|
 |
The most spoken language in 2050 | ||
Tags: Language Importance | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4293 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 33 of 115 10 January 2015 at 2:43am | IP Logged | |||||
|
English Proficiency Index
Look at Latin America--most are in "Very Low Proficiency", the lowest ranking possible, with some in "Low Proficiency". This is just one ranking order, there are surely others, but here are some rankings, with Argentina and Spain being notable exceptions to the Hispanophone world, but nevertheless the entire Hispanophone region as a whole have seriously poor English skills: 15-Argentina 20-Spain 35-Ecuador 41-Chile 43-Costa Rica 44-Uruguay 50-Venezuela 51-Guatemala 52-Panama 53-El Salvador The total pool surveyed was 63 countries in total, to give an idea. Compare to the "English" European countries. No surprise here: 01-Denmark 02-Netherlands 03-Sweden 04-Finland 05-Norway EFI by region - Latin America: Low proficiency I have a feeling that Spanish and English shall split, i.e. as the Hispanophone world expands both culturally and economically in terms of power, it could replace English in many regions, like in the PRC as those who learn English quit English and take Spanish instead for the new ties with Spain and Latin America. Latin America also have a very high population growth rate like the PRC. Edited by 1e4e6 on 10 January 2015 at 2:52am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 4035 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 34 of 115 10 January 2015 at 5:58am | IP Logged | |||||
I never said English was hard, It IS easier than FRENCH due to the fact it is less conservative. Russian and the Chinese writing system are as difficult as people believe but it is due to their irregularity ONLY. Russian will take 30 times as much memorization of irregular forms to speak, it will take months of just reciting so much before a sentence can be spoken, English is 5 "7", but Russian is really 12 feet tall. It's just that its not a good comparison. The Chinese writing system too requires as much effort, there is no pattern, I still write characters down over and over in drills just to get them right, it's as grueling as Russian/Lithuanian/Latin/Chechen in the end, but maybe less than the first 3. It just seemed you automatically equated inflection with difficulty, Russian has only 10-ish verb forms but they are almost all irregular compared to the 40 in Spanish which are classifiable. It's like saying that using blocky symbols makes a language more complex than curvy symbols because Chinese uses blocky symbols, but Korean uses blocky symbols yet it doesn't operate like Chinese characters. The grammar's of many European languages operate like Chinese characters in that forms are not consistently made, random extensions and alternants, not sound change etc. This can't be generalized everywhere. Even Spanish randomly forms a diminutive 12 ways compared to 1-2 in Korean/100+ other languages. I never said all languages are equally complex, well, they are in that all languages are able to express a person's thoughts, but they are not equally irregular or "marked", nor that English is ungodly hard, it is not, it belongs to a tier comprised of watered down varieties in respective families. I would say it is far too watered down compared to it's Germanic cousins and the easiest Germanic language, but the lack of inflection is not the main reason, the reason is the lack of standard Germanic features such as inseparable prefixes, V2., hither/hence, thou, indefinite "mann", to be perfect, etc. I never needed you to be sarcastic enough to say English is difficult, because it is not. It's just not some magic presto esperanto meant for the world from birth. It was the Eurocentrism that ticked me off. Tones are hard, I just said complaining about mandarin tones is odd considering we have Vietnamese with an absurdly huge vowel inventory, 6 tones of which 2 contain voice modification, and far less syllable restrictions along with more marked phonemes. Likewise, English's sounds are nothing to complain about considering we have Danish up north with an even more absurdly large inventory than Vietnamese's, a creaky voice, several consonant lengths, and dozens of vowel allophones. English writing is not easier than French nor absurdly difficult, the lack of diacritics means it is only easier to type which can play a role in how fast messages can be sent, it is not the diacritics themselves, if you made that argument I would not have said anything. French pronunciation as an inventory is somewhat more straightforward due to a simpler syllable structure, straightforward stress, etc. but we can't forget the silent sounds that occur when a vowel comes up nor the liaison and heavy linking/contractions, I admit that. English does lack gender, it makes a huge difference in grammar, its just that this is not remarkable, languages having gender is more remarkable. Okay I blew up, I had a few too many sodas. I apologize for that. But you missed my points. Edited by Stolan on 10 January 2015 at 6:25am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5433 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 35 of 115 10 January 2015 at 7:17am | IP Logged | |||||
Well, I'll take my so-called rhetorical barbs back, and we can get back to debating the subject of the thread. All that I suggested is that, when compared to the languages that could be possible contenders for global status, English presents a number of features that make learning it relatively easier. This is not to say that there are not other very interesting languages in the world with all kinds of neat features. Neither am I saying that English is the best or the most unique language in the world. That it is certainly not. We can quibble over certain features. For example, English pronunciation is probably more difficult than what I originally wrote. There are many languages without grammatical gender, but in the confines of this debate, I was only referring to the presence or lack of gender in the candidates for global language status. Here English stands way out ahead of the pack in general because, with the exception of Chinese Mandarin, the other candidate languages all use grammatical gender. That said, I am not claiming that the rise of English as a global language is due to its ease of learning. It may actually not be a very important factor, but I do believe that it certainly helps somewhat in the current momentum behind English. Edited by s_allard on 10 January 2015 at 1:36pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cthulhu Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7226 days ago 139 posts - 235 votes Speaks: French*, English, Mandarin, Russian | Message 36 of 115 10 January 2015 at 2:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
