"English" Not Threatened By Webspeak 695
MudButt writes "Linguists say not to worry too much about Netspeak, otherwise known as the language of choice in chat rooms and IM clients. According to this Yahoo! article, linguists say that terms like "cya", "brb", "afk" are a healthy way of exploring the power of the written language. They went on to say "FYI, RTFA"!"
When are we getting machine code natural language? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:When are we getting machine code natural langua (Score:5, Funny)
damn you kids! (Score:4, Funny)
Hmmmm... (Score:5, Funny)
OMFG. Liek nevar, j00 n00b. lololol. j/k.
Re:When are we getting machine code natural langua (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:When are we getting machine code natural langua (Score:5, Interesting)
It's called Lojban [wikipedia.org]. (Just an interesting tidbit I picked up after having my question answered in the AI thread.)
Re:When are we getting machine code natural langua (Score:5, Interesting)
In what way can the term ease be used to describe anything about English? Let us see:
I could go on with my argument on how badly English is screwed up and aught to be scrapped completely but many others have proven my point through some creative writing:
Re:When are we getting machine code natural langua (Score:3, Interesting)
Everybody can read and understand English, even PHBs. So, if we had a reliable C -> English translator, then even PHBs would be able to understand what a given function does (I doubt they'd be able to understand a complete system, since that involves holding together the interaction lots of functions.)
Rational (of ROSE fame) invented a language called 'Controlled English'. This is English with a formal lexicon and grammar, absolutely awful to write, but
Re:When are we getting machine code natural langua (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:When are we getting machine code natural langua (Score:3, Interesting)
Newsflash! People are not as smart as they think they are! English has an interesting position in the language world -- there are those that believe that there is only one way to speak a language correctly, and they know this correct way; yet there is no body governing th
English? (Score:3, Insightful)
The point is that speaking passable English is easy, as in easier than many other languages. Speaking correct English is difficult, but many languages are more difficult.
P.S. I don't think the word "aught" means what you think it does.
Recalls a witticism: (Score:4, Funny)
and a wild horse is an ass,
Why is a ram in the ass a goose?
The question is all the more compelling during tax season.
Re:When are we getting machine code natural langua (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, English falls flat in the *mastery* area. Most other languages are easier to master, because they tend to use one word for one concept. The downside to this is that other languages tend to demand mastery, while English allows the speaker to present the concept in as simplistic terms as possible and still be understood.
Re:When are we getting machine code natural langua (Score:5, Interesting)
Not really. The biggest hurdle in mastering English is laziness. Most people don't want to learn "big words" such as "pyrotechnic", "facetious", "colloquial", or "penultimate" when simpler phrases such as "explosive devices", "bad joke", "local slang", and "second to ultimate" can be used just as well. Unfortunately, the former words convey quite a bit more richness in their definitions than the later phrases do. This results in the phrase "you know what I mean?" being constantly uttered.
Even worse is when people use phrases such as "He went to the store" instead of "He walked to the store", "He drove to the store", or "He jogged to the store". The former is perfectly acceptable, but fails to communicate many of the details inherent in the described excursion.
The second biggest barrier is proper grammar. Again, it take quite a bit of practice to state, "My apologies, I was unavoidably detained." instead of "Sorry I'm late." The former conveys far more elequance of speech than the later, thus setting the stage for productive communication.
Remember, only you can prevent yourself from saying, "And I was like, ugh, and she was like duh, and he was like whatever, then I went like that, and then you know..."
It's more complex than "laziness". (Score:5, Insightful)
1. The reality of phonological change, and linguistic change in general
Not really. The biggest hurdle in mastering English is laziness.
This is a very common sentiment among educated people, cross-linguistically and cross-culturally. In basically every culture around the world, there is a group of people, usually middle-aged, that believes that people spoke their language "correctly" about a generation or two ago.
The fact is that languages change constantly, and lots of these changes can be pretty well understood as natural processes. For instance, if you're from the US, you probably pronounce the word butter with a d-like sound in normal speech (linguists call the sound a "voiced alveolar tap"). So it sounds just like "budder". When people started using that pronunciation, their elders probably thought them "lazy" as well. I can almost hear them saying, "Pronounce your t's properly!"
