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That being said, I do consider contemporary English to be technically superior to Italian in almost all respects. It&#x27;s easier, more flexible, more expressive, more concise, and more complete. The only exception would be its utter, inexcusable, almost criminal, irregular spelling.<p>For German I consider it exactly the other way round. German is much more exact: Long compound substantives are very easy to express in German but difficult in English (in this sense I consider German as more expressive and concise). The grammar in German might  be ugly and unforgiving (it really could be simplified - just my opinion) but makes it much more complicated to express sentences that can be misunderstood. English might be easy to learn at the beginning, but becoming really good in English takes a horrible amount of time. For example it is in my opinion much easier to become good in French than in English. Additionally there is no really &quot;standard English&quot; as there is in French or in German (Hochdeutsch). What is actually the authoritative ressource for English to clear up what spelling, punctuation etc. really is the correct one?