Quote Originally Posted by Liza
Actually, there are quite a few others. Just so you know what you're talking about (although it doesn't seem like you would care about anything concerning these countries), they are: Angola, East Timor, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau and Sao Tome and Principe.
I forgot to write (that i know of) after "nobody else speaks "...", believe it or not. I knew i should have written that just to protect myself from situations like this. Situations where people have nothing better to do than dust off their grandfather's encyclopedia and look up which countries that are smaller than Omaha Nebraska speak what languages. OK you got me there, but only because I forgot to write what i should have.

Oh yea, when is the last time you went to, or met anybody, or just HAD TO CONVERSE for some reason with anybody from those countries. And i highly doubt that it is the national language of ALL of those pissant places, it is probly just widely spoken there. (just like spanish is widely spoken in the US).

Quote Originally Posted by Liza
you might also be surprised to know that there are countries in South America where the official language is French, Dutch and even English.
I wish i could slap you. Are you really hoping that i say " NO THEY DON'T THEY ONLY USE CLICKING SOUNDS IN REMOTE MOUNTAIN COUNTRIES!, so you can go and pull out your world book on geography again, because i doubt you can name those countries either. And i bet those languages again, are not the only national languages in the country. Even canada has french, and africa has *gasp* arabic, and yes *english*.

Jasper May wrote:
Maybe it's important in America, but Spanish isn't that important to the rest of the world
Wow, do you really think so?? I'm sure it's very important to all the countries in Latin America - not to mention elsewhere in the world. And, mind you, Latin America makes up a large part of that "rest of the world".[/quote]

I defend jasper here, i think we had already discussed the south american thing by this time, and he was referign to the "asia/europe/africa" "part of the rest of the world".

Quote:
I just don't see why spanish is so popular, or even still tought in highschools when it is virtually useless.


Mind-boggling.
Why ? IT IS USELESS. I can see why they might teach Turkish in swedish schools, because those countries have love affairs with each others sky resorts... But besides old people moving to mexico to retire... besides panama, i can't think of any major event (in the past few years) that has DIRECTLY affected a spanish speaking country and America.

You people need to understand im not just bashing spanish, as useless as it is. French, and even russian are pretty useless too. If someone asked me why i was learning russian, and then started arguing with me about how useless it is... they would probably win. Im not saying "Don't learn spanish" im simply confused as to why it is just so popular when it is so useless. And if i hear someone say "All of south america speaks spanish" one more time I'll be forced to tell you that over 2 billion people speak chinese and punjabi combined. But you don't see these languages offered in high schools.

I'd say, with russia, and all the former USSR countries combined, only about 200 to 250 million people speak russian(just a rough guess, feel free to get your almanac to correct me here). So obivoulsy you can't play the numbers game with rusian, and drop it with the spanish. The only reason you should learn it, is to go help poor people in poor south american countries. Spanish is useless, not that many people speak it, and the only people who learn it are the n00b language learners.

@Joysof - I probably speak better english than you.