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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) |  |
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5774 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 121 of 176 02 June 2014 at 1:39am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
Hundreds of millions of children around the world are forced to study English in order to graduate from high school/Gymnasium/whatever. Mostly it's for their own good, but they are being forced to do it. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5189 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 122 of 176 02 June 2014 at 1:40am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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There are plenty of people who survive just fine in the US knowing only Spanish, or Chinese, or various African languages. I have never heard of anyone being forced to know English or being punished for not knowing it. I have never heard of any business owner in the US who was not allowed to operate a business only in a foreign language. There certainly may be very big incentives or motivations to learn/know English... but that is exactly the point! If people are learning English because there are huge benefits in it for them, that is a good thing!
Other countries that have mandatory English in their schools do it because that is what their people demand. That is somehow a bad thing? And... still, they are not proficient. I have spoken to numerous English high school teachers from Spain and many say the same thing... English is required, but nobody learns anything. The argument that English is getting forced down people's throats nowadays is silliness. I don't know what the word is for it, but it strikes me as odd to have people who usually all speak English and have so many opportunities in life say to poor people in developing countries who are very poor... "keep your culture... you should not learn English... the "world" will be better off if your language and culture survive without being contaminated by English... we don't really care that you want to learn English to find a job and eat." There certainly can be some exceptions to the rule, but it seems so painfully obvious that English is dominant because people WANT to learn it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5290 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 123 of 176 02 June 2014 at 1:42am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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A nice set of logical responses, some decent food for thought. Thanks for sharing guys, this thread has been
very interesting indeed. There are some individual comments I'm still intending on responding to yet. All in all I agree ppl learn English because they want to in general. Aren't languages sooo bloody interesting! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6411 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 124 of 176 02 June 2014 at 3:20am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Most people who are simply "interested" never move beyond A1.
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| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4703 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 125 of 176 02 June 2014 at 3:53am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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This should keep you all busy for awhile: a study out of the UK on the future of
English: EnglishNext Though ... sorry, Peter ... it's going to refute almost every single one of your points. On the other hand, you might actually like the conclusions (that international English dominance is diminishing rapidly): - The loss of smaller languages is a result of modernity: the trend started in 1500, and has little to do with the rise of any one language, colonialism, or imperialism. - The impact of English on language extinction loss is small. English's rise as a lingua franca had a much greater impact on the other major, world languages (Mandarin, French, Spanish, Dutch). It was a battle at the top, mostly between French and English. - English dominance is declining rapidly. In 2000 50% of internet activity was in English. In 2005 it was down to 32%. There are similar trends in business. - Mandarin is rapidly becoming the second language of choice in E. Asia (ironically, to the detriment of other Chinese dialects). - Balancing this is the fact that English is still seen as a "gateway language" to economic development. -"Global English" might be a new phase in the language's development, and is no longer tied to England or the US. - And my favorite: the "cost" of learning English as a second language is low, and the potential benefits are high. This will work in favor of keeping English as a major lingua franca. However, the costs of a native English speaker learning another language are higher, and the potential economic benefits are lower. This partially explains why so few Brits/Americans/Aussies et al. become fluent in a second language - most of us don't need to, and only do it if we want to. And so here's the paradox: English as a lingua franca can actually isolate native English speakers from the wider global culture. --------------- This is a really rough summary of items that caught me eye, or made me ponder (I had no idea English was only 32% of the internet, or at how rapidly it's changing). The full article is well worth a read, and I'm sure that others might pull different conclusions than I did. Edited by kanewai on 02 June 2014 at 3:56am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5148 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 126 of 176 02 June 2014 at 5:57am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
I am highly skeptical to number 4, I have no idea why number 9 is on the list (I do not know your time frame here - is it 10 years, 30 years , 100 years?) and number 7 also sounds fishy to me, but other than that I think you make a lot of valid points. What we need to keep in mind, though, is that a lot of the phenomena you are describing concern only a fraction of the population. Scandinavia is along with the Netherlands possibly the countries in the world with the highest amount of non English native yet English proficient speakers, but even here only a few are truly proficient. Almost everyone can muster some kind of English, ranging from a few sentences to full fluency, but you will find lots of people in remote valleys, or even in the big cities who cannot or will not speak English. And I suspect that even in a time frame of a 50 years, few countries will go beyond that level. Even if we can speak English, it will still be easier to speak our own language. I have had an American staying in my home over the last couple of weeks, and everyone speaks English to him, but the rest of the conversation in the room still goes on in Norwegian, even if we can all speak English. And inevitably, at some point everyone will revert into Norwegian, before we catch ourselves, and remember to go into English again to include him. Again, I would need to know which time frame you are thinking of, to know the accuracy of your predictions, but given how resistant languages are I am nowhere near as concerned as you are. English will become even more important, and it will provide a number of languages with loan words, but unlike you, I do not see that as a bad thing. In my ideal world, the Scandinavian situation would become the norm. Most people speak English, but they keep their own language. Could you imagine how many interesting users we could have on HTLAL from all over the world if that were the case? :-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5290 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 127 of 176 02 June 2014 at 2:43pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
Okay, apology completely ignored then. No, this thread is about language dominance, many of my arguments are based on globalization which I think includes the settling of new continents and the languages they brought with them as the new cultures overun the older ones and predominantly steamrolled them replacing their languages by force and sheer numbers. You had nothing to do with that so I don't expect you to feel guilty.
