The argument (is it an argument? if not," what is it?) around <a href=""https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxARj07jFp0&amp;t=3m50s"">3:50</a> does not make sense. You just said English is fairly "analytic"", but then complained that the linguists who came up with the spectrum were Europeans and therefore distinguished more categories of "synthetic" languages while lumping together "isolating" languages. If English is fairly analytic then, at the very least, Europeans in general cannot have been too unfamiliar with analytic languages.