Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

>Latin languages like Italian, Spanish and French have literally dozens of conjugations[0] where English usually handles all tenses and quantity with "will, would, did, had, -ed" plus a handful of irregular verbs, which themselves have two words to learn each (unlike Italian irregular verbs [1])

That's just one point of comparison, though. You can also identify features of English which appear to be more complex. For example, English has phrasal verbs, two forms of the possessive, VP ellipsis and antecedent contained deletion, a greater number of nominalization constructions, a greater number of ECM constructions, etc. etc. No-one has come up with any sensible measure of complexity according to which any of these languages is clearly more complex than another.

>Spanish and Italian are only easier to read and write since their spelling is regular for the most part.

No-one claims that all writing systems are equally simple. Indeed, some are easier to learn than others.



Consider applying for YC's Winter 2026 batch! Applications are open till Nov 10

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: