[quote name='Sirisian' timestamp='1307933526' post='4822586']
Hopefully more people will switch to English. I imagine it won't take long for an international language to take hold in this day and age especially with the Internet. Once the world is speaking the same language things will be interesting. </optimism> (Tower of Babel is a space elevator ).

Maybe if it's soon. There's an increasing likelihood that the language will be Chinese, probably Mandarin or Cantonese. Either way, have fun. Tonal languages offer more absurd fun than Spanish or English.
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I doubt it. I had a Chinese professor say he preferred English. Same response when I asked a group of Taiwanese students. I worked with 2 of them on a large school project and met their friends and they said English is better. Have you ever seen how they type on a computer? It's a form of narrowing down selections or something. Kind of confusing.

When I compare english to portuguese I find it very limited...portuguese is overbloated with rules and far more complex, but it makes room for lots of creativity, style, word trickys...
Just the fact of english having the same word for you and you(plural) make it look very lacking(having to use "you all" to compensate, i.e.)..and then there are those auxiliary stuff to make things understandble('do' 'did' 'will')..Of course it have the advantage of being easier to learn, and sinse is so limited ppl from different places will almost speak like the same(if you compare it with portuguese, ppl cant even understand others from a neighboard city sometimes..)

As you can see, my english is awsome ;D

[quote name='way2lazy2care' timestamp='1307927144' post='4822562']
[quote name='owl' timestamp='1307925213' post='4822558']
That's what I find to be one of the most important differences. Speaking bad spanish is very badly seen. It denotes social status. Not saying "usted" to the proper person can be socially problematic.

not really as long as you use the usted form of the verb. Maybe it's different in spain, but I rarely heard tu or usted the way it is used in your examples in mexico in any social class. Sometimes it's used when the subject might be fuzzy or in more complex sentences, but most sentences don't have subjects when they are implied by the verb.
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I was under the impression that owl was in/from South America. Brazil actually. Am I wrong?
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In Brazil they speak brazilian/portuguese

When I compare english to portuguese I find it very limited...portuguese is overbloated with rules and far more complex, but it makes room for lots of creativity, style, word trickys...
Just the fact of english having the same word for you and you(plural) make it look very lacking(having to use "you all" to compensate, i.e.)..and then there are those auxiliary stuff to make things understandble('do' 'did' 'will')..Of course it have the advantage of being easier to learn, and sinse is so limited ppl from different places will almost speak like the same(if you compare it with portuguese, ppl cant even understand others from a neighboard city sometimes..)

As you can see, my english is awsome ;D

Yeah, well, I wasn't talking particularly about literature. It does add to the language (in the context of literature) to be able to genderize nouns or to have a wider vocabulary for verbs, but for more general/technical situations I think that if it takes less effort to think what your gonna say more effort can be put in the content of what you're saying. I've yet to find a case in which you can't realize the "number" when the pronoun "you" is being used. And if I found it, it probably wouldn't matter in the context of what's being said.

I'm not following. Give an example. In Spain they only say "tu" for the singular you and "vosotros" for the plural. In central america most countries do use "usted" a lot but between friends they use "tu". In Argentina we say "vos" instead of "tu".

You don't need a subject when talking in mexico when it is implied by the verb. For example, "you go to the store," is just, "va a la tienda." That is what I was referring to. A lot of english speakers who learn spanish will tend to always use the subject the way you would in english, "tu va a la tienda," but it is not necessary whether you are talking formally or informally. It's not really wrong to do it that way, but very few people talk that way.

Noting that the way Mexicans speak spanish is very different from the way spanish people speak spanish.

BeanDog expressed it quite finely:

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English has higher information density per syllable, in my experience.

[color="#1C2837"]Also The meaning of words and sentences in english depend on the context. "Fu.k you" yelled out loud in the middle of a crowd could be directed at a single person, to a group or to the entire crowd. Nobody will ever know until more information is added.

[color="#000000"][color="#1C2837"]One thing I can add to all that has already been said is the pronoun "you" being used for the singular as well as for the plural (in spanish they are two different words tu/ustedes). It also doesn't change when a "respectful treatment" is required ("usted" for "tu").
[color="#000000"][color="#1c2837"]You are a silly boy = (tu eres / vos sos / usted es) un niño tonto. (usted is for respectful treatment used mostly when directed to adults or unknown persons)
[color="#000000"] [color="#000000"][color="#1c2837"]You are silly boys = (ustedes son / vosotros sois) niños tontos.
[color="#000000"] [color="#000000"] [color="#000000"][color="#1c2837"]English has a superior grade of synthesis that seems to be designed to communicate an idea simpler and quicker than in Spanish. Spanish is flooded with emotional connotations that while enriching the language they add (to me unnecessary) noise to the information.[color="#000000"]
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[color="#000000"]EDIT: EOLs seems to be gone again. Please stop screwing the css!
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You don't seem to make a lot of sense.

