Re: [OT] Why we should be more patient with people learning English

Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:

Here in the West, meeting people who are new to the English language is
a very common occurrence. We all hear people struggling with the
language and we all react with varying degrees of patience to it. Some
of us claim that we don't have any idea what the other person is saying
while others seem to follow the other person fairly effortlessly. This
video provides an argument for why we should be more patient:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lhxxiqqlQY [21 minutes]

The fact of the matter is that English is WEIRD. It has a lot of
significant differences in it from the vast majority of languages. These
differences are far more than just the words we use but the structure of
the language and the way our grammar works compared to most other
languages.

I've said this before and I'll say this again. The Norman Conquest of
1066 is what led to English's suitability to become the world's universal
language, plus that the UK had colonized half of the world. Old English
was a Germanic language. Middle English was about half and half Germanic
and Romance. Thereafter, if English needed a word, it borrowed it from
another language. English was now impure. As we know, French, the language
of diplomacy (scoff), lost its universalness when scholars deliberately
purged loan words in the 19th century.

It's a feature, not a bug.