You should have a good time watching Frankenstein (and my spelling checker disagrees with you and signals it as non-English).
My spell checker signals a large number of my words as "non-English" as well. The abridged dictionary used for spell checkers doesn't define a language.
And for the record, I never said I speak with French people; I said they would understand me better if I spoke Portuguese instead of English. I maybe wrong about that, this is a too wide generalization; some French might prefer English.
Having been to France and Portugal (not Brazil, closest I've been there is Argentina), I'll assert that the French speak to the Portuguese in English. The finer points of nuance are irrelevant if the language doesn't match.
The one time we got very lost was the only time were weren't surrounded by people that spoke English. So I tried Spanish, Russian, and Chinese (the only languages I'm conversant in). Given that Spanish didn't work for anything useful, I doubt Portuguese would have. A quick check of Google Translate seems to indicate that Spanish is closer to French than Portuguese is, at least for the directions we were looking for.
I'm saying leaving a Latin language, going through a Germanic one (like English) and then returning to another Latin-derived one is a recipe for problems.
I'm saying that, with some effort, one can have a discussion solely in Latin-derived English (for the complex words). Then, by your standards, English would be no worse than anything else.
I merely presented the case that I have not seen this proven.
And I pointed out that you have not seen smoking proven harmful to that standard either, yet you believe it causes harm.
That you are now attacking me as having committed a logical fallacy does not remove the burden of proof from you.
But it does. I've proven you a hypocrite, thus "logic" isn't the determining factor of your belief. So any logic I use to prove my point would be a waste of time.
Keep in mind though that it is called "Theory of Evolution" because it hasn't been proven to be fact.
So you disbelieve in the Theory of Gravity as well? Does this all come down to your lack up understanding of the word "theory"?
Have you ever heard of the Emancipation Proclamation? Notice how nobody ever made the slaves citizens? They just set them free. Why is that? Oh yes, they were citizens. If they weren't, when did they become citizens?
I never said anything about taking away your right to drive. For one, you never had that right. It doesn't exist. For another, you are a lying sack of shit because I never said anything about stopping anyone from driving. You are an insane little piece of shit, and that's why you get modded down.
You are the one voting away your own freedoms. I've voted in every presidential election since '92 (the first I was eligible to vote in), but managed to never vote for a winner. Anything other than that is supporting the system. Can you claim to have managed to have voted a "protest vote" every time? If not, you are supporting the system because abstinence is a vote for the winner. And all of the winners managed to remove rights of some kind.
Or are you going to go into a rant where your party (I could presume, based on your insanity, but it doesn't matter) wasn't as bad as The Other Guy would have been?
Why does it not work? Even the Irish and Chinese railroad workers were made citizens. We brought in temp workers, and kept them. Africa first, others later. All were made citizens (and yes, slaves were citizens, just not free ones). We've always had a love-hate relationship with workers, but, until recently, were happy to make them citizens.
Yes. They are. They are doing the economic equivalent of selling-short. When the US crashes, they will profit. Better for the US (and the world) would be to open the borders, and effectively declare that anyone in the world can be a US citizen, if they so wish. That's how it was when the country was founded.
Anyone here on 4, July 1776 was a citizen, by default. Amnesty for all. But now, the "conservatives" hate everything the founding fathers did.
There's a lot of concepts I've encountered throughout my life that were most difficult to translate (maybe in part due to my incompetence). For instance, did you know the expression "indian chief" does not make sense? (I'm talking about the indians we got in Brazil). Yet everybody uses that expression in English, mostly because of ancient feudal concepts linked to a master and serfs.
How does "Indian Chief" not make sense? Was the Chief not the head of the tribe? IF you don't like that connotation, pick another. Village Elder is another valid way to express a similar idea. The point I was making about English is that there are 10,000 ways to say most things, so if you don't like "Indian Chief" don't use it. Use another term with a meaning closer to what you mean. And when there is no word that means it, use a foreign word. The English word for Kabuki is Kabuki.
And, in your idiocy talking about French and such, you do realize that Chief is French (even retains the original French spelling), from the same root as cabeca (no unicode, and I can't be arsed to make the "c" with a tail). Head, head. And in English, "chief" can mean "most important among equals", which may be closer to the idea you are looking for. Such as "red is the chief color of fast cars" Red is no "better" or "worse" than any other color, but somehow first.