But think about it. In order to pronounce the word with a proper tt in the middle, you'd have to turn your voice on to say the b and the u, then turn it off to say tt, and then turn it back on to say er. It's much easier to just leave your voice on! And that's what people started doing. If you say the word with a hard t sound in America today, people will probably consider it strange.
This does not imply that the speakers are/were lazy. In fact, this is a ridiculously common kind of phonological change. The same thing happened, for instance, when Latin amicus (pronounced [amikus]) changed to Modern Spanish amigo. That [k] sound turned to a [g] because it was between two vowels.
2. Registers
The second biggest barrier is proper grammar. Again, it take quite a bit of practice to state, "My apologies, I was unavoidably detained." instead of "Sorry I'm late." The former conveys far more elequance of speech than the later, thus setting the stage for productive communication.
People use different means of encoding meanings depending upon the register. That is, you speak differently depending on the social context. If you're late for a job interview, you probably wouldn't say my bad, the fuckin freeway's a mess by way of apology. Similarly, if you're late arriving to a keg party, you probably wouldn't say my apologies, I was unavoidably detained, unless you mean to be mildly humorous. (One probably wouldn't say that last sentence to one's spouse, either. The sentence is pretty strongly restricted to formal contexts.)
3. The reality of syntactic change
Regarding grammar, that's always in flux too. Consider the sentence, I'm going to buy a car next week. This is a future tense construction in Modern English, even though it doesn't much look like one to an educated reader. The word going in this kind of sentence no longer implies any kind of movement, as evidenced by the sentence, I'm going to sit here in my chair for three hours. (This construction, by the way, is being heavily phonologically reduced these days, to I'm gonna do or even I'munna do. This is something that happens very frequently to grammatical markers.)
What is going on here? Well, English speakers used to only use the verb go to mean movement. They then began using it for movement associated with proximal futures (with modal and aspectual meaning tied in), as in
Ev
0110100001101001 (Score:4, Funny)
Re:hi (Score:3, Funny)
Quite true.
Re:0110100001101001 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:0110100001101001 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:0110100001101001 (Score:4, Funny)
--
for some reason "preview" didn't help catch my spelling/grammar mistakes this time?
Re:When are we getting machine code natural langua (Score:3, Insightful)
"Time flies like an arrow."
"Fruit flies like a banana."
Both sentences can be parsed in either of two ways: Time(noun) flies(verb) like an arrow, or Time(adjective) flies(noun) like an arrow. Don't ask me what a time fly is. I
Re:When are we getting machine code natural langua (Score:3, Informative)
Re:When are we getting machine code natural langua (Score:3, Insightful)
A computer would have no more difficulty than we would. Most people upon first he
"English" (Score:4, Funny)
Re:"English" (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. (Score:5, Funny)
Now, get you're ass back to work. We don't, want to piss you're boss off their do, we now?
Re:"English" (Score:3, Funny)
Ah well, at least they didnt use the blink tag.
Re:"English" (Score:4, Funny)
Ah well, at least they didnt use the blink tag.
I prefer the bling tag, which causes words to become jewel encrusted.
Re:"English" (Score:2)
Re:"English" (Score:5, Funny)
We shouldn't get "hung up" with things like the "misuse" of "punctuation". We're "geeks" and as such we should be "allowed" to "misuse" the English "language".
Re:"English" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"English" (Score:3, Funny)
Like French...
Z95 Rocks Paris! (actually heard on Paris, FR FM radio)
I'll bet (Score:5, Funny)
Or IS he?!?!?!
Re:"English" (Score:5, Informative)
If french do have a word for things that are computer related for instance, it's likely to be akward or unusable (like the absence of distinction between download and upload).
And French is my native language.
Re:"English" (Score:4, Insightful)
French government forbidding their employees to say "e-mail" just because it's a word that came from English is nothing but pure nazism.
Re:"English" (Score:3, Interesting)
It may have, if we were still hundreds of years ago. I think with the internet and ease of international travel, the various dialects may actually merge more. I already hear certain "britishisms" (look ma, I created a new word!) being used in the US (across the pond, 'bloody', etc.). IMHO the more the wo
Threatened? How about evolving? (Score:5, Insightful)
We are already communicating under the influence of the computer. Language must change with the way that we communicate.
