true for Dante, only much worse.

Chaucer made much the same decision that Dante did in that he wrote The Canterbury Tales in English rather than French, which as you cite was still the language of the English court. Although England was only barely under the Norman yoke, as a result of the Hundred Year's War started by Edward III, Chaucer's employer.

Dante made the move from Latin to the vernacular Italian, a huge step for the literature of his time. And there is a slight possibilty that Chaucer got the same idea from Dante for the _Canterbury Tales_, since he spent some time in Italy. Nevertheless, the move paid off artistically for both of them and really was important in the overall formation of both languages.

[ May 14, 2003, 11:46: Message edited by: Chandos the Red ]

English easy? Man you must be out of your mind. I've spoken english all my life and i find it one of the hardest laguages i know.

Yago -- Let me ask you this: How much has German changed over the last 1000 years? Would a Modern Swiss or German understand German that old? I have always wanted to read Dante in the original Italian. But when I asked an Italian instructor, he informed me that no one speaks the same Italian as Dante spoke some 700 years ago.
Swissgerman speakers are usally those who understand the old-German languages the best. Because it's "conserved form of old-middle-high-German". That's because the "word" "Swissgerman" is usually misleading. The word "Netherlandic-German" would have the same meaning. Switzerland is a small country and the Swissgermans speakers are only 3 millions, and then they are divided in a lot of different dialects. Swissgerman does not exist as written language. That's why we use "standard-German" to write. And "standard-German" is the first foreign language we learn. We self call are language "schwiizerisch". That's were "Switzer" comes from. If Switzerland would be bigger, Switzer would be internationaly known as language on its own. -> A language is a dialect with an army behind it. Acutally most of the Germans don't get it. Particularly late-night-king Harald Schmidt. They mistake Swissgerman with Swiss, who are speaking standard German to foreigners.

To understand German that old. Swissgerman is a more archaic south-German language (more exact, it's one of the alemanic-dialects). So, we usually have a better undersanding of older German writings then Germans, that's for sure. I think even better then Dutch and Flamish speakers (At least the professors say that). The main problem is, that the old Anglo-Saxon language is a North-German dialect. So, a lot words are unkown to me. Considering older writings in German if there a South-German dialect, then very old writings (Luther, Jiddisch, Walter von der Vogelweide) are not too difficult after some (rather short) time to get used to it. This would be an analogy to Middle English. Swissgerman is closer to older German dialects. It's the same with other dialects of Swissgerman. We have to get used to other dialects of our language first, to understand them.

The next problem is, that "standard-German" is an artifical language, mainly developed in the 19th century, which was needed for and after the unification of Germany -> Without standard German, the Germans in Germay would not understand eachother. Dutch, Flamish and Frisian are reminders, how North-Germans (some of them are Angles and Saxons) used to speak 2 centuries ago. The same is the issue with Italian. They too needed an artifical language to "unite" Italy (which happened in the 19th century too). French the same, but (not sure about the time) it happenend in the 18th or the 17th century.

By the way -> funny part of it -> A lot the Eastgermans are called "Saxon". But they are not saxons, they got the name, because this regions used to be ruled by the saxons.

But my point is still, as polyglot through multilangual nationality, I say, there's no language other than English, which get's one so fast to point, where having a conversation is possible.

Edit: Just realized some unclarity: Dutch and Flamish and North-Germans have the best connection to "Anglos-Saxon-English" -> North-German-Dialect.

[ May 13, 2003, 13:23: Message edited by: Yago ]

English is my first language and probably wouldn't know if it was more difficult to learn than other languages. Also I don't speak very many languages and cannot therefore really compare. I do know people though who speak several languages and they said that English is more complex than other languages. I had friends who took foreign languages for a couple of years as electives and spoke Italian, French and German fairly well. In retrospect I studied and practiced speaking English for over 14 years to reach my level of fluency.

There was a translator in the UN who spoke over 30 languages. It would be great if anyone knew a translator and got his opinion.

Ruler. Apart from English what other languages do you know? You have learnt some Maori right?

Yago, I love the quote. I can still understand Chaucer mostly without a dictionary even though it is about 600 years old. The problem comes in comparing Chaucer with English that was used just before the Norman conquest. Old English is so different it may as well be German. In fact I read a book on Old English stating that if you know German you already know 90% Old English. I don't know German so I can't tell.

As for a second language, I reckon that Bahasa Indonesia would easily make it to first place. Written in Latin Alphabet, totally phonetic spelling, simple sounds and not complex consonant clusters, very basic tenseless undeclined grammatical features...

It totally rules Esperanto, which in my opinion is a dud language. Yes I am semi-familiar with it.

If I could choose a language to be the trendy world's second language I would pick Persian or Arabic, simply because I reckon the script is cool and the way that sounds go together are unique.

Chinese is still important to me since I learnt it for 6 years and even studied in Beijing.

Hardest language I know is Korean. I can't be learnt! Well not outside Korea anyway...

Hardest language I heard of would have to be Finnish. I don't know any but I've heard the rumours, and Tolkien was impressed so much by Finnish he loosely based Quenya on its grammatical features.

Ok since we theoretically decide to dump English, what should we use as a sensible and easy alternative?

Chinese with a Latinised form of writing or Hindi with the same, because already so many people speak them.

Failing that I'll accept Spanish, for the same reason.

I truly believe though that if the US was not so important in the world, or if Deutsch was the official language there then the world would not be so interested in such a weird language as English...

@Khazrai
I know basic norweigen (Shows what i mean by basic i can't even spell the word), french and a little german as well as you mentioned a bit of Maori (just because i'm young and stuck in the middle of the biggest ocean on this pathetic planet doesn't mean i haven't travelled any where before or learn any other languages). And of those English would have to be the most confuseing :confused: language. I have also heard form a lot of other people who english isn't their first language how hard it is to learn when compaired to some other. I would say the most usefull language to know (after english) would be latin. Its the main scientific language. I just think it would be fasinating to know (its a shame my school doesn't teach it :( )