[color=#1C2837][size=2]Spanish is flooded with emotional connotations that while enriching the language they add (to me unnecessary) noise to the information[/quote]
Can you give any evidence of this? As a fluent speaker of both English and Spanish (with Spanish being my first language), I can tell you that it's completely untrue. You seem to be talking about the difference between usted/tu. Are there any other "emotional connotations" you would like to point out (whatever "emotional connotation" might mean), or are you simply stating that Spanish is "flooded" with them without even knowing what you're talking about?

Regarding the idea of having formal and informal pronouns, you haven't made a case as to how such pronouns make a language "worse" (again, whatever that might mean). You state that English has a "superior grade of synthesis that seems to be designed to communicate an idea simpler and quicker than in Spanish." Do you have an argument for this, or are you just putting it out there without one? Your very example seems to be evidence of the opposite.

A person yelling "Fuck you" in a crowd in English. As you say, no one knows exactly who is being spoken to. This is because of ambiguity, something that English is full of. It's completely ambiguous who the object is, or even whether the object is plural or singular. How can you state that this "communicates an idea simpler and quicker than in Spanish"? In Spanish you instantly know, at least, that the person is talking to (for example) one person instead of a group of people. That is more information because of less ambiguity. In my book Spanish wins.

Spanish is also a somewhat strict language as far as its rules go. For example, every vowel in Spanish has one sound. It is always pronounced that way, and once you learn how to pronounce it you always know how to pronounce it. If you look at a word written in Spanish, and if you know a few rules, you immediately know exactly how to pronounce that word. There are very few exceptions to any rule. English, on the other hand, is flooded (to use your terminology) with exceptions to absolutely every single rule.

Think about the way you pronounce the following words: thought, enough, though, cough, bough. Each one is a different pronunciation of the "ough" pattern. How the hell do you teach that to someone?

How about.. if someone says "bite", do you spell it "bite", "byte", or "bight"? How do you know? Seen, scene, feet, feat, etc.

What about silent letters? How do you know how to pronouce "gnaw" if you see it? If you hear it, how do you know how to spell it?

Fact is that English is one of the hardest languages to learn in the world. That's because it's an unstructured mishmash of languages from vastly different etymological lines. What makes it the "best language in the world?" Nothing, the reason everyone learns it is that the English colonization effort was very widespread and successful, and after that there was the rise of the USA as the dominant superpower. Well that's on the way out, and quickly, and soon everyone will be signing up for Mandarin and you'll only hear English at your local Beijing McDonalds.

Some more English stupidities.

Wind (air moving outside) or wind (what you do to a clock)?
Read (to get meaning from written words) or read (past tense of the same verb)?
Abuse/abuse, combine/combine, defect/defect, polish/polish, does/does, invalid/invalid, sewer/sewer, desert/desert, close/close, wound/wound.

Why doesn't book sound like doom? Neither sounds like floor. None sound like flood.

Why is "two" pronounced the way it is? Doesn't look like it would be. What about "one"? What about "of"? What about "to"?

Shoe/grew/throught/do/doom/flue/two/who/brute/duty. How many ways of spelling the long 'U' sound do we need?

'i' before 'e'?

This is a nice, neat little rule concerning words that have the letters i and e together, usually to form the Long E sound in English: i before e, as in piece or relief.
Then the rule says "Except after C". The ie becomes ei , as in receive and deceit.
Now, you know that the Long E sound in English can be made by 'ie', unless the sound comes after 'c', in which case it is made by 'ei', (except for those times when the Long E sound is made by 'ee' or 'ea' or 'e' or 'i' or 'oe').
Then the Rule tells you about another exception - when the i and the e are together in a word and are pronounced like Long A, the e must come before the i. Examples: neighbor, sleigh, weigh, freight, etc.
In this one short Rule, there are already two exceptions to it covering dozens of other words, but that is not the end. There are many words that do not follow the Rule or its exceptions: seize, weird, neither, either, foreign, sovereign, forfeit, counterfeit, leisure, heifer, protein, geiger (as in 'counter'), height, sleight, feisty, seismograph, poltergeist, kaleidoscope.

