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English as the universal language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5332 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes  Speaks: Swedish* | Message 81 of 206 09 November 2009 at 11:20am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I don't agree with this. I don't think that people who know foreign languages tend to throw in foreign words more than other people. At least around here, I would say it is a sign of lacking education and/or snobbism to do that. (How could it be otherwise?) There are basically four cases: 1. Troubled youths from immigrant areas have a sort of slang where some words come from Turkic and other immigrant languages. 2. Snobs that know a bit or a lot of a foreign language, often French, and feel the need to show that to the world. 3. Slobs that listen to hip-hop too much and watch too many American sitcoms. 4. People in finance, advertising and other areas where some of the terminology is in English. Most importantly, I don't think that mixing in foreign words will create any kind of hybrid language that will be understood by all. Why would Spanish with some English loanwords, even if those should amount to 50%, be understood by a Russian? Even if a lot of the words are common, except for pronunciation, syntax and morphology, as well as all particles, pronouns, basic adverbs, common verbs etc will be different. It would be even more difficult than for Chinese and Japanese to understand each others writing. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Hoopskidoodle Senior Member United States Joined 5311 days ago 55 posts - 68 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 82 of 206 09 November 2009 at 1:18pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I took a couple of semesters of Japanese a hundred years ago. At the time I was rather big on all things Japanese. I had a jacket with a Japanese phrase on the back of it. One day a Chinese woman, who didn't speak Japanese, told me exactly what was written on the back of my jacket. Of course, the spoken words were completely different, but the Kanji, and thus the gist of the phrase, were perfectly clear to her. Edited by Hoopskidoodle on 11 November 2009 at 6:37am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Silvance5 Groupie United States Joined 5305 days ago 86 posts - 118 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, French | Message 83 of 206 11 November 2009 at 2:40pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I personally don't really see a universal language as necessary, but it could of course be helpful. One poster commented on the inability to speak to people from other languages during the colonization periods. What people don't seem to realize is that the spoken word makes up only 7% of our communication. The tone of your voice makes up 38% and your body language makes up 55%. I doubt they really needed to understand each others language to communicate at first.
Besides, why English as a universal language? I realize it's already at that point, but English is a complicated mess of rules and exceptions to those rules and is considered by most to be one of the hardest languages to learn. Edited by Silvance5 on 11 November 2009 at 2:41pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Rikyu-san Diglot Senior Member Denmark Joined 5339 days ago 213 posts - 413 votes Speaks: Danish*, English Studies: German, French | Message 84 of 206 11 November 2009 at 3:48pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I would like to add another perspective to our discussion which began with these two questions:
Is English on its way to become the first truly universal language? Is such a development desirable? So here is an observation I have made recently. I only started to pick up learning languages last month - and since then I have shared my enthusiasm with some of the people I have met, both friends and family, business relations and so on. And the number of people that states a) yes, they do have a dream of learning another language (German, French, Portuguese, Chinese and even Latin), some have even tried and failed miserably several times, which leads to b) and I wish it were so much easier than it is. Some even would like to learn more than one. It seems that there are many potential polyglots out there. But they don't know how. If only... I have noticed in the Chinese as the lingua franca thread that "easy" is mentioned in favour of English by many. And what has easy got to do with it? If a language is easy, it is of course more easily mastered, and why go further than English? Yes, why indeed. What if acquiring languages, even the difficult ones, were easy? We of the Western world would pick up English, German, French and Latin before leaving school or high school (for Latin). We might even have wrestled with Mandarin, and/or Spanish, Finnish, Sanskrit, Japanese, Tagalog, Swahili or whatever. And we would be comfortable with speaking with natives and would go about our business in a much larger and interconnected word - we would truly connect with people from other countries. I spoke with a Dane this morning who is fluent in several other languages and reasonably accomplished in an Afghan tongue. We have a shop where I live owned by people from Afghanistan, and when he spoke to them in their own tongue, they received him with open arms. They have always been very friendly and kind, but they opened doors to him that are normally closed for others. They speak perfect Danish. Still, it took some afghan phrases to really connect. Is it desirable that English becomes the universal language? No. Why? Because by learning more foreign languages we open doors to the heart and soul of other people. Our horizon is broadened. We learn to think, feel, act in different ways, and through this we not only learn about them, we also learn something of lasting