English is Difficult...

Sometimes I just don't understand the English language....

Take a look...

The bandage was wound around the wound.

The farm was used to produce produce.

The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse

We must polish the Polish furniture.

He could lead if he would get the lead out.

The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.

A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

I did not object to the object.

The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

They were too close to the door to close it.

The buck does funny things when the does are present.

A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

After a number of injections my jaw got number.

Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?


Im glade I don't have to teach english.... *lol*


System_0verload

just the word run has 26+ possible meanings...I wonder if any other language has packed so much into something so small?

Very George Carlinesque! No wonder people don't communicate nowadays.

It's all about context.

No wonder English is considered the world's most difficult language... though frankly verb conjugation in others seems a lot worse (probably something having to due with the fact that I'm a native English speaker, only having pursued others as early as the high school time frame).

I always thought that if you spoke a gender enabled language (Spanish, Italian, French, German) it would be easy to learn verb conjugation. I worked for 5 months in German and spoke with Germans and other nationalities and discovered that this is not the case. Several, much to my surprise, said that English was easier then other languages spoken on the continent. If recently, decided that they all through tricks at you. I've only ever tried Spanish and German and I had different difficulties with both.

Cheers,
-D

good one system... english is really funny...

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Originally posted by Draziw
No wonder English is considered the world's most difficult language... though frankly verb conjugation in others seems a lot worse (probably something having to due with the fact that I'm a native English speaker, only having pursued others as early as the high school time frame).

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Since I find this part of the thread more interesting than the original post, I'll react to this one...

I don't think English is considered the world's most difficult language (I'm even sure about it...)...

Regular verbs, conjugation: in English, there are only two forms of the present time: I,you,we, you, they (I work, you work, we work, you work, they work) and he/she/it (works). Most languages have at least three... (Je travaille, tu travailles, il travaille, nous travaillons, vouz travaillez, ils travaillent). In English, you only have the regular verbs and the irregular verbs. All regular verbs are conjugated the same. Languages like French have regular verbs, separated in about 5 categories (all conjugated differently), and irregular verbs.

Irregular verbs, conjugation: the list of irregular English verbs isn't that long.... People who had to study the French irregular verbs once, know what I'm talking about.

Nouns: in English, the only case left is the genitive. Languages like German still use all four cases. As mentioned before, most European languages are gender enabled. (LE garçon/LA fille <--> THE boy/THE girl). In English, you don't have to know whether a noun is masculin, feminin or neutral. In French, it's crucial...

Vocabulary: the English vocabulary isn't even half as extended as most European languages'.

Culture: language is culture; to fully master a language, you have to understand it's culture (Nooo, I'm not going to say that English-speaking people have no culture). It's easier for foreigners to master the English/American culture than it is for English/Americans to master European cultures: European culture is full of American influences (love it or leave it...), the opposite isn't true...

Just some points... the list is much longer than this... and I haven't even mentioned Chinese or Japanese... try mastering that as a foreigner.

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Originally posted here by Negative



I don't think English is considered the world's most difficult language (I'm even sure about it...)...

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Have to disagree with you there Negative ;), English is renowned as the most difficult language for foreigners to learn, mainly because there are so many similies, metaphors, hononyms etc, which makes it really easy for us to come up with jokes involving puns that just wouldn't make any sense if translated into another language.

There are often lots of exceptions to the rules in English, e.g. Paul's, Robert's but *Charles'*, its and it's etc.

What surprises me is that, even though English may or may not be the most difficult language for foreigners to learn, it is still the most widespread and accepted language in the world, and I believe it is also the offical language for requesting landing permissions at airports. This is probably because we went round colonising the world 2 - 3 hundred years ago and left our language behind!

English is probably easy to learn, but difficult to master. However, if you want anyone to blame for this, it's probably the ancient Romans, since they came over here in 44BC and gave us Latin, on which English is strongly based.

Of course, English is more simple than European languages in that we don't distinguish the gender of objects, but then I think that's a good idea because how do you define or even remember whether an object is masculine or feminine, and what real difference does it make? We couldn't do this anyway in English because we're too politically correct so we'd have to divide everything 50/50 to be fair...

