>>Marc: Why is Spanish not so difficult IYO? because of the Latin lexicon?
porque se escribe como se habla? easy pronunciation? I don't think it's
intrinsically easier than English or any other language, do you? Marc
>Gerry here: Perhaps Spanish isn't any easier to learn than English, but it
certainly is easier to learn than Russian. Even for Russian natives!
Dou you think so? I once read somewhere that declension (eg, German,
Russian) is only fully mastered at the age of 7, but perhaps the same can be
said about conjugation in languages without much declension?
Marc
+++++++++
>Mark: My own view is that Spanish is much more suited to be the 'world
language' in that it is probably the easiest of the major world languages to
learn. This is unlikely to happen, though. Mark Spanish is
regular, and of all the world's major languages, I'm told only Turkish is
more regular. This counts for a lot. The spelling system is consistent and
it's pretty much pronounced as its spelled. For the most part, the phonology
is not difficult either (dark-L and tap-R are difficult for
English-speakers). No language's grammar is 'simple', but compared to, say,
Russian or English or German, its grammar requires one to memorize
considerably fewer rules.
>Gerry: And I'm told that because of it's regularity, Turkish is a snap to
learn.
>Italian, so I'm told, is also just as easy to learn. Spanish, however, has
far more native-speakers world-wide.
>Esperanto suffers from the enthusiasm of its true-believers. I once heard
it (rather archly) described as 'an Indo-European language in the Slavic
group'. If a designed language, a 'conlang' (constructed language)
is to be imposed on the world, then one not quite so Euro-centric and even
IE-centric would be considerably more appropriate. Such a language would
lack not merely grammatical gender, but grammatical number as well.
Agent-verb agreement would probably be positional and not inflectional. It
might even dispense with articles. Much of the world speaks languages
without such niceties, and these features are rather difficult to learn if
you have not grown up with them. Thus. Spanish is the best candidate
available among the world's major languages to be the 'world-language'.
English, however, has established itself, and I don't thing anything is
going to change in this regard. Mark.
>Gerry: I think this issue is still very sensitive and it will be a while
before any definitive answer can be reached. Perhaps it might take a
century or two for languages to consolidate -- I think that in South America
folks are trying to establish some workable taxon for Hispanic. Could
someone else speak to this question? Gerry