English Is the Best Language in the World

gilbert   Tue Aug 04, 2009 4:02 pm GMT
English truly is the number one language in the world, and you don't need to know any other languages. People who don't speak English are illiterate in global terms. Thus English-speaking nations are superior to all other nations on Earth.
Maxwell Blanck   Tue Aug 04, 2009 4:05 pm GMT
Looks like the start of another fantastic thread :)
K. T.   Tue Aug 04, 2009 5:49 pm GMT
I would say that it is currently the most useful language to know as a first or secondary language. It's good to know at least one other language as well, but this depends on one's situation. In the US, it may not be necessary to know another language at all, but it makes things easier.

Knowing the roots of foreign words that are a part of English now is helpful, especially with vocabulary in specialized fields like law and medicine.

It depends on one's field and one's interests. Sometimes I want to see what researchers in other countries are doing before their research is published in English.

A translator (Reverso, for example) can help somewhat, but some languages don't translate well by machine.
Guest   Tue Aug 04, 2009 6:36 pm GMT
"English truly is the number one language in the world"
True

"and you don't need to know any other languages"
Not true

"People who don't speak English are illiterate in global terms"
True

"Thus English-speaking nations are superior to all other nations on Earth"
Not true
ESB   Tue Aug 04, 2009 7:17 pm GMT
English is the most powerful language on earth, for several reasons.

1) Its original Germanic base has been mixed with the Roman vocabulary, giving it "the best of both worlds"--an extremely rich dual arsenal of expression unprecedented in history.

2) It's extremely laconic (succinct). Sentenced translated from English into other languages take up at least 30% more space. English words are concise and so are its sentences.

3) Absence of a sophisticated grammar system (present in other languages, such as Slavic ones) makes it not only efficient but adaptable to new concepts and technologies. It's one of the most adaptive languages on earth. A noun can be easily turned into an adjective or a verb, and vice-versa, without sacrificing expressiveness or literary beauty.

4) It's spoken by the most influential and powerful countries on earth, the USA and the UK. But this is no accident: I actually believe that the privileged status of these Anglo nations is in large part *due to* speaking a language as elegant and adaptive as English, as strange as it sounds. When you have a language as remarkable as English, it's really no surprise that it would become a potent tool both for Shakespeare and for Bill Gates. Whether we're talking about movies, art, literature, IT, technical stuff, or science, English is always at the forefront of expression. This proves that, apart from the political status of its speakers, the language itself has certain remarkable properties that make it, objectively, the best language in the world.
chulo   Tue Aug 04, 2009 8:17 pm GMT
<<People who don't speak English are illiterate in global terms.>>

True, but then how many people actually are 'global', whatever that means? A lot of people like to think they are 'global' but are far from it!

Also, just because one knows English doesn't make you 'global', or internationally literate.
trzdrz   Tue Aug 04, 2009 8:43 pm GMT
Damian London SW15   Tue Aug 04, 2009 10:40 pm GMT
The English Language....

A correspondent above quoted the following regarding our Language:

***It's spoken by the most influential and powerful countries on earth, the USA and the UK***

Please define your exact interpretion of "influential and powerful" in this context. Please delete my country the UK from the above statement.....nobody in the UK really believes that this country is "one of the most influential and powerful countries on earth". Thankfully and mercifully our days of being in this category are well and truly over....we will leave that to others to have such ambitions.

We are now a constituent part of the European Union and neither the UK on its own nor the EU as a complete entity have any intention of seeking "influence or power" as it was practised in the past, in this part of the world especially. Europe has changed out of all recognition, praise be.

All we in Europe (including the UK of course) now want is unity in economic prosperity and pride in our very diverse cultures and lifestyles, all under one single banner while at the same time maintaining all our own national characteristics, all of which goes to make the EU a very interesting and exciting place in which to live, as far from the horrors of nationalistic ambition and lust for "power" which ultimately caused all the misery of human suffering so graphically illustrated by our history.

To my mind the coming into being of the EU is the best thing that could ever happened to this Continent, and what happened in the last century and in preceding centuries will never happen again in Europe at least.

"O what a lovely war" - a Richard Attenborough film from 1968. Part of the action of this film was shot in Brighton, Sussex, on the south coast of England, and this final scene from the film was shot just inland from Brighton, up on the South Downs, the range of upland open countryside (called downs in the South of England) stretching for miles from West Sussex,parallel to the coast all the way to beyond Dover on the south east coast of Kent....dropping vertically to the sea as chalk white cliffs.

All wars are vile and a total waste of precious human life, and invariably young male lives at that in the case of this particular film. Power and influence? The UK doesn't want that any more....it has killed far too many of us, and sadly still does in a different kind of conflict with a totally different kind of enemy in hot, stinking, crappy, desert hellholes so alien to what we are used to in the UK.

Ask the people of the small town of Wootton Bassett, in the lush green countryside of Wiltshire, England....they see the final outcome of this on a regular basis it seems.

Leave the UK out of this one. We shall always speak English and be proud of it, but that's all in this respect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f95idVQEXI&feature=related
Amabo   Wed Aug 05, 2009 12:17 am GMT
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ...
Xie   Wed Aug 05, 2009 9:37 am GMT
>>All we in Europe (including the UK of course) now want is unity in economic prosperity and pride in our very diverse cultures and lifestyles, all under one single banner while at the same time maintaining all our own national characteristics, all of which goes to make the EU a very interesting and exciting place in which to live, as far from the horrors of nationalistic ambition and lust for "power" which ultimately caused all the misery of human suffering so graphically illustrated by our history.

As modest and succinct and reasonable as usual.
Guest   Wed Aug 05, 2009 9:55 am GMT
I assume that was sarcasm...
EU   Wed Aug 05, 2009 11:14 am GMT
<<English truly is the number one language in the world.>>

True

<<who don't speak English are illiterate in global terms.>>

I don't think so.

<<Thus English-speaking nations are superior to all other nations on Earth.>>

If you meant USA, It is true. The rest of them are not.
****   Wed Aug 05, 2009 12:42 pm GMT
No ******* statian is superior to me, you ****!!!
A.M.   Wed Aug 05, 2009 1:22 pm GMT
Chinese and other languages like Spanish, Arabic and Hindi will be more important in the near future.

The future importance of Chinese depends on the economic power of China and the choice of Chinese or English in countries like Vietnam, South Korea, Japan or Malaysia. If they prefer Chinese, this language will be the lingua franca of East Asia, but not all the World.

There will be a new order with the big five: English, Spanish, Arabic, Hindi and Chinese. All of them will have their area of influence, according to the economic organizations and countries where these languages are spoken.

Besides, English will be only 5th in number of mother tongue speakers, after Chinese, Hindi, Arabic and Spanish. I think that the Golden Age of English is over.

So, English will be less important, of course. It won't be the World lingua franca, only the lingua franca of North America and Australasia.

Perhaps, also the lingua franca of European Union. I am not sure, but if English is less important in the World, French and German people would prefer to use their own languages, or Esperanto/Europaio, a neutral language.

Finally, there will be good translators, and it will be less useful to study languages. So, the importance of a language will be considered by the mother tongue speakers, not secondary ones.
Gina   Wed Aug 05, 2009 2:18 pm GMT
Yes, I agree.