And, if there isn't a word to express the idea, there is no limit to the number of words you may use. I never claimed English was the most brief language, but that it was the most verbose. Chief, like thousands of other words, came from French (which came from Latin and others before that). Sometimes the words come straight from Latin. But the words at there, and in greater number than other languages.
Since English has got all the words for an International language, how do I use it to talk about a jabuticaba with a Japanese?
What does "Japanese" have to do with it? If you want to talk about jabuticaba, talk about it. It has a word in English for it. "jabuticaba". Like I said, English is inclusive. Not a linguistic bigot like you. If you don't believe me, look up the English Wikipedia page, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...
So you speak Portugese to people who don't speak it, and they speak French back, and you know no French. More likely you are lying to make a point. And the only point you made is that you are a liar. In practice, those living in border areas will learn the other language, even if they have never studied it. And English is better for an idea to be conveyed than any other language on the planet (because it incorporates any and all words for common ideas that aren't otherwise articulable).
Because Apple IIC C64 and others had BASIC essentially built in. And there were piles of magazines with BASIC programs to make and try. Now, the basic command line editors are not included in Windows. You can't drop to a command line and edlin yourself a working program. Maybe you can, if you download and install an editor, but doing that is the same as installing a compiler for C++, so the low barrier of entry to BASIC is gone. It's no longer any easier than any other language.
You have no idea what you're talking about and need to go educate yourself on the subject before you comment on it again, OK?
You ask why you get modded down when you comment on self driving cars? The reason is that you are an asshole.
I'm sick and tired of ignorant people with their ignorant, uninformed opinions. Get correct or get out.
I know more about the subject than you do. That our opinions are different doesn't mean I'm factually wrong. You are the idiot that doesn't notice 40,000 dead people a year. If one jumbo jet a week crashed in the US, people would stop flying. But the equivalent death toll by car has idiots like you saying "drivers are not shit". They aren't? They die a lot for being so good at it.
French is certainly regular, and the rules are no more complicated than Spanish.
In Spanish, you pronounce every letter every time. Accents do not change the pronunciation of the letters, but change the stresses on the syllables.
In French, Angers is pronounced An-zhe[mumble]. Not every letter is pronounced, and the rules as to which are "dropped" are unclear to someone who casually picked up some French without formal lessons.
Venus and Mars both have no usable atmosphere because of the lack of a strong magnetic field. Venus has a dense (and poisonous) atmosphere because all the lighter gasses are forced to the top, and whisked away by the solar wind, leaving only the heaviest behind. If the planet had a magnetic field, the wind effect stripping away the atmosphere wouldn't have been as strong, and an equilibrium could have been achieved. Mars has the same effect, but not as much concentration of "heavy" because the lighter gravity. There's simply less to begin with. But what's there is CO2, heavier than O2 or N2, though some N2 is present. The elemental gasses were stripped away as well.
So all AGW predictions that are false. Except the ones that are true. And the true ones are obvious and would have come true without AGW. Is that the no true scotsman for AGW?
How come I get shot down every single time I make a similar comment/observation about autonomous, driverless, manual-control-less cars? It's really not that different.
Because it's completely different. In one case, you have a remote driver with a connection of questionable reliability. In the other, you have a self-contained system that can't be jammed in a manner that wouldn't jam a human driver.
Also, the reliability of human drivers is proven to be horrible. So a computer couldn't be worse. Or are you thinking that all self-driving cars will be vulnerable to hacking?
guilty, but the police officer screwed up the ticket. I've won on prima facie cases before.... well not won... in actual fact the police at the very last second asked that the case be dismissed. (So they too are playing the "hope I don't show up in court to win a default judgement game"; because they knew damned well they'd have lost their case the moment I opened my mouth.
Doesn't work. I showed up in court with ironclad proof that the ticket I was given, and the charge described in the summons was wrong. They changed the charge after I got there to one I wasn't prepared to disprove (but was no more valid). So I plead guilty. It doesn't matter if the police screw up the ticket, they can still make it stick.
- actually not guilty; it happens. Especially with speed camera based systems, where the ticket was issued by mail.
I got a ticket when I crashed a motorbike because the cop that responded thought I deserved punishment for his trouble of showing up. Speeding (30 in a 55, with lots of witnesses), and passing in a no-passing zone, because I crossed the center line when I crashed.