I must admit that I *hated* having to learn an EU language (French) for my GCSEs, because it was so different to English and the grammer seemed to follow various different rules! You could get marked down just for saying "nous avons" instead of "nous avais", or something like that (I apologise if any of my French is incorrect, although I managed to get an 'A' in the subject I have forgotten most of it now, which shows what a waste of time it was learning it).

However difficult English is to learn, it would be a good idea for everyone to pick a little bit up if at all possible, because it *is* the international language for communication - the majority of sites on the internet use it and practically every country in the world has a significant number of people who speak English (if you go abroad to Spain or France, most waiters, shop assistants etc. will speak English in addition to their native language). In fact, English is probably as wide-spread as Coca Cola .

What I have said is probably somewhat biased since I'm a patriotic Englishman. :)

Hmmm, IMO, isn't expecting everyone to know a little bit of English a little rude. I mean one of the most common complaints in America is that people come here and don't bother to know English. Wouldn't going to another country and expecting them to speak English to accomodate us be the same thing?

Deb :D

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Originally posted here by debwalin
Hmmm, IMO, isn't expecting everyone to know a little bit of English a little rude. I mean one of the most common complaints in America is that people come here and don't bother to know English. Wouldn't going to another country and expecting them to speak English to accomodate us be the same thing?

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I don't *expect* everyone to speak a little bit of English, but it would help them to do so because it's the internationally recognised language. Of course, some people will speak/write/read more English than others, because it's their first language (as is the case for me). I don't mean to force anyone to learn English.

I can't see how Americans can complain about people not bothering to speak English, because they have corrupted parts of the language anyway by leaving out letters such as the "u" in colour, which really annoys me because I have to learn all these mistakes in order to create proper HTML - in English it would be bgcolour="#ffffff", but because America started the internet I have to use bgcolor="#ffffff", which is not correct! :mad: ;)

If I go to France, I would expect them to expect me to speak some French in order to communicate, after all it's only polite to speak to people in the language to which they are accustomed if you are a tourist. BTW though, if you go to Gibraltar and speak to them in Spanish they would probably be offended - they're the most patriotic British people I know of!

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Originally posted by Mr. Waring
Have to disagree with you there Negative , English is renowned as the most difficult language for foreigners to learn, mainly because there are so many similies, metaphors, hononyms etc, which makes it really easy for us to come up with jokes involving puns that just wouldn't make any sense if translated into another language.

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Most jokes in any language don't make sense if translated to other languages. I see your point if you talk about homonyms (although I think you're referring to homophones, and not homonyms... "its" and "it's" is a homophone btw...), but metaphors? Let's go through this from a historical point of view: you mentioned that English is based on Latin. May come as a surprise, but most European languages are also based on/strongly influenced by Latin. You guys say "Paul has many irons in the fire"; most European languages have the exact same expressions.
Then there's a lot of metaphores based on body parts; the same metaphores are used both in English and most European languages (the neck of a bottle, the teeth of a saw, the head of department,...).
A lot of computer-terms are metaphores: mouse, virus, window, web,... Same in Europe, Mr. Waring ;)

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There are often lots of exceptions to the rules in English, e.g. Paul's, Robert's but *Charles'*, its and it's etc.

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Hmmm, that aren't exceptions. There's a rule for that (and a pretty easy one): words ending in "s" don't take 's but just '. Its and it's are two different cases: "it's" is just an abbreviation for "it is", and its is the genitive of "it" I was talking about. In German, you would have something like <dramatization> its, i'ts, it's, 'its, and its'</dramatization>, depending on the case. Of course there are exceptions to the basic rules in English, but this wasn't one of them... This was just a homophone.

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Of course, English is more simple than European languages in that we don't distinguish the gender of objects, but then I think that's a good idea because how do you define or even remember whether an object is masculine or feminine, and what real difference does it make? We couldn't do this anyway in English because we're too politically correct so we'd have to divide everything 50/50 to be fair...

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The point is not whether it's a good idea or not, or whether it makes a difference or not. It's easier to not differentiate, right? And more difficult to differentiate, right?

Although sometimes it's practical to actually differentiate: if Debwalin says something about her (oh look, a differentiation... would be stupid to say 'his', wouldn't it? ;) To all of us, this sounds obvious; to (most) French people differentiating between masculin, feminin and neutral nouns is obvious as well...) little one when referring to her child, you wouldn't know whether she has a boy or a girl. European languages save you the hassle of having to ask whether it's a boy or a girl.