Re:Threatened? How about evolving? (Score:2)
Young People, Take Note (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of us old timers still prefer to comprehend what we're reading.
Re:Young People, Take Note (Score:4, Informative)
Some of us old timers still prefer to comprehend what we're reading.
Even Slashdot has its own "Slashspeak" (Sorry, couldn't resist the quotations marks, as per some of the previous threads). Some has taken me a while to figure out. Some I still haven't figured out. There should be a FAQ page with some of the frequently used Slashspeak, IMHO.
Here some of the few I've managed to figure out on my own.
IANAL = I am not a lawyer (with lawyer sometimes replaced with astronomer, physicist, etc)
WRT = with regard to
AFAIK = as far as I know
RTFA = read the f***ing article; also shortened to TFA or just FA - see parent post for FTFA, another variation - substitutes "from" for "read"
WTF= what the f*** usually followed by lots of ?'s and !'s
GP = grandparent, or grandparent post, the parent before the previous (parent) post
I still haven't figured out what the hell IIRC means, though.
Re:Young People, Take Note (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Threatened? How about evolving? (Score:3, Insightful)
The points of things like "CYA" and 'l8r' is that they sound the same as "See ya" and 'later', but they're easier to type (arguably l8r is not easier to type, however). There's no benefit to saying 'cya' versus 'see ya' because it comes out, verbally, the same.
The problem is that this sort of thing alters the way we communicate in a written manner. The English language, especially when it's being written, is already muddled enough without inv
Re:Threatened? How about evolving? (Score:3, Insightful)
so what? writing things without capital letters signifies the same utterance; why did you use capital letters? and that gratitous apostrophe?
The English language, especially when it's being written, is already muddled enough without inviting new deficincies just because a bunch of fourteen year old kids are too lazy to type or waste too much time IM'ing each other on cell phones.
Their ancestors butchered the la
Re:Threatened? How about evolving? (Score:5, Insightful)
The "netspeak" discussed in the article is the written counterpart to conversational English. It is not derived from formal writing; it is derived from informal spoken discourse, adapted to typed text.
It is obviously inappropriate for formal writing, and students have to be taught to write well, but there's no reason that they can't chat online informally and write papers formally. No parents avoid chatting around the breakfast table for fear that they will somehow damage their ability to give speeches. Cicero didn't deliver a prepared speech when he wanted to know how his friends were feeling, and there's no reason people chatting online should write essays to each other.
(Incidentally, the plural of "medium" is "media", unless your offspring are chatting with the dead)
Re:Threatened? How about evolving? (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally I think that the English language being taught in schools in the USA is devolving.
Kids are taught to identify syllables in a word and then to simply 'say' those syllables. The traditional pronunciation (based on derivation and history) is simply ignored.
This is turning the language taught in schools into a purely mechanical method of communication.
'Street' versions of the language are certainly evolving, but t
Re:Threatened? How about evolving? (Score:3, Insightful)
When has the traditional pronounciation been based on derivation and history? It's based on how things are actually pronounced. Frequently, when it's supposedly based on derivation and history, it's wrong: the t in valet was pronounced in the era of French that word was borrowed from, and it was pronounced for hundreds of years in English, until someone came along with "derivation and history".
Video (Score:5, Insightful)
So who's going to be the next Netscape?
Re:Video (Score:2)
Re:Video (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't multitask with video like you can with text. Unless somebody can figure out how to carry on several independant conversations at once using video, text will continue to be king.
Re:Video (Score:2)
Re:Video (Score:3, Insightful)
Still, while that offers a potentially more natural means of communication, text still has the (in my opinion very large) advanta
lest we forget Microsoft's take on this (Score:5, Funny)
I disagree (Score:5, Funny)
Sadly, that is a direct cut-paste from my IM window this morning.
Re:I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not an elitist thing, either. It's just a matter of time and energy. I don't have any more time to sit and puzzle together someone's stupid "netspeak" comments than I have to figure out what the fuck something like "skeet" means.
Worse is when someone can't be bothered to type "you are" instead of "u r" - but they can be bothered to put 50 exclamation points in the same fucking sentence.