My crime was being a novice motorcyclist. But that's not something he can ticket for, so he flat made-up tickets unrelated to what I actually did, to make sure I got punished for bothering him on a Saturday Afternoon.
In Texas, when I left (2001) speeding tickets were still criminal. I've heard they are not anymore. I've seen plenty of people convicted of the Misdemeanor Crime of speeding on nothing other than the word of the cop.
Most trials are biased against the defendant because most defendants that go to trial are, in fact, guilty.
And that translates into presumed guilty until proven innocent, right?
Picture this. A cop gets on the stand, "He was speeding 160 in a 55" The defendant gets on the stand, "I was going 55 mph in a 55, with my cruise control set. I saw the cop on the side of the road and was confused as to why he pulled me over."
Should he get a guilty or innocent verdict? Note, there isn't a photo or video of the car speeding. Nor does the person have proof that they weren't speeding (not that there really is much that could be done).
One person's word against another's. What should the verdict be? Would it matter if the "cop" wasn't a cop, but instead was a neighbor/witness?
I've been taken to court for "speeding" when I was going 30 in a 55, with about 20 witnesses to my speed. Paid $400 to fight a $200 ticket. But I won, at the appeal.
So, in English, you can put the word "only" anywhere in a specially crafted sentence, and it will remain valid. The same happens in Chinese, with greater frequency. One of my go-to examples of Chinese grammar is that you'd say "I went to the store" as "I go to the store ago" in Chinese, because there are no verb tenses or such. But, as to my point of putting words in any order, "Ago I go to the store" would be just as valid, as would "I go ago to the store". You can shuffle the ago. It wouldn't necessarily sound as native, but "to the store ago I go" would be a valid sentence construction. Much like (when conjugated) most of those are valid in English. You can put the words in any order (with the exception that "I go" and "to the store" are must be treated as single words).
Words are being created (and not just the token 10 a year that they make a big deal of putting in the dictionary) at a large rate. Grammar doesn't change (on a micro level).
Native-level grammar in Chinese is hard, words have associations. You can put words in any order, but a native-speaker would group them in certain ways, without clear rules or order. Basic communication is easy, but passing as a native-speaker is nearly impossible for a foreigner. For English, the accent and word choice is the easy tip off. As basic grammar is easy for common things.
"I will have finished", or "I will have been done" both have the same meaning, and different tenses. Selection between the two becomes impossible for the non-native, and subconscious for the native. The native will make more errors, but they will be common and understandable errors.
Nothing helped me understand poor English speakers from China like learning Chinese. The errors are understandable and predictable.
But as for the original question, the answer is easy. Fix English, and kill the French. The French are still at war with English, for reasons only they know. The International System of Units (called such in almost all languages) is abbreviated SI for the French wording. Almost every standards body gets its abbreviation for the English name from the French name that nobody uses. IF not for the French fighting English at every turn, the question would have been answered 50 years ago.
Esparanto was pushed by people who wanted an English replacement. The stated goal was a neutral international language. But the actual goal was to get an international language France didn't whine about daily.
exceptions and borrowed syntax which can't be explained to non-native speakers
I am outside the US. I work for a company with more foriegn-born people than locals. The exclusive language in the workplace is English. There are a few that consider themselves learners. Sadly, some of the worst at English claim expertise. But I'm helping one of the guys that wants to learn better English. He's never come up with a question I couldn't easily answer. I've looked up "official" answers to help him, but I've never had to consult one to answer a question. The syntax is easily explained to non-native speakers, even if it's inconsistent and confusing. My favorite is http://grammarist.com/usage/hi... the rule is clear, consistent, and optional. Though, my answer if he were to ask for the proper plural of "hippopotamus" would be "hippos".
We have it. It's called English. When a Russian businessman goes to China or Korea to do business. Usually, the discussions will be in English. Depending on the level and type, the two sides will greet and depart with phrases from the other's language, but not do the main discussion in either language. Of those who know multiple languages, with at least one non-local, the number one second language is English. I added in qualifiers because Mandarin is a second language to many in China, and Hindi is a second language to many in India. But, when you exclude the local languages from areas with multiple local languages, English becomes the overwhelming winner in the second-language contest.
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You should have a good time watching Frankenstein (and my spelling checker disagrees with you and signals it as non-English).
My spell checker signals a large number of my words as "non-English" as well. The abridged dictionary used for spell checkers doesn't define a language.
