271–280 of 392 posts
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"Easy-to-learn" is very subjective. There's a lot of different languages spoken in the EU and the accessibility of a language environment matters.
> "Easy to learn" is very subjective Not really. For example, a language that has no grammatical gender is inarguably easier to learn than a one that has.
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Perhaps this can be generalized? Language entitlement seems to be a thing among French speaking regions. Whether it's French Canada, French Belgium or France?
Funny to see so much drab posturing about our supposed « language entitlement » while almost calling for languages to be rolled over and wiped out by English. I'm quite certain the position of French-Canadians has little to do with « entitlement », and more with how trapped they feel. Not that Anglo-Canadians would give a rats ass about the actual motives of Québec's cultural policy, as long as it can get weaponized…
Not that I believe that the rest of Canada somehow has the moral high ground or something but what is going on in Quebec language wise is frankly completely non-understandable from an outsider's point of view. From that both sides have good and bad arguments in the debate but at this point things are just silly. It feels like a never ending blood feud. The vicious cycle has to be broken.
Yes the Anglos weren't nice to French speakers. I sympathize.
Now the French speakers want to legislate doing the same to Anglos? Are they crazy? Sorry but sympathy withdrawn immediately!
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> if that was actually successful It was successful. That language is English, the obvious choice agreed upon by everyone who isn't interested in playing idiotic political games.
Yeah for you yes, for others it's synonym with colonialism, and armed invasion.
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> "Easy to learn" is very subjective Not really. For example, a language that has no grammatical gender is inarguably easier to learn than a one that has.
Finnish has no grammatical gender. Is it easier to learn than Spanish?
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184cm = 6ft
Okay, so this makes me wonder something. So 6 foot tall (72in) is like a magic number for American men. That's like the threshold for manliness in popular culture. If you were to plot the self-reported heights men in America, you'd absolutely see a dip at 70 and 71 inches, then a big spike at 72in. What's this magic number in various metric countries? 185cm seems like a sound choice, but I could see it being 190 in s…
I’d have thought they would have kept English as it’s effectively a neutral language at that point - it would be convenient to avoid accusations of German or French dominance should either push for their’s in English’s place
Shame there's no real-world interest in the powers that be to officialize Esperanto.
The sane thing to do after the Brexit, was to embrace English as main language, since it has not become neutral ground! According to Wikipedia we have: * Germany: 56% English speakers, 14.5% French speakers * Italy: 34% English vs. 19.43% French * Spain: 22% English vs. 11.73% French * Sweden: 89% English vs. 8% French I can't get over how bad this decision is. How can you ignore these kinds of discrepancies? [1] htt…
I think embracing english as the main language of the EU is the worst idea since Brexit. It’s anything but neutral. It’s a concession made to the brits and a trojan for the Americans. They left, they can f right off and take their piss poor excuse of a language with them. It works for programming, insults and not much else. If they hadn’t joined the EU to sabotage it, maybe english wouldn’t be as popular in the EU. L…
(Latin is oppressive? I’ve heard it all. Better tell the scientists.)
But French is even worse. To hell with these non-phonetical languages. I am serious. I'd take Latin over these unpredictable monstrosities any day of the week
Spanish is an almost ideal modern language - it is straightforward in all important respects, while 90% of its vocabulary should be familiar to pretty much everyone.
The sane thing to do after the Brexit, was to embrace English as main language, since it has not become neutral ground! According to Wikipedia we have: * Germany: 56% English speakers, 14.5% French speakers * Italy: 34% English vs. 19.43% French * Spain: 22% English vs. 11.73% French * Sweden: 89% English vs. 8% French I can't get over how bad this decision is. How can you ignore these kinds of discrepancies? [1] htt…
The EU has a 6-month rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union. So this is the President of France postulating that when his country takes the Presidency next year, he will use that to push French to be the next working language. I don’t know what the President of the Council of Europe does besides Chair meetings, but apparently it includes setting the language for which the meetings will be held in. S…
And besides the long term costs that can be reasoned out, all sorts of emotions, insecurities, etc., will undoubtedly come flying out from many quarters.
I doubt if these sorts of topics can be discussed calmly by anyone invested in the change.
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Literary French is quite phonetic, at least outside proper names. What are some examples where you feel that French writing is not in a one to one relation with pronunciation?
Granted, my experience with French is rather limited and the language could be pretty consistent internally. But there's lots of utter madness such as "beacoup" which is literally "buku". Sorry for being blunt but pronouncing 50% of the letters is extremely non phonetical. There's just no other way of putting it
If your native language has sane spelling correspondences this feature of English never ceases to amaze and to be honest baffle, even bother you.
Will this vowel in this particular word be the diphthong you'd expect according to the patterns you've inferred up to this point or some wild monophtong just because? Let's find out!
As for the French, good for them, they speak a world language that is also one of the three working languages of the EU. My native language is another world language. English is a lingua franca nowadays, but there's no methaphysical necessity about speaking English, it's just popular enough and therefore convenient.