Re:I disagree (Score:3, Funny)
Wlcum 2 my fos. Strng to c such aversn 2 leetspk frm an elitist such as urself. lol!!!!one
I should not have to read your sentences three or four times to figure out what you're saying, just because you're too lazy to write propertly.
We shdnt waste time 'n b-w just 'caus ur too slow-witted. !!!! lol1!11!!!
Takes more time, too.
We waste time riting lik that, u waste som time
Re:I disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
You must also realise that some people can read/write in such shortcuts very easily, and it's you who can be ridiculous not being able to quickly read the "garbled" message (especially in MMOGs, counter-strike and web-chats).
I almost never use webspeak/textspeak/leetspeak, but I do appreciate the beauty of it and I would have use
Not to Mention (Score:3, Funny)
Well Microsoft is pretty worried (Score:2, Funny)
can go both ways (Score:5, Informative)
"E-mail" used to be a technical term, and now can be written as plain english in "email".
"Text" was never a verb until SMS.
Re:can go both ways (Score:3, Funny)
I work for a rather large technology company and about two years ago, Blackberries became quite popular amongst the managment gang. During a rather prolonged conference call discussing some technical "challenges", one of the previously mentioned management types joined the call. The question was then raised about client notification. The PHB then promptly responded "Yes they are aware, we have been Rimming each other all weekend".
Kind of casts a new light on
I'm not worried about it... (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of people in the "professional" work force don't seem to understand that professionalism is supposed to extend to their written communications, and things like "werd" and "brb" in an email to a higher level executive don't provide a professional image.
What, no boxen and virii ... (Score:2)
Not even a TFAD (Troll for a Day)! Shocking, I tell you!
They really must update their list. We're on internet time here, buddy!
WTF (Score:5, Funny)
2000. 4LL j00r n3tsp34k is w34k
2001. eye r owns0r joo all!
Then we all realized it was easier to communicate with normal english, and having both hands on the keyboard is a huge factor
Re:WTF (Score:5, Funny)
If they don't, we mock them, example:
young'en: can neone help me?
olde 'en: I don't know, "Neone" does not seem to be on right now.
young'en: what?
olde 'en: There is no player named "Neone" in our guild.
young'en: no, i mean i want ANYONE to help me!
olde 'en: oh! you should have said so in the first place.
(I make an alt named "Neone" )
Neone: I can help you! But I am only a level 1 druid...
And so we teach and encourage proper written communication.
Netspeak? (Score:3, Interesting)
Some of these are pretty old, probably adopted as netspeak, which should underscore that, like the muck that is the english language, so is netspeak adaptable. What's worse is when k1dz put t3xt m3ss4g3 s14ng 1n th31r p4p3rz. Teachers have seen quite a bit of it, as an article several months back in the San Jose Murky News told of. u for you, mi for me, etc. English if nothing else has accumulated and occasionally discarded words from other languages and even made acronyms words. It's an ongoing thing over generations. Quite a lot comes in from whatever the big social upheaval is at the time a lot of slang came out of WW II with returning GI's
Don't understand what people are saying today?
"I dig"
"uh, no, it's 'word'"
"word?
"word!"
eom/eot/fts
spelling (Score:2)
Of course this doesn't mean that some people will not put in the effort to spell correctly when it matters.
Spelling & Grammer (Score:5, Interesting)
P.S. I am intentionally not spell checking this post, because if I mispelled something, it will help to proev my point.
Re:Spelling & Grammer (Score:2)
What's up with "grammer"? (Score:5, Interesting)
WTF people write "grammer"?
Re:What's up with "grammer"? (Score:4, Interesting)
Weird American English Vowels (Score:4, Interesting)
This is why is happens: phonetics. I myself often have trouble remembering which it should be because of this.
In American English, at least all the dialects I've personally heard, because the emphasis is on the first syllable, the second vowel is often neglected, and since the "a" is is pronounced as a nondescript "uh" in this context (as in both syllables of 'butter'), and the word comes off akin to "gram-rrr".
R is itself a semivowel, which can be pronounced alone without the use of any other vowels, though it isn't properly written that way. The closest vowel combination to a stand-alone "R" is "er", which is itself very close to the "ar" (with 'a' as 'uh', thus 'uhr') in "grammar", hence the easy confusion.
