On Tue, 1 Apr 2003 11:18:15, Carl P. Nelson wrote regarding the English language:
<snip> > It's a complex, irregular and confusing language, > sometimes even to native speakers, but its power and range are virtually > unchallenged. Oriental languages are to some extent inferential, German > is more precise, Spanish is more nearly regular, but English with all of > its flaws is still the most comprehensive. Whether this is the reason > for its invasive growth, or whether it owes more than I suppose to the > dominant position of the United States at this point in history, is not > easy to determine. But I do not see the trend slowing at any time soon. <snip> Many immigrants and visitors coming to the US from Spanish speaking countries tell me that English is a very difficult language to learn because, unlike their own native language, English words are not spelled as they are pronounced and because English has many more irregularities and exceptions to the rules than their own language. I agree with them on all the points they make on how difficult it is to learn Engish. I give them some advice on how to go about learning it and I tell them that their own language is a very easy one to learn. I know several people who are very fluent in Spanish and English and several other languages and they all tell me that English is among the most difficult languages to learn and that Spanish is among the easiest. I know a Korean immigrant who knew no language other than his own when he came to Washington DC and settled in a neighborhood where I used to live at the time. The neighborhood has many Hispanic residents. My new Korean neighbor told me that it was much easier for him to learn Spanish than to learn English. He told me that he was going to set about learning both languages with equal diligence because about half of the new friends he was making in the US speak Spanish and the other half speak English, and of all these new friends many speak both languages. I noted that his progress in learning Spanish seemed to be about four times as fast as his progress in learning English. He was very surprised to find that Spanish is so widely spoken in so many areas of the US. I believe that in a few decades Spanish will rival English as being the most widely spoken language throughout the world because the populations of the Spanish speaking countries are growing much more rapidly than the populations of the English speaking countries. All the best, Sam Heywood -- This mail was written by user of The Arachne Browser: http://browser.arachne.cz/
