drunk French/Dutch*

Belgian as the next international language!
I read that in some part of Belgium they were planning in the past to make Esperanto as an official language x) (see Neutral Moresnet)

miljarde!

What is this cancer?

I'm sorry, but I couldn't care less for a language that has about 70,000 native speakers, most of which can also speak Scots / English. It wastes money because all legislature has to be passed into Scottish Gaelic, and there is no legitimate reason to keep this language around. Scots and Scottish-English are nation-wide languages that most anybody can speak, so why have a 3rd one that has less than 100k speaking it? Useless.

Some parts of Spanish are indeed harder than English (conjugation of verbs is an example); but frankly by empirical evidences, it is not that hard, and there are not that much irregularities unlike in French (since there are even more common patterns in Spanish that French misses!) or even sometimes in English (numerically more irregular verbs in English than in Spanish). So once you know the general rules of Spanish grammar + the few irregular verbs, you will get it frankly.
In the other hand, in terms of spelling (no errors possible, everything is spelled as pronounced), pronounciation (it is always consistent), there are not as many words as English for a same meaning (since English often uses English/germanic and French/latin words for the same term), so again you would have to convince me and prove me better how English is easier...

(Gosh Pablo is going to think I am turning mad, I am defending Spanish now...)

Outer orkney is where the true Scots live, not backstabbers like you.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/Scots_Gaelic_speakers_in_the_2011_census.png

They have their own independence movement there, actually, separate from Scotland and Britain.

@Ox
So by the fact Scottish is is an endangered language it should die? Well do you realize that only 100-200 years ago, Scottish was way more spoken than nowadays?
The Scottish people do not have that much resistance it appears when it is about protecting their own national language, but do not worry at all, you can still revive it ;)
And waste of money? Not really, it is more a proof of laziness and general surrender of your own culture, Euskara was successfully revived (mostly in the Spanish side) with not that much waste of money, but because people cared about their ancestral language. Same could be done in Scotland if people cared a little more about their ancestral language and culture.

As for Spanish, I highly doubt it is harder than English. It is more the contrary for what I know.

Because your mother tongue itself is similar to Spanish, duh.
English having simplest grammar and relatively short words (comparing to other european languages) isn't at all a bad pick for international language, really.

Also I wouldn't bother with esperanto, it's too artificial for me.

well Onoma, one question: do you know Spanish? And frankly French and Spanish are not that much similar, even if they are from the same language family, they are very different. And btw, you can say I have a biased view due to it, but I guess my views are less biased than yours anyway as I learnt both English and Spanish (+ I am from a family background where people spoke a non Indo European language which has nothing in common with these languages!), whereas you apparently know only English, rather hard to compare 2 languages when you know almost nothing about one of the 2, duh.

Short words ahah, Spanish words are most of the time shorter, because there is no some stupid orthographic inconsistencies like in English or French. With Spanish no-frills at all.

By "simplest" you imply here English is the easiest language compared to all others, prove it.

I don't understand Esperanto, it's not important.

Rofl, anonym. In that order, huh? :P

Koala, you're proving your stubbornness by continuing to call Gaelic "Scottish". I won't argue with you if you continue to do that further.

And no, definitely not 200-300 years ago. Back when it was actually called Alba (in like 1000 AD) maybe, but not anything past 1200.

+Onoma, though don't see what's wrong with Esperanto being "artificial".

English has no subjunctive = simplest confirmed

Wrong PE, English also uses subjonctive, did you miss some of your English classes?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_subjunctive

The way subjunctive is expressed in English is indeed easier, no doubt on that, but that's it, this is frankly the only thing we can concede as "easier" compared to Spanish.
English has a more inconsistent grammar (more irregular verbs than Spanish), inconsistent orthography and spelling (useless frills, blame the French for most of this :P) and a very inconsistent pronunciation (Spanish is pronounced as it is written, even French here is more consistent).
And subjunctive is frankly not that difficult, since Spanish grammar rules are regular, you are making something out of nothing.

If we were just defining the easiest language just by its conjugation system, then Chinese would be the easiest language (no conjugation of verbs, you basically just add a word or affix for past and future tenses and that's it), but does that mean Chinese is easy? Not at all, other factors have to be taken in count.

the subjunctive form of a verb often looks identical to the indicative form,

It's better than French to be sure

indeed better than french, but fortunately subjonctive in French is not used at all, you would find it mostly in literature, but not in common speech. So it is not that important.

Spanish has more regularity, but English has less builds.

Conjugation of most verbs in English:

Now:

I/you/we/they eat
It eats

Past:

I/you/we/they ate
It ate

And some helping verbs which are not too hard to understand.

Conjugation of verbs in Spanish:

Now:

Yo como
Tú comes
Vos comés
El come
Nosotros comemos
Vosotros coméis
Ellos comen

Was:

Yo comía
Tú comías
Vos comías
El comía
Nosotros comíamos
Vosotros comíais
Ellos comían

And there's seven more unique ways to conjugate verbs (not counting helping)!

While in English, I read up on this, subjunctive is by choice, and most don't even wield it.

Edited 5/24/2016 18:32:52

English is the best choice for a number of reasons the places that speak it are scattered throughout the world,it's the official language of business and diplomacy, and it's the most popular language if you count second languages