And for the record, I never said I speak with French people; I said they would understand me better if I spoke Portuguese instead of English. I maybe wrong about that, this is a too wide generalization; some French might prefer English.
Having been to France and Portugal (not Brazil, closest I've been there is Argentina), I'll assert that the French speak to the Portuguese in English. The finer points of nuance are irrelevant if the language doesn't match.
The one time we got very lost was the only time were weren't surrounded by people that spoke English. So I tried Spanish, Russian, and Chinese (the only languages I'm conversant in). Given that Spanish didn't work for anything useful, I doubt Portuguese would have. A quick check of Google Translate seems to indicate that Spanish is closer to French than Portuguese is, at least for the directions we were looking for.
I'm saying leaving a Latin language, going through a Germanic one (like English) and then returning to another Latin-derived one is a recipe for problems.
I'm saying that, with some effort, one can have a discussion solely in Latin-derived English (for the complex words). Then, by your standards, English would be no worse than anything else.
I merely presented the case that I have not seen this proven.
And I pointed out that you have not seen smoking proven harmful to that standard either, yet you believe it causes harm.
That you are now attacking me as having committed a logical fallacy does not remove the burden of proof from you.
But it does. I've proven you a hypocrite, thus "logic" isn't the determining factor of your belief. So any logic I use to prove my point would be a waste of time.
Keep in mind though that it is called "Theory of Evolution" because it hasn't been proven to be fact.
So you disbelieve in the Theory of Gravity as well? Does this all come down to your lack up understanding of the word "theory"?
So, when did the freed slaves become citizens? That was the question.
The slaves became citizens?
Have you ever heard of the Emancipation Proclamation? Notice how nobody ever made the slaves citizens? They just set them free. Why is that? Oh yes, they were citizens. If they weren't, when did they become citizens?
I never said anything about taking away your right to drive. For one, you never had that right. It doesn't exist. For another, you are a lying sack of shit because I never said anything about stopping anyone from driving. You are an insane little piece of shit, and that's why you get modded down.
You are the one voting away your own freedoms. I've voted in every presidential election since '92 (the first I was eligible to vote in), but managed to never vote for a winner. Anything other than that is supporting the system. Can you claim to have managed to have voted a "protest vote" every time? If not, you are supporting the system because abstinence is a vote for the winner. And all of the winners managed to remove rights of some kind.
Or are you going to go into a rant where your party (I could presume, based on your insanity, but it doesn't matter) wasn't as bad as The Other Guy would have been?
Why does it not work? Even the Irish and Chinese railroad workers were made citizens. We brought in temp workers, and kept them. Africa first, others later. All were made citizens (and yes, slaves were citizens, just not free ones). We've always had a love-hate relationship with workers, but, until recently, were happy to make them citizens.
Are they TRYING to destroy the country!?
Yes. They are. They are doing the economic equivalent of selling-short. When the US crashes, they will profit. Better for the US (and the world) would be to open the borders, and effectively declare that anyone in the world can be a US citizen, if they so wish. That's how it was when the country was founded.
Anyone here on 4, July 1776 was a citizen, by default. Amnesty for all. But now, the "conservatives" hate everything the founding fathers did.
There's a lot of concepts I've encountered throughout my life that were most difficult to translate (maybe in part due to my incompetence). For instance, did you know the expression "indian chief" does not make sense? (I'm talking about the indians we got in Brazil). Yet everybody uses that expression in English, mostly because of ancient feudal concepts linked to a master and serfs.
How does "Indian Chief" not make sense? Was the Chief not the head of the tribe? IF you don't like that connotation, pick another. Village Elder is another valid way to express a similar idea. The point I was making about English is that there are 10,000 ways to say most things, so if you don't like "Indian Chief" don't use it. Use another term with a meaning closer to what you mean. And when there is no word that means it, use a foreign word. The English word for Kabuki is Kabuki.
And, in your idiocy talking about French and such, you do realize that Chief is French (even retains the original French spelling), from the same root as cabeca (no unicode, and I can't be arsed to make the "c" with a tail). Head, head. And in English, "chief" can mean "most important among equals", which may be closer to the idea you are looking for. Such as "red is the chief color of fast cars" Red is no "better" or "worse" than any other color, but somehow first.
