<p>i think all the great universities around the world come from english-speaking countries: harvard, princeton, mit, yale, johs hopkins, oxford, cambridge, trinity college (?). i think the reason is, the english language is suited for educational purposes so well!! just look at the english dictionary! the size of a miniature dog house. we are so incredibly inefficate by having something like two or more words for many of the nouns. </p>
<p>but, english is not a difficult language. the difficult languages are arabic, chinese, finnish, greek, etc. with few exceptions, these cultures also have produced great intellectual works. generally the more vast and dificult a alanguage, te better for it to suit for academica purposes.</p>
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arabic, chinese, finnish, greek, etc. with few exceptions, these cultures also have produced great intellectual works
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<p>Different languages are good for different things. There is no good correlation between the difficulty of a language and its vastness, IMO, and whether the culture in which it has grown spawns great "intellectual works." Germany has spawned great intellectual works and I would argue German is easier than any of the other languages mentioned, though maybe some would say English and German are a toss up. </p>
<p>The better correlation is with the vastness of culture -- and vast cultures tend to give rise to more sophisticated versions of a lot of things. I am struggling, though, to identify many great intellectual works that have come out of China. Yes, of course Taoist and Confucian thought. Yes of course Sun Tzu and so on. But during a lot of the vaunted 5,000 years of Chinese culture there was a lot of rigidity. On the other hand, Chinese culture is quite rich. Go ahead and flame away, by the way.</p>
<p>Oh, and SV, there's a girl at work that I like who keeps coming into my office and alternately purring or hissing at me. Do you think she's trying to tell me something?</p>
<p>"i think all the great universities around the world come from english-speaking countries"</p>
<p>ALL the great universities? I disagree. These universities are more popular internationally in part because of the popularity of the English language nowdays (which is caused more by political reasons than for educational purposes). Consider that the research-oriented university system that is so important today originated in Germany, a country that enjoyed great academical success before the wars. </p>
<p>The other day I was checking a really huge Spanish dictionary. Some of the words' meanings were really surprising, even when I knew them already. I couldn't believe there were actual words for such especific things. And I mean words with harder etymology than those composite words that are so common in germanic languages like English. And all Romance languages are very rich in synonyms too.</p>