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English, The Global Internet Language?
from the omnium-gatherum dept.
There are a number of interesting links there as well, including one to an interview with David Graddol of The English Company U.K in which he comments:
The type of language switching and word borrowing that typically goes on in any multilingual community is now happening on the Internet on a massive scale, and it is difficult to know what long-term impact this might have on the way the international community will use English.
The main article stated, "As has been widely noted, the Internet, besides being a convenient vehicle for reaching mass audiences such as, say, the citizenry of Japan or Argentina, is also well suited to bringing together the members of small groups -- for example, middle-class French-speaking sub-Saharan Africans." The two comments together paint a picture of various communities across the net infecting each other with their jargon as the members they have in common carry linguistic information with them from place to place on the net. Because the net is notoriously devoid of geographical places, the divisions are solely on the basis of interest and language. Sufficient interest will motivate the transfer of ideas, although I can't see how sufficient fluency will overcome lack of interest. That implies that those people who do not participate in online culture will be the last to adopt the linguistic innovations that spread from here. And conversely, we will adopt their linguistic creations only when they don't attempt to replace one of our own. After all, how many regular Slashdot users mispronounce "Internet" as "Information Superhighway"?
Re:a point to ponder (Score:3)
Firstly, that was just a quip taking adavantage of the poster's misspelling(s) given the nature of the topic. Secondly, I didn't mention English per se, but rather American.
I find it absolutely amazing how true the stereotype of American's poor spelling is. All too often I can deduce the American origin of posters simply by the number and nature of spelling mistakes. While there is a good number of British, Australian, Kiwi, Indian and other English-speaking posters untouched by any sense of syntax, their numbers pale in comparison to their American counterparts, both in terms of quantity and scope.
I am sick and tired of the old excuse of content over form. Apologizing for one's poor spelling skills in a written medium is akin to apologizing for showing up with a hammer at a fishing competition. It might possibly get you some fish, but who dare endure the process of shame and misery? Poor spelling distracts the reader and undermines the message.
Huh? (Score:3)
Re:what is english? (Score:3)
Even though German, French, Italian and Russian are far more common as a first or second language inside europe, English evolved into the third language of choice, to replace latin and French for that purpose. In my view the advantages by far outweigh the disadvantages.
The disadvantages are that since English is a living language, as opposed to Latin, native speakers have a strong advantage in education, and have less trouble getting their message accross to other people. (for example: Even though I am a scientist, an american intelligence test would probably classify me as a moron, because English doesn't come naturally to me, and my knowledge of the Anglo saxon cultural framework is limited)
People don't hate 'English' as such, it is convenient to have a standard tool for communicating with people from other parts of the world.
There is a lot of resistance against the attitude predominantly associated with anglo saxon culture (American- especially). It is a rare fusion of the Island mentality of the English, the evangelical attitude of the pilgrims and the empirial mindset usually found in superpowers (the Roman empire was a good example, so was the British empire, and so is the American empire now).
Americans seem to assume by default that every sane human being would want to be an american deep down inside, and that people who don't are suspicious, enemies or freedom and security world wide. Other models of free societies are usually dismissed as primitive, contrived or indecisive. Even the posted article suggests that the USA is the only truly free society.
Strong, often violent resistance against cola and hamburgers is often dismissed as religious fanaticism, anal retentive tendencies or downright jealousy, but the fact is that arabs really like being arabs, and they don't just pretend to, out of fear that Allah may otherwise strike them down. The French like being French, the Russians are proud of being Russian etc. I feel patronised and belittled when an American tourist asks me for directions in my city, and then corrects my grammar when I give them in his native language.
We'd all get along a lot better if Americans (especially in politics and business) would stop viewing the world as made up of only two groups: flawed wannabe americans on one hand, and enemies of all that is good and holy on the other hand.
immigrant Joke Time! (Score:3)
China! (Score:4)
Westerners (I am one) typically base world languages against their own personal experience. That is, English to be #1, Spanish is #2, and French is a quaint but dying language (grin)
I would not be totally surprised if China someday unseats the US as a world power, and having totally devestated their own country's ecology, they look to Sibera, Alaska, northern India and Russia for land to rape and "resettle".... like they are doing to Mongolia and Tibet.
Chinese as a world language is usually dismissed on the bases that the concentration of speakers is localized - but what if they weren't? We're talking about over 1/4 of the world's people under the thumb of a dictatorship always looking to distract their people. As the population gets on the net and becomes dissatisfied, one could speculate that a nice diversionary war would fan the flames of nationalism (remember the near-riots after the US bombed the Chinese embesy in Yugoslavia?).
More accurately, English is the world's BUSINESS language. I don't expect that to change in the next few hundred years however...
