> Sadly, not everybody can have a good linguistic education from the go
Totally true! I hadn't, for instance. I had Internet. And while I believe my English is very far from perfect, at least you can understand me.
> simple for who
It's very common to hear about "simple != easy" on HN (maybe because of R. Hickey, idk) and this is just the case.
Easiness = Familiarity (subjective)
Simplicity = "Does/is one thing" (objective)
English has simple grammar compared to most of languages I know, probably compared to most of non-constructed languages at all. It has simple writing system compared to Chinese, objectively. Even "lolcats English" can be understood quite easily, if you know English to some extent. You cannot write "lolcats Chinese", only pinyin (or kana, for Japanese). If some Japanese shows you a visit-card with his name in kanji only, you often have to ask him (if it's not some really common name/surname) how that is pronounced (even if you have seen that kanji before, because there are many variants of pronunciation!). I don't know what's about Chinese, but declension/conjugation in Japanese has far more cases than in Modern English (although probably can be said to be "more regular"). Russian declension is objectively more complicated than English (almost non-existent!). In it's turn, Chinese pronunciation is pretty hard to master if you don't have concept of tones in your language. I won't say anything about English this time, but Chinese pronunciation is objectively more complicated than Japanese, for instance. That means, if you speak Chinese, you won't have very hard time repeating what Japanese says, but not otherwise.
The concept of "simplicity" is so not bogus that even have been made attempts to invent some language, that will be easy (because it's simple!) to speak for everyone (esperanto). But as there are many people that don't really care for defragmentation, enlightenment, modernism and stuff like that — so, esperanto is dead now. Maybe it's for the better. Anyway, English doesn't have to be invented, and it's fine, although maybe not perfect as "the universal language". Fine is fine, that's what I'm saying.
Totally true! I hadn't, for instance. I had Internet. And while I believe my English is very far from perfect, at least you can understand me.
> simple for who
It's very common to hear about "simple != easy" on HN (maybe because of R. Hickey, idk) and this is just the case.
Easiness = Familiarity (subjective) Simplicity = "Does/is one thing" (objective)
English has simple grammar compared to most of languages I know, probably compared to most of non-constructed languages at all. It has simple writing system compared to Chinese, objectively. Even "lolcats English" can be understood quite easily, if you know English to some extent. You cannot write "lolcats Chinese", only pinyin (or kana, for Japanese). If some Japanese shows you a visit-card with his name in kanji only, you often have to ask him (if it's not some really common name/surname) how that is pronounced (even if you have seen that kanji before, because there are many variants of pronunciation!). I don't know what's about Chinese, but declension/conjugation in Japanese has far more cases than in Modern English (although probably can be said to be "more regular"). Russian declension is objectively more complicated than English (almost non-existent!). In it's turn, Chinese pronunciation is pretty hard to master if you don't have concept of tones in your language. I won't say anything about English this time, but Chinese pronunciation is objectively more complicated than Japanese, for instance. That means, if you speak Chinese, you won't have very hard time repeating what Japanese says, but not otherwise.
The concept of "simplicity" is so not bogus that even have been made attempts to invent some language, that will be easy (because it's simple!) to speak for everyone (esperanto). But as there are many people that don't really care for defragmentation, enlightenment, modernism and stuff like that — so, esperanto is dead now. Maybe it's for the better. Anyway, English doesn't have to be invented, and it's fine, although maybe not perfect as "the universal language". Fine is fine, that's what I'm saying.