I want to say as an Italian, Russian is very under-rated.

Loom over= cernirse sobre. Este capullo no más quiere hacer la pelota a los anglos. Con sólo los diminutivos, aumentativos, despectivos, y de cariño, ya les vamos sobrando media carretera. ( Ejemplo: perro, perrito, perrazo, perrucho, perrín, perraco...). Y es sólo una palabra, así que...

I can guarantee you that Italian has all those terms and allows for far more complex phrasing

I think every language has features that are more and less precise than in others. For example, Chinese speakers might sound like cavemen in English if they don’t fully understand how verb tense works, but English speakers sound just as silly in Chinese when don’t grasp verb aspect. Same thing with European plurals vs East Asian counters.

Inglés no tiene subjuntivo ni imperativo ni condicional papá qué decis!! Ni siquiera hay USTEDES en inglés tampoco hay ser ni estar! En qué mundo vivias Borges!!

I’m a Spanish teacher and I disagree with Borges.. English is wonderful and has a mixture of both Saxon and Latin sure but he never wrote in English nor lived “in English” I think he had an unrealistic idea about how this language is. English unfortunately is too literal. When you forget your server’s name at a restaurant what do you call him? In Spanish, amigo, socio, cuate. In English you have to really work around it with a “Sorry” because even if you say “buddy or friend” they might look at you weird. English is just too literal for the clown world we live in.

As a non-native English speaker, I agree. It's such an expressive and varied language. It's a language of synonyms and you can say essentially the same thing in different ways (or utter fundamentally the same phrases in a variety of manners, blurt identical stuff out in a lotta ways - see what I did there 😅). I sometimes even find myself getting the English translation of a foreign book, rather than my native language. 😅

Okay, but why does fridge have a d and refrigerator doesn't?

This is a fascinating take, although español is sexy.

I’m a native English speaker who’s learning Spanish and has reached a pretty solid intermediate level. I’d always heard over and over that learning Spanish would open up a whole other beautiful world of speaking, but I’ve actually found myself wishing that I could more easily convey things like what he’d mentioned in Spanish a lot easier. When I use a translator, the phrases just don’t quite hit the same. I didn’t expect it at all. I keep thinking it’s probably just because I haven’t learned how to say them in the language yet, but I’ve found many translations to be too simple and not quite nuanced enough

If only the guy Ever got to learn hindi

I love this comment section, it seems like a great community full of people with insightful responses. Thank you everyone!

Somebody show this to all the French snobs that insult English.

Great to hear this - teachers in the UK have said for years that it was a class thing because if the Normans. NO! The Romans were there before and what stays true is words stay alive for their particular meaning.

Fascinating

You can't say "no ni na" in english.

El idioma inglés es muy bueno para fábular, tergiversar, manipular y escribir mentiras: Leyendas Negras, Inquisiciones, etc....

Borges was a sellout

I love that diction part about English, and how you can dance and weave with connotation and meaning with the shear amount of different words that convey an idea, and especially with that grammatical flexibility as well. It's like painting with language.

Pathetic, dumb, ignorant and arrogant English imperialist. He knows nothing and pretends to know everything.

The last part is actually really important if you're learning another language... You can't just speak how we speak in English in another language. Like if you wanted to say "dream up" in Spanish you just can't, so the literal translation wouldn't make sense even though the English does to you. This is something that seems obvious, but when you only know one language it's actually not obvious. It's not even on your radar cos you don't have another language for a comparison

As a native speaker, whenever i meet someone who says learning english is straightforward/easy for them i know for sure they have no idea of the subtleties and intricacies.

I'm going to play the devil's advocate here and as a Bosnian say that I don't completely prefer English to my native language (even though I love them both.) In short: Bosnian is a SIGNIFICANTLY more complex language than English, and that complexity enables unmatched creativity in literature - that's something I find English to lack in. For example, our sentences make sense in almost *any* word order (because each word holds a large amount of grammatical information, unlike English, where words depend on each other to create meaning.) But when it comes to normal or day-to-day communication, English is the vastly superior option.

English is a piece of garbage. I hate that it is the most common...

When I was getting good at speaking French this was the most frustrating part was that I had only one way to say anything. It was so rigid and one dimensional

It's refreshing to hear someone not disparage english for once.

Bravissimo Alberto Angela!!

