Quote Originally Posted by Regitnui View Post
English Degree speaking; the English language is quite the aberration when it comes to languages. If French or German are elves and dwarves, English is a gibbering mouther. Almost everywhere in the world speaks English to some degree, and even amongst the primary English speakers there's a wide variety of lexical terms. Compare "that girl is beautiful" (standard) to "that shelia's a beaut" (Australian), "Daai girl is nxa, ne?" (South African), "Hey, that's a bonnie lass" (UK), and "dayum, that girl's fine" (US). It's getting to the point where a strong case can be made for English now being a mutually intelligible family of languages as opposed to one coherent language. Of course, there's no danger of English fully splitting as long as the global society remains intact, even if the UK and the US disagree on the definition of pants.

Using English as your yardstick for other language's complexity, especially extinct or ancient languages, is a bit like using the Great Lakes to judge bodies of fresh water . You can see the connection, but it's a totally skewed reference point.
I still think my favorite description for English was 'English mugs other languages in dark alleys, going through their pockets for loose vocabulary and grammar.'