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You could get marked down just for saying "nous avons" instead of "nous avais", or something like that (I apologise if any of my French is incorrect, although I managed to get an 'A' in the subject I have forgotten most of it now, which shows what a waste of time it was learning it).

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"Nous avons" was correct...

French and Spanish waiters speaking English? Guess you got lucky then, since most Spanish and French people refuse to speak English... or if they do, it's English with hair on it (oh looky, I just translated a Dutch metaphoric expression to English... don't know if it'll make sense).

If you're talking about the diffulty of a language, you shouldn't be talking about particular cases (which every language has). Those particular cases are something you'll only learn by speaking to the people, by researching the culture, by thinking like someone who's language you're interested in... That's what differentiates the people who speak English from the native-English speakers and they who master English. I, for example, make up everything I want to say in Dutch first, then translate it to English, taking in account my vocabulary... Non-native English speakers who master English, don't have to translate everything first. They THINK in English, I don't...

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Originally posted here by Negative

"Nous avons" was correct...

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I haven't lost all my French knowledge then... :)

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French and Spanish waiters speaking English? Guess you got lucky then, since most Spanish and French people refuse to speak English... or if they do, it's English with hair on it (oh looky, I just translated a Dutch metaphoric expression to English... don't know if it'll make sense).

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Most French people I've spoken to speak some degree of English, although it's been a while since I last visited France.

English with hair on it??? No, it doesn't make sense! ;)

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If you're talking about the diffulty of a language, you shouldn't be talking about particular cases (which every language has). Those particular cases are something you'll only learn by speaking to the people, by researching the culture, by thinking like someone who's language you're interested in... That's what differentiates the people who speak English from the native-English speakers and they who master English. I, for example, make up everything I want to say in Dutch first, then translate it to English, taking in account my vocabulary... Non-native English speakers who master English, don't have to translate everything first. They THINK in English, I don't...

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Fair point, I'm native English so it comes naturally to me, although some things don't always make perfect sense. You write good English for someone who doesn't come from my country, as do a lot of people on AO. Undoubtably your Dutch would be far better than mine, in fact I don't really know any Dutch...

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in fact I don't really know any Dutch...

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Aardvark, Apartheid... there you go. Dutch ain't that difficult ;)

"English with hair on it...". You know when you don't clean your kitchen and there are some left-overs laying around and you go on a holiday for a couple of weeks and you don't have a cat to eat all the left-overs and your mom doesn't come over to take care of your kitchen... hmm, well, you get the idea... Hair all over what's left over from your left-overs... Now make the analogy with English, and you'll get my idea ;)

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What surprises me is that, even though English may or may not be the most difficult language for foreigners to learn, it is still the most widespread and accepted language in the world

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I'd have to disagree with you there cause I'm fairly sure Mandarin is the most wide spread language in the world, with Spanish coming in a distant second and then English in third.

So instead of learning English should we all run out and learn Chinese?

P.s. Asian languages are not that difficult, I've only been learning Japanese 3 months and I can already count up to ten (at least most of the time) in it!!! :D

P.p.s I'd have to say that Celtic languages are the easiest to learn, but then I didn't learn English until I was 5 and started school (I used to (and still do) speak Irish at home with my family)

itch nie san sji go rok sich hatsj kou tsjou... Hrmmm, pretty close, no?

You both have a point, garathjax and Pwaring: Mandarin is spoken by over a billion of people, and therefore the most-spoken language, followed by Spanish indeed. Too bad those Mandarin Chinese peeps aren't exactly wide-spread, and so isn't their language... The English language though IS widespread (no wonder, with the States in the West, England in the middle, and Australia in the East...There's no escape, I'm telling you! Mandarin Chinese, beware!).

I would agree with Negative. I'm from Czech Republic so english isn't my first language. And I've studied german and english -IMO I can see some differences between this languages.

First of all english isn't hard to study - of course to speak/write without mistakes and with advanced english is really hard but it's in every language. In english after about month of studying you are able to ask for a lunch or something like that and make only a few mistakes in that sentece. But german or mainly czech are MUCH harder then english. And I mean just to speak (even with mistakes).

For example in german - every word such as auto, haus etc has also its specific article (don't know how to call it right in english) - there is no just haus, hund - its DAS haus, DAS auto, DER hund... this articles are later used when building a sentence...

