I was going to say Scots... http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/vli/language/scots/makingYourVoiceHeard/index.htm but maybe not...
I'm a German major, and my original language is English. Also, last year i took French and i couldn't believe how much easier it was than German. There are less rules in French and they are easier to remember, and from what I hear, Spanish is even less difficult.
I hate to be an insular asshole, and I am sure this has been the opinion of the English for generations, but....that's a real language? I mean, seriously, that seems like a really vernacularized version of English.
French. Is it Afrikaans where they make that weird clicking noise, or is that only the black ones? Anyway the only time I've heard South African people speak they just use English, in a bizzare sort of way which sounds like a posh Aussie had a baby with a cockeny.
That "weird clicking noise" is an African tribal language. There are about 3 distinct clicking languages (one of which is called Xhousa or Xhhusa) and there are some sub-dialects within the 3 languagues, its not Afrikaans. Its also one of about 5-6 languages that, try as they might, the Mormon missionarys and the US State Department have never been able to teach someone to become fluent in. In fact they couldn't even get anyone remotely conversational.
Sarth Efricen is a great accent. I remember chatting with this guy and a South African girl about the problems he was having with his girlfriend, and she she just piped up "do you fart a lot?" The guy did a double take before she added "Are you always farting?" Puzzled by this curious, if understandable, reason for tension between a couple, he was speechless, until the penny dropped "my ex-boyfriend and I used to fart over loads of things. We were always farting over stuff that really wasn't worth farting about, but used to make up afterwards." She puzzled the barman later, by asking him "can I have some arse?" before raising her drink - "Ken are hev some arse in thet?"
it may be a regional dialect, but i don't hear the "r" you say you heard in words like "fight" and "ice". to my hearing, it's more like "faaht" - the "a" in father drawn out. and "lot" would be more like "loot" rhymed with "foot", but the "oo" clipped.
I disagree. English has a lot of logic in that you mostly write words the way you pronounce them. Same goes for Spanish (if you know the basic rules).
like: rough though doubt country could thought and then there's south and southern and wound and wound or fear and bear fair and faint sew and few lose and close
English orthography is terrible, as demonstrated by royalstilton. Spanish spelling matches pronunciation much more closely.
the problem i notice with marginally literate Spanish speakers is that they don't know where words have "h" as the initial letter. i've seen "llo ablo" written. apart from that kind of error, Spanish is remarkably easy to write. i've always been a pretty good speller, though there are some words that still give problems. wierd/weird is one of them. fortunately, the spell check from bigsoccer or firefox helps me out.
IMO Germans should speak the English language exclusively nowadays. 1. Its from a Germanic base to start with. 2. They lost the War.
That wouldn't be fair would it? Neither of those languages have a Germanic base. Let you keep a little bit of dignity! In any case, if Europe is going to become more "intergrated" as people from Germany-France always call for, both should adopt the English language as official, since it is globally used as the main language of the business classes. Unless you'd prefer mandarin?
Every language has that kind of issues though. It's not like English is particularly difficult. Difficult languages are languages with difficult grammar (French, German) and languages that require a lot of vocabulary knowledge before you can start a half-decent conversation in it. I think English is not difficult in either area personally, but this may be because my native language is Northern European. Asians are South Americans might disagree. Spanish in my view is the easiest European language to learn. Dutch again I don't think is very hard to learn to speak or understand even, but to write its a bitch despite (or maybe owing to) there having been two official spelling simplifications over the past 10 years. Even for the Dutch themselves I might add.
As soon as you figure out a couple of rules in Spanish, the spelling is quite easy (so whoever invented that language, well done!). Even though German is obviously quite close to my native language, I find it almost impossible to speak and write correctly. I mean I can hold a conversation in German easily, but I probably make about ten mistakes in the grammar in every sentence.