Common Mistakes - Non-Native Common Mistakes - Native Finding a Teacher Greetings
Business Greetings Inflection and Stress
By far the best argument in favor of English as an International Language is its popularity. Statistics show that non-native speakers may outnumber native speakers by a factor of three or more. English has become a language of international commerce quite naturally.
The next argument is the effectiveness of English. Chinese has more native speakers, however, it also has simplistic grammar, and it lacks articles, prepositions, verb conjugation and tense, singularity and plurality of nouns making it less effective than English at expressing complex meanings. It is also tonal, which limits the speaker's use of tone for emotional and conceptual expression. Furthermore most Westerners find the Chinese writing system difficult to grasp, whereas the Chinese and other groups tend to learn the Roman alphabet easily. The Roman alphabet is already the most widely used alphabet in the world today, and is shared by many disparate and seemingly unrelated languages, such as English (which has Germanic and French roots) and Spanish (which derives from the Vulgar Latin.) Since the Roman alphabet is phonetic (representing sounds) rather than character based (representing concepts) it is a more effective method of describing the actual sounds of words and phrases. Again, the primarily difficulty with learning the Roman alphabetic system is getting over irregularities, for example the gh in through and laugh representing no sound and f respectively, whereas g alone can represent the hard g in get or the soft g in George, and h alone can represent the aspirated sound in hat or no sound at all as in honor. I am not a proponent of spelling reform; the only solution to this problem is memorization and practice.
While English can be very difficult to learn (please understand that you have my sypathies here), learning it can be very rewarding. A knowledge of English makes it possible for natives of non-English speaking countries to enjoy English-language film, television, music, magazines, novels and nonfiction, among other things, without the need for any translation. English makes communication with people of other countries and cultures possible. More importantly, English offers a wide range of possible expressions for similar concepts. For example:
I am sad.
I am unhappy.
I am miserable.
I'm in a rotten mood.
I am down in the dumps.
I am blue.
These all have effectively the same meaning, but each reflects a different nuance of expression. Esperanto, which has been proposed as an international language, offers comparatively limited expression.
Mi estas malgaja.
Mi estas tiel malgaja.
Mi estas malfelic^a.
Mi estas trista.
The language offers terms for "unhappy" and a term for "sad". However, Esperanto does not have the wide range of synonyms that English offers. Worse, Esperanto is almost devoid of idiomatic expressions. This ultimately makes it a colorless language with a limited range of expression. Since terms in Esperanto tend to retain their original meaning, attempting English idioms in Esperanto would tend to cause the listener to interpret the speaker literally. That is to say, if I said Mi estas blua, the listener would tend to think I was claiming to actually be blue in color.
Hence, while Esperanto is effective at communication it is simplistic and doesn't lend itself toward poetry. English in its modern form has been used for poetry, sonnets and songs for nearly five hundred years, and thus allows the speaker much more freedom to express himself.
Another thing in favor of English is relative simplicity of conjugation of verbs. Every language has its conjugation nightmare, especially the irregular ones. However, English dispenses with complex prefix and suffix arrangements for tenses such as the future tense and moods like the conditional in favor of a simpler auxiliary verb conjugation.
Next Page: Essential Grammar - Verbs