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Solutions for International Communication | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6472 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 9 of 42 03 March 2010 at 10:10am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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This does not make it easier for everyone, for example many languages in Asia are just
as unrelated to Mandarin as English is, and same for Central Asia with regard to Russian, South American languages with regard to Spanish (also: why not Portuguese?), and Africa is a problem anyway. I believe that the institution of a regional lingua franca is much more likely to hurt indigenous languages than an international lingua franca, because it encourages the idea that it's a local language, a local way to address people, so that the government, TV stations, cinemas and touristy places may decide to use that language exclusively - they wouldn't feel that way about English for example, because it's clearly foreign. Right now, if I were to try to get by on Russian in Eastern Europe other than Russia, I'd be very aware that it's not the people's native language, and that many people actually hate Russian there because of its forced instruction under the Soviet Union. So if I'm travelling to Lithuania, I'm much more likely to try to pick up some Lithuanian (yes I did). However, as a world traveller learning each region's lingua franca, I'd feel that I have done my part and not give the local languages another thought. You should also consider the idea that an international auxiliary language such as Esperanto may be easier to learn than any designed local lingua franca. For example, it's easier for a French person to learn Esperanto rather than German, it's easier for an Aymará speaker to learn Esperanto rather than Spanish, it's easier for a Pole to learn Esperanto rather than Russian (according to my Polish friends), it's easier for a Japanese person to learn Esperanto rather than Chinese, and so on. Edited by Sprachprofi on 03 March 2010 at 10:15am 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5405 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 10 of 42 03 March 2010 at 12:48pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I always imagined that in the future there shouldn't be a single world lingua franca. I imagined that if the whole world one day progresses to a level of civilization today's developed countries have reached, then in this world there wouldn't be a single lingua franca, but this world would have several global lingua francas, not local ones. I dislike the idea of Esperanto as an international auxiliary language. I'd rather see a future where everyone could speak at least half a dozen languages. In such a scenario even if there are 20 world languages (depending on which today's local languages will become so in the future) the chances you would find someone who speaks just on of the languages you speak (and you speak one of the languages s/he speaks) would be quite high.
I guess it is just my polyglotic dream. :-) Edited by Delodephius on 03 March 2010 at 12:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| delectric Diglot Senior Member China Joined 7183 days ago 608 posts - 733 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: German | Message 11 of 42 03 March 2010 at 1:02pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Esperanto already contains roots from European languages like Russian, Spanish,
English, French and German. It's essentially an Indo-European language with a Turkish like grammar. Now, if we add roots from Arabic, Indonesian, Chinese Mandarin and Hindi (while keeping the simplified grammar) maybe we can make it a world language. Doesn't the constructed language of lojban already contain roots from many languages (not just Indo-European ones)? Still I don't know how easy the grammar of the language is. I know inter-lingua is an attempt of merging lots of common roots together but as far as I can gather it doesn't have the same 'perfect' grammar/spelling system as Esperanto. Of course if you don't care about the ease of learning then ithkuil might be of interest to you! Though seems a little difficult. For an auxiliary language at the present I'm still going to learn Esperanto because it actually has a community of people that can use the language. I'm always on and off in this language at the moment Chinese and now French takes up far too much of my time so Esperanto gets left behind. What is true is that this language is EASY! I think if I had the free time I could be fluent in it within 3 to four months. Every time I get back to learning it, it distracts me from Mandarin because progress can be so rapid and therefore fun. Implementing a world auxiliary language that isn't based on the language of the major world economic power is very utopian. However, the logistics of it wouldn't actually be very hard to do. By the way Indonesian would probably be suitable for South East Asia, Australia and the Pacific region. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6661 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 13 of 42 03 March 2010 at 8:28pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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To some degree, I think some of this is happening already.
For example, it seems like English, French and German are unofficial intermediary languages in many parts of western Europe. If you are a European who wants to talk to as many people from as many European countries as possible, you are probably going to learn one or more of these languages first before you go on and learn the equally fascinating languages spoken by smaller numbers of people. It would probably be difficult to legislate such a plan. It's more likely to happen from the bottom up as significant numbers of people learn languages on the basis of sheer practicality. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6441 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 14 of 42 03 March 2010 at 9:41pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Esperanto doesn't have a nation, but it has the rest of the properties you mentioned, as has been discussed ad-nauseum on this forum. That said, I do agree that it will remain a minor factor in international communication in the near future. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5962 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 15 of 42 03 March 2010 at 9:46pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The same way they do now. With interpreters. Neither the German chancellor, the French president, the Chinese president, nor the Russian president can hold a conversation in English.
This depends largely on the Germans themselves, doesn't it? They have by far the most important economy in Western Europe and are the largest group of native speakers. Western Europeans would rush to learn German if they suddenly found that Germans weren't all learning English anymore. If Germans continue as now to all learn English as their first foreign language, then I agree, the other Western Europeans shouldn't be that bothered to learn German as their first foreign language.
Tourists can communicate in whichever major language they like. German, French, English, whatever. Tourist businesses will always accommodate several languages.
This is a problem for any lingua franca. In general, regional lingua francas accommodate speakers of smaller languages much better than any global lingua franca could. Half the world population has a hell of a time learning English because their native language is completely unrelated to it.
That's a legitimate concern.
I'm hoping that the Slavic language speakers in Eastern Europe would be pragmatic enough to see how much more easily they can learn Russian than English.
Read up on Chinese loan words in East Asian languages, and the usage of Chinese characters in East Asian languages.
Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese companies increasingly do business in China using Mandarin. English is already on the way out in that field.
I've heard this meme dozens of times and it's as meaningless now as ever. The reason is that >90% of the Chinese who attempt to learn English fail at it. They never reach a level where they could have any sort of a meaningful conversation in English. The same goes for Japanese who studied English in school. Less than 20% of them can hold a meaningful conversation in English. Mandarin doesn't have much work to do in order to surpass English in East Asia, that's for sure. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5455 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 16 of 42 03 March 2010 at 11:31pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
No it does not depend only on the Germans themselves. I don't think there's any chance that the French and English would start to communicate with each other in German anytime soon. And why on earth should the Germans stop learning English? It is by the way a myth that all Germans speak good English. It is also a myth that everybody in Western Europe speak English. People that today don't bother to learn English to a decent level won't bother to learn German to a decent level either. Tourists do speak with people outside of tourist businesses that "will always accommodate several languages". As of today, as a tourist you either speak to the locals in the local or national language or you use a lingua franca. In most of Western Europe the lingua franca of choice will be either English or just some sort of finger language. Tourism is a major part of the economy in several European countries. There are more people in Europe who speak their foreign languages on holiday than there are people doing business with German corporations as part of their job. Why do you propose German as a lingua franca for Western Europe? Whom would benefit from it apart from the Germans, the Austrians and some Swiss?
You can hope as much as you want, but as long as Russian is not popular in many countries in Eastern Europe, it's just a very bad idea to introduce it as a regional lingua franca. And they would have to learn English (if not German) to communicate with people from Western Europe anyway. Edited by tractor on 03 March 2010 at 11:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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