The Antithesis of English

Guest   Sun May 11, 2008 3:08 pm GMT
I think it’s very clear that there is no one single language in the world today that can compete with the overwhelming dominance of English in the world as a whole. It’s the most useful foreign language to learn and to be able to communicate with others all over the globe.

I think the secret to the supremacy of English (aside from the British Empire and American Culture) is the fact that it’s a hybrid of Latin and Germanic, so it’s able to satisfy and be familiar to both Romance and Germanic speakers. Choosing any other existing language to compete with English right now is destined to fail, whether it was French, Spanish, or German, because it will always be thought of as either Latin or Germanic, in other words, on one side of the fence.

The only way is to compete with English is to do the same thing that happened to it hundreds of years ago: mix Latin and Germanic again, but this time, under regulation and supervision by linguists, to create an English that is much more logical and easy to learn. Maybe we can call it…

Latin + Saxon = Laxon or Saxtin

The loss of art and literature would be staggering and the fact that people have to learn it from scratch would be extremely inconvenient and impractical, which makes this new language an utter failure and a mere dream. It was just a hypothetical experiment.
Guest   Sun May 11, 2008 3:11 pm GMT
Previous sunthetic examples like Esperanto and Interlingua don't count because they are way too biased to Latin. They sound like bad Spanish!
They don't have nowhere near the right mix of Latin and Germanic in their vocabulary.
Adolfo   Sun May 11, 2008 5:09 pm GMT
English is not a mixture of Latin and Germanic , but a Germanic language with huge Latin and Norman derived vocabulary which is rather different. The Germanic DNA of English remains unaltered and it's a world language not because it may have familiar things for both Romance speakers and Germanic speakers (there are more people who use Englisy in the world apprt from them by the way), but because of the dominance of US in many fields. All languages can gain the same status English enjoys right now if the country where they are spoken becomes as important as US is, no matter how that language is.
Guest   Sun May 11, 2008 5:46 pm GMT
<< English is not a mixture of Latin and Germanic , but a Germanic language with huge Latin and Norman derived vocabulary which is rather different. >>

I know that, English will forever remain a Germanic language at heart.

<< it's a world language [...] because of the dominance of US in many fields. All languages can gain the same status English enjoys right now if the country where they are spoken becomes as important as US is, no matter how that language is. >>

Absolutely, but from a purely linguistic view (aside from economy, military, science/research... etc.) and within a Western European scope, the fact that English has both Germanic and Latinate elements (even though at heart, it's Germanic) must have had a favourable effect on learners... in Western Europe.


English can sound familiar to both a German, when he sees the word (house) for example, but also to a Frenchman, when he sees the word (simple) for example.
Guest   Sun May 11, 2008 6:48 pm GMT
<<The only way is to compete with English is to do the same thing that happened to it hundreds of years ago: mix Latin and Germanic again, but this time, under regulation and supervision by linguists, to create an English that is much more logical and easy to learn.>

English is already easy to learn. Many learners have remarked that English grammar is "moronically simple", or "pidgin-like".
Guest   Mon May 12, 2008 1:28 pm GMT
<,English can sound familiar to both a German, when he sees the word (house) for example, but also to a Frenchman, when he sees the word (simple) for example. >>


English poses a MUCH greater natural familiarity to other Germanic speakers than it does to speakers of Romance languages.

The placement of English dead-centre in the middle between the two would not be a point we would want to assume as valid.
Guest   Mon May 12, 2008 1:49 pm GMT
Yes, it's a joke to say that English souds equally familiar for a Spanish speaker and a Swedish speaker. If people speak English so well in Denmark, Holland, and Scandinavia it's because English is much closer to the languages spoken there than to Romance languages.
Guest   Mon May 12, 2008 3:28 pm GMT
No, it's because they have a much better education system.
Guest   Mon May 12, 2008 3:32 pm GMT
France has better education system and people speak English worse because it is more different.
Guest   Mon May 12, 2008 4:16 pm GMT
I met a Frenchman who told me that France has an awful education system.
Guest   Mon May 12, 2008 6:53 pm GMT
"I think the secret to the supremacy of English (aside from the British Empire and American Culture) is the fact that it’s a hybrid of Latin and Germanic, so it’s able to satisfy and be familiar to both Romance and Germanic speakers."

The world wide supremacy of English has nothing to do with the linguistic qualities of the language, but rather the dominance and influence of the former British colonies.

Nobody likes the english language for its linguistic qualities; they only learn it for utilitarian purposes.
Guest   Mon May 12, 2008 7:29 pm GMT
Only European languages can become world languages, all the other ones are too hard, among those countries, whichever surpasses the U.S. will ocupy the place English has right now.

For example, China will be the world superpower but Chinese is not a European language therefore it won't take English down.

I think that only Russia, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina have a change of overtaking English and impossing their own language and that will only happen in the next 50 years at least.
Berlusconi   Tue May 13, 2008 9:13 am GMT
hahahha Mexico, a world power? Argentina? Joking thou art!
Guest   Tue May 13, 2008 3:22 pm GMT
Mexico and Brazil have huge economies, and Argentines live way better than Brazilians.
Guest   Tue May 13, 2008 3:24 pm GMT
Argentina, Chile , Uruguay and South Brazil together are a potential world power. I don't understand why they don't get integrated into a single nation like US did. They would become a major power at least.