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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) |  |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4912 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 169 of 176 22 July 2014 at 9:57am | IP Logged | ||
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That is interesting, but be careful about veering into politics. These forums are for discussing language, and if the discussion gets political it will be closed.
I can't restrain myself, however, from making a couple of comments. ;) 1. Be wary of anyone who tells you that they have the truth that everyone else is missing. They are as likely to be guilty of "selling" you an idea as the established media. 2. Western press can be accused of being driven by money, but they can still be held accountable. It's not a perfect system, but the alternatives may even be worse. (E.g. should the press be funded by the government instead of business?) I'm reminded of the quote attributed to Churchill, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others." 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5769 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 170 of 176 22 July 2014 at 3:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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One remark re: English and vanishing linguistic diversity
Some years ago I read - I do not know where - that currently, English isn't the language minority languages are replaced with. Not anymore. It's done that in the past, but currently, Spanish, Hindi, Russian and Mandarin are much faster at replacing local languages and variants. Don't remember the source, can't verify this, but it seems to make sense. Edited by Bao on 23 July 2014 at 3:41am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5265 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 171 of 176 22 July 2014 at 3:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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I can read all about politics, corporate dominance, "evil machinations", globalization and such all over the internet. I come here to read about languages. Edited by iguanamon on 22 July 2014 at 3:41pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5479 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 172 of 176 23 July 2014 at 2:58am | IP Logged | ||
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Okay so clearly this thread has left some people feeling that it doesn't belong on the forum. That's fine, i'm
not going to argue with another person's perspective/opinion. I started this thread in part because I feel the two are strongly associated. Politics has played a large part in the spread of language, and I was merely voicing my concern at the way globalization, Americanization could be associated with the spread of languages, perhaps to the detrimant of other languages, with particular focus on the English language, since the U.S. is the strongest political and economic force nowadays. I feel that the political and economic landscape does much to shape the cultural and linguistic landscape, often via 'dark' clandestine avenues that are perhaps hidden in clear sight, once again in my opinion. Many valid points have been made by others in contrast to mine, and some in support. Much of the thread does discuss the adoption of second/third language, what drives that (politics, economics, choice, entertainment) and whether or not myself or others are concerned about this. I make no apologies for discussing the topic, as a decent sift through thread will demonstrate it is ultimately about language learning/language acquisition. I admit it may not specifically be about the techniques of learning but it is about the choice(s) people make in choosing which language to study. Perhaps many points are rather indirect and perhaps seemingly off-topic, but when discussing such things elaborate discussion that appears to be off topic is bound to occur as much theory and background information is required to elaborate/support one's point of view. If you don't like the thread there are plenty of other interesting threads. Just remember we are all human here, i'm not out to degrade the forum, have this thread descend into a messy argument about whether it should exist or not, but merely attempting to have an intellectual discussion with my language learning compatriots. I admit my last post appears 100% political in nature, and this may have triggered certain kinds of responses. However I figured I had already discussed the topic of this thread in great detail previously and that providing some quick input would not require a total new explanation of the background and supporting evidence or links to language learning in order to clarify. I didn't want to do that, as I felt the topic had been pretty well covered already, so I just threw in a couple of quick links that i felt were pertinent to the discussion. I'm not looking for an argument here, I welcome difference of opinion, just a friendly explanation is all this is :) PM 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 173 of 176 23 July 2014 at 5:28am | IP Logged | ||
Because it's already replaced everything it could find... Also, it might not be replacing other languages directly, but it seems like unless education is performed in the minority language, many parents tend to think that national language+English are difficult enough to manage, and adding a small language will be overwhelming and pointless. It's easier for minority languages to compete with one large language than with two. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| aokoye Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5544 days ago 235 posts - 453 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, Norwegian, Japanese | Message 174 of 176 23 July 2014 at 1:26pm | IP Logged | ||
Do you come here to read about languages or do you come here to read about learning languages? Or perhaps more specifically - do you come here to learn about how to learn languages? I ask that because politics, dominance, and globalization can all be related to language and language learning (who is learning what language, why, and in what context). If you want to talk about endangered languages, for instance, you're going to end up talking about language politics and, to at least some extent, globalization. If you want to know about why the majority of English speakers have a native language that isn't English and have any sort of substantive conversation then globalization and dominance are going to be involved in the conversation. I should be asleep right now so I'll end this here, but all of that is to say that the intersection of language and politics is a very real one and there are plenty of things to talk about linguistically that involve politics as well as globalization. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5265 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 175 of 176 23 July 2014 at 2:06pm | IP Logged | ||
My objection isn't to the thread, but to the penultimate post of the OP which has veered into being blatantly political. Edited by iguanamon on 23 July 2014 at 2:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5535 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 176 of 176 23 July 2014 at 2:54pm | IP Logged | ||
OK, I just took a moment to catch up on this thread and figure out what's been going on. For quite a few pages, this thread was borderline political, but still clearly about languages and language learning. But by the end of page 21, this thread became nakedly political—the governance of the EU, GMOs, etc. And as always happens in this case, the discussion quickly got heated and went downhill. As several posters have pointed out, basically 95% of the forums on the Internet are All Politics, All The Time. There are flame wars, political partisans, and people spewing memorized talking points and demonizing their political opponents. Politics is like kudzu in the US—given a chance, it will take over and drive everything else out. HTLAL is an international forum. We have a huge range of political viewpoints, and some of our members live in countries that are actually at war with each other. Some of these wars actually involve major language issues. And so both our host and the moderating team have decided to steer clear of these particular shoals, and ban discussion of politics. Now, we try to be reasonable about this. We try not to shut down genuinely interesting discussions about language learning, and we do pay attention to the "tone" of the discussion. So if there's some language learning issue that can't be discussed without an occasional reference to politics, and everybody carefully avoids political rants, then sure, there's a small amount of grey area. Unfortunately, this thread has become unambiguously political, and several of the recent messages have nothing at all to with language learning. Since the original discussion was pretty much dormant anyway, I'm going to go ahead and lock the thread. 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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