I know I've said this before, but there's absolutely no evidence for this historically; even if you can conclusively prove that Language A is quantifiably easier to learn than Language B (Something which is extremely contentious as you can see), people just learn whatever language they have to learn. Japanese people have a nearly legendary degree of difficulty learning English, for whatever reason, but they keep trying. In China, speakers of languages from a dozen different languages all learn Mandarin, because they have to. You could be right about difficulty playing a role, absolutely, but it's a completely unprovable supposition; I might as well say that English is supported in its current position by the will of Allah. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6585 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 37 of 115 10 January 2015 at 3:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
At any rate, it seems that we are far from reaching "peak English" anytime soon. There are very few countries where English levels are falling. There's a standstill in Japan and South Korea, according to the earlier link, but that's not for lack of trying. Every country on the planey seems to prioritize teaching English. So as of 2015, English is gaining, not losing, momentum as a world language.
BTW, I'm guessing I'm not the only one checking out those lists of English proficiency, searching for nice countries with low proficiency. :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5433 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 38 of 115 10 January 2015 at 6:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
I try to choose my words carefully. Please, read what I wrote. I did not write that Chinese Mandarin has become that standard language in China because it is easier than the other Chinese languages. Neither have I said that Latin spread because it was easier than any other language at the time. French and English did not spread in Africa because they were easier to learn than indigenous African languages. Russian did not spread through out the former Soviet Union because it was easier than other language. Nobody has said that. What I did write was: "…but I do believe that it (ease of learning) certainly helps somewhat in the current momentum behind English." Is this a "completely unprovable supposition"? I'm not so sure about that. As for the will of Allah, I'll leave that to more qualified people than me. But what is interesting in the current spread of English is that, unlike the examples referred to above, there is no colonial, imperial or political hegemony underlying the current spread of English. Can one even speak of a cultural hegemony? I wrote earlier than English is not colonizing or displacing other languages. We are seeing the rise of a global lingua franca that is willingly embraced by pretty much every country on the earth. Nobody is forcing English down the throats of the Koreans, the Japanese or the Chinese yet there seems to be this mad rush to learn English. In other words, there seems to be a consensus that English is today the language of international communication. If you look at the institutions of the European Union, you see that English is the de facto working language. It could have been any of 27 languages but English has a number of things going for it. One of these things is the lack of certain complications other languages have. Grammatical gender comes to mind. A complicated writing system is another one. But English has its complications of course. All in all, English, in my mind, is the best choice for the time being. This is not to say that Esperanto or Toki Pona are not better languages, it's just that given the choice of natural languages, English is out in front, whether we like it or not. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 4035 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 39 of 115 11 January 2015 at 6:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
S_Allard, you did not touch upon the fact Hollywood makes pretty much all internationally reached movies and that NATO had the USA in it, there were subtle influences, English was not chosen or spread without the USA existing and sending pop music and action flicks everywhere and being the only superpower left. If some coup of language were to exist from out of nowhere, as if over a millennia Spanish replaces English in the USA, this will have a ripple effect on the rest of the world. The USA practically controls the media of everywhere. Plus, English is not spoken as widely as you might think. The Japanese mostly just speak a gratuitous version mixed into their native language. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-sp eaking_population Only 1/6ths of the world have a command of English, not so global, its not 9/10ths like some others think. Ironically many of the countries where the largest anti-English language drivel comes out of have low percentages of English speakers. Anyway, There is also the question of the possibility that the English spoken by natives will evolve into a different language. Edited by Stolan on 12 January 2015 at 4:19am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4668 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 40 of 115 11 January 2015 at 8:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
"Anti-English language drivel?" What are you talking about? In my experience even people coming from countries with very low average levels of English competence (say, Thailand or Algeria) are enthusiastic about learning it.
1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