I feel all people are equal no matter what you do in life. But it's a fact that some cultures are more destructive towards other cultures or the environment than others. I'm not judging that morally simply analysing the traits.
Honestly i'm not sure exactly what you're getting at here and i'm not saying that to be smart, I would be happy to have it clarified. I'll attempt a response nevertheless. I have no idea if white people have something 'special' to set them apart in order to have gone down the path to discovery if you will. I doubt it, I think it was probably more of a chance thing and that their particular culture (European) or environments encouraged the search for new places and things.
I agree. It's worth pointing out the aboriginals again. During my health studies I wrote an assignment on the disparity of health compared to the rest of the Australian population as well as the effects of the western culture on their culture. Despite modern medecine and other such advantages aboriginal life expectancy today is close to 20 years less than the rest of the Australian population. This has resulted from a myriad of conditions which came via the new culture. They are not better off with all the conveniences of modern life. To think that other cultures are better off with a modernized society is ethnocentric and simply wrong, as the only people that should make that judgemet are those who have gone through the changes themselves and belong to those cultures. I'm sure there are cases where many cultural groups have been improved drastically and had their life expectancies increased but that isn't always the case. 'Modern' farming is NOT healthy for humans. Unless it's free range and organic, because once again we've messed with nature too much. Have you seen where the meat comes from in American McDonald's burgers and the power these food companies have? Their meat is so bad that to avoid food poisoining outbreaks they spray deadly poisons on them. Their is research that suggests that we are healthier without grains, dairy and many things farmed. Evidence points to a fats and proteins WITHOUT the processed rubbish which came along with modern farming ideal for health. Why have the rates of cancer sky rocketed in modern society when i'm certain many centuries ago the rates would have been much lower (earlier statistics going back decades or a hundred years show this). There is so much opposition to vaccination out there in there world. If you consider that each congressman (not sure right word- those that pass bills for the ppl in the US) has the equivalent number of 3 pharmaceutical lobbyists per each one them is it any wonder we all think modern medecine and vaccines are fantastic. All major diseases were in rapid decline in westernized countries BEFORE the introduction of vaccines. Do you know that a baby injected with the hepatitis vaccine just after birth is subjected to aluminium levels 5 to 10 times higher the safe recommended limits set in America by doctors. Not to mention the fact that so many people vaccinated still get the diseases they are vaccinated against, all the allergies caused by vaccines and the rates of autism skyrocketing? It's wrong to think they boost your immune system. There is a mountain of evidence out there by DOCTORS that proves vaccines do not work, wreak havoc on the immune system and neurological systems. Now go back to the congress situation and follow the money, pharmaceutical giants OWN politicians who influence media and churn out BS day in day out and how bad we are if we don't have vaccines. Obviously I am not in support of vaccines. Oh and do you know how many top politicians in the US (and making their influential way into Europe too) are linked to Monsanto? Arguably the most hated company in the world who genetically modifies crops feeds cancer causing grains to the populace (French lab tests on rats proved this). It's all good for you tho coz that's what the media mostly says, and the media is directed by dollars, and Monsanto has their dollars flowing everywhere they can to influence everyone they can. Nor am I in support of modern medecine in the area of most (not necessarily all) pharmceutical medications- always on the look out for a 'cure' when all they really want is to keep people buying their medications so they can keep influencing government and driving policy while the people are kept in the dark brainwashed by the popaganda machines aka television. Ever heard of food grade hyrdogen pyroxide, liposomal vitamin C and ozone in the area of health? Did you know that the FDA squashed trials of a product that had NO side effects and cured HIV patients in the decades ago as they were lobbied by a company who went on to sell a product (after being approved of course) called AZT which you might be familiar with. It won't cure you but hey at least you'll buy it. There are countless other options that you will never hear about that are CHEAP and have cured advanced cancers WITHOUT side effects. I could go on but i'm sure i'm going to be absolutely smashed for writing this stuff, but it proves a point and that is NOT everything you assume to be good for people really is. Modern culture is so much at odds against both the Earth and the human race. In fact it's worth digging beyond the surface for the truth behind most things, as we are fed so much rubbish. Edit: I'm not going to respond to comments on this topic as I have ranted and it's not really the place for it, I should've held my tongue but I couldn't help it, I feel like people should not accept things for what they appear to be and that's really my message, I don't want to debate any of it as I know there already is strong opposition to what I have to say, so there's really no point but just to accept 99 out of 100 people will not agree with any of this. Edited by PeterMollenburg on 02 June 2014 at 2:48pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Chris Ford Groupie United States Joined 4557 days ago 65 posts - 101 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Portuguese | Message 128 of 176 02 June 2014 at 3:14pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
Question: why do you think that a decline in English as a percentage of internet activity is an indicator of a decline in English usage overall? Increased usage of the internet is an indicator of development and modernization in a country; ironically that kind of modernization could just as easily be taken as an indicator that a country's economy has developed to the point where it's attracting foreign investment, manufacturing, trade, etc., which actually increases the demand for English skills in that country. Basically, just because a country is using the internet in its own language, that doesn't mean they aren't also using English internet sites as well for work or school. What I believe is happening (based on my own observations and experiences) is that more people in developing countries are learning English, while also preferring to use their native languages for social media, entertainment, or communicating with colleagues in their own country. Thus, the percentage of the internet in that native language inevitably increases (because there was little to no content in that language before), even if the people from that country are also using more English. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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