[Androgeos Exeunt]

French isn't that bad either. I finished six weeks of weekly basic conversational French lessons last Friday, and I thought it wasn't that bad. The starting was a bit rough because we didn't know what our lecturer was saying, but by the end of the penultimate lesson, we had little problems understanding her.

The real problem with French is the spelling. Even until now, I still misspell the phrase "je m'appelle" once in a while.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

United nations!

people don't have a vote there, only nations.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

I do not like the way the EU is run, or the way legislation can be written and enacted into law even if not ratified by our elected MEPs. These ideas and opinions are not incompatible with each other.

We can be friends, trading partners and allies without creating a superstate that will undermine not only democracy in member states, but also the civil liberties of the individuals residing in those states.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/charlemagne/

Anyway, back to his speech of yesterday. Even allowing for the caveats about electioneering, does he really want British voters to believe that he believes that the EU is "completely unaccountable to the people of Britain"? I am not about to turn rabid federalist on you, but there are British ministers in EU meetings, British MEPs in the European Parliament, and British diplomats in every working group. They are not powerless: Britain is one of three Big Beasts, along with France and Germany, that wield serious clout in the EU. And they are all, at least last time I checked, accountable to the British people

----------------

the same goes for the other members of the Union. In the end the Whole of the Union's leadership is accountable to you, the voter. Not always in a direct way (like with the Commission) but the people you elect help determine how the Commission will look. Of course a directly elected EU government would be better but we're not there yet.
And like I said before: it's not because politicians are *****ing about this or that rule the EU implemented that these same politicians are'nt the ones that asked for it in the first place

[Mobius]

German vocabulary is farily easy, but the grammar is hard. I don't believe that one language is overall more or less difficult than another, just that some points about it might be more or less difficult.

Italian is much harder than English under all points of view, even pronunciation (the word "tone" is more appropriate, in this case).

[colecampbell666]

French isn't that bad either. I finished six weeks of weekly basic conversational French lessons last Friday, and I thought it wasn't that bad. The starting was a bit rough because we didn't know what our lecturer was saying, but by the end of the penultimate lesson, we had little problems understanding her.

The real problem with French is the spelling. Even until now, I still misspell the phrase "je m'appelle" once in a while.

French may be easy coming from Singaporean (or Hindu, what is Singapore's language?) but coming from English every structure is wildly different.

[Kosh]

what is Singapore's language?

Official language is english, but because there are lots of chinese people there that language is commonly spoken, along with malay.

[Mikes]

German vocabulary is farily easy, but the grammar is hard. I don't believe that one language is overall more or less difficult than another, just that some points about it might be more or less difficult.

German is much... much harder to learn as a second language than English. Documented linguistic and pedagogic fact.

Take it from someone who took Anglistics, including English didactics, as a second subject at the university.
Language acquisition in general is a quite thoroughly researched and documented process.

[Roanoke]

It's especially easy to learn coming from German-root languages as they all share common roots.

German on the other hand... is not easy to learn and as such i am actually quite glad that german is my native and english my 2nd language.


P.S. The ordeal that learners who are confronted with German go through has been illustrated in a very funny/satirical way by Mark Twain: http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/jod/texts/twain.german.html

How can a language be "crappy" exactly ?
English is generally acknowleged as one of the hardest languages to lean btw.
I managed a "B" at school in German and I was totally indifferent to it at the time. Shame really, as I'd would have liked to have a second lanuage and, if it were to be "european", I would choose German.

[NGTM-1R]

German is a wonderful langauge for expressing yourself in. They have words for everything.

[Mikes]

German is a wonderful langauge for expressing yourself in. They have words for everything.

... and all the words have genders and different articles too and can be fused together to form new and novel and especially very long words like the Donaudampfschifffahrtskapitän !

I can just recommend that Mark Twain article posted earlier, s really a good laugh

[Roanoke]

I always enjoyed those crazy compund words.

[Reprobator]

French isn't that bad either. I finished six weeks of weekly basic conversational French lessons last Friday, and I thought it wasn't that bad. The starting was a bit rough because we didn't know what our lecturer was saying, but by the end of the penultimate lesson, we had little problems understanding her.

The real problem with French is the spelling. Even until now, I still misspell the phrase "je m'appelle" once in a while.

In france, we have the same problem in the opposite way.
Generally i think about 80% of the times , i just have to reverse the order of the sentence .
But that's not a problem for me when i speack english, the real deal is the accent...