Proficiency alongside "poverty".

<Mastering all the complexities and nuances of a verb is difficult in all languages. Complexities and nuances are not an exclusivity of English. What makes English easier than some other languages, in my opinion, is its simple morphology.>

I'd say "relatively" simple.

Anonymous

In that respect, I would like to know when and how the auxiliary "do" appeared in English. What kind of people introduced it into the English language?

I would like to know who decided about the value of tenses of the Past. They do not correspond to the value of the tenses of the Past in latinoïd languages. Who can give me answers ?

In this  debate, I do not think there is an evolution towards simplicity nor towards more complicated structures. The

communities of native speakers of a language constantly change the rules and the meaning of words (although the main core remains more or less stable for facility reasons.)

Ethnic languages are tools of inclusion and mainly exclusion (internal and external). That is why there are so many exceptions.

No ethnic language is that easy to learn. When I say "to learn" I mean to learn it to be on equal footing with a native speaker of the language.  There will always be a difference, a discrimination.

From what I have experienced ( I am very interested by languages), there is no easy language. All has been done by training.

There is no natural language : everything has been constructed by Man. 

I invite the readers to learn an interlanguage such as Esperanto, compare it with your mother tongue   and with languages you have studied later. 90% to 95% of the time is spent to the learning of exceptions. That is why a language without exception such as Esperanto is ten to twenty times faster to learn than ethnic languages. 

It is fascinating to see how a universal congress of Esperanto works and to compare it with an international congress in only one language. Many prejudices fall.

Maybe I am opening new interests in the debate..

George/Belgium

Do existed in Old English more than a thousand years ago as a regular verb and meant to cause. It is impossible to say who introduced it to English. It's use as an auxiliary in questions and negations was established in Shakespeare's day when it was correct to say both

I know not him
and
I do not know him.

It is very common that the usage of tenses varies from language to language, especially if the languages are not closely related. No reasons can usually be given for this. You might just as well ask why the usage of tenses in the Romance languages differs from that in English. Linguistic changes are often shrouded in the past and there is no knowing why they occurred.

All words and grammatical structures people are not used to sound wrong and/or odd and therefore people usually object to changes that are about to happen in their lifetime and think the language is deteriorating. This is true about all languages, not just English. People tend to think a language is at its most beautiful right now and any change will just make it worse.

English grammar has become so simple over the centuries that I cannot envisage it becoming any simpler without the risk of English becoming even more inexact than it is now. However, not all changes have made the language simpler in structure. In Old English there was just one relative pronoun and it had only one form. That made communication with relative clauses very awkward and it wasn't a great surprise that who, whom, whose, what and which began to be used as relatives to facilitate communication.

CB

I meant the morphology is simpler. I'm sorry I didn't express it clearly enough the first time. I disagree with you about all languages being equally complex. In my opinion there is nothing particularly complex in English syntax compared with the syntax of the other languages I am familiar with.

To my mind, spelling is by far the most difficult aspect of English, which is manifested in quite a few native speakers' occasional misspellings even in these forums.

CB

You are right, Forbes, we have had this discussion before! Maybe we can introduce some new angles to it.

I repeat that I have never said English is easier than other languages. I have said that its grammar and syntax are easy.

"What have you locked the book I was being read to out of up for? (Five prepositions in a row at the end of a sentence.)"

That looks a little complicated, I admit. However, all the words are in a logical order; there is nothing ungrammatical or grammatically exceptional in the sentence. Understanding it calls for a good command of English but a good command of a language is always required if one wishes to understand complex sentences. That applies to all languages. By the way, up isn't a preposition in the sentence. It's an adverb.

"The Cumbria Water Board Lake Windemere region staffroom silverware safe key custodian. (Ten nouns used attributively in a row.)"

Nothing grammatically unusual. If a noun can be used attributively, there is no limit as to how many nouns can occupy that position. English would be difficult if there were restrictions. Adjectives can be used in the same way in English and many other languages. There is nothing exceptional about this:

a sad song

a beautiful sad song

an unforgettable beautiful sad song 

"Compact disc cleaner. (We know it is a cleaner for cleaning compact discs.)

Carbon fibre cleaner. (We cannot be sure if it is a cleaner for cleaning carbon fibres or a cleaner made of carbon fibres unless we know the context. In fact, I have a box which says it contains a compact disc cleaner and a carbon fibre cleaner and since it is designated a hi-fi cleaning set I know without opening the box that the carbon fibre cleaner is made of carbon fibres and is not intended for cleaning carbon fibres.)"

In your opinion this is an example of how complex and difficult English syntax is. In my opinion it is a good example of how simple English syntax is. Any nonnative speaker knows what you know without opening the box. What makes English easy for him is the fact that ne need not worry about having carbon fibre or compact disc in the right grammatical case because no special case is required in English. Couldn't be simpler!

"I was given a book. (This is perfectly standard English, but looks like a passive when clearly it is not.)"

The sentence is in the passive voice and synonymous with A book was given [to] me. I was taught the English passive voice when I was a 15-year-old schoolboy.

"This wine drinks well. (We can say that although the wine is not doing any drinking; however, we cannot say This wine drinks – the adverb is essential. Nevertheless, we can say This wine keeps well  and This wine keeps.)"

The fact that it is possible to use many verbs in the way you describe certainly is a fascinating feature but I fail to see the difficulty it poses for nonnatives. All languages abound in expressions that are complete or that are not complete without a word or two. Of course mastering all this takes time  -  but it takes time in all languages, not just English.

Cheers

CB 

EDIT: Unfortunately the "select text colour" feature doesn't seem to work. I have what I quoted from you in blue but it doesn't come out that way in the final product.