Quote:
Originally Posted by tbailey
yes - you're right English is much simpler than compared to Spanish - i know for that for sure
And yes, geographical proximity to other nations is a definite salient factor in the bilingual composition of a population. This is especially pertinent when considering 16th/c empires such as Spain. In Spain not only geographical proximity but, in addition, maritime trade, i presume, historically has significantly shaped the linguistic demographical composition  |
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.
TheBarrett, which Asian languages do you know, just out of curiosity?