Re: Spanish and Portuguese in Latin America

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

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.         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

 

 

Spelling, of course, is a lot better than English, but I don't think Spanish is more regular than other languages, eg, think of its irregular verbs in Spanish.         Marc