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Will English take over? | ||
Tags: Lingua franca | Endangered Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| FuroraCeltica Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6867 days ago 1187 posts - 1427 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 9 of 37 03 March 2010 at 2:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think that most major languages are safe. The only ones that are genuinely threatened by English are the small, tribal languages
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 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 10 of 37 03 March 2010 at 3:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't think that even languages like Danish will die out soon, but it is a problem if global companies and significant parts of our higher education will be using English as their official means of communication because that will rob our own language of some vital areas of use and development. And we do have people here who don't care a bit about Denmark or Danish or the national heritage as long as they can earn more money by selling out. The same people would probably also sell their dear old grandma to medicinal experiments if they could get away with it.
Apart from that: it is practical that we have a language for global communication, and right now it is English. 6 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 11 of 37 03 March 2010 at 3:39pm | IP Logged | ||
I think small, tribal languages are more threatened by the national language or majority language of a country than by English. In the US, that national language, will of course be English. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Vinlander Groupie Canada Joined 5823 days ago 62 posts - 69 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 12 of 37 03 March 2010 at 3:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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You guys are crazy. English will take over in africa, India, netherlands, and the nordic countries. It won't happen over night but give it about about 3 generations. In India and Africa native languages are just cause for needless division. They pretty much have to speak English. Not all will but no none will care to speak it. It'll be like the children of immigrants who aren't fluent in their parents languages. Same way in northern Europe, within 1 generation children will think of swedish and dutch as their parents language, sure they'll be able to read it but they won't care if their children learn it. Swedish will be like irish is now in about a hundred years atleast to young people.
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| Muz9 Diglot Groupie Netherlands Joined 5526 days ago 84 posts - 112 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Somali | Message 13 of 37 03 March 2010 at 3:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't think so, though it is slowly creeping into many languages. Not just for business- and technical terms but also everyday speech. For instance, the Dutch word ‘Zuigeling’ (Baby) has been entirely replaced by the English word baby! Zuigeling sounds just absurd nowadays. Slowly more of these basic words are replacing normal Dutch words and I think with given time that Dutch would be one of the first major European languages to become heavily Anglicized.
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| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5455 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 14 of 37 03 March 2010 at 4:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm astonished by how people think they can predict the future and claim that in a few generations everybody will speak English as their native language.
English loanwords in a language does not mean that the language is dying. The Scandinavian languages absorbed a whole lot of German and Dutch loanwords some centuries ago, and now these words are part of everyday speech. Yet, we don't speak neither Dutch nor German. And look at English. It's almost impossible to utter a sentence without using words of French or Latin origin. At the peak of the Roman Empire, who would have thought that Latin in a few centuries would no longer be the language of the people but instead have given birth to new languages? Who would have thought that Greek would no longer be an important language of culture, administration and commerce? Edited by tractor on 03 March 2010 at 4:26pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Vinlander Groupie Canada Joined 5823 days ago 62 posts - 69 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 16 of 37 03 March 2010 at 7:30pm | IP Logged | ||
Well latin and its descendants due dominate a large percentage of the earth area, eroding over 1000 languages. Furthermore all your example were long before notions of globalization appeared. The only era that can be compared to this century is the roman era, when aside from the east the majority of the known world spoke latin. Of course English won't be the last language that will be spoken but it will erode certain regions of the world. Notice how I didn't mention its influence on other areas than africa, Germanic europe and india. Thats because Its hard to predict. It's easy to guess that English is will continue to be important in india, with languages, 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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