value about ourselves. With the onslaught of popular culture of everything of true value, many people will probably settle for the "English only" option. But I am quite certain that, if learning languages were easy, many people, if not the majority, would love to learn more than one, maybe three, maybe five. Like Steve Kaufman who has passed ten "and I am not stopping", as he says in one of his videos. And why should he? One month ago I could speak in two languages. Danish and English. Today I can speak the barest rudimentary sentences in four (including German and Mandarin) and sing most of the Sanskrit vowels, focusing on the resonance and the energy so my whole body and energy system vibrates. I can to this thanks to this site and its users, and the grace of Pimsleur, FSI and the American Sanskrit Institute. I can feel an expansion and I can feel how these countries are no longer just extended tracts of land, but are heartlands with unique hearts and souls. And even though Sanskrit is rarely spoken today, it is true for this language, too. And the doors to these heartlands are now slowly, gently opening. Please forgive me for this poetic way of expressing this point and play along for a moment. Ask yourself, if it is desirable if the doors to these heartlands will remain forever shut? Is it desirable if the doors to the heartland of your own language, if your native tongue is not English, will be forever shut to the foreigners visiting your country and perhaps stay there for a while? Is it desirable? And if you came to a country that speaks a language not on the top 10 list, and if it was easy, wouldn't you want to do what you would have to do to be receptive to the heart and soul of its inhabitants so that the doors could open and you could be let in? Edited by Rikyu-san on 11 November 2009 at 7:12pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 5845 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 85 of 206 11 November 2009 at 6:07pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
5. Unintentionally imposing foreign syntax on your native language 6. Professionals, importing technical vocabulary of various sorts 7. Writers and other creative professions, incorporating foreign influences (i.e. vocabulary and even syntax) into their work I think 6 and 7 are particularly important because these innovations eventually become part of the standard language. Other people adopt them without even realizing they are borrowings form another language.
That's total nonsense. First of all, I didn't say that the "hybrid language" would be understood by native speakers of its predecessor languages. Of course it would not, the way you don't understand Old Norse in spite of being a speaker of Swedish. Secondly, why do you think grammar is immune to borrowing? Given enough time the pronouns, particles and common verbs could merge. Different languages have emerged where there are isolated populations and these populations remain isolated for a sufficient amount of time. What do you think happens when the populations are closely integrated, mobile, and multi-lingual? In any case, that sort of evolution would require a lot of time, far more than a human lifetime and perhaps more than the EU would exist. My argument was purely speculative. I'm not advocating Esperanto or anything, don't worry. Edited by Sennin on 11 November 2009 at 6:50pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5332 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 86 of 206 11 November 2009 at 10:39pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
In that case I misunderstood. But in any case, it would not be the same as Swedish from Old Norse, rather like a Creole from English/French + an indigenous language, or Russenorsk from Russian and Norwegian. That could happen, although I have never heard of this happening between more than two or three languages, and not over such a vast area. It's hard to imagine why this Europidgin would be the same, or even remotely similar, in Portugal and the Ukraine, unless you wait thousands of years. I don't think that the fact that people are multi-lingual and mobile will cause any creolisation, that is not the circumstances under which it usually takes place. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6720 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 87 of 206 12 November 2009 at 2:42am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'd say that most languages are "a complicated mess of rules and exceptions". There's nothing unique about English regarding this. I'm not so sure that "most" consider it to be one the hardest languages to learn. Most of how many? 5-6 billion people? The native English speakers? It's not that uncommon to hear natives "brag" about their own language being the hardest in the world - Swedes say it all the time about Swedish, Chinese about Chinese, Germans about German, Russians about Russian and so on... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kyknos Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5307 days ago 103 posts - 140 votes Speaks: Slovak, Czech*, English Studies: German, Spanish | Message 88 of 206 12 November 2009 at 1:37pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I would say English is pretty easy as a foreign language. Of course, it is hard to get to very advanced levels, but that is probably true for any language. But IMHO it is very easy to achieve basic fluency in English which is sufficient in most practical situations. MY English is far from perfect - but I have no problem using it without any extra effort in my work, when traveling, for reading English literature, whatever I need.
And I was never really studying it. I just started to use it (with a book I wanted to read desperately and a dictionary). Edited by kyknos on 12 November 2009 at 1:43pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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