To me, as a non-native English speaker (if I can even now say that I am "English speaking person"), English was interesting from the moment when I started to learn it. Not because of the beauty of the language (to be honest English sounds very ugly), but because it looks fake, conglomerate, made up from the pieces of other languages, franken-language. Some words seems to be French, some German, and many of them looks latin.
On top of that comes vocal pronunciation of the English, which to me, as someone who natively speaks phonetic language sounded very strange and unnatural. Teacher in elementary school told us that if we want to speak English good, we must imagine that we speak with the hot boiled potato in our mouth, and that there is no letter in English that sounds clear as we have used to speak.
Many times I wanted to wrote something but I couldn't find the words in English to translate precisely and in full sense what I want to say (and thanks god for that
). That of course could be because of my limited english vocabulary.
Anyway, I think that English is useful because of it's simplicity. Almost anyone can learn it. Although there is really a chance for this said by spyraal, but ironically by native English speakers in the first place.
Anyway, at the moment, and perhaps more than ever before, a rich and accurate language is a much needed tool for understanding and objectivity. There is wonderful literature and ideas expressed in the English language. But i am afraid that while English is becoming a global language, it's future or the so-called "International English", has the potential to become what George Orwell dreamed in his book: A language to facilitate the necessary minimal communication between a global crowd of uneducated and subservient people. A horrific thought indeed...
Just my 2cc FWIW. Thank you.
One interesting thing. I was searching what "Liberum Arbitrium" means, and came to this, I suppose medieval English text, which when read phonetically is much clearer than modern English.
_http://books.google.com/books?id=_yizjxMGowIC&pg=PA278&lpg=PA278&dq=liberum+arbitrium+plowman&source=bl&ots=vyhQ2UtQgE&sig=52zWMn084QhSPpMWBfX4JkCJGQs&hl=en&ei=FhP0TLWJJYroOcbltc0K&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CCIQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=liberum%20arbitrium%20plowman&f=false
_http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=l&p=c&a=p&ID=16522&c=157