French Woman Claims English is a "Simple" Language, Gets Schooled By Linguists

Emmy Pratt • Senior Editor

May 2, 2023 11:30 AM EDT

A fun fact about me is that I got a Linguistics minor in college. Educated diva, I know. Getting a linguistics minor isn't the most challenging thing in the world: all you need is five courses, but I learned so much about language. The most important thing I learned in Linguistics class is that no one language reigns supreme over another. There are no languages for intelligent people and languages for dumb people. The vast, vast majority of humans have the capacity for language, and the way we speak our native language is not an indicator of our intelligence. There's a massive difference between how you use verbal language on the SAT and your use of oral language while speaking.

Unfortunately, these tenants of linguistic equality are not widely known by TikTokers. TikTok is a cesspool of pseudoscience, so it's no surprise that one of its users is spreading that nonsense.