I once drew up a thing that you might find useful, deliniating the different vowel and dipthong sounds used in American English, arrayed in order by similarity, and the stupidly large assortment of different written letters that can make those sounds. This is from memory so it might be a bit off...
VOWEL SOUND
- LETTER EXAMPLES
ee
- "e" in "be", "i" in "sing", "y" in "very", "ea" in "eat", "ee" in "bee".
ih
- "i" in "bit"
aa
- "a" in "bat"
ah
- "o" in "bot", "a" in "car", "augh" as in "caught", "ough" as in "ought", "aw" as in "law"
eh
- "e" as in "bet"
uh
- "u" as in "but", "a" as in "a thing".
oh
- "o" as in "note", "ow" as in "throw", "oa" as in "oats", "eau" as in French
ouh
-"oo" as in "book"
oo
- "u" as in "dude", "o" as in "do", "oo" as in "pool", "ew" as in "new", "ough" as in "through", "w" as in "now" (as part of a dipthong)
And there are two dipthongs that sometimes get single-letter representations in English (the rest are just combinations of the above base sounds):
ee/oo dipthong
- "u" as in "butane" (pronounced like "you" the second person pronoun)
ah/ee dipthong
- "i" as in "kite" (pronounced like "I" the first person pronoun)
Seriously, English pronunciation is just fucked up in the namespace (amongst many other places). We need like twice as many written vowels as we've got to represent all the sounds.
Re:Weird American English Vowels (Score:3, Informative)
"ough" is pronounced at least 6 different ways in English:
"uff" as in "tough" or "rough"
"ow" as in "bough"
"oo" as in "through"
"o" as in "though" (long 'o')
"aw" as in "thought"
"off" as in "trough"
"Rediculous" (Score:3, Interesting)
My personal pet peeve, and I've only really noticed this in the past few years, has been the word "ridiculous". Seemingly overnight, half of the under-25 crowd on IRC started typing "rediculous". Drove me bonkers for months. Finally, I went on a very long and pompous tirade about spelling. I couldn't take it anymore.
Several of them then explained to me that that is how they think it's sp
I don't get it (Score:2, Insightful)
We'll wish for netspeak when we're old... (Score:5, Insightful)
I like "netspeak". I don't use it much, but I like that a subculture exists, as computers have changed things so much that they very much deserve one. I also like that we've already seen a rapid turnaround: our current abbreviations are one variant, the 31337 stuff another, the variant where vowels are always lowercase and consants uppercase (or the other way around) is pretty much gone now, and the old school one from the DOS based BBSes where people used the extended ASCII set to do similar things has been extint for awhile.
Still, I think it's cool that they all exist.
Re:We'll wish for netspeak when we're old... (Score:3, Funny)
Alive and well, you insensitive clod!
The problem with real-time text communication (Score:5, Insightful)
face to face: Body language + tone of voice
Phone: only tone of voice, losing all the information that bodylanguage brings
IM: nothing.
The English language (others too) is at best an incomplete tool of communication. All the subtleties that tone of voice and body language convey are lost over internet chat. Why else would people use those asinine "smileys" to convey their mood? They do this because otherwise, it's rather difficult to get a feel of the other person's mood.
Re:The problem with real-time text communication (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree with you completely. I'm kind of "older" for the IM crowd (early 30s), and in general, I find it absolutely infuriating. It's the most impoverished mode of communication i've ever experienced. All the absence of conversational pragmatics normally present in speech, and none of the well-formed ideas of writing. Email, while it may be half-duplex, at least has the advantage that a single message is int
|\|eTZP3@K (Score:2, Funny)
Re:|\|eTZP3@K (Score:5, Funny)
the list is screwed up (Score:2)
Not Concerned about a new form language (Score:2)
I only worry about speech that is not clear or not precise. Netspeak is clear and precise, though you may have to learn it like
OSS Strikes Again (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm guessing that English is, in fact, being threatened. If they only used Gaim instead of AIM, they wouldn't have problems with language because it replaces "webspeak" with English.
Re:OSS Strikes Again (Score:2)
Re:OSS Strikes Again (Score:3, Informative)
I have made the mistake of using cum in my postings on slashdot, which always seems to delight and amuse the sixth-grade-male mentality prevalent.
