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

Just to reinforce my opinion.

Finnish is superior to all, you can have like 30 or more different forms of a word and they all have a different use ._.

Now try to remember the name of each different form... -.-

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.

Even if you don't make it explicit, the "I before E except after C" part only applies when the two letters form one syllable that's pronounced as a long E. (I always learnt the "rule" as "I before E, except after C, when the sound is E...". This is implied anyway, since clearly the "or when sounding like a" is an alternative to sounding like something else).


Thus most of your exceptions are not exceptions if you apply the "rule" properly. (Foreign, sovereign, forfeit, counterfeit, leisure, heifer, Geiger, height, sleight, feisty, seismograph, poltergeist, kaleidoscope -> none of these have a long e sound.) Obviously there are still some (seize, neither / either, weird) and you can't apply it to plurals, but personally I'm happy with a "rule" that works the vast majority of the time.

Also, pay attention to Barbosa's third point here.

Finnish is superior to all, you can have like 30 or more different forms of a word and they all have a different use ._.

Now try to remember the name of each different form... -.-

I'm not saying it's superior to all (how can I say that? I only speak Hungarian, Finnish (a bit), English (to some extent) and German (a bit)). But once you know these "30" forms (and you have vocabulary of course), you speak Finnish fluently You know what a word means just by looking at that word... It's much harder at the beginning, but quickly becomes very easy. English is harder the more you learn..

Finnish has the disadvantage of having hilariously long words sometimes (and that only Räikkönnen and Väinämöinen speak it ).

I never said it was complicated, nor that the rule was inconsistent or inconsistently applied, just that that particular construction is strange. That there are two entirely separate constructions of the statement to differentiate does not make either sentence clearer without pre-existing understanding of that arbitrary differentiation. Which is fine to a native speaker no doubt, but the same can be said of most of the complaints people make regarding English.

The "rules", such as they are, are quite clear when "wind' would be pronounced which way. If you're speaking, it doesn't come up at all. When you're reading or writing, context will only allow one or the other, and the phonetics of it are irrelevant. If you are reading it in a sentence it will be confusing but only if you don't know the other word (which it is, despite having a spelling in common). But this is not much improved by requiring the reader to learn a different word which also has a different spelling.

When an identical spelling encompasses multiple parts of speech this is an issue, though if someone finds it offensive enough there are plenty of other words which will serve that purpose which do not do so.

You aren't going to hear me defending English as easier to learn or more sensibly arranged than another language. For every example one could show where Spanish has something strange to learn (say, a reflexive verb carrying a different meaning from the same, non-reflexive verb), there are at least several complaints to be made about some arbitrary English issue. English took the worst parts of Germanic languages and then picked up the worst parts of Latin and then, perhaps in response to these poor developments, became linguistically promiscuous.

But of the most common complaints people make of English, most don't have much functional significance. There are a ton of poor spellers, native speakers and otherwise, who write the wrong word in the wrong place. Lots of people pronounce words poorly, even taking region into account. While there are people who will look down on these, there are few who can't understand the intended meaning quite quickly. Indeed, there is little regard for the rules of English in general on these issues, precisely because they are strange and easily broken without much issue.

The benefits of English are the large vocabulary and the lack of irrelevant information (like gender) inherent to words themselves. Neither of these will be much use to the English learner or merely functional English speaker. Whether or not they compensate for English's inadequacies, or how much ease of learning for non-native speakers counts in comparing languages, I can't say. But complaints that it's hard to master a rule that no one cares about in the first place rings a little hollow.

You're talking about the ambiguities in the English language as if they only affect the non-native learner. Part (and only part, I stress, but not a negligible part) of the reason you notice so many native speakers making grammatical and spelling mistakes is because the rules are not consistent. You can pretend that no one cares about the mistakes because everyone understands everyone else anyway, but it's a fact that I had to go through a lot of schooling to be taught all the exceptions. I think that's an important point. To learn to speak or write English correctly much, if not most, of one's learning is spent learning the exceptions. How much more math could I have learned if I didn't have to learn spelling and grammar all the way up through highschool? It's hard to say. How many people have not gone to college because they never memorized the exceptions well enough to earn do well in highschool? Who knows. How many dyslexic children fail school when they wouldn't have when dealing with a different language? My point is that I think it's obvious to anyone who bothers to think about it that, given two languages which can convey the exact same information and which differ only in terms of numbers of exceptions to every rule, the language with fewer exceptions is the better one.

There's been a little bit of research done on the topic of the effects of the complexity of the English language. Here's one, for example.
http://www.spellingsociety.org/news/media/dyslexia/reports.php
In short, it takes longer for the English speaker to read a word and to say it. That implies that it takes more brain processing power. The effects due to that are probably not measurable, but can you assume they're negligible? I hope more is done as I think it's a very interesting topic.

