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English is a global lingua franca, not just european. And it's not just because of the american and british influence, but because it's a relatively easy language.
Also the translator programs are better and better, this is actually a good and fitting usecase of current LLMs. I think we are not far away from the babel fish.
Counterpoint:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJ69ny57pR0
It's a lingua franca, and I don't even think it's about being easy to learn... avalanche effects are completely sufficient to explain its status. Many people already speak English, so more people learn English to speak with them, now even more people speak English, and so on, and so forth... the development of any lingua franca only depends on the ability to talk to as many people as possible. It's absolutely a bonus if it's easy and quickens the process, but at some point the pure amount of speakers outside ones own country becomes the overwhelming factor.
No language is inherently easy to learn. Whether a language is easy to learn depends on how close it is to the languages you already know, thus to a Dutchman it will be much easier to learn English than to a Russian or a Thai. It is true that learning English is made a lot easier by having such a huge media presence, meaning itβs very easy to immerse yourself even without living in an English-speaking country.
As a Dutchman living in Germany I can attest to the immense difference that dubbing makes. While even young children in the Netherlands consume tons of English language media and have done so for decades, their peers in Germany generally get only dubbed versions. This leads to a lackluster immersion when "properly" learning English.
Yeah, Iβm also Dutch and watch German television often, and I always think itβs odd that all foreign movies have been dubbed over. In the Netherlands, that only happens to movies for children who canβt read yet. I think itβs a bit of a shame too, as I like to hear different languages.
That may not be entirely true. Some studies have shown that Danish children generally take longer to learn to talk than children from other Scandinavian countries, which are incredibly similar in most other aspects. The leading hypothesis is the complicated phonology is to blame.
Popular science article in Danish, summing up the several studies
The researchers themselves however also make the valid point that
But I was speaking in general terms, anyway. Language, being a natural phenomenon, of course has lots of variation.
I don't know about that part. The orthography at least is wild.
Every 'real' languare has wild parts. there are constructed languares that don't but if they became common wild parts will likely be added over time.
Yep. I always liked the idea of a conlang, but there's nothing stopping language change with them.
I literally cried learning English as a kid lol
The grammar is fairly simple, but spelling is a total train wreck and an unparalleled nightmare of inconsistencies and convoluted rules. As long as you donβt have to read or write anything, thereβs not much to cry about.
Now try to learn Portuguese, or German, or Russian. English has wonky phonetics, but has a relatively simple grammar. As a bonus it's not properly standardized, so whatever you come up with is going to be correct in at least one of the existing dialects.
As someone who learnt both German and English as a second language, German was easier.
Consistent spelling and pronounciation make a massive difference.
Iβm learning German now and itβs insanely logical. Iβm angry people dissuaded me as a kid from learning German. I truly love the language and Germans are also very kind.
Side note: are there any German communities on Lemmy you know of? Iβd like to join. Iβm a fan of Staiy and Spacefrogs.
Try the server: Feddit.org, there are some groups in German.
Thank you so much I joined there and itβs my main account now. Everyone is so nice. I hope you have a great week. :)
You're welcome.
Consistent spelling and pronunciations but even native speakers get pronouns for certain nouns wrong sometimes.
And as for German being consistent there are still situations like Umfahren (Drive around) and Umfahren (Run over) that are written the same but pronounced different.
Plus English has influences from everywhere. In my oral abitur exam, I got stuck once or twice and made up words by anglicizing the pronounciantion of french words gaining extra points and impressed faces.
That works for almost all European languages. In one of his books Richard Feynman tells a story about when he went to Brazil and didn't how to say "so" in Portuguese so he used "Consequentemente" by adapting Consequently and everyone was impressed with his fluency.
there's also a story about how he just decided to fire off nonsense phonemes at some visiting professor from some asian country because he thought it was funny and people were apparently impressed at his diction. i don't think his perceived audience reactions should be taken at face value.
I've heard a bit recently about how a lot of what Feynman told his fanboy writer were simply lies.
I feel like that's just a tall tale that Feynman told the author, like most of those stories
Me too, but later I learned a bit of german and latin. The thing is you can fake english easily, like "why use lot word when few do trick" is a totally understandable sentence. Word order is not as stict as in german, no cases, no grammatical genders, verb tenses are mostly optional. Pronunciation is messed up though.
Yeah, English Grammer is basically just Germanic (not to be confused with the Germanic language German, which is just another Germanic language, not the origin). Our words though are not. Most of the words that make up most of our sentences are still their Germanic versions, but talking about specific things could use words from dozens of languages. This makes pronunciation really challenging, because you can't just know the origin from looking at it, and even if you can it might have shifted from that.
I HATE the idea that we would have some Kind of built into us translators. Languages are a crucial part of human development and, therefore, they should be learned in school the old way. (Ofc school must also evolve)