[10/15] Morning Musume。'14 57th single - TIKI BUN/Shabadabadoo~/Mikaeri Bijin

[Moh]

I know I've already said, but I really, really like the styling for this single.

It's just one of the reasons people in non-English speaking countries find English to be quite difficult in comparison to another foreign language.

Yeah, no wonder it's a level 10 language. I'm a native speaker and I'm still not fluent.

[Celedam]

rules like that are quite trivial and doesn't really make English more "difficult" gramatically, but instead they remark English's distinctive characteristics.

They are not trivial. Many of the people with whom I work are Brazilian, and they have exactly this sort of difficulty with English adverbs and prepositions, and it has caused problems for us as a team. We've had to postpone entire releases, for crying out loud, because one half of the team was talking about one date and the other half was talking about another date.

Furthermore, part of my work is to learn how to write in Simplified English (yes, it's a thing, look it up), to make the documentation that I write easier to translate into other languages, and getting these things as simple and accurate as possible while still communicating the essential information is a HUGE deal.

Unless you're more than just a casual speaker of English as a second language — and as far as I know, you're not — you really don't know what you're talking about.

I'm pretty sure English's gramatics are quite nothing in comparison to many other languages (if not, doubt it would be the most popular language on earth).

English is the most "popular" language in the world because of the dominance of first the British Empire (in the 18th and 19th centuries) and then the United States (in the 20th and 21st centuries). It has nothing to do with how easy or difficult it is to learn.

[CaptainBerryzGiraffe]

Well, Celedam, idk but there's a difference between "popular" and "used"... The most used language is Mandarin, but the most popular doesn't mean that it was forced onto them. Like, many people don't study english because they feel it is a necessity, they study it because they want to- therefore it is "popular"

[esm]

Most people abroad don't sit around learning English for enjoyment the way they might watch American movies and listen to American music because that's what's "popular" in their countries. There is a sense that it's useful to learn English. In Europe, many students are choosing to learn English as a second language rather than some other language of their neighbors. It feels like a necessity when everyone else around you is doing it and you wouldn't be competitive if you were to lack the skill. It's like knowing how to use a computer.

As for non-English-speaking immigrants in English-speaking countries, yes it would be necessary to learn English. I mean, I guess you could be a Korean in Koreatown, LA or something, but being able to function in just one neighborhood in an entire country is arguably not really being functional in the country.

Anyway, English is the language with the most speakers if you're not just counting first-language speakers.

---

I don't know if I've already said this, but I love that the outfits are red, black, and white. That's one of my favorite color combinations.

[Celedam]

Well, Celedam, idk but there's a difference between "popular" and "used"... The most used language is Mandarin, but the most popular doesn't mean that it was forced onto them. Like, many people don't study english because they feel it is a necessity, they study it because they want to- therefore it is "popular"

First, I said "popular" because he said "popular". Notice the quotation marks. So don't try to throw that in my face.

Second, Mandarin may be most used as a primary language because there are so many Chinese, but English is still the most used language overall because so many people learn it as a secondary language and it is the international language of business, technology, and media.

Besides, those "total number of speakers" statistics aren't worth much to begin with because they lack context; I don't care if a billion Chinese speak Mandarin or a billion Indians speak Hindi, because the vast majority of them will never speak to anyone outside their home villages. Am I being a first-world bigot? Perhaps, but that's reality. There could be TEN billion mole people living at the center of the Earth and speaking only the holy language of the Great Mole God. It wouldn't matter in the slightest.

Right now, for better or worse, English is our lingua franca. It's the language we learn if we want to be a part of the world community. And because it's a relatively recent mash-up of other, older languages (German, Latin, Greek, etc.) with often conflicting rules of grammar and pronunciation, it can be very difficult to learn properly.

[DSQueenie]

Link for the special site is up, although the page gives a "404 file not found" error...
http://www.helloproject.com/morningmusume/tikibun/

I've got some real hair envy. So glossy~

[CaptainBerryzGiraffe]

oh, is that so? I always thought it was the most used overall. whoops, my bad.

[TotallyUncool]

Haruna is definitely the coolest of the cool in that picture!

[CaptainBerryzGiraffe]

..just realized. We aren't going to get the MV's for a whole 'nother month now. :c

[Denki]

She is pretty much stealing Sayu and Riho's spotlight.