geo63:And many Chinese spoke Polish good enough to make business with them....

Amazing! I can understand many Chinese knowing Russian because of Communism, but why would they learn Polish?

Miland:

geo63:And many Chinese spoke Polish good enough to make business with them....

Amazing! I can understand many Chinese knowing Russian because of Communism, but why would they learn Polish?

Simply because in 1990 many Poles came to China to make business. Me too.

(A busy post! I have just come into it after an illness.) Concerning learning of English, I concur that it may be easier for adult learners of west European (especially Germanic language) origin to learn it, just as, as was mentioned, Polish may be easier for other Slavic speakers, for instance.

I am an educated native speaker of (General American) English, and although I am not an instructor of English as a Second Language, I have tried to help others learn the language. I can say from experience that for speakers of some other, non-Indo-European, language families, English can be fiendishly difficult, such as in its phonology, phonotactics (many closed syllables and consonant clusters), bizarre phrasal verbs, and baffling idioms, among other things. And, certainly, there is no one "English," with its various dialects.

Of course, as to phonology, I have read many complaints even about the phonology of Esperanto (such as the supposedly "notorious" 'sc', although I myself find it easy). One person's ease is another's damnable difficulty.

As the author Mario Pei pointed out in his book One Language for the World in 1958, one way to deal with the world language problem is to pick a language -- almost any language will do if it has an adequate modern vocabulary -- and teach it to all young children around the world. Granted, one issue is finding enough qualified instructors and teaching materials, but in a generation or two that could be solved. I wonder if that may be becoming the situation of English. However, if we want to use a constructed language for the sake of something closer to neutrality, then probably Esperanto has the the only realistic chance.

bartlett22183:As the author Mario Pei pointed out in his book One Language for the World in 1958, one way to deal with the world language problem is to pick a language -- almost any language will do if it has an adequate modern vocabulary -- and teach it to all young children around the world. Granted, one issue is finding enough qualified instructors and teaching materials, but in a generation or two that could be solved. I wonder if that may be becoming the situation of English.

Ok... this has been done with English is several parts of the world... Here, in South America, English has been taught in schools since several decades ago.

Mi parents are 60-something now, they studied English when young... I had to study English at least during 7 years at school. The current generation has English as part of their education...

I can assure you that their level of English is so poor, that most of them cannot talk to a native during five minutes. And those are already three generations.

Most English teachers in schools cannot talk to a native either.

That's the reality of the (current) international language...

Amike,

Daniel.

henma:...That's the reality of the (current) international language...

Amike,

Daniel.

Teaching English is just terrible waste of time and money, if we take into account the cost and results. And why should the 92% of the world population stick to 8%? If English is to become a real international language, it won't be English anymore, because the original is too difficult to get good command of for most of us (Germans excluded).

I wonder, why do politicians and other people want us to learn English, when it's shown that it's very difficult to use that language everyday, etc.?

geo63: If English is to become a real international language, it won't be English anymore, because the original is too difficult to get good command of for most of us (Germans excluded).

I wouldn't mind that, since as a native English speaker I probably wouldn't notice it as much as morphing into someone else's language . But it is possible to keep it similar to the original while making it easier - no doubt the biggest pain in the arse is not the imprecision (I think it's fair to say like it or not, international langauges will always be around as imprecise as English), but more the MASSIVE amount of irregularities yeah?

Maybe a way to avoid that would be to make English more analytical when normally written spoken, e.g. I was eating vs. I ate. And there are other non-official constructions that could be officialised in international English to make verb tenses more regular, e.g. instead of "I had eaten", "I had had an eat".

The biggest problem would be changing the alphabet because every man and his dog would complain. Then again, it's not *too* hard to make the alphabet look Englishy, but be regular (although it will still look wrong to every said man and his dog!)

And then we have to work on having better idioms for the international community, since things like "every man and his dog" might come across too literally

Anyway, I'm digressing, and this is about EO anyway

@ Hispanio:

It's got nothing to do with difficulty, and in actual fact I think foreigners actually learn English in a needlessly difficult way (as the above might allude to). It's because it, due to historical reasons, became the most widespread language across the world, and was further strengthened by US power. Nothing more really.

That said, Europeans are sort of spoilt as well though since there are many languages there that are closely related (sorry, it must be said haha). E.g. a Spaniard can learn French, Italian, a Pole can learn Russian, Czech, an Englishman can learn French, Cockney . Here in Australia, we don't have the same benefits unless we go to europe, since indonesian, vietnamese, thai, chinese, japanese, korean etc are no where near related to English There's no "point" in learning european languages unless you plan to move there, and the languages around us are very alien (sometimes easy, sometimes unforgivingly confusing, but they're out of the comfort zone of say French, Spanish and Italian).

Firefly fans might be in for a treat though since Chinese is also becoming more popular in Asia, while English is still becoming more popular. Perhaps a pitch for South East Asian tourism?

Hispanio:I wonder, why do politicians and other people want us to learn English, when it's shown that it's very difficult to use that language everyday, etc.?

Because nobody takes esperanto seriously. But wait - now it is English, in future it can be other language, since no language is eternal in the role of the lingua franca (latin - French - English - {Chinese}?). The cost of teaching English is enormous. And it is paid by almost the whole world.

I was lucky to start learning foreign languages with esperanto. And I think that is the only reasonable way.

The questions you have to ask yourself Geo, is why does the world not take Esperanto seriously, yet is prepared to spend good money to learn English.

Until the Esperantists can answer (satisfactorly) the question as to why the World has largely ignored Esperanto, it will be just be more of the same.

It is clearly no good just rehearsing the same old arguments for Esperanto.

I'm not convinced that because other languages have occupied the role of Lingua Franca, this means that English will one day give way to another language.

It could be different this time. Maybe you reach a tipping point, and, in any case, the world is much smaller now. English is perhaps the first Lingua Franca with truly global reach.

sudanglo:you have to ask yourself .. why .. the world .. is prepared to spend good money to learn English..

The same reason that anyone spends good money, if it is not for a recreational or personal reason - to make more money. English is increasingly dominant as an international professional language, as well as in international politics.

It may be that Esperanto will have to be content with being an international language of friendship, or a bridge language between people who cannot use English sufficiently well. Its big break, if there ever is one, may come in international diplomacy, but we will have to wait and see.