For those who are ignunt: It is precisely the latin conjuction meaning "with", as in: "I think this new photocopier-cum-papershredder is a disaster waiting to happen." Think of the word "cumulative"
Perhaps this is why... (Score:2)
And yes, I pretty much don't know WTF I'm talking about.
IronChefMorimoto
Other research claims 'netspeak' is not a language (Score:3, Interesting)
Ofcourse, this is not without controversy -especially with leet-speeking people.
I tried to have a slashdot article of it, but apparently the Higher Mods were of the opinion leet wasn't interesting enough...untill now (?).
The reasearchpaper can be found on: http://www.verbumvanum.org/indexlingua.html [verbumvanum.org]
Spell checkers (Score:3, Insightful)
Therefore, no one knows how to spell "their," "there," or "they're" anymore. Same with your/you're and many others.
Sadly, teacher I know are getting lax on punishing these errors, as the problems are so common everyone's scores would be too low.
Besides, can't you just add "lol" to the spell checker's dictionary?
My teacher friend would disagree (Score:3, Interesting)
Purity of the language? (Score:3, Insightful)
Netspeak, not idiotalk (Score:5, Interesting)
Rather, it's the laziness involving a complete lack of punctuation and other more subtle elements of the language which convey the tone and perhaps intent that is worrisome. Combine that with self-correcting software like spell checkers, and essentially a person never really develops communications skills beyond a certain point. And then they carry themselves in text communications as idiots.
A friend applied for a job that he wasn't really interested in and received a form-letter rejection via email, riddled with grammatical errors, incorrect usage of some words (they're/their/there, then/than), and so on. He corrected the letter rather sarcastically and sent it back to them and they actually apologized AND offered him the job! Apparently people who can write english as well as speak it are in short supply.
Re:Netspeak, not idiotalk (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed. It is not so much the use of Netspeak as it occurs on the Internet, but that it has a tendency to creep in
Which version of English is threatened? (Score:3, Interesting)
Instead, there are about 500 Million Plus individual languages, each varying in the number of common elements, which are all collectively called the "English Language".
Unless I have a bigger gun than you, your version of English is just as "correct" as mine.
The fears of an English Major... (Score:3, Funny)
I fear I shall see a plethora of posts, all alike in their incoherent use of obscure, incomprehensible acronyms and abbreviations, intelligible only to residents of the deepest rings of the Internet's darkest places.
I fear that, upon reading the content contained herein, I hall be inundated with the text chat of the Deep Old Ones.
I fear such things, and what they portend for the future of language.
If you don't know NetSpeak... (Score:3, Funny)
Source [aqfl.net].
It Doesn't Help That English Absorbs Everything (Score:3, Insightful)
English is built upon 30% French, 30% 'Latinate', 30% West German, and the rest is what was lying around the British Islands (Celtic, Galegic, etc.). All of these influences happened because Britan was invaded...a lot. It has touched many cultures and been everywhere. Grammar and spelling rules are more dictated by historical reasons than pheonetic. It is also heavily 'exported' all over the world due to world influence of Britian and now the US.
Is it bad that Instant Messenger programs and computers communciation in general is changing English? Not really. It just shows that English is very much a living language. Besides I consider it to be a transitive thing: people generate grammatic errors and chose different patters because of the keyboard input. Once technology evolves to something different for the primary Human-Machine interface then this will be less of an issue.
Then perhaps someone could help me out... (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Do not have anything capitalized
2) Do not have periods at the end of the sentence
3) Are run-on sentences
4) Oftentimes have shortcuts for words (the most common being 'u' for the word "you").
Does anybody know where these habits are coming from?
Re:Then perhaps someone could help me out... (Score:4, Insightful)
There's always the possiblity that you suck as a teacher. One thing that pissed me off in high school was bad teaching. If an entire class fails a math test, retakes it, and fails again, the problem is most likely not the stsudents. Either the test is poorly written or the teacher didn't do their job.
I'm not saying that you're neccesarily the problem, I'm just asking you to examine yourself first if it's a seemingly widespread problem.
Famous quote (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Famous quote (Score:3, Insightful)
I will feel a certain amount of schadenfreud concerning the impending demise of other languages.