[Wikipedia-l] Edits by project and country of origin

Wed Sep 6 08:51:56 UTC 2006

On Mon, 04 Sep 2006, David Gerard wrote:

> [greatly oversimplified history]
> 

I speak French to a reasonable degree, and have travelled to plenty of
places where English is not the first language.

I find that I can simplify my English - short sentences, easy words,
repeat for emphasis - and can be easily understood by a non-native
speaker.

I think English is one of the easier languages to speak and be
understood, and probably one of the hardest to speak as a native.
Things like collective nouns add no extra information, but considerably
add to the vocabulary.

But you can brutalise English and still be understood, which I gather is
not the case for Chinese.

Cheers,    Andy!