As for the large vocabulary. Is it a positive thing to know many different words that technically mean the same thing but have subtle nuances? Assuming everyone agrees on the nuances, sure it is. It's not easy to gain this large vocabulary, however, and every day there are problems arising from differences in the understood meaning of different words. Your argument implies that if we were to double the words in the English language we'd then have a superior language. Hell, double that and we're really getting somewhere!

English: The result of taking people from all over Western Europe, sticking them on an Island together, and teaching them to produce alcohol.

You're talking about the ambiguities in the English language as if they only affect the non-native learner. Part (and only part, I stress, but not a negligible part) of the reason you notice so many native speakers making grammatical and spelling mistakes is because the rules are not consistent. You can pretend that no one cares about the mistakes because everyone understands everyone else anyway, but it's a fact that I had to go through a lot of schooling to be taught all the exceptions. I think that's an important point. To learn to speak or write English correctly much, if not most, of one's learning is spent learning the exceptions. How much more math could I have learned if I didn't have to learn spelling and grammar all the way up through highschool? It's hard to say. How many people have not gone to college because they never memorized the exceptions well enough to earn do well in highschool? Who knows. How many dyslexic children fail school when they wouldn't have when dealing with a different language? My point is that I think it's obvious to anyone who bothers to think about it that, given two languages which can convey the exact same information and which differ only in terms of numbers of exceptions to every rule, the language with fewer exceptions is the better one.

I think that you're missing the thrust of my argument. You learned English in school, which is a decidedly non-native-speaker experience. As a native speaker, who went through the American school system in an above-average district, I can tell you that very little time was devoted to learning proper English, and very little attention was paid by most students. After the second grade, English classes were essentially literature classes; there was next to no emphasis on grammar, syntax, spelling, etc. Given national statistics, this appears to be an approach favored by most schools. I learned infinitely more about linguistic concerns from one year of Spanish classes than I did in all of the English classes I ever took at the primary and secondary levels.

So talking about how difficult it was to learn correct English as a non-native speaker, while a valid issue on its own, ignores the fact that very little emphasis is placed on correctness in day to day American English discourse. While a non-native speaker must have some focus on rules and exceptions to become functional because they did not have the benefit of learning through immersion at the language acquisition stage, the fact is that failure to adhere to the rules (regardless of their consistency or lack thereof) is not much of a concern to American English speakers in general. For example, English may as well not have a subjunctive tense because it is generally ignored. I would bet that your average American would not be able to tell you what that tense is or when it would be appropriate to use, despite knowing only English and using it every day. So no matter how much time you spend learning it, and how officially correct it is to use it properly, it just doesn't make much functional difference.

There's been a little bit of research done on the topic of the effects of the complexity of the English language. Here's one, for example.
http://www.spellings...xia/reports.php
In short, it takes longer for the English speaker to read a word and to say it. That implies that it takes more brain processing power. The effects due to that are probably not measurable, but can you assume they're negligible? I hope more is done as I think it's a very interesting topic.[/quote]

Dyslexia aside, yes, I can assume that the difference is negligible. An additional fraction of a second required or fraction of a calorie required to process and English word does not appear to make any real difference at all. If this effect is real and consistent (in that the posited effect is present in English inherently and normally distributed among English speakers, and that this is not the case in Italian), it will always have been, or at least have been so for the duration of modern English. But it doesn't seem to have had any effect at all on communication or anything else compared with other languages.

I agree that it's an interesting area for investigation, and maybe there is some effect which could be discovered. But empirically this would seem to be an academic concern, not a practical one.

As for the large vocabulary. Is it a positive thing to know many different words that technically mean the same thing but have subtle nuances? Assuming everyone agrees on the nuances, sure it is. It's not easy to gain this large vocabulary, however, and every day there are problems arising from differences in the understood meaning of different words. Your argument implies that if we were to double the words in the English language we'd then have a superior language. Hell, double that and we're really getting somewhere!
[/quote]

It's not so tough to learn more words. All you have to do is work more with the language, like reading more. The nuances tend to be subtle enough that there isn't a major difference in the core meaning between assumptions. The functional vocabulary of English-speakers may or may not take advantage of these additional words and their nuances. Many people are not eloquent English speakers, but then again, eloquence is not a terribly common feature in any language. Should you choose to do so, you can take the subtleties of the language more or less as far as you would like to, and there is room to suit your own style of language use as you do so. The possibility of doing so is a major credit to the language.

Arbitrarily increasing a language's vocabulary is an absurd position to take, because that isn't how the English develops. Words are adopted as they're used, and if used enough become part of the standard lexicon. Do you think that English would be improved if its vocabulary were reduced to Newspeak?

Using English well is an art (as is using any language well), and not one that is required to communicate. You can be as eloquent and precise as you'd like, but even if you are extremely deficient in your adherence to rules you can still claim fluency. There is an extremely low hurdle to clear for English linguistic competence, and that is nothing more than the common parlance which consistently ignores rules, especially the most irritating of them. It may not satisfy and English professor, but that isn't anyone's goal anyhow. Remaining issues are largely (though not entirely) a matter of vocabulary.