Astrazione, trovarsi nel posto giusto al momento giusto. Filosofo scopritore

Fascinating!

Spanish has also a German part. And Arabic. And Euskera. And Pre-Roman, Greek, American Native and even English words thrown in. Both languages has strong points and shortcomings. English is easier to learn, but harder to understand as spoken language especially some accents, its writing and spelling a mess. Spanish has a more complex grammar, but simpler to write, and has far more depth than English, whatever Borges may say. To any English word there are 6 or 7 words, one ore two common, and several less used.

If you want to play with words: English. If you want to communicate: Spanish

Español >>>>>> Inglés. Borges was a filoj...w and a traitor. Nada que agradecerle. No hay Quijote en Inglés, sólo en ESPAÑOL. Si no sabes Español no puedes catar eso. Ni la sevillanas, ni los romances, ni Quevedo, ni Unamuno, etc. El inglés es una lengua para el espectáculo, la mentira y el negocio o las ventas. Nada más. Lengua de piratas y corsarios.

Guys there's a lot of nonsense in this thread. Some quick points: Yes, English phrasal verbs and prepositions allow for great nuance. I love this in English. Comparing size of lexicon is not a good way to compare whether one language is better than another. Yes, we have 'regal' and 'kingly'; in 30 odd years I have never had cause to use either. English is morphologically simple but has some tricky complexities in negation, tense, singular and plural, etc. There is plenty of grammar in English if you look under the bonnet. English is not the world language because it is uniquely beautiful or rich, etc. It's the British Empire and the United States .... end of story. Claims that English is uniquely rich for its Latin and Germanic admixture are probably unfounded given that there are about 7000 languages out there. Thank you for reading my Ted Talk, An exasperated amateur linguist

Mais le gouvernement italien je le comprends pas, pourquoi tu arrêtes des fouilles quand tu sais que t'as une villa énorme encore quasi ensevelie?

As a speaker of French, it truly struck me a few years ago, when I realized that we lacked VERY important words such as "big" or "warm"

Where is this in full

These shorts are really reassuring and letting me know I'm not alone, thank you brother

Ringraziamo i servizi segeti italiani americani .

English is very expressive,with alot of verbs slang and adjectives which have the same meaning but are Watson of expressing and conveying more depth and feeling. Like there is blue but there are so many shades of blue. English is very descriptive.Many languages are not.

Even though I’m a French speaker, I find English to be more concise and direct even in poetry when you try to convey an idea, it is sometimes more poignant in English and more staggering and sometimes I find myself thinking in English. But it all depends of the phrasing I find Arabic, Spanish and French, to be also very impactful depending on the subject. In any case, whatever language you speak if you don’t master it, of course it won’t give the same experience. For example Japanese uses very unique terms encompassing a whole idea. So every language has its beauty and i think what he says is fair but it’s not universal.

he is plain dumb. there are languages other than english that are blends of 2 or more completely different languages(example: japanese, with lots of words borrowed from chinese) every language has nuance in its vocabulary, even when they seem to mean the same thing to foreigners, they don't. there are expressions in other languages that cannot be directly translated to english. for example something as simple as the chinese proverb "水滴石穿" turns into "dripping water can penetrate the stone". doesn't seem very physical to me. i do not like how that man chooses to look down upon romance languages...such arrogance and ignorance.

this is the first time i've heard anyone say anything nice about english, and from such a titan

I think the only thing gives somewhat advantage to English over other European languages, is not its vocabulary but its beautiful sonority ( British RP accent ) and the fact that English having ridden itself of absurd, irrational grammatical genders, otherwise English Grammar tends to be absurd , inflexible and lacking many enriching features compared to other indo-european languages .

Theres a reason English is the universal language

Oh yeah because 40% of English got directly taken from french

This is the first time I ever heard someone praise English.

Ieri avevamo Moravia oggi Sgarbi e Alfonso Signorini 😢

I’ve said this for years to all my friends. English has a way to describe anything and everything in both a stylistic and bland way. You can sound eloquent and dumb all based on the vernacular you chose.

2:40 religion = image de la philosophie ; philosophie = concept ; religion = image du concept...

Probabilmente un refuso al min. 17:10. Filomena fu trasformata in usignolo. Procne in rondine (da cui "garrir Progne e piagner Filomena" nel sonetto Zefiro torna di Petrarca