And, if there isn't a word to express the idea, there is no limit to the number of words you may use. I never claimed English was the most brief language, but that it was the most verbose. Chief, like thousands of other words, came from French (which came from Latin and others before that). Sometimes the words come straight from Latin. But the words at there, and in greater number than other languages.
Since English has got all the words for an International language, how do I use it to talk about a jabuticaba with a Japanese?
What does "Japanese" have to do with it? If you want to talk about jabuticaba, talk about it. It has a word in English for it. "jabuticaba". Like I said, English is inclusive. Not a linguistic bigot like you. If you don't believe me, look up the English Wikipedia page, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...
So you speak Portugese to people who don't speak it, and they speak French back, and you know no French. More likely you are lying to make a point. And the only point you made is that you are a liar. In practice, those living in border areas will learn the other language, even if they have never studied it. And English is better for an idea to be conveyed than any other language on the planet (because it incorporates any and all words for common ideas that aren't otherwise articulable).
Because Apple IIC C64 and others had BASIC essentially built in. And there were piles of magazines with BASIC programs to make and try. Now, the basic command line editors are not included in Windows. You can't drop to a command line and edlin yourself a working program. Maybe you can, if you download and install an editor, but doing that is the same as installing a compiler for C++, so the low barrier of entry to BASIC is gone. It's no longer any easier than any other language.
You have no idea what you're talking about and need to go educate yourself on the subject before you comment on it again, OK?
You ask why you get modded down when you comment on self driving cars? The reason is that you are an asshole.
I'm sick and tired of ignorant people with their ignorant, uninformed opinions. Get correct or get out.
I know more about the subject than you do. That our opinions are different doesn't mean I'm factually wrong. You are the idiot that doesn't notice 40,000 dead people a year. If one jumbo jet a week crashed in the US, people would stop flying. But the equivalent death toll by car has idiots like you saying "drivers are not shit". They aren't? They die a lot for being so good at it.
French is certainly regular, and the rules are no more complicated than Spanish.
In Spanish, you pronounce every letter every time. Accents do not change the pronunciation of the letters, but change the stresses on the syllables.
In French, Angers is pronounced An-zhe[mumble]. Not every letter is pronounced, and the rules as to which are "dropped" are unclear to someone who casually picked up some French without formal lessons.
Venus and Mars both have no usable atmosphere because of the lack of a strong magnetic field. Venus has a dense (and poisonous) atmosphere because all the lighter gasses are forced to the top, and whisked away by the solar wind, leaving only the heaviest behind. If the planet had a magnetic field, the wind effect stripping away the atmosphere wouldn't have been as strong, and an equilibrium could have been achieved. Mars has the same effect, but not as much concentration of "heavy" because the lighter gravity. There's simply less to begin with. But what's there is CO2, heavier than O2 or N2, though some N2 is present. The elemental gasses were stripped away as well.
So all AGW predictions that are false. Except the ones that are true. And the true ones are obvious and would have come true without AGW. Is that the no true scotsman for AGW?
How come I get shot down every single time I make a similar comment/observation about autonomous, driverless, manual-control-less cars? It's really not that different.
Because it's completely different. In one case, you have a remote driver with a connection of questionable reliability. In the other, you have a self-contained system that can't be jammed in a manner that wouldn't jam a human driver.
Also, the reliability of human drivers is proven to be horrible. So a computer couldn't be worse. Or are you thinking that all self-driving cars will be vulnerable to hacking?
I saw a number predict things like a California drought. So your "none" doesn't sound true. Or are you saying that there isn't a drought in CA?
guilty, but the police officer screwed up the ticket. I've won on prima facie cases before. ... well not won... in actual fact the police at the very last second asked that the case be dismissed. (So they too are playing the "hope I don't show up in court to win a default judgement game"; because they knew damned well they'd have lost their case the moment I opened my mouth.
Doesn't work. I showed up in court with ironclad proof that the ticket I was given, and the charge described in the summons was wrong. They changed the charge after I got there to one I wasn't prepared to disprove (but was no more valid). So I plead guilty. It doesn't matter if the police screw up the ticket, they can still make it stick.
- actually not guilty; it happens. Especially with speed camera based systems, where the ticket was issued by mail.
I got a ticket when I crashed a motorbike because the cop that responded thought I deserved punishment for his trouble of showing up. Speeding (30 in a 55, with lots of witnesses), and passing in a no-passing zone, because I crossed the center line when I crashed.
