erinja:I'm sorry, but I don't agree with you at all, I think you are completely wrong. You could spell words in a very faulty manner in English and you would still be understood.

If you didn't remember how to write a Chinese character, nothing would help you. You couldn't draw a random assortment of lines and be understood. Most characters are not as simple as 口.

Even with the great irregularity of English spelling, if you read an English word that you don't know, and you pronounce it wrong, an English speaker will usually be able to guess what word you meant to say, even though you got it wrong. If you read a Chinese word you don't know -- good luck! You will be unable to pronounce it at all. You have no chance.

You are a great fan of English. For a Chinese it is equally difficult to read your English text as it is for you to read his Chinese. This American is a bad example - take a Chinese, who learned how to write in Chinese school with proper traditional methods, not an outsider. And it is not true that a native will understand bad pronounced English words - many examples of plane trafic communications show that clearly - the plain crew could not communicate with the ground controller or was misunderstood.

geo63:

ceigered:It is global. Being global doesn't necessarily mean that everyone in the world speaks it, more that it takes place more internationally than it does only nationally - it's used on the international level.

Wrong:

Global means of or referring to a globe and may also refer to: around the world

What you refer to is only international. With your definition French, Spanish, Mandarin are all global.

They are. Because global doesn't mean tutmonda.[/quote]

English is well spread but it is not global yet. And that what is spread is hardly English (Globish perhaps). Look at the thread topic - Mr Sudanglo is damn right.

It is around the globe, ergo it's global, but also modern English isn't split up with international English - they're one and the same formally. Different dialects etc only differ in minor pronunciation differences (not as much as say Brazilian and Portuguese Portuguese being compared), small writing differences, and informal vocabulary (such as the biro conversation we had before). We still understand each other, and any misunderstand is so minor we can ask what X/Y/Z word means.

RE English spelling, it's pretty damn lawless but I have to be honest it's nothing like Chinese or Japanese Kanji (though, in Japanese you can always fall back on hiragana if you need to). An example in Japanese: without a dictionary, how would you spell "doctor" (isha) in Japanese (using Kanji)? You'd have to already know that doctor is "医者".

English spelling, you can atleast "bullsh*t" as we'd say, in that you can make it up. Dokter, docter, doctr, we understand it all even if it's not spelt "doctor". While normally everything about an irregular spelling system is bad, it does have one benefit, and that's that once you're used to the system, you can understand words spelt horribly wrong.

fr istance if i speek liek thiz iven if it luks rong piipel huo spaek ingislh no what i sey, biccawz they noes to expet de unexpet'd
They will however likely want to punch me in the face for sending their error-alarms off on full alert despite the fact I'm a native speaker....

@Targanook, surprisingly, it'd also be just as hard for a Chinese speaker to understand Esperanto if they've never learnt it. The only languages I know that people have an easy time understanding without having learnt those langauges are ones that are so closely related that it doesn't matter, like the slavic languages and romance languages (esperanto and interlingua included)

Seriously, why are there so many Polish people here writing in perfectly fine English but making it sound harder than Chinese?

For heavens sakes, even if you're finvenkists or really wanting chinese to supplant English, it's not gonna happen overnight, and English won't just disappear, as did neither French nor Latin.

ceigered:Seriously, why are there so many Polish people here writing in perfectly fine English but making it sound harder than Chinese?

This is because we don't like totalitarianism. Was it Chinese, we would fight against Chinese. Was it German, we would fight against German. 25% of population is against everything, even against their being against. Do you understand that? I don't. And that's fine. You English get easily irritated. And this "many Poles" is about 3 persons....
Think what would happen if all of us (50 million or so) knew English and wrote on this forum - so pray that English would not become global or prepare for more critic.

targanook:

ceigered:Seriously, why are there so many Polish people here writing in perfectly fine English but making it sound harder than Chinese?

This is because we don't like totalitarianism. Was it Chinese, we would fight against Chinese. Was it German, we would fight against German. 25% of population is against everything, even against their being against. Do you understand that? I don't. And that's fine. You English get easily irritated. And this "many Poles" is about 3 persons....
Think what would happen if all of us (50 million or so) knew English and wrote on this forum - so pray that English would not become global or prepare for more critic.

Irritated probably isn't the right word Contrary to whatever our words say here, I'm actually more less leaning back on my chair relaxing The only thing irritating me is this chicken meat on the bone. I HATE the bones. Chickens should be born without bones

I don't see the reason why we need to be against such misconceptions of "totalitarianism". In the end, it's just a language, really. You're free to learn it, you're free to not learn it. If you want to cooperate with society, you have to do what societies doing , or at least meet them halfway. If you don't want to do that, then you can't blame them for not putting in all the effort :-/ Same goes for Esperanto, Polish, etc. And even if you're forced to speak it, it's not like it's harming you in any way.

Nonetheless I can understand your point of view sort of, but in this case I don't think there's much justification for complaint. If Polish was the global lingua franca, I wouldn't mind learning that, it'd give me something to do, people to talk to. Because of English though, I'm left being a lot more bored, and a lot more worried that my love of languages will leave me with very few interesting job possibilities about languages if the elite of the world already are happy speaking English.

