Quote:
Originally Posted by fsquared
Simplicity is in the eye of the beholder  . Spanish is a lot easier to spell, for instance  . I think "simplicity" all has to be gauged relative to your native language.
Regarding your second paragraph, are you talking about bilingualism within Spain, or people being LanguageX+Spanish bilingual elsewhere in the world?
It seems more like the latter, in which case I guess you're talking about places like Latin America (although Spanish has probably almost displaced all the other native languages in much of Latin America). I guess a similar statement could be made regarding English in North America and lots of other places, but policies regarding ethnic assimilation/etc. need to be taken into account as well. |
"In Spain you's easily catch lots of Portuguese, English, and French, being the close relativity of those countries."
this was originally stated by The Barrett and i was adressing what he stated. I was working off his knowledge of Spain, which, i presume, is correct and certainly makes sense. I was not talking about Latin America just Spain, which is further indicated by my statement of 16th/c maritime empires and South America did have empires but as for maritime empires i don't think they had any compared to Spain.
As for Spanish displacing the native languages in South America i can only speak of Bolivia with some knowledge
Quechua and Aymara are the two predominant native languages in Bolivia and are mostly spoken in rural areas with approximately 4.5 millions Bolivians speaking them (which is about 1/2 the population)
the current President is seeking to implement mandatory Quechua in the schools, so your statement of state policy influencing bilingulism is certainly true. Furthermore, the native languages are staying strong but having an inverse relationship to urbanization
Bolivia, though, may be an exception to the rest of South America