My crime was being a novice motorcyclist. But that's not something he can ticket for, so he flat made-up tickets unrelated to what I actually did, to make sure I got punished for bothering him on a Saturday Afternoon.
I've gone to court twice for speeding. Got out of both. Wasn't guilty for either (based on legal definition of "guilty").
In Texas, when I left (2001) speeding tickets were still criminal. I've heard they are not anymore. I've seen plenty of people convicted of the Misdemeanor Crime of speeding on nothing other than the word of the cop.
Most trials are biased against the defendant because most defendants that go to trial are, in fact, guilty.
And that translates into presumed guilty until proven innocent, right?
Picture this. A cop gets on the stand, "He was speeding 160 in a 55" The defendant gets on the stand, "I was going 55 mph in a 55, with my cruise control set. I saw the cop on the side of the road and was confused as to why he pulled me over."
Should he get a guilty or innocent verdict? Note, there isn't a photo or video of the car speeding. Nor does the person have proof that they weren't speeding (not that there really is much that could be done).
One person's word against another's. What should the verdict be? Would it matter if the "cop" wasn't a cop, but instead was a neighbor/witness?
I've been taken to court for "speeding" when I was going 30 in a 55, with about 20 witnesses to my speed. Paid $400 to fight a $200 ticket. But I won, at the appeal.
And you can't put words in any order in Chinese, that's idiotic.
http://101books.net/2014/09/17...
So, in English, you can put the word "only" anywhere in a specially crafted sentence, and it will remain valid. The same happens in Chinese, with greater frequency. One of my go-to examples of Chinese grammar is that you'd say "I went to the store" as "I go to the store ago" in Chinese, because there are no verb tenses or such. But, as to my point of putting words in any order, "Ago I go to the store" would be just as valid, as would "I go ago to the store". You can shuffle the ago. It wouldn't necessarily sound as native, but "to the store ago I go" would be a valid sentence construction. Much like (when conjugated) most of those are valid in English. You can put the words in any order (with the exception that "I go" and "to the store" are must be treated as single words).
Words are being created (and not just the token 10 a year that they make a big deal of putting in the dictionary) at a large rate. Grammar doesn't change (on a micro level).
Native-level grammar in Chinese is hard, words have associations. You can put words in any order, but a native-speaker would group them in certain ways, without clear rules or order. Basic communication is easy, but passing as a native-speaker is nearly impossible for a foreigner. For English, the accent and word choice is the easy tip off. As basic grammar is easy for common things.
"I will have finished", or "I will have been done" both have the same meaning, and different tenses. Selection between the two becomes impossible for the non-native, and subconscious for the native. The native will make more errors, but they will be common and understandable errors.
Nothing helped me understand poor English speakers from China like learning Chinese. The errors are understandable and predictable.
But as for the original question, the answer is easy. Fix English, and kill the French. The French are still at war with English, for reasons only they know. The International System of Units (called such in almost all languages) is abbreviated SI for the French wording. Almost every standards body gets its abbreviation for the English name from the French name that nobody uses. IF not for the French fighting English at every turn, the question would have been answered 50 years ago.
exceptions and borrowed syntax which can't be explained to non-native speakers
I am outside the US. I work for a company with more foriegn-born people than locals. The exclusive language in the workplace is English. There are a few that consider themselves learners. Sadly, some of the worst at English claim expertise. But I'm helping one of the guys that wants to learn better English. He's never come up with a question I couldn't easily answer. I've looked up "official" answers to help him, but I've never had to consult one to answer a question. The syntax is easily explained to non-native speakers, even if it's inconsistent and confusing. My favorite is http://grammarist.com/usage/hi... the rule is clear, consistent, and optional. Though, my answer if he were to ask for the proper plural of "hippopotamus" would be "hippos".
We have it. It's called English. When a Russian businessman goes to China or Korea to do business. Usually, the discussions will be in English. Depending on the level and type, the two sides will greet and depart with phrases from the other's language, but not do the main discussion in either language. Of those who know multiple languages, with at least one non-local, the number one second language is English. I added in qualifiers because Mandarin is a second language to many in China, and Hindi is a second language to many in India. But, when you exclude the local languages from areas with multiple local languages, English becomes the overwhelming winner in the second-language contest.
How do you make a tree quiet? You take away it's bark!
I could make up one for every homophone, but they get worse from there.