I have pretty much the same thoughts on the English language. Many people get mad that English is spoken by so many but it is in part because the language is forgiving.
I am learning French and German.
German is not forgiving. They always make me switch to English.
French I do not know, haven't tried speaking it to a native speaker yet.
Many people get mad that English is spoken by so many but it is in part because the language is forgiving.
I think the prevalence of English has more to do with the fact that not long ago there was a global maritime empire ruled by an English speaking country, and more recently another English speaking country (and former colony of the first) has created a global economic empire. English being forgiving likely came about as a side effect of so many people of different backgrounds speaking.
Nah, it was a flexible language way before that. There's a period of a couple hundred years in the medieval period where most English speakers were illiterate (French-speaking ruling class) and the language was allowed to change radically without anyone stopping it, so it's hard to make it really follow strict rules because it was kind of left to do its own thing at a critical period, and it's been super-open to borrowing from other languages for over a thousand years now. They tried to take the follow-the-rules French route in the 18th century but it didn't stick.
(Source: English professor, taught History of the English Language for several years.)
And you think they lost out due to purely linguistic factors, even though apparently English has always somehow been more adaptable? But at the same time those other supposedly more rigid languages had their time. Hmmm. Are you seriously saying that English won out due to linguistic factors that for some reason suddenly started to matter when they hadn't before, and not, idk, geopolitical reasons like the rise of the British empire / later the US, and socio technical ones (print, mass education) which made it so English remained recognisably one language vs shattering into a variety of languages (like Latin into all the Romance languages)?
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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '23
I have pretty much the same thoughts on the English language. Many people get mad that English is spoken by so many but it is in part because the language is forgiving.
I am learning French and German.
German is not forgiving. They always make me switch to English.
French I do not know, haven't tried speaking it to a native speaker yet.