The Global Internet Language? (Score:3)
1337 sp34k0r1ng 15 4LL j0 n33d, 5ux0r5!!!!!!!!!!1!!!!!!!
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Not surprising (Score:3)
English is also the official language of air traffic control, so basically if you live in a non-English speaking country and want to be a commercial pilot, you must learn English. Of course, many pilots only learn enough useful English to communicate with ATC and nothing else, but that does say something.
Re:China! (Score:3)
Hmm, more or less true (not true, strictly speaking; especially amongst the older generation, there are large literacy gaps). But not perhaps for the reasons you're thinking.
As a native speaker of both Chinese and English, and a product of both educational systems (I spent most of my teen years in the US, before my family relocated back to Taiwan, and had to play catch-up with my Taiwanese classmates as a result), I'd say the Taiwanese educational system places a much greater emphasis on written literacy, for the simple reason that written Chinese is harder to learn. It may be true that literacy rates are equivalent at comparable grade levels, but only because the Chinese student puts much greater effort into it.
In Taiwan, young children are taught to read and write using bopomofo (aka the Taiwan Phonetic System), a phonetic representation for Mandarin which allows children to learn to read and write while they're working on proficiency in written Chinese. That proficiency (it takes a vocabularly of between 2000 and 2500 characters just to read a newspaper), on average, seems to come somewhat later for Chinese children than for Western children; so in the meanwhile, they rely on bopomofo.
As for being able to input Chinese more quickly than English, this depends in large part on the input method being employed. There are several common methods available; I'd say the only one that is faster is handwriting recognition.
You are correct about the "densities" of the languages. This is not true necessarily, however, simply because of the relative character densities, but also because Chinese tend to speak in shorter sentences, using more compact language. For example, where in English I would say "I have a question," the Chinese equivalent utterance would be simply, "have question".
Take care,
Lee Kai Wen -- Taiwan, ROC
Well... BASIC English (Score:5)
I am natively speaking Czech/Slovak and my primary and secondary language are German and Russian, but you cannot help it. If you work around computers, you simply HAVE TO learn english. There is no way how to get around it. I have few friends that tried, but either they overcome incredible difficulties or they just gave up. But however english is my third foreign language, it soon became the one that I use most.
There is several reasons why english spread so much, but I think one is really important. You can learn just 3000 words to be able to fully express yourself in most cases. Basic english is something that really helps this language to spread. When you count into it kind of easy grammar...
And I especially like that there are no special symbols, special characters, just all the basic latin characters and thats it. Don't even talk about ease of computer recognition ...
But what I think will move english forward is the fact that more and more 3rd world countries use english as their official language. And these countries are now stepping forward too...
when in rome (Score:5)
The issue is also this, while the US does not hold a monopoly on goold old DARPA Net, it was the first. and it comes to an argument of "when in rome..." If the internet was created by the spanish and everyone started to adopt that, i'm sure the language of the internet would be Spanish. (This is not to say that the de facto language right now IS english, but for all intents and purposes, english is the beast that rules).
I guess it's just getting annoying that everyone keeps having an argument about why it's so bad that English is becoming the foremost global language. Personally, i'm getting sick of it. Let's just pick a fsckin' language, make sure everyone speaks it (i guess except for people in the south - i still can't figure out what language that is they're speaking), and be on our merry way. If it's english, great...a ton of us already know what one. If not....i'm not lazy, and i'm willing to learn.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
Re:a point to ponder (Score:4)
> than one language fluently was extrememely low
And the percentage of Americans that could spell their native language was even lower.
Re:China! (Score:4)
In response to your post, I don't think chinese is going to become a global language for a couple of different reasons.
1)When you say Chinese - are you speaking of Mandarin or Cantonese (i would assume Mandarin)?
2)Before china unseats the US as THE super-power, it needs to go through the same time of issues as the old soviet union did. I honestly don't see a communist dictatorship moving into the big seat any time soon. Russia is a slightly different beast, and they were never really on par with the states....that was more of an assumption, as they sacrificed almost everything internally for things like sputnik and the nuclear arms race.
I think one of the main reasons that people say chinese is going to become the main language of the world because it's the most spoken language in the world currently. Remember where most chinese speakers live...in China. The language is way too concentrated currently. Additionally, by that rational, Hindi has a high likelihood of becoming the global language as well. I find that idea laughable.
Oh well, let's just pick a frickin' language and be done with it.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
ENGLISH (Score:3)
However I do agree written English is a mess, and its spelling moreso
Peter.
American English (Score:5)
English is the grande dame of the internet, not some language du jour. English is not a kludge consisting of some funky words that we so irregardlessly made up. English is the Big Kahuna!
If