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English as the universal language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Alvinho Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 6236 days ago 828 posts - 832 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish | Message 18 of 206 19 October 2009 at 12:04am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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According to an article, Spanish has reached second place regarding the amount of speakers in the world.......therefore, .....Spanish - 329 mi..... English - 328 mi
Globalization led by the US influence around the world, due to British colonization in certain continents in the past have been decisive for the language itself to play such role. http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/cultura_sociedad/2009/10/091017_2 300_lenguas_muertas_irm.shtml Edited by Alvinho on 19 October 2009 at 12:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Envinyatar Diglot Senior Member Guatemala Joined 5538 days ago 147 posts - 240 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 19 of 206 19 October 2009 at 12:45am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Number of native speakers is not enough to determine how "important" is a language, how many people learn it as a second language or how many countries use that language is also to be considered.
I found this page that tries to weight other factors and not only number of native speakers, very interesting: http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/languages.htm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| maaku Senior Member United States Joined 5576 days ago 359 posts - 562 votes Speaks: English* | Message 21 of 206 19 October 2009 at 5:25am | IP Logged | ||||||||
No, it can't. Certainly not any more than is true of English (read, red, rid, etc.). In fact the situation is much better in Japanese, despite being such a sound-poor language.
What the...? Chinese (and Japanese, and Korean) is read left-to-right, top-to-bottom, same as any European language. What can you possibly mean by non-linear? In any case, Chinese characters are not the monster people who don't know them make them out to be. It honestly takes only a few months to learn enough for basic literacy, which is comparable to the effort you'd have to put into any other language to achieve a similar result. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Clintaroo Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6873 days ago 189 posts - 201 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Tagalog, Indonesian | Message 22 of 206 19 October 2009 at 10:27am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Of course it can be difficult for East Asians to learn English or any language for that matter, however everytime I've been to Japan I've marvelled at the amount of English a Japanese person can see in everyday life. I tune into Alpha Station in Kyoto and hear English songs instead of Japanese songs, I look at my beer and 'Asahi The Premium Malts' is written, I look at my shopping docket and 'Thank you for shopping' is written. Its usage in Japanese popular culture has only been increasing. I was listening to a Japanese song before with English thrown in. There were lyrics like 'what's in, what's out?' instead of the more stiff sounding
So why is English the bad guy? People want to learn it and people are learning it - they are therefore validating its status as a global language. They may have little choice if they desire an international career. I can't find the specific post, but somebody said something along the lines of 'people are free to study or not study English'. Isn't this it? Is English's current status really such a bad thing if it can facilitate a heck of a lot of intercultural communication? Edited by Clintaroo on 19 October 2009 at 10:28am 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 23 of 206 19 October 2009 at 10:38am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I guess we can agree upon something here: Chinese is challenging for Westerners, and English is challenging for Asians, Arabic-speaking people, and so on.
Non-native English speaking Westerners tend to forget how much effort one needs to gain proficiency. It does not happen overnight. In my case, if I may use myself as an example, it took more than ten years with lots of music listening, book reading, exposure to pop culture, browsing the Internet, reading foreign (English and American) psychological articles at the University of Copenhagen and lots and lots and lots of spoken communication practice. So English is a likely first choice - but forget about easy. It is not. In fact, most foreigners communicating in English do this with a limited vocabulary. I don't know how large my vocabulary is (I haven't done word lists or anything like that) but it seems that it is bigger than most. But I know that it is not as big than the most skilfull diglots, triglots and polyglots on this site, or educated Englishmen allowing themselves to speak with all the nuances that their education allow. So in a way, learning to speak English presents a barrier for all of us non-native English speaking people. Grammer is complicated, pronounciation is difficult (we make fun of ourselves with our Danish accent and it is hard work to make it sound more English) and spelling... don't even get me started. Have you had any ghoti today? Ghoti is "fish" spelled phonetically. You can't even spell "phonetics" phonetically! So the only reason why no one has ever invented a Heisig method for English - "Remembering the Ghoti and other useful words" part 1, 2, 3 and 4 - is that we in the West take this for granted. You just keep at it untill you have learned it. Period. And dount maike sotj e foss abawt it! :-) I don't know if one can learn to spell 3000 English words correctly in three months, but it is certainly possible with the Heisig method (for the Hanzi once book 2 is published). So, speaking of barriers, in three months they could be history for all of us if we put the effort into it. And once this barrier is conquered, Chinese grammer is said to be very simple and it is said by people in the know that you can reach basic and useful fluency in six monhts... So there is a language barrier, but it is not insurmountable. And once a critical mass of educated Westerners, Farsi speaking Iranians, Arabic speaking Saudi Arabians, Urdu and Hindi speaking Pakistani and Indians and so on conquer that barrier, many more might follow. Edited by Rikyu-san on 19 October 2009 at 10:42am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 24 of 206 19 October 2009 at 12:39pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
It has happened before. The Western part of the Roman empire disappeared and the Eastern part developed a culture based on the Greek language, but because the Roman Catholic Church kept Latin alive this remained the main scientific and philosophical language for a thousand years more. In theory the scientific community, the international network of backpackers and Hollywood combined could keep English alive even after a possible shift in the economical power towards East Asia (read China). In practice things may work out differently this time because translation technologies could make material in 'obsolete' languages available (just as Goggle and other translation machines do it now, except better), and most scientific texts from today will be obsolete in 2059. How many modern physicists have read Newton in Latin? Few I guess. But all this is pure speculation. With all its quirks, including the absurd orthography, no other language is likely to take the place of English in the foreseeable future. Edited by Iversen on 19 October 2009 at 12:48pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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