The writing system has 0 to do with that. More the UK and USA being superpowers for ages.
There is no reason why English would be more interesting to native speakers than German, Spanish, Finnish or Bulgarian to their respective native speakers.
There is no reason why English would be more interesting to native speakers than German, Spanish, Finnish or Bulgarian to their respective native speakers.
I've since heard interesting comparisons as well from native Mandarin speakers, where there is a certain formulaic piece missing in English that let's them form ideas easier. Interestingly in that case they would describe opposites too where there are certain groupings of ideas that they found easier to form in Mandarin that they had to invent words for in English to get across. But they could do so - invent those words.
I'm a native English speaker and only a third rate French and Spanish speaker, so I have to take this on faith for the most part, but it is interesting to hear that common view across origins.
Not that German is "pure" but even with words you don't know you got a fair chance of being right most of the time
A French kid can reasonably spell words they hear, even if there are a lot of unpronounced or apparently useless letters.
I've heard from a Chinese friend that the same is true for Mandarin. Apparently most written words have a "meaning" component and a "pronunciation" component (excepting the most common words, which are easy to learn by rote).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classificati...
To me, Finnish is the only interesting language in your list, due to not being related to the rest of the Nordic languages or Russian (Finno-Ugric). It’s also purely phonetic, which is nice, but what a shame about all those case endings. I am definitely biased as I learned Finnish as a teenager.
Might as well take this opportunity to plug Bill Bryson’s book The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way, it’s a fun read.