Re:Blue–Green Distinction in Language
by henrikschroder on Thursday January 23, 2020 @09:26PM
(#22134819)
> they wouldn't have spread something else than a globalized Mandarin worldwide
For sure, but my point was that the simpler (relatively, comparatively) a lingua franca is, the less pidgin you get, and the more of the actual language you get instead. And that's a merit of the language itself, not the powers that back it.
Besides vocabulary/characters, in what sense is Mandarin not simple?
Tones
Which is a massive sense in which it is not simple! For any non-native speakers, (I'm a native English speaker), tones were nearly impossible to master, and I still have a terrible grasp of them I think. It requires a complete rewiring of the way you speak language, sure, but it also requires a complete rewiring of how you hear it too!
Just compare the delicacies of the differences between British English & American English, if not only for the different understated meanings.
The "funky word order" of German makes sense from a German perspective (and back to ancient Latin & Greek).
Mandarin is not simple, comparatively to English. Yet, you can be quite assured that, would China, for instance, get the military & cultural influence UK/US had for 2 centuries, by 2200 they wouldn't have spread something else than a globalized Mandarin worldwide (as it happened for English; and French and Spanish before them).