Other thig is how to say something. In english (correct me if I'm wrong) when you want to say that some apple is little, red and rounded you say little red rounded apple. In czech we could say malé kulaté jablko (translation from english), or malinké kulaÂ�ouèké jablko(a little bit nicer), or just jablÃ*èko(something a little bit different but I can't describe the difference:))

Next thing is that english isn't hard to pronounce - of course native speakers would hear the difference but IMO english isn't hard to pronounce - you have no special letters that has no other language. Czech language has (I talking about czech language because I know it and I'm showing the differences on it but there are many other hard languages) - ì,Å¡,è,ø,ž,ý,á,Ã*,é...

And the last thing - in english you have still the same i/y in the words (the i/y is not depended on sentence order). In czech we don't - Sometimes the sentence is right in this form - Chlapci behali. The boys were running. Sometimes this - DÃ*vky bìhaly. Girls were running... Many mature czechs has sometimes problem decide how to write something right - so it is probably an horror for others to do it. So thats my opinion And sorry for my english mistakes:)

Thanx for your time:)

El gato es muy feo! (and I probibly spelled something wrong) That's about all I can say after 4 years of spanish. English and bad english... that's all I know.

English may present difficulties with context, but I have to say that German was by far the hardest language for me to learn. I took Spanish and French also, but frankly found German more challenging.

There's like 4 or 5 different ways you can conjugate verbs, then there's like a casual form of speaking and then a more formal manner of speaking. So many choices.

But what really got me was the difference in dialects, which I discovered when stationed at Hohenfels. The dialect can actually change the sound of a word so much (to me) that some folks were very difficult to understand. (Which may be equivalent to somebody who speaks English as a second language trying to understand a person who was born and lived in the deep south all their life vs somebody who has lived in NY all their life.)

But I have to agree about Mandarin-Chinese. While in the Army, I was offered a chance to become an interrogator-linguist (97EL for you Army pukes :-)), I wanted to continue with German as I had already studied the language for 4 years, the Army wanted me to go to school for 55 weeks to learn Mandarin-Chinese! 55 weeks was a little longer than I wanted to spend in school, so I declined. But did learn the school is that long as Mandarin-Chinese is considered by many language professionals to be one of the most difficult languages to master.

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Originally posted here by garathjax


I'd have to disagree with you there cause I'm fairly sure Mandarin is the most wide spread language in the world, with Spanish coming in a distant second and then English in third.

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I think from the fact that there are more Mandarin speaking Chinese then any other demographic Madarin is the most spoken language in the World -but how many of them speak English and might that tip the scales in favor of English?

Language is divided into categories, which will be easy to determine their degree of difficulty to learn based on the native language you speak. (ex. If you speak French, it may be easier for you to learn a similar grouped Italic-based language such as Catalan or Italian, because much of the rules are the same.)

Language/Linguistics is based on a spectrum similar to that of the political spectrum.


Indo-European Languages (since this is the main subject of this thread)

Celtic:
Breton
Irish
Scots Gaelic
Welsh

Italic:
(Romance/Latin)
Catalan
French
Italian
Portuguese
Provencal
Romanian
Spanish

Germanic:
(Divided into two categories - West and North)
West:
Dutch
English
Flemish
Frisian
German
Yiddish

North:
Danish
Icelandic
Norwegian
Swedish

Hellenic:
Ancient Greek
Greek

Albanian

Armenian

Baltic:
Latvian
Lithuanian

Slavic:
Bulgarian
Czech
Macedonian
Polish
Russian
Serbo-Croatian
Slovak
Slovenian
Ukrainian

Indo-Iranian (split into two categories, one based on Old Persian and one on Sanskrit, which is a debated topic, so I'll just leave it to this list.)
Old Persian:
Persian

Sanskrit:
Bengali
Hindi
Punjabi
Urdu

(I apologize in advance if I blundered this list, it was off the top of my head)

If you took a look at all languages abstractly, they are just as difficult equally. They all have their rules, and even their much hated exceptions. As I had stated above, degree of difficulty has much to do with your native language. It's easier to relate to the similarities in the words, grammar rules, form, and usage. If you are a native English speaker, going completely out of your category and learning a Sanskrit language is going to give you a lot more trouble than trying to learn Dutch or German. Sanskrit has its own alphabet, very dissimilar to the English alphabet, and trying to relate the similarities would be far more difficult, even if it is an Indo-European language, it is far different, based on different things...etc.

