[sverige]

I'm a native English speaker who learned Russian. It has to be harder to learn English, though Russian was no picnic.

Though I was once maybe 75% fluent speaking (and could understand 90% of what Gorbachev said - he speaks pretty fast), I haven't used it for 25 years and so have forgotten most of it. I do remember that it was easy to spell, especially compared to English. I also remember that Russian verbs of motion were hard to get right, and declining numbers and certain adjectives correctly was tough.

English has become the new lingua franca (still cracks me up to pause and consider that literally), for better or worse. For all its faults, English is very flexible and can be precise, despite the fact that it's not often used for that feature. Most native speakers I know would be surprised to learn how many verb tenses English there are, and even more surprised at their proper use. The MLA and AP styles haven't helped that cause any.

[HillRat]

>English has become the new lingua franca (still cracks me up to pause and consider that literally), for better or worse.

On a completely pedantic note, lingua franca doesn't actually refer to what I think most people associate it with (the use of French as the diplomatic language of the 18th and 19th centuries in particular). It actually means the language of the franj, the "Franks," or Western Europeans. The original lingua franca was a pidgin Italian with a lot of Arabic and Turkish loanwords, the result of the Venetian dominance of the Levantine sea trade. Of course, in a purely literal sense, using it in phrases like, "Gulf media Arabic is the lingua franca of the Middle East" is itself wrong.

Tiresome pedantry complete, please carry on.

[haddr]

I think 'lingua franca' is never used in a purely literal sense, so probably nobody even thought about what you mention (which is definitely true)

[taneq]

This particular tiresome pedantry was quite interesting. Thanks!

[mitchtbaum]

> lingua franca doesn't actually refer to what I think most people associate it with

Wikipedia users also make that mistake: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Common_language&r...

[sverige]

TIL

[gaius]

English has become the new lingua franca

It's funnier if you say "de facto lingua franca" :-)

But the strength of English is that you can freely mix in words from other languages and there is enough redundancy that your meaning will probably be understood anyway, and eventually the word will simply be absorbed - and that's where alot of the irregularity came from. There's no Academie Francaise equivalent to police it and no-one even wants one.

[shitgoose]

"it was easy to spell"

Yep. Russian speaker is always puzzled by North American obsession with "spelling". Spelling competitions etc. In Russian if you want to "spell" a word, just say it slowly. No big deal really.

[Alexey_Nigin]

Actually, declining numbers is something most native Russian speakers can't do. Even people on TV, whose job is to speak correctly, often struggle with it. Moreover, in the Russian translation of the Empire Strikes Back, C3PO's line "Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately three thousand seven hundred and twenty to one" has the number declined a wrong way.

[sverige]

That makes me feel better then!