Does Wealth Make Your Country Stupid?

[Barnabas]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
Probably because modern Hebrew has lost most of the pharyngeals and other icky back consonants that Europeans tend to find so difficult.

Spanish guttural J and German ch rock

[Barnabas]

I have heard good things of afrikaans, that it is very simple and logical

[DaShi]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
Chinese and Japanese would both be difficult to write with just the standard 26-letter alphabet. Japanese is workable if you add some diacritical marks above certain vowels to differentiate between their long and short versions plus apostrophes to indicate glottal stops, but Chinese would seem to require even more modification. You have to indicate which tone to use somehow...

Pinyin is written with little marks about the toned vowels to denote which ones to use. However, they are rarely put in words outside of textbooks because it's too inconvenient on computers to use them. Of course, you need to know pinyin to use most Chinese word processors, but again the tone is ignored. There's also a system of using stroke order to find a character on computers, but it's also a pain. Frankly, Chinese is a ***** on computers.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by _BuRjaCi_
One word: Esperanto

That's one fine word --except for the accent marks over the "c's" and "s's" which disappear when the letter is capitalized.

[Odin]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
Ideally, the world should be speaking an already-widely-spoken language with simple spelling and grammar.

Latin could work (yes I know, it's dead, but that makes it neutral), but then again learning Latin grammar is pure torture, at least it was for me when I tried to take Latin last semester.

[Odin]

Originally posted by Barnabas
I have heard good things of afrikaans, that it is very simple and logical

I've heard Afrikaans is very easy for English-speakers to learn because it is a fellow West Germanic language and, like English, is based more on word order then inflections.

[Bosh]

[Straybow]

Originally posted by Eli
Why on Earth is Hebrew in the second group and Arabic in the third?

I've always been impressed with 7 moods and 24 tenses. I think it should be a tough language to master.

[_BuRjaCi_]

How did this turn from an America bashing uhh I mean "Does wealth make your country stupid?" thread to a language thread?

[Colon™]

Originally posted by Odin


I've heard Afrikaans is very easy for English-speakers to learn because it is a fellow West Germanic language and, like English, is based more on word order then inflections.

Might as well learn Dutch then.

[DAVOUT]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly

Ideally, the world should be speaking an already-widely-spoken language with simple spelling and grammar.

Such a language is appropriate for all trivial daily matters. But expressing complex ideas and problems resorting to science, legal affairs, diplomacy, litterature, etc, requires languages more precise and sophisticated than basic english. The ultima ratio of languages is precision not simplicity.

[Kuciwalker]

English isn't capable of expressing complex legal or scientific ideas? I think a lot of people will find that fascinating news...

[DAVOUT]

The "already-widely-spoken language with simple spelling and grammar" named "basic english" is not capable of expressing complex legal or scientific ideas, let alone other domains. I am surprised you confuse it with English.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Bosh

I love it. Simple, effective and beautiful

[Colon™]