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English as the universal language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Rikyu-san Diglot Senior Member Denmark Joined 5530 days ago 213 posts - 413 votes  Speaks: Danish*, English Studies: German, French | Message 137 of 206 15 November 2009 at 2:38am | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks for the link. It is a good and thoughtful article.
Which reminds me of something. Do you believe in evolution? Of course we do - we are Darwinians, children of the modern enlightenment, part of a culture that progresses towards higher standards of living, exploring and ultimately gaining control over nature and our own destiny. We can create peace and happiness and prosperity for all, everlasting happiness, and unending exponential growth... Well, for starters, there is only one thing in nature that grows and grows and grows without stopping - and that is cancer. Think about it. Our economic system is like a cancer. And what happens with cancer when it "wins"? It dies. It kills the host body. So much for evolution. Is evolution real? Yes. But is progress a necessary effect of what we do in the Western world? From a modernist perspective - yes. It is the most powerful assumption legitimizing science, political visions and societal reality. "Don't worry about today. We are working for a grander tomorrow." From a postmodernist perspective - maybe. History, evolution, is open-ended. We might progress, but evolution may end in disaster, that is, disaster from our point of view. Open-ended means - "well, we are not quite sure." Here is another thing. Compare the "evolution" of the following language: Vedic Sanskrit to Classic Sanskrit. Panini wrote one of the most powerful treaties on grammar ever written, using only one infitive. Vedic Sanskrit had twelve. Think about it - twelfe infinitives! But at the time when Panini wrote his grammar treaties, only one of the twelve forms was still in use so he only included that one. As time goes by, languages seem to evolve from the more complex to the less complex and more simplified. Cases disappear. Conjugations disappear. Sanskrit moves from 12 infinitives to only one... Hm... Sanskrit has the singular, the dual and the plural. English has only the singular and the plural. Danish has only the singular and the plural. The numbers are very important. Think about it - being alone, being with one other person and being with two or more other person make a difference. These three situations are coded in the grammar as the singular, the dual and the plural - because they are important distinctions that make a huge difference. You place an instrument by yourself. Someone enters the room where you are playing and the situation has changed completely. Another person enters - and it changes once again. A fourth person enters but this is only a change in number, not in the situation. When the dual is lost, it is harder to code this important relationship - and it is easily lost, until someone points it out to us. Sanskrit has three genders, German has three genders, Danish once had three (one or two dialects still has three), but now usuall only has two. I could go on. English is very complex but it is a discount language compared to Sanskrit. Danish as it is spoken nowadays doesn't compare favourably either, even though Danish in its fully fledged form has a larger vocabulary than English. This makes me wonder. If evolution is progress, but languages seem to move in the other direction, then how on earth did Vedic Sanskrit enter the world stage thousands of years ago at a time where we were supposed to be much more "primitive" than we are today? Since Sanskrit has a complexity that is both beautiful and perfect, so systematic, mathematical it is called, from whence did it come? My problem with English and the devolution of languages is that as languages decay, so does our possibilities of living a life without decay. I would much rather live in a world that spoke one of the following languages as its lingua franca - while at the same time preserving the priceless qualities of local languages everywhere: * A world that spoke Vedic Sanskrit. And if that was not an option, then Classic Sanskrit. * A world that spoke Classic Chinese. And if that was not an option, Standard Chinese with traditional characters - no simplified Hanzi, please. * A world that spoke a common Norse tongue, before the Danish and the English tongue split (3rd-4th century) * German, France or Danish as its finest. You may add your own favourite super language to this list. I would probably be happy to agree with you if you included a more complex and more evolved form of the language and not a devolved, decayed language. Edited by Rikyu-san on 15 November 2009 at 2:47am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7158 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 138 of 206 15 November 2009 at 3:49am | IP Logged | |||||
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Rikyu, I agree with the first part of your post, but I find the second part about evolution in language to be harder to see.
