OT: Off shore call center workers mad at American

[Spoo]

Starhawk said:I don't want to sound like an "ugly american" but I understand WHY English is the primary trade language of the world (It's relatively easy to learn and you can skid by with knowing less of our language then you can with most).

I mean for instance you can't "skid by" with Spanish because it's got like a hundred and one ways to refer to everything from a spoon to a table and let's not even get into the fact that EVERYTHING has a Gender and if you accidentally use a male instead of female or vice versa what you say will have no meaning whatever.

English is the primary trade language of the world because that's what's used in the USA. English is not at all easy to learn. Many of our words are not pronounced the way that they're spelled, i.e. "though", "of", "neighbor", etc.

There are also myriad exceptions in our grammar. Just try listing the rules of grammar. Examples: How do you express a verb in the past tense? Usually you add an -ed: Climb->climbed, but what about run->ran is->was sleep->slept read->read (not the pronounciation changes)? When do you use "too" and when do you use "to"? Also, consider how changing the accent on a word can change it's meaning. "CONtent" vs. "conTENT"

It's funny that you compare English to Spanish. Spanish is a relatively easy language (at least for English speakers) to learn. Consider that the words are almost always spelled exactly like they sound. Accents are always on the second-to-last syllable unless an accent mark is present. Of course, there are irregular verbs etc., but I believe there are significantly less of them than in English. Messing up the gender of nouns/adjectives may cause confusion, but it won't cause complete loss of meaning. Finally, as far as I know, "spoon" is "cuchara" and "table" is "mesa" or "tabla", depending on which definition of "table" you mean. What are the 100 other translations?

[Starhawk]

Well Spoo I suppose in a sense your right however most people do tend to agree that gender designation for myriad objects that are not even alive is a frustrating and difficult aspect to learn.

I agree with that part entirely because I tried to learn Spanish and the gender designation PLUS the different words to represent the SAME object were frustrating as hell.


But I do agree that we should probobly eventually come up with a universal language that is used for trade and international relations because it would seriously simplify things.

Problem is that whole ONE LANGUAGE thing scares the hell out of most people and rightfully so, because a universal language can lead to a universal government and unfortunately you can't be at all sure that would be a good thing.

[Suicide Junkie]

A nice universal language would help as an intermediary for translations too.

How would it lead to one government anyways? That's silly. Better let the Americans, British and Canadians know.

[Jack Simth]

Would it directly lead to a world-government? Not really. It would, however, eliminate one of the major roadblocks to a world-government.