(about the definition of "global", no where in the word "global" nor "international" is there the meaning of "tutmonda", more only something I guess better worded as "transmonda". I regard the definition of global as "tutmonda" as being nationalistic, as if ones own country is the only one worth caring about in the world. So, English, or any language, is global provided it has enough speakers spread out across the entire globe, which it does, considering the US, Canada, UK, India, South Africa and Australia are across the entire world. Spanish is similar. Chinese is too, but not to the same extent, since most of China's population is in China, and the chinese diaspora often speak other languages like hokkien and cantonese).

ceigered:

I don't see the reason why we need to be against such misconceptions of "totalitarianism". In the end, it's just a language, really. You're free to learn it, you're free to not learn it. If you want to cooperate with society, you have to do what societies doing , or at least meet them halfway. If you don't want to do that, then you can't blame them for not putting in all the effort :-/ Same goes for Esperanto, Polish, etc. And even if you're forced to speak it, it's not like it's harming you in any way.

Nonetheless I can understand your point of view sort of, but in this case I don't think there's much justification for complaint. If Polish was the global lingua franca, I wouldn't mind learning that, it'd give me something to do, people to talk to. Because of English though, I'm left being a lot more bored, and a lot more worried that my love of languages will leave me with very few interesting job possibilities about languages if the elite of the world already are happy speaking English.

Unbelievable. Ceigered, are you joking? Or laughing at us?

horsto:Unbelievable. Ceigered, are you joking? Or laughing at us?

I would say the same to you Horsto. What on earth are you taking offence at? Since it's apparently so badly offended you perhaps you might like to take time to explain it rather than leaving a cryptic reply that leaves a chill up the spine?

ceigered:
I don't see the reason why we need to be against such misconceptions of "totalitarianism". In the end, it's just a language, really. You're free to learn it, you're free to not learn it. If you want to cooperate with society, you have to do what societies doing , or at least meet them halfway. If you don't want to do that, then you can't blame them for not putting in all the effort :-/ Same goes for Esperanto, Polish, etc. And even if you're forced to speak it, it's not like it's harming you in any way.

Does that mean that every society has some "totalitarianism"? Means society enforces society members to swim inside mainstream principles? I believe that's some kind of collegialitism which members of individualism societies (like i.e. the current German one) probably will not accept.

ceigered:
Nonetheless I can understand your point of view sort of, but in this case I don't think there's much justification for complaint. If Polish was the global lingua franca, I wouldn't mind learning that, it'd give me something to do, people to talk to. Because of English though, I'm left being a lot more bored, ...

I experienced something similar as I travelled through Australia and trying to walk around that much of German backpackers who try to switch to German language conversation. It really destroys any excotic to speak German (my native language) in a foreign country. But I also met same believed Germans: "Here we have the oportunity to speak English all time. Let's do it. Even if we could use German".

ceigered:
... and a lot more worried that my love of languages will leave me with very few interesting job possibilities about languages if the elite of the world already are happy speaking English.

Common, ceigered. Don't worry. There should be dozens of Translater and Interpreter job oportunities in Australia. Maybe you should also try to link your language proficiencies with some other field i.e. Governmental Service, Health Care etc. Australia seems to be immigration-friendly country which of course also needs lots of Translaters and Interpreters, isn't it?

qwertz:Common, ceigered. Don't worry. There should be dozens of Translater and Interpreter job oportunities in Australia. Maybe you should also try to link your language proficiencies with some other field i.e. Governmental Service, Health Care etc. Australia seems to be immigration-friendly country which of course also needs lots of Translaters and Interpreters, isn't it?

Hehe, not as immigration friendly (or smart) as I'd like, but that is a possible option. I want to avoid working too much with the govt though especially with regards to the defence force, since after thinking about it I don't think I can support that arm of the government... I was wondering if maybe community orientated work would be good, especially for say the italian etc diasporae here in Aus.

But I also met same believed Germans: "Here we have the oportunity to speak English all time. Let's do it. Even if we could use German".

That makes no sense to me, but I guess it is a relatively free society . But I'd hope then that they're speaking every other language the know in common whenever they can!

qwertz:Does that mean that every society has some "totalitarianism"? Means society enforces society members to swim inside mainstream principles? I believe that's some kind of collegialitism which members of individualism societies (like i.e. the current German one) probably will not accept.

I guess but totalitarianism is the wrong word since it gives off the idea of "total control". It's more like "incentive based control", e.g. be like what we want and we'll get along just fine, be anything different and we'll have to work on it, be too different and unless there's a reason we'll avoid you - that sort of thing.

I just read up on collegiality (damn you smart people and your big long words , that seems sort of right to me. Maybe society is more a blend between collegiality and individualism in free societies like the west - and laws are built around the collegiality aspect which is influenced by tradition?

The difference between English and Esperanto is that the latter is mostly used by educated people with whom the conversation is interesting and worthy. And English internationally has turned into Globish - a primitive form of the language.

geo63:The difference between English and Esperanto is that the latter is mostly used by educated people with whom the conversation is interesting and worthy. And English internationally has turned into Globish - a primitive form of the language.

Well, Esperanto becomes international, it's large amount of liberal minded interesting speakers will look a lot smaller (something that concerns me actually, since that might cause dissatisfaction with EO even if it succeeds, not good imho).

(to be honest though, the reason I don't like going into EO-only forums here is because some of the conversations make me want to bash my head against a brick wall, which happens in my native tongue too but then I'm not thinking harder than normal )

What's wrong with Globish though, from a feature point of view?

Maybe we should all speak Deutgyarsky - German, Hungarian and Slavic- those fellows seem intelligent