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[GlyphGryph]

Actually, I'm pretty sure spanish is the most similar to english of all the euro-languages (other than English).

I know, historically, that just seems wrong, but structurally the languages are super similar, and the shared vocabulary is large. But English doesn't really have all that German a structure, does it?

[MagmaMcFry]

Epic derail so far.

[Flying Dice]

Actually, I'm pretty sure spanish is the most similar to english of all the euro-languages (other than English).

I know, historically, that just seems wrong, but structurally the languages are super similar, and the shared vocabulary is large. But English doesn't really have all that German a structure, does it?

Actually, English is a Germanic language, while Spanish is a Romantic language. English, Scots, Dutch, and the various flavors of German all developed from the same West-Germanic branch of proto-German. The various Norse languages developed from the North-Germanic branch of the language.

Granted, modern English gives and receives quite a few loan-words and grammatical structures.

[scriver]

Actually, I'm pretty sure spanish is the most similar to english of all the euro-languages (other than English).

I know, historically, that just seems wrong, but structurally the languages are super similar, and the shared vocabulary is large. But English doesn't really have all that German a structure, does it?

Being a speaker of Swedish and English, having studied Spanish and having heard my family talk German to each other (they all studied it and used to have conversations in it) to the point where I'm relatively knowledeable (as in for someone who hasn't studied it) of it, I can say to you with certainty that you are wrong. German is much closer to English, definitely dictionary-wise and to lesser extent grammatically. And Spanish certainly isn't "closest to English" of the European languages, that would be Dutch, and Swedish pretty much works exactly like English grammatically and lots of the words are direct relatives.

[RedKing]

Karne, Spanish/French still isn't more like English than German

Also, @RedKing, that doesn't seem to take multilingualism into account at all... For example, if I remember correctly, you can get along better with English than Hindi in India because almost everyone spekaks it, while far from all speak Hindi.

I was just going off the chart at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers, which admittedly doesn't consider 2nd languages. Equally interesting (but far more complicated to calculate) would be most widely spoken languages (in terms of geographic area rather than population). For instance, French isn't the powerhouse it used to be, but it's spoken across a large swath of the world thanks to colonialism. While Wu is pretty much just in a relatively small area centered on Shanghai (which nonetheless gives it a speakership of around 80 million because Shanghai is ZOMGPEEPLES)

[SealyStar]

My school has Finnish, English, Swedish, German, French, Spanish, Italian and Latin. I'm only fluent in the first two, as for Swedish my skill in it mainly consists of "Jag pratar inte Svenska." I did study French in grades 3-5, but remember nothing of it.

What country is this? I want to know what school teaches that many languages.

Solum Latinam scio. Volo plures linguas scire, sed modo possum unam discere in schola.

[scriver]

Definitely Finland.

[OREOSOME]

I dont remember where i read/heard this but:

You know what, we(americans) should Invade Switzerland! Its full of banks right? We'll be the richest country in the world!

Wut. Just wut.

[Loud Whispers]

I dont remember where i read/heard this but:

You know what, we(americans) should Invade Switzerland! Its full of banks right? We'll be the richest country in the world!

Wut. Just wut.

War fixes everything! Even war!
~Murricaaaaaaaaaa

[scriver]

I'm sure it was just a joke, but yeah, invading Switzerland? Impossible. They're what happens if you take Afghanistan and fill it with the most militia-ist, gun-crazy American rednecks you can find, and also give each and every one of them military training and require them to keep their own arms at home at all time. You can't beat their army without crushing the entire populace.

They're kind of serious about their freedom.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

They're a bit more serious about independent neutrality than freedom. Women couldn't vote in some of the cantons until the late 90's, you aren't allowed to construct minarets in Switzerland, there's a universal male draft, and the Swiss Banking System is the Swiss Banking System. Very useful until the Swiss think that you can't do anything to them, at which point all your money belongs to the Swiss. They even kept gold made from the melted fillings of holocaust victims after WWII.

[i2amroy]

Very useful until the Swiss think that you can't do anything to them, at which point all your money belongs to the Swiss. They even kept gold made from the melted fillings of holocaust victims after WWII.

It's not that they take it when they think that you can't do anything, it's that their bank accounts have a year limit where if it goes untouched for that long then it defaults to the Swiss government (info from a Swiss exchange student). As such a lot of the gold and various other objects from WWII defaulted to the swiss government because so many people died, therefore leaving their accounts unused.

[SealyStar]

To be both on-topic and discuss the foreign language education topic, some pearls of wisdom from the high school Latin teacher:

"Yes, it's from Latin"; note there is no specific context for this, as she says it pretty much any time someone asks her if a word is from Latin.

"I heard 'Skyrom' [her pronunciation, sic] is a pretty good video game, so I bought it for my son for Christmas! People tell me it's got Latin in it!"

"If you don't put your name on the paper, I'll put in in the 'nemo' [n.b.: Latin for "nobody"] file."

"There are only two fourth declension neuter nouns, 'genu' [knee] and 'cornu' [horn]." One week later, and "gelu" [ice] appears in the text. Cue confusion.

On the subject of those two words, let's cut to her bizarre concept of how high school students memorize everything better with sexual innuendo involved: "You can remember these are the two because it's ironic, the words are 'horn knee', like 'horny', but they're neuter gender!". Actually, this worked. But it was still uncharacteristically... uncouth of her.

And the crown jewel: she calls up my father one day to tell him about how well I'm doing in class, but she also has a concern about me: She thinks that I think I'm a time traveler. I kid you not. The origin of this concept: a brief writing she had us do about what we would do if we time-traveled to Ancient Rome. She evidently forgot this.

[Descan]

Wat?

[kaijyuu]

She might be legitimately crazy.

Or all those years of studying latin made her very, very sheltered.