Dominic Fandrey (kamikaze)'s status on Wednesday, 19-Dec-12 21:39:24 UTC
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@nerthos English is very difficult for the reasons that make it so successful as a lingua franka. A beginner can already communicate a lot, with very simple, short sentences. However English is a very idiomatic language, it is influenced by hundreds of cultures, due to the history of the UK, its colonial history and the immigration rate of the US. Thus you can convey a superset of the concepts conveyable in many other languages. The downside is that everything you say is strongly context sensitive and requires a certain cultural background to be understood the way it was intended. TL;DR The semantics are a nightmare.
