I just came across this interesting thread on a topic of permanent interest to me (and anyone who often spends time in other nations and, or has frequent verbal and written exchanges across the borders of countries and continents, as these days is usually the case with scientists, engineers and many other types of workers).
I am interested in this subject as someone whose native tongue is not English, but uses it daily and often also thinks in it -- and has done so for years now.
I appreciate the excellent article linked at the beginning of this thread on why English is "so weird."
Well, I agree with much in the article, but I am not convinced that English is specially weird. Or weirder than, let's say German, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Japanese, Greek or Italian. Or Chinese. In fact, of the several languages spoken in the British Isles, I would say that we are fortunate that were the English that predominated in the 16th -19th centuries British conquest of much of the non-European world. Because I seriously doubt millions of us would be better off if we had to learn Welsh instead of English to get on in any of the relevant and, or interesting world-wide businesses of our Age. Not that we couldn't do it: after all the Welsh do just that (as long as they can find people abroad to correspond with, or talk to in this language about some matter of importance to them). But is the essential simplicity of English grammar that I believe makes it hands-down the better choice, among European official national languages at least.
One and only one thing has been a source of difficulty for those of us who are native speakers of phonetic languages written using some straightforward variant of the Roman alphabet. (A combination that made it possible for me, not at all gifted in this regard, to read children books and to write a few short stories at age five, just a few weeks after graduating from drawing squiggles on gridded paper to loosen my hand enough to write words using the letters of the alphabet, once I learned to pronounce them in their (in my written language) unique and unvarying ways. Not being myself at all unique in this respect among my classmates at a local kindergarten run by both severe and immensely helpful Catholic nouns).
And that one thing that was for me an impediment to switch languages to English? It's exuberantly and vaguely, almost rule-free spelling and pronunciation of written words and the self-indulging use of diphthongs and triphthongs, those continuous slides through series of sometimes partially unwritten vowels used for no particular reason, often at the ends of words. Slides that come naturally to English speakers, who consequently mispronounce, to mention a simple, common example, the "o" ending in Italian and Spanish words as "ou" and not as "oh." That to some speakers of those languages can be aggravating, because it seems to be done on purpose to annoy them.
Take for example phonetic languages, such as German (or my native one, Spanish). I can pick up any text written in German and pronounce it clearly and intelligibly enough to be well-understood by native German speakers ... even without having the slightest idea of what is that I am reading. Of course, once I learn the words, I could do both with no problems whatsoever. Now writing complex sentences using correctly the complex German grammar on top of that, well ... that is a different story.
Therefore, all things considered, having studied closely both languages for very immediate and practical reasons that had to do with getting on with my life in places where they are spoken, I am very glad that English, with its simplified grammar, not German, with its old and complex one, for example, is the most used language today, by many living in most countries, world-wide. That is our own Age true Lingua Franca, the one that has let me speak with, write to, befriend and love people that were born and grew up in places where other languages I did not know and probably will never learn, are their own native tongues.
