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English as the universal language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5523 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes  Speaks: Swedish* | Message 25 of 206 19 October 2009 at 3:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Chinese as a world language
Even if it might be tricky for most people to become fluent in Chinese, it is particularly easy to gain a conversational grasp if perfect pronunciation or grammar is not required. Even more so than in English, you are free from conjugations and declinations, there is no grammatical gender and hence no adjective agreement to worry about. Since most of the people that are considered to "speak English" today speak a very basic form, it is not fair to compare this to the effort needed to gain fluency in Chinese. They could even devise an internationalised version of Chinese, written in pinyin (obviously for conversation characters are almost completely unnecessary even today, and homophonic ambiguity can be resolved for simpler form of writing, if an effort is directed at the task of creating a new language, Chineasy). Efficiency of a world language Of course it would be efficient if we had a world language that corporations could use to peddle their useless trash to mindless consumers everywhere, without even bothering to change the labels. There would be no need to produce multiple commercials, or dub or text the American TV-shows that is imbibed with the breast-milk by toddlers from Alaska to Cameroon. Capitalists could buy and sell their companies to other capitalist everywhere more easily than today. Just because something is efficient doesn't mean it's necessarily good. Efficiency has become an idol. PS Why on earth do people insist on bringing up that "English is the language of aviation"? For the 99.9% of the population that is not employeed as pilots or in air-traffic control, this is harldy more relevant than saying that "laughter is the international language of clowns". Sort of. Edited by Gusutafu on 19 October 2009 at 5:14pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Matteo Diglot Groupie Brazil Joined 5582 days ago 88 posts - 85 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English Studies: ItalianB1, German | Message 26 of 206 19 October 2009 at 4:43pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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yes yes.. English is the lingua franca
and we all know it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| maaku Senior Member United States Joined 5576 days ago 359 posts - 562 votes Speaks: English* | Message 27 of 206 19 October 2009 at 6:25pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Fair points, but how long was Latin a dead language before educated people switched to the vernacular? Back when the Roman empire was waning, who would have guessed that England, that backwater colony island of all places, would become a global hegemon, setting the stage for one of it's former colonies to push English and western culture on the rest of the world? I just think it's a little premature to be calling the shots now. As for the machine translation... good point, but let's wait and see. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| DanHalen Triglot Newbie Korea, South Joined 5854 days ago 8 posts - 9 votes Speaks: English*, Korean, French | Message 28 of 206 19 October 2009 at 6:41pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Answering the second question as to whether or not it's desirable, I would say no. The first reason being that I believe my language is being cheapened. As was brought up earlier in the discussion, I too would like to be able to speak privately with other Anglophones. Even if people can't fully understand what is being said, just that so many have such an interest is bothersome. The second reason is I believe English is being ushered in at the expense of other cultures. This is certainly the case in South Korea where I live (and not as an English teacher.) Kids are taught that English is more important and I've heard many students at my University say they wish they had grown up speaking English even at the expense of their Korean. There are many schools here where the children are prohibited from saying their Korean names even and must speak entirely in English. Even president Lee Myung-Bak recently proposed that all schools teach every subject in English. This proposition was met with heavy resistence and would have failed anyway for lack of qualified instructors, but this is an example of the mindset of many Koreans.
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| Alvinho Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 6236 days ago 828 posts - 832 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish | Message 29 of 206 20 October 2009 at 3:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Could someone let me know about a good article about this English "craze" around the world? Edited by Alvinho on 20 October 2009 at 3:59pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Icaria909 Senior Member United States Joined 5593 days ago 201 posts - 346 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 30 of 206 20 October 2009 at 5:31pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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1. I personally believe English is the common global language of the world. So far there have been many people who have already posted good reasons as to why someone should think this.
