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The dark side of language dominance | ||
Tags: Language Map/Atlas | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion | ( Topic Closed) |  |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6692 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 153 of 176 04 June 2014 at 2:05pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Actually we don't even need a large invasion to boost English in Denmark. Our TV stations send programs in English all the time, people listen more to Anglophone pop than to anything else and the language is taught in school from 3. class (and soon from 1. class). And when such a tendency has taken speed there isn't much that can stop it.
I'm on that band waggon insofar that I watch more TV in English than in Danish (although often without sound and with Danish subtitles), I use English grammars and dictionaries and read technical literature in English, and right now I'm writing in English on an international forum. But I do that because English is a marvellous tool and materials in English are much more varied and plentiful than those I can find in Danish. For me the big problem is that both a lot of individuals and whole sectors in society appear to consider English as 'smarter' than Danish, and they are too ignorant about other foreign languages to spot or even use good materials in anything but English. The worst sinner concerning perceived 'smartness' is without any doubt the advertising industry, but the management business isn't lagging far behind. Maybe there really are dumb Danes who are more likely to succomb to the lure of a slogan formulated in English, but for those of us who don't see English as anything special this tendency can become somewhat tiresome because we also are exposed to those inept advertisements in bad Danglish. Edited by Iversen on 04 June 2014 at 2:11pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| cpnlsn88 Triglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5026 days ago 63 posts - 112 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Spanish, Esperanto, Latin | Message 154 of 176 04 June 2014 at 9:38pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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It is interesting that advertising and popular culture are taking the lead in this process. Twas surely always thus.
Interesting to hear from Denmark's experience. My own theory is that in Germanic countries this will happen more and more and slowly in the Germanic speaking countries a kind of diglossia will reign as people have their native language and English features start to get absorbed into native languages. Languages can grow together as well as apart. Perhaps at this point native English speakers will get increasingly frustrated by their inability to grasp the European English dialect there may be an upsurge of language learning (no sign of it yet though). The concept that national languages in the EU need some sort of protection is surely unsupported by evidence and yet minority languages are actually about to be lost to us, already on the point of dying out, without measures taken to support them. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5465 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 155 of 176 13 June 2014 at 10:34am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Thanks for sharing Iversen. This is sad to me, but to some it's not at all....
I'm not attempting to draw other people into this thread, but in glancing at emk's log and just simply quoting one of his posts I see evidence of English dominance yet again... Unfortunately some of what emk has mentioned tends to 'side' with my thoughts that as English dominants particular areas/fields of life it increasingly pushes out other languages. So emk is mentioning technical instructions in French in Québec of all places (who have very strict language laws). They seemingly don't bother a lot with the French translations as English seems to be the chosen medium to deal with such topics. Will this happen in Science? Will it happen in Commerce and education? How much many more fields will BECOME irrelevant to other languages in the future as English is seen as the preferred vehicle? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5465 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 156 of 176 13 June 2014 at 10:38am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
I just want to clarify that I was not suggesting British language teachers or American (English speakers) are less creative in their teaching methods. I was suggesting that the curriculum was in need of adjustment. The other point I was making that methods have improved since and thus Europeans with a better curriculum involving improved methods for teaching with modern resources are now able to teach perhaps more effectively than what I recall being exposed to in an anglo country some years ago. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Retinend Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4297 days ago 283 posts - 557 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), French | Message 157 of 176 13 June 2014 at 11:10am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
What about when Latin was the "preferred vehicle" of scientific discussion? Did it cause any language extinction? Do you consider some thousand years of Latin "domination" of educated society as so sinister? -- Sorry, everyone, if this has already been asked of Peter. This thread is now mammoth. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7194 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 158 of 176 13 June 2014 at 11:24am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them The good news is that even that article is available in 34 languages. I guess that's just to let everybody know what's coming. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Retinend Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4297 days ago 283 posts - 557 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), French | Message 159 of 176 13 June 2014 at 11:31am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
How can you say so confidently that they've improved? Just because they're "modern"? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5521 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 160 of 176 13 June 2014 at 3:20pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Well, and Francophone programmers have really good reasons for this choice. Let's see if I can unpack things a bit, as I understand them: 1. I work in the startup/web end of my field, where the underlying technologies are still improving very rapidly, and many of the key libraries are open source volunteer projects. Basically, every three years or so, somebody invents something which makes it vastly easier to build cool new stuff. To put it in perspective, in any given year, at least a third of my projects cost perhaps 10% of what they would have cost a few years before. So if you rely only on well-known commercial technologies, or on mature technologies that have been around for five years, you're going to be at a substantial disadvantage. 2. If you work with fast-moving volunteer technologies, much of your documentation arrives in the form of blog posts written by random programmers. Nobody has either the time or the resources needed to translate all this into multiple languages. So if you speak English, you have access to maybe 1000 times as many tutorials as French speakers, and those tutorials are almost always of higher quality, and several years newer. 3. The amount of specialized technical terminology is simply immense. Sure, various government organizations spend a lot time translating words like "spam" and "smartphone". But nobody cares very much about translating thousands of words of specialist jargon like "HTTP routing mesh" or "interned Lisp symbol." I'm currently attempting to do technical translation from English into French, and it's a lot of work: I spend lots of time trying to translate things like "parsed syntax tree" into French, and I can almost always find answers, but it takes time. 4. The actual language used for in libraries and APIs is almost always English, so even if you try to write code in French, it ends up being 50% English anyways. 5. Working entirely in French drastically limits the opportunities for international collaboration. You can't invite the really interesting speakers to your conferences, you can't collaborate with the German programmers, you can't outsource things to Eastern Europe or to India, and you can't really have international partnerships. 6. French programmers are paid far less than programmers in Silicon Valley, and from what I can tell, they're often treated with less respect. (At least that's what I read a lot on French sites.) A French programmer who avoids English also loses the option of moving to the Valley and getting a big pay raise. Seriously, I've tried to write code in French, to get all my programming news in French, to look for documentation in French, and so on. And when I do this, I can feel my horizons shrinking painfully, as hundreds of powerful technologies become largely inaccessible. I've also spent a lot of time thinking about whether I could earn a living in France for a few years, and from a professional perspective, there are some potential downsides to this plan. I don't like a lot of what I hear about typical French employers or salaries, certainly. Given these facts, it's obvious that many Western European programmers will choose to gain passive skills in English. Learning to read English comfortably is actually pretty easy, if you speak a Romance or Germanic language and your job already encourages you to spend hours a day using English-language documentation and news sources. It's like a free, non-stop Super Challenge on your employer's dime. I certainly don't feel that I can criticize French programmers for using so much English. If I were in their position, I would certainly do the same. It would be rather rude for me to insist on them remaining monolingual just so that I can improve my technical French. :-) 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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