While some languages appear to "simplify" (or "decay" depending on your point of view), the path of development really is less clear-cut. Talking about "decay" in contemporary language reminds me of the age-old problem that somehow the ancient languages were "superior" to what is used today (perhaps it's a form of "linguistic ancestor worship"?) Bulgarian and Macedonian have lost virtually the entire case system that was used in Proto-Slavonic. However the verbal conjugation patterns in Bulgarian and Macedonian have become more elaborate from their Proto-Slavonic antecedents, as they use constructions and moods that just aren't attested in the ancestral Slavonic language. In other words modern Bulgarian and Macedonian describe actions in more ways than what would be possible using the conjugation system that's been reconstructed for Proto-Slavonic. At the same time, no one talks about Bulgarian or Macedonian conjugation being "superior" to that of Proto-Slavonic. According to linguists, it is probable that Old Chinese wasn't a tonal language but tones arose in order to maintain distinctions that were being lost when certain final consonants were disappearing in words. A linguist would not view this kind of development (i.e. the establishment of tones in Middle Chinese and their maintenance in Modern Chinese) as a form of "decay". 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| minus273 Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5767 days ago 288 posts - 346 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Ancient Greek, Tibetan | Message 139 of 206 15 November 2009 at 8:06am | IP Logged | |||||
Because there's some kind of circle. You see, when a language becomes "isolating", with quite immutable morphemes, the order of morphemes become important and eventually fixed. Then the morphemes, yore felt as independent words, become affixes, like in Turkish. Then, the affixes start to do nasty things on morpheme boundary, resulting to a perfect Greek/Sanskrit system. This system simplifies to an English or a Chinese, restarting the cycle. Edited by minus273 on 15 November 2009 at 8:06am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5523 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 140 of 206 15 November 2009 at 10:22am | IP Logged | |||||
I don't know exactly how threatened the Lappic languages are, but this is rather due to coercion, just like it was in the UK. If no-one forced them to even learn Swedish, their languages would fare better. Then ambitious Lapps would learn some Swedish if they wanted to, but most probably wouldn't. English is not really forced upon us now, we do have to STUDY it for a bit at school, but you can get pretty far in life without knowing a word. In your dream society, people would be FORCED to learn Esperanto or some new, even more "neutral" language. Probably the EU would order that all signs and official documents be at least bi-lingual. Don't you see that this would be MORE dangerous for Swedish, not less? Also, it seems to me from your posts that it is actually Anglophone cultural imperialism that you are against, aren't you confusing that with the language? As to Esperanto vs Latin. The Romans did have an army, but in any case, Latin somehow did become the language of educated conversation and correspondance, for hundreds of years. Our languages still survived, with very little change. English was more affected by Norse rule than Swedish by hundreds of years of Latin. I talked to a Dane last week, he mentioned that 200 years ago, an educated Dane would only speak Danish with his dog. Still, Danish is in rude health today. Edited by Gusutafu on 15 November 2009 at 10:25am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6013 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 141 of 206 15 November 2009 at 6:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Let's go for Sindarin.
It has a culture, it just happens to be an invented one. Everyone's happy. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Jiwon Triglot Moderator Korea, South Joined 6438 days ago 1417 posts - 1500 votes Speaks: EnglishC2, Korean*, GermanC1 Studies: Hindi, Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 142 of 206 15 November 2009 at 7:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Let's try to keep this discussion as civil as possible, shall we? There is a reason why I don't get involved in "Is language X going to be the universal language" threads.
2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Rikyu-san Diglot Senior Member Denmark Joined 5530 days ago 213 posts - 413 votes Speaks: Danish*, English Studies: German, French | Message 143 of 206 15 November 2009 at 8:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
That sounds interesting. Could you please elaborate on this point? Please also answer this questions: What would it take for the world to develop a language like Sanskrit? If there is some kind of circle, moving forward, we might find ourselves rediscovering old treasures. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Rikyu-san Diglot Senior Member Denmark Joined 5530 days ago 213 posts - 413 votes Speaks: Danish*, English Studies: German, French | Message 144 of 206 15 November 2009 at 9:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
One of the problems with English is that the meaning of a sentence is becoming much more contextual. In order to understand a sentence, one need to refer to an ever sliding and unclear context. We can still communicate and understand each other, but English is no longer a language of precision. Of course, great ideas can be expressed and profound truths can be said in just a few words. But the ambiguity is harmful to our thinking. Unclear, imprecise and muddled thinking leads to problems. Sanskrit was invented as a language of truth. It has unique characteristics that make it particularly suitable for this. English does not have the same power. When languages change, should we not prefer changes that improved the languages? I am looking forward to advance in my Chinese studies. The Chinese characters can be read at different levels - the ordinary person reads one level of meaning, the educated scholar, or someone with a special background, reads different levels of meaning. This means that the same text - written with the same characters - can be read in mulitple ways. I find this absolutely astonishing. Only a language that makes clear, truthful and unambigous communication possible should be worthy of consideration as the world's primary lingua franca. Remember French was once the language of the diplomats and the international postal language exactly because of its precision, clarity and unambiguity. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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