I agree that superiority is a loaded term, and I don’t think I’d try to make the case that English is the best language, but I am curious to know more about which languages you think are better and why.
If you were to replace english in the current world, the best candidate, in my opinion, would be spanish.
If you look at list of the most spoken languages you end up with english, mandarin, hindi and spanish, out of those spanish does not require learning a new alphabet.
Spanish is mostly phonetic, there are exceptions here and there with how consonants are pronounced here and there, but vowels are phonetic, you can read text without wondering how something is pronounced.
English has taken so much from latin that it actually looks a bit like a romance language despite having germanic roots, but this does mean that there’s a lot of overlap in vocabulary where english words and spanish words are mostly the same.
Of course is spanish isn’t perfect, but creating a new language that covers everyone’s usecase would just lead to lower adoption so I think it’s the one that has the best shot while solving some glaring issues from english.
It’s a good shout, especially given how large the current speaker base is. Obvi, the alphabet thing cuts both ways — we’re still pushing our alphabet onto hindi, mandarin speakers &c — but that’s unavoidable.
Anyway, i prefer neo-latin (though, french is the last on my neo-latin languages tier list) languages and i find germanic langs to be cool (aside from english) but i don’t feel like to learn any of them so idk how they are.
English is not very coherent and is “simple” only if you look at the basics, if you look at the rest you notice that it has worse then French, for example.
But, again, it’s just personal taste and maybe bias too
Idk. I find the French verb tense system to be pretty difficult to navigate without a lot of gain in expressivity — I think simpler verb tense systems, like Danish, get the trade off better.
English is definitely not at all coherent or simple by any stretch of the imagination.
My number one language feature I miss in English is a case system. I know not all case languages are non-word order languages (I know Arabic requires both), but I think word order languages are constrictive and cases are the only alternative I’m aware of.
I agree that superiority is a loaded term, and I don’t think I’d try to make the case that English is the best language, but I am curious to know more about which languages you think are better and why.
If you were to replace english in the current world, the best candidate, in my opinion, would be spanish.
If you look at list of the most spoken languages you end up with english, mandarin, hindi and spanish, out of those spanish does not require learning a new alphabet.
Spanish is mostly phonetic, there are exceptions here and there with how consonants are pronounced here and there, but vowels are phonetic, you can read text without wondering how something is pronounced.
English has taken so much from latin that it actually looks a bit like a romance language despite having germanic roots, but this does mean that there’s a lot of overlap in vocabulary where english words and spanish words are mostly the same.
Of course is spanish isn’t perfect, but creating a new language that covers everyone’s usecase would just lead to lower adoption so I think it’s the one that has the best shot while solving some glaring issues from english.
It’s a good shout, especially given how large the current speaker base is. Obvi, the alphabet thing cuts both ways — we’re still pushing our alphabet onto hindi, mandarin speakers &c — but that’s unavoidable.
Any language that has a coherent pronouns XD
Anyway, i prefer neo-latin (though, french is the last on my neo-latin languages tier list) languages and i find germanic langs to be cool (aside from english) but i don’t feel like to learn any of them so idk how they are.
English is not very coherent and is “simple” only if you look at the basics, if you look at the rest you notice that it has worse then French, for example.
But, again, it’s just personal taste and maybe bias too
Idk. I find the French verb tense system to be pretty difficult to navigate without a lot of gain in expressivity — I think simpler verb tense systems, like Danish, get the trade off better.
English is definitely not at all coherent or simple by any stretch of the imagination.
My number one language feature I miss in English is a case system. I know not all case languages are non-word order languages (I know Arabic requires both), but I think word order languages are constrictive and cases are the only alternative I’m aware of.
Languages that differ between singular you and multiple you.
Philadelphia English has this fixed with “youse”
I guess there’s also the Pittsburghese “yinz”
Or the southern “y’all”
deleted by creator
That is a lower bar than I expected tbh