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English as the universal language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5521 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes  Speaks: Swedish* | Message 105 of 206 14 November 2009 at 6:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
It has everything to do with it. Even if you were to force everyone in the European Union to speak Esperanto, people would still rather know English since everybody's favourite movies and songs are in English, and, for people from the Third World, America is the land of opportunity. Trying to force a language upon someone is never a good idea. Just look at a similar political project of "Unity", the Soviet Union. Most non-Russian Estonians dislike Russian to the extent that they pretend tnot to understand it. Why would it work better with the Brussels Union? Just because Esperanto is "neutral"? It won't seem neutral if Brussels bureacrats force us to learn it. People will only voluntarily learn a language if they see some benefit, be it financial or cultural. And non-voluntary language studies are seldom a success. And a lingua franca can outlive the power that spawned it, just look at (West) Rome. Edited by Gusutafu on 14 November 2009 at 6:13pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7156 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 106 of 206 14 November 2009 at 7:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yet this type of change will happen regardless of the opinions expressed in this thread (perhaps the only thing that could bother you is that it's not guaranteed that the lingua franca will be Esperanto - it could be Arabic, Japanese or any other of the world's 6,000 some odd languages for all we know). English's place in the future for sure is uncertain. However I don't see the need for some kind of activism to make it happen. If you were to declare by fiat that a language such as Esperanto (which is spoken by a miniscule fraction of the world's population) be the new lingua franca, I don't see how that would be popular with a majority of the world's population. All that I can see is the urge to satisfy some sort of nebulous political / social justice aim. It has nothing to do with language, but rather feelings toward English and Esperanto. As a large-scale communicative tool today, English functions "least-worst" (or "best" depending on your point of view) and there's no way to demonstrate if Esperanto would function appreciably better as that large-scale communicative tool without imposing this Esperanto-experiment on Europe (or the entire planet for the sake of argument). Basically you're trying to reverse the development of English as a lingua franca (whose pace accelerated over the last 60 or so years) and start new with Esperanto whose spread you presumably want to compress into a shorter time. Understandably a lot of people are not interested in wanting to bear the costs of going along with it just to see if it would indeed turn out to be the case. If it would turn out that Esperanto as a lingua franca would be no better than English, then a lot of people would begin questioning why did everyone go along or assent to this decree or imposition (unlike English which for most of its spread just "happened" The recent urge to impose it is abetted by people outside native English-speaking communities who genuinely want to learn it and be part or gain understanding of these communities (not everyone outside the English-speaking countries is overtly forced to learn English, despite some popular opinion). These kinds of things... well, just happen and if you look back, everything is part of a series of accidents. In the case of English, anyone can see that it took a lot of small accidents and a few big ones for it to emerge in the way that it did. - What could have been if that Anglo-Saxon speech community was assimilated or subsumed by Jutes, Danes, Norsemen and Normans? - What could have been if the French or Spanish Empires had emerged ascendant rather than the British one? - What could have been if European powers didn't get tied up in their imperial ambitions and interlocking alliances which contributed to WWI? (with WWII being a kind of sequel) - What could have been if the Americans had not been forced into taking a less isolationist stance and get involved in both wars? (coincidentally thus setting up the conditions for the global spread of American English?) 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5838 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 107 of 206 14 November 2009 at 7:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
Hah! No they don't pretend not to understand it! At least not any Balts that I know (I recently worked with some Latvians here in London). In fact they practically brag about their skills and how "easy" it was for them to learn RUssian. I won't bore you with example. Anyway, Russian in the USSR is another red herring - it's not the same as the EU..... ! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5838 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 108 of 206 14 November 2009 at 7:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I agree with Chung's point that people in general probably wouldn't go along with the Esperanto idea immediately.
In order to make it work, there would have to be some kind of big campaign to explain the benefits, then gradually introduce it.. Basically the same thing that was done with the EURO. As for whether or not English was spread by chance... Well I think it spread for the EXACT same reason as Latin spread in the Roman empire... Although now we have the media industry, Hollywood, popular culture, NATO, international business etc to make the spread MUCH MORE aggressive and much faster! The USA dominance for 50 years has acheived what took the Roman empire hundreds of years... Plus in those days most people were illiterate and rarely met people from other countries. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7156 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 109 of 206 14 November 2009 at 7:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Cordelia0507, you should then have met some of the Lithuanians and Estonians whom I visited. I knew that they knew some basic Russian (my Estonian host even showed me a Russian cartoon), but they hardly bragged about knowing it. They preferred to speak native language plus English and weren't terribly enthusiastic about maintaining or broadcasting their knowledge of Russian unless forced to.
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| Paskwc Pentaglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5677 days ago 450 posts - 624 votes Speaks: Hindi, Urdu*, Arabic (Levantine), French, English Studies: Persian, Spanish | Message 110 of 206 14 November 2009 at 7:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Can't widespread European fluency in English be considered an asset? Most Europeans I
meet seem to have a very solid grasp of English and this allows them to go just about anywhere. This coupled with another language is even better. Think for example what proportion of Europeans are in many of the world's NGO's and IGO's. Being a TCK, I probably don't understand the peril that surrounds language loss. Even then, it seems to me that that the need for Esperanto is almost fabricated. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5521 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 111 of 206 14 November 2009 at 7:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think it is quite different if you go to the Baltics, especially if they think that _you_ are Russian! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5838 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 112 of 206 14 November 2009 at 8:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
Ok back to the topic. Does anybody have an answer to this:
1 person has voted this message useful |
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