I was once told by a very good professor that learning a language is need-based. If you were stuck in a foreign country and no one spoke your native language, you would pick up the essentials much faster than you would studying it for leisure. You may not become the most eloquent of speakers, but you will pick it up on need basis. Learning a language is just like programming, it's just a code, but instead of dealing with a device or other medium, you're dealing with humans. (Culture has everything to do with it. This is a topic that pulls at me because I have so many language theories that I think will change the world, this is one topic that I'm so very passionate about.)

You have to learn the slang and the gestures, gestures and facial expressions, how one moves, it's all part of language, and a book could never teach you that.

I could ramble on about this forever. Hope this helps.

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Originally posted here by garathjax


I'd have to disagree with you there cause I'm fairly sure Mandarin is the most wide spread language in the world, with Spanish coming in a distant second and then English in third.

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Just to clear this point up, I was saying that English is the most *wide spread* language in the world, i.e. it is spoken all over the world in pretty much every country. Chinese is spoken by more people by anyone else, but then over 1 billion people live in China so what do you expect? However, people who speak Chinese are concentrated mostly in that area of the world, so English is still more widespread.

To recap on what are probably the 4 most spoken languages in the world (not in any order):

Chinese: Spoken mainly in China, but by the most people.
Spanish: Spoken in Spain, Portugal and South America (I'm simplifying a bit there though).
French: Spoken in France and Canada.
English: Spoken in Britain (England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales), America (albeit with incorrect grammer and spelling!), Australia and of course the various British colonies such as the Falklands. Also *the* internationally recognised language.

I've no wish to get involved with an argument over which country's language is best, except the fact that I *hate* it when the Americans change words and grammer to suit them. There is a "u" in colour! ;)

hee hee .... guys .... wait till u try learning arabic ..... then talk about Difficult languages ....

for us in the M-east, we know lots of languages ,
as for jordan: first language is the jordanian arabic then English then french.
egypt ( egyption arabic then french then english ) gulf ( they have their own arabic then english only no third )
morocco and algeria ( arabic then french )

i think the most Difficult language is the fareast ( japan , china, taiwan, korea etc. ) and then the arabic language ...

but i see english is a very simple and easy language to learn and communicate with , that's why it's the most language used world wide.....

Hey Negative, close enough, not sure about the spelling though.

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Originally posted here by Geric
El gato es muy feo!

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The cat is very ugly! :)

Spoken language, in my opinion is more about basic wording and intonation than pure verbiage or structure. I haven't 'studied' spanish for 10 years, but I remember a basic vocabluary and a basic set of verbs...the conjugation of said verbs comes to me through context more than knowledge, most of the time. I can also read ancient Greek (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta.......Omega), but could never speak it. French seems to be the most difficult for me, as it isn't based in a Greek or Latin substructure. The same with Dutch, Russian, and the 'Eastern' dialects (Mandarin, Japanese, etc.).

In short...if you can dig up and learn the template language, you can easily figure out any following dialects from that. Granted, American English is rife with corruptions and slang, but the basic language is the same as Greek/Latin...you just have to be able to see it and mutate all words from the frame of the preceeding language.

Ouroboros

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Originally posted here by pwaring

English: Spoken in Britain (England, Ireland , Scotland, Wales),

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Come to some parts of Ireland and say it's part of Britain and you'll be lucky to leave with your kneecaps (not to mention your head).

Anyway I just thought I'd bring the whole Esparanto thing into the equation. A friend of mine used to subscribe to a paper in that language (I'm not sure if he still does or not). and once out of boredom I tried to read it and I discovered I could understand the whole thing, and me with only knowledge in Irish, English and very basic French, if all languages were as easy as Esparanto to learn we'd be away with it

Aaaahh
lol
ok, firstly I think the world's most difficult language considered is Japanese.

Secondly my english level is very bad (I don't understand most of humour senses, I create some words and my phrases are badly constructs) but I think also this language is very easy to learn.

Verbs are easy to conjugate, there's only a few irregular verbs, a good voacabulary part is near french meaning...

yes, English is easy to use for transmission of basical informations contrary to french with his complex system to conjugate any verbs (I don't understand how you're able to learn it if it is not you're native language!)

Thx for that list, GreekGoddess :D Was looking for it, but couldn't find something like that on Google...


Although, I don't agree with the point you're making in your post...

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Language is divided into categories, which will be easy to determine their degree of difficulty to learn based on the native language you speak. (ex. If you speak French, it may be easier for you to learn a similar grouped Italic-based language such as Catalan or Italian, because much of the rules are the same.)

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Agreed, if you speak an 'italic' language (the Dutch term is 'Frankian', don't know the English variant...anyways, it's based on a tribe called the Franks, so I guess it should be something like 'Frankian'...), it's easier to learn another 'italic' language than to learn a 'Germanic' language.

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If you took a look at all languages abstractly, they are just as difficult equally. They all have their rules, and even their much hated exceptions. As I had stated above, degree of difficulty has much to do with your native language. It's easier to relate to the similarities in the words, grammar rules, form, and usage. If you are a native English speaker, going completely out of your category and learning a Sanskrit language is going to give you a lot more trouble than trying to learn Dutch or German. Sanskrit has its own alphabet, very dissimilar to the English alphabet, and trying to relate the similarities would be far more difficult, even if it is an Indo-European language, it is far different, based on different things...etc.

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Again, I don't agree...If you take all languages abstractly, they are NOT as difficult equally imo: Dutch, English and German are in the same categorie, but I didn't think anyone was going to argue about the fact that German is more difficult than English: of course there are a lot of English expressions....but so are there in German... The simple fact that Germans stilll use cases makes it more difficult than languages that don't use use cases, no? Or the simple fact that German still is 'gender enabled'... that makes it more difficult, no?
I'm Dutch, I should be able to learn both English and German fairly easily.... I didn't... German is just too bloody hard to learn. Doesn't have anything to do with vocabulary/whatever... German uses cases, English doesn't... German is gender enabled, English isn't... ("I am a boy" in English... All you need to know is the word for 'I', the conjugation of 'to be', and the forms of 'boy'). Try that in German...

I have found French to be easier than learning English, even though English is my first and most often spoken language. The fact that all nouns have a gender used to bother me, but it doesn't anymore.
The only reason Chinese is the most spoken is because it is spoken by over 1 billion people, but it isn't just Mandrin that is spoken (there are several other dialects, but Mandrin is by far the most popularly spoken).

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Originally posted here by valheru


Come to some parts of Ireland and say it's part of Britain and you'll be lucky to leave with your kneecaps (not to mention your head).

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I know what you mean, although Ireland is still part of Britain (including Southern Ireland/Republic of Ireland - that's not in the UK though). It's like going to Gibralter and saying it's part of Spain - you'd be beaten up by a enraged gang of patriotic senior citizens! :D

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French: Spoken in France and Canada.

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I think you've missed the entire continent of Africa. They almost all include French as a national language in addition to their local language due to France's colonial presence there for so many years.

When I was talking about the abstraction of language, I think I went a little too far, and ended up overstating and not really projecting what I meant...

What I was trying to convey was that, abstractly, if all languages were just an outline, compared to eachother they are just as equally difficult. All languages are complex in their own rights, and as I was saying, it's to what you've been exposed to linguistically that will determine the ease and manner in which you learn a language. They all have their own phonology, abstractly, semantics, morphology, syntax and lexicon. And as for the German versus English, yes, it may be harder but I was stating more along the terms of the form and the phonetics, the vocabulary is similar in many ways. It's not as if you have to go and learn a completely new alphabet with far different pronounciations and completely foreign usage as you would with learning Russian or Greek. I hope that made sense, because it's making sense to me..... *LOL*

And, Negative.....from your previous statements about language and culture, thought you might enjoy this:

http://www.sunflower.com/~dewatson/dma-ls02.htm

It's the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis of Linguistic Relativity....just an article on it, but it's something worth a few comments, as there is a lot to it....

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Originally posted here by str34m3r


I think you've missed the entire continent of Africa. They almost all include French as a national language in addition to their local language due to France's colonial presence there for so many years.

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France as well as the Cote d'Ivoire, Haiti......and hundreds of other places you would never suspect French being a dominant language. Frenchies are everywhere. MUAHAHAHA....