2. To answer the second question, I believe that it is a good thing that English is the lingua franca of the world. More importantly, it is good that it is English rather than a language like mandarin chinese, that is the global language. To use The Loom of Language, by Fredrich Bodmer, I want to point out Enlish word economy, its simplified grammar, and hybrid nature as all being attributes of a language predisposed to being a global language. According to Bodmer, it takes about 1700 words to be able to communicate on a basic level in romance and teutonic languages, while one needs to understand 17000-20000 words to read books and newspapers extensively without a dictionary on hand. English is different however, in that it takes only 800 words to communicate on a basic level. This has great ramifications for buisness people, as it takes less study to talk about basic buisness transactions in English than in most other languages. Conversely, it takes 25000 words to read extensively in English but the ability to be able to communicate effectively at a basic level with most people outweighs the negative aspects of having to study more to read literature, at least when one is concerned with having a global language. English also has a much simplified grammar structure. It has almost completely gotten rid of grammatical gender, it requires few derivatives and has evolved away from verb conjugations and flexions. Simply stated, English has dropped many of the illogical grammatical fallacies of other languages. This simplified grammar makes it easier to learn than most other languages. English is also a hybrid language. English is made up of 53% Romance languages (especially latin), 38% Teutonic, and 8% Greek, making English easier to learn for those who speak a romance language or teutonic language (which is much of europe, and the americas). So more people are will have an easier time learning English than say mandarin or japanese. In summary, I am glad English has risen to global predominance as a language. I value other languages as well, but when it comes to being able to do buisness, traveling and basic communication I want a single language to communicate in and I am glad English has done this because it is easier to learn. 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 31 of 206 20 October 2009 at 6:31pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
The problem is that vocabulary does not start and end with words. For one thing, do you count the various conjugations of any given verb as different "words"? Did Bodmer? Take that hoary old classic line "Eskimos have 100 words for snow". Well, technically there are thousands of words for snow in any Eskimo-Aleut language, because they're polysynthetic languages -- ie they inflect their words by sticking on lots of prefixes, suffixes and infixes. Now, what passes for a word in a Romance language? Take the Spanish "partir", to "split", and the Spanish "compartir", to "share". Now in English, as well as "sharing" something, we can "split" something "with" someone, which is exactly what "compartir" is "con" (with) + "partir" (split). Romance languages have more words in their basic vocabulary than English purely because combinations of words become stuck together. If you instead count the number of individual morphemes, this argument falls apart. Because Spanish has the ability to build new words out of reusable elements, it doesn't need a morpheme "share", because it can reuse "split" instead. In the end, Romance languages may have more words, but they have fewer morphemes, making them easier. Furthermore, because we don't tie our morphemes together, we end up with the concept of "phrasal verbs", an idea which scares learners perhaps more than it should, where a verb is associated with various particles and prepositions which are separated from it and could appear anywhere in the sentence -- eg "I put him up for the night". Here if we get rid of the particle "up", we lose the meaning of the verb -- the action of the sentence.
No, it has eliminated most inflection, but to compensate has imposed a rigid ordering. Generally, the stronger the case system in a language, the less important word order is.
Believe me, if you'd ever tried to teach English you would have realised that there is as little logic in English as any other language. Aside from the phrasal verbs thing... Why do we sometimes have "verb object(indirect) object(direct)" and other times "verb object(direct) preposition object(indirect)" eg "I gave him the car" vs "I gave the car to him", and then "I gave her a big sloppy wet kiss", but not "*I gave a big sloppy wet kiss to her"? Logically, it's pretty pointless.
It's a chimera -- bits of one language stuck on bits of another. At times this leads us to employ opposing logics. Hardly "simpler".
This is a false benefit. For every Latinate word, there is a Teutonic equivalent. To master English, you must learn both. So even a Romance speaker still has to learn as many words in English as he would in any other language. If you only learn the one that's in your language, a German and Frenchman wouldn't be able to have a conversation in English. I'll round off by saying that language simplification is a zero-sum game: Whenever you simplify something in a language, you have to introduce complexity elsewhere to retain expressivity. In the final analysis, no language is simpler than any other. Edited by Cainntear on 20 October 2009 at 6:32pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Icaria909 Senior Member United States Joined 5593 days ago 201 posts - 346 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 32 of 206 20 October 2009 at 8:00pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Bodmer counted conjugations as each seperate word, which is why he said to learn derivatives, but your point on morphemes is valid. I didn't see it like that.
I personally believe rigid ordering is better than the case system, but your right that could be personal opinion. Perhaps your right, no one language is necesarilly easier to learn. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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