But again, I am not saying that English is a superior language (though I myself prefer it). It has myriad problems and issues. All that I'm saying is that I don't find your issues to be the most substantive ones reasonably available, and the existence of those issues (substantive and less so) does not negate the peculiar benefits of English.

Actually I suppose I misled you by saying Spanish was my "first language." I didn't mean to imply that I have only one native language. I learned English almost as early as I did Spanish and I use English at least as well as I do Spanish. An English speaker would never suspect I spoke Spanish and a Spanish speaker would never suspect I spoke English.

So, for what it's worth, which may not be very much, I can give the personal account of a person who is a native speaker of both English and Spanish. I do not find Spanish limiting with regard to word choice. I do, however, find Spanish much easier to read and especially write. That's not to say I have trouble with either -- the difference is noticeable, however. Moreover, I greatly enjoyed "English class" (which was grammar, spelling, etc) throughout my English-speaking school career, which was spread across many years, but it is a fact that I learned almost the entirety of what I know of Spanish spelling and grammar in one year (6th grade). English took me much longer.

[color=#1C2837][size=2]Arbitrarily increasing a language's vocabulary is an absurd position to take, because that isn't how the English develops. Words are adopted as they're used, and if used enough become part of the standard lexicon. Do you think that English would be improved if its vocabulary were reduced to Newspeak?[/quote]
I think it's erroneous to assume that the course a language naturally takes is the best path for it to take. By what logic do you derive this assertion? One problem this argument faces is that we lack an agreed upon definition of "best", but I don't think that assertion would hold for any definition other than "the one which followed the most natural path."

Even accepting that the natural path is the best for a language take, that would make English one of the worst in the world. We have so many words because of the Germanic and Latinate origins, as you know. This was not a natural course for a language to take. The Norman conquest of England can hardly be considered part of normal language evolution.

Furthermore, the vast majority of English words are unknown to most people. What good are these words that are unknown to most people? Granted, many of them convey ideas that rarely come up (whether because they're academic, or simply rare concepts, or other reasons) but should still exist. Wouldn't you agree that many are simply superfluous, though? Can't you agree that we don't need superfluous words?
begin (Germanic) vs commence (Latinate)
ask (Germanic) vs inquire (Latinate)
anger (Germanic) vs rage (Latinate)
bodily/corporal
dog/canine
leave/depart

I didn't think these up, I looked them up, but you can be sure that this list could be extended to cover hundreds, if not thousands, of synonyms. Why is it good to have the choice between "leave" and "depart"? Because it makes writing poetry easier? Same argument as before: if that's the case, let's just invent synonyms for every single word we currently have, thereby doubling the vocabulary, and we then will have a language that's twice as good! You keep on talking about this giant, aberrantly huge vocabulary as if it's a good thing. You feel that way because English is your native language. The rest of the world thinks it's idiotic, and I agree.

Furthermore, the vast majority of English words are unknown to most people. What good are these words that are unknown to most people? Granted, many of them convey ideas that rarely come up (whether because they're academic, or simply rare concepts, or other reasons) but should still exist. Wouldn't you agree that many are simply superfluous, though? Can't you agree that we don't need superfluous words?
[...]
I didn't think these up, I looked them up, but you can be sure that this list could be extended to cover hundreds, if not thousands, of synonyms. Why is it good to have the choice between "leave" and "depart"? Because it makes writing poetry easier? Same argument as before: if that's the case, let's just invent synonyms for every single word we currently have, thereby doubling the vocabulary, and we then will have a language that's twice as good! You keep on talking about this giant, aberrantly huge vocabulary as if it's a good thing. You feel that way because English is your native language. The rest of the world thinks it's idiotic, and I agree.

There are only like 250K words in English. It's really not too bad to have duplicates and give a speaker variety. Regarding "leave" and "depart", and many other similar words, they are used in different situations. "The train left at 5" is fine. "The train departed at 5" is nicer. Why? No idea. I didn't know the rest of the world didn't like it. News to me. So they have only exactly one way to say anything? Sounds boring.

Some of the words you listed are scientific in nature or more professional. "I own a canine" sounds odd. "They did corporal damage to him" is also odd. "I own a dog" is simple and non-professional. Some words like anger and rage are different altogether. "He was angering" sounds bad, but "he was raging" ( ) is correct.

I think you're giving me a new appreciation for English.

Also without the extra words (see I didn't use superf... superfulou... superfluous) we can write crazy stuff like "We will begin commencing the attack at dawn".

I'm not implying that other languages don't have superfluous words. They surely do.

We have too many of them. It's hard to decide what to call a word, and thus it's hard to count words in any given language, but most experts agree that the English vocabulary is vastly bloated compared to most other languages.

Take these estimates with a grain of salt, but the OED has about 500,000 words. Estimates of the German vocabulary are about 185,000 words. Estimates of the French vocabulary are about 100,000 words.

Do you really think that you, as an English speaker, are able to grasp or express five times as many concepts as a French person?