[Jimbee (OP)]

Why is English the most simple language in world? I think it is: In sentence structure, verb conjugation? Inflection? We only have two S's. The possessive and plural. Verbs only take endings: -(e)s, -ing, -ed and (rarely) -en. Everything else is done by auxiliary verbs. Spelling is semi-phonetic.

But people tend to think of the English as intelligent, or at least intellectuals. Cambridge, Oxford, Shakespeare. But their language is so simple. Is there any other language like that? Especially with the auxiliary verbs.

Also. Why do languages seem to simplify as they evolve? English used to be much more complex. Case endings. We even had a dual and grammatical gender. Now we are much more simple. Like Latin and the Romance languages. Is there something to that?

[alancalverd]

Why is English the most simple language in world?

It isn't. If anything, it is one of the most complex because it doesn't have a single source and route of evolution.

Case endings actually make Latin so simple that word order doesn't matter. This makes it great for oratory, where you can put the key word at the beginning or end of a sentence for emphasis, or whatever sounds good if it's poetry.

You can deconstruct a compound German word into purely German components, and vice versa, so you don't need a huge base vocabulary and the derivations of technical words are obvious. One of my favorites is fernsehenhochspannunggleichrichtenapparat - a television high voltage rectifier, whose "English" translation actually derives from Greek, Latin, Saxon, modern Italian, middle German and French. I think the technical term for the derivation of new words from existing components is "motivation", with German being perhaps the most motivated European language and French perhaps the least.

Since basic English is mostly the bastard offspring of Saxon and Norman with standard dialects arbitrarily assigned by Chaucer (1400) (egges or eyren?), equally arbitrary spellings immortalised by Caxton (1480)  (cough, bough, enough, through - same spelling, four pronunciations. Do you bow to the vicar of Bow?) and further words unashamedly borrowed or even misused from wherever the flag was planted in the Empire on which the sun still doesn't set, there is  no logic to our language at all.

On the positive side, however, we have lots of historic and continuing motivation leading to an unlimited vocabulary. No "Academie Anglaise"  tells us which words are not English, but an ever-expanding Oxford Dictionary tells us which words are, and Webster stirs in handy bits of Spanish, Yiddish, Inuit, Choctaw etcetera, plus alternative spellings and lethal inversions of meaning  (do you walk or drive on the pavement? Is laurel leaf a fragrant spice or a source of  cyanide?) with no regulation at all.

And the accents! I met a Romanian woman working in England.  She had graduated in English Language in Bucharest and decided to polish (not Polish - same spelling, different meaning, but how do you pronounce a capital P?) her skills with a Masters  course in Glasgow "where I had to learn English all over again". Travelling from north to south in France or Germany, no problem, but if I drive less than 2 hours west from Cambridge I have to completely retune my ears to what is, officially, still a "Midland" accent.

[Bored chemist]

Before you ask "Why Is English So Simple?"
you should ask
"Is English So Simple?".
And the answer to that is
"can you read this out loud?"

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough
 Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, laugh, and through. 
And cork and work and card and ward
And font and front and word and sword
Well done! And now if you wish, perhaps
To learn of less familiar traps,
 Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
 And dead: it?s said like bed, not bead?
For goodness sakes don?t call it deed. 
Watch out for meat and great and threat,
They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.
 A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother. 
And here is not a match for there,
And dear and fear for bear and pear.
And then there?s dose and rose and lose?
Just look them up?and goose and choose, 
And do and go, then thwart and cart.
Come, come, I?ve hardly made a start!
 A dreadful language?
 Man alive!
I?d mastered it when I was five.

[evan_au]

I think that the language you grew up with is the simplest language in the world for you.
- Children up to around age 5 easily absorb a new language.
- Learning a new language as an adult is hard work, and you never really lose your original accent.

Research suggests that babies start learning their "mother tongue" while still in the womb - the cadence and tone of the mother's voice is heard through the amniotic fluid.

An anecdote:
A Korean man was talking to an older English-speaking woman: "The problem with English is that it has no rules!".
The woman retorts, indignant: "Of course English has rules!".
My observation: "English does have rules, but you have to implicitly understand which language the word originally came from so you know which set of rules to apply....".

[alancalverd]

And dead: it?s said like bed, not bead?
For goodness sakes don?t call it deed.

Unless you are from the Western Isles. Except where the western aisle is a knave.

Excellent poem, BC!

[alancalverd]

"Of course English has rules!".

Voltaire observed that "the English have every few laws, and  they obey them all", which leaves us plenty of time to learn all the rules (and multitudinous exceptions thereof) of a heterodox, promiscuous and extremely fertile language.

[Bored chemist]

English even has rules that most English speakers are not aware of.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjective#Order

[Zer0]

Shee Shells, Sea Sells, at the Shee Shore!

: (

[alancalverd]

Thx xntxrxstxng thxng xbxt Xnglxsh xs thxt thx vxvxls xrx xrrxlxvxnt. Thxs mxxns thxt yxx cxn hxvx lxts xf dxffxrnt xccxnts wxth thx sxmx wrxttxn vxcxbxlxry.

[Zer0]

The interesting thing about English is that the vowels are irrelevant.
This means that you can have lots of different accents with the same written vocabulary.

PeeAss  -  : )