Right, better language Who are you kidding?

source: http://www.say-it-in-english.com/SpellHome.html

<br>Also, Spanish has a wierd construction with blame for events. If you drop some plates, the sentence is something like "The plates dropped themselves to me". It's not the only way to construct that meaning, and it does have situations where it's specifically not used, but it's odd to me to have such an anthropomorphised form at any time. That's kind of a finnicky complaint though.<br>

<br><br>It's not about blame, it's about intention.&nbsp;&nbsp;Accidental events can seem rather weird to non-native speakers.&nbsp;&nbsp;The key, however, is that the rules regarding accidental reflexive construction are clear and consistent.&nbsp;&nbsp;It may "seem weird" to you as a non-native speaker, but that's always the case when learning a new language.&nbsp;&nbsp;That shouldn't be the bar by which the "goodness" of a language is measured.<br><br>The rule is, as I said, clear and consistent.&nbsp;&nbsp;It also conveys more information that the English equivalent.&nbsp;&nbsp;If I say "I dropped the plates" a listener needs to inquire further to find out whether I dropped them on purpose or whether it was a mistake.&nbsp;&nbsp;This is immediately clear in Spanish.<br><br>In the case that information about intention is unknown one can resort to the passive "The plates fell".

<div><br></div><div>And, by the way, there's no&nbsp;anthropomorphizing, I don't know where you got it. &nbsp;The construction is more like: &nbsp;"The plates fell from me."</div><div>"Los platos se me cayeron" == they fell from me</div><div>"Los platos se cayeron" == they fell</div><div><br></div><div>It's not very complicated.</div>

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Also, Spanish has a wierd construction with blame for events. If you drop some plates, the sentence is something like "The plates dropped themselves to me". It's not the only way to construct that meaning, and it does have situations where it's specifically not used, but it's odd to me to have such an anthropomorphised form at any time. That's kind of a finnicky complaint though.

It's not about blame, it's about intention. Accidental events can seem rather weird to non-native speakers. The key, however, is that the rules regarding accidental reflexive construction are clear and consistent. It may "seem weird" to you as a non-native speaker, but that's always the case when learning a new language. That shouldn't be the bar by which the "goodness" of a language is measured.

The rule is, as I said, clear and consistent. It also conveys more information that the English equivalent. If I say "I dropped the plates" a listener needs to inquire further to find out whether I dropped them on purpose or whether it was a mistake. This is immediately clear in Spanish.

In the case that information about intention is unknown one can resort to the passive "The plates fell".

And, by the way, there's no anthropomorphizing, I don't know where you got it. The construction is more like: "The plates fell from me."[/font]
"Los platos se me cayeron" == they fell from me
"Los platos se cayeron" == they fell

It's not very complicated.

Some more English stupidities.

Wind (air moving outside) or wind (what you do to a clock)?
Read (to get meaning from written words) or read (past tense of the same verb)?
Abuse/abuse, combine/combine, defect/defect, polish/polish, does/does, invalid/invalid, sewer/sewer, desert/desert, close/close, wound/wound.

Why doesn't book sound like doom? Neither sounds like floor. None sound like flood.

Why is "two" pronounced the way it is? Doesn't look like it would be. What about "one"? What about "of"? What about "to"?

Shoe/grew/throught/do/doom/flue/two/who/brute/duty. How many ways of spelling the long 'U' sound do we need?

'i' before 'e'?

This is a nice, neat little rule concerning words that have the letters i and e together, usually to form the Long E sound in English: i before e, as in piece or relief.
Then the rule says "Except after C". The ie becomes ei , as in receive and deceit.
Now, you know that the Long E sound in English can be made by 'ie', unless the sound comes after 'c', in which case it is made by 'ei', (except for those times when the Long E sound is made by 'ee' or 'ea' or 'e' or 'i' or 'oe').
Then the Rule tells you about another exception - when the i and the e are together in a word and are pronounced like Long A, the e must come before the i. Examples: neighbor, sleigh, weigh, freight, etc.
In this one short Rule, there are already two exceptions to it covering dozens of other words, but that is not the end. There are many words that do not follow the Rule or its exceptions: seize, weird, neither, either, foreign, sovereign, forfeit, counterfeit, leisure, heifer, protein, geiger (as in 'counter'), height, sleight, feisty, seismograph, poltergeist, kaleidoscope.

Right, better language Who are you kidding?

source: http://www.say-it-in-english.com/SpellHome.html

It's reasons like this I wish there was an International language standard that would over time remove these flaws and problems. It would be similar to a w3c standard with proposals. It only takes a few generations to make the changes.

It does worry me that with more and more people learning English and communicating online that English isn't 100% standardized. I wouldn't mind switching to British spellings (though I find English removed some of the silliness from them like centre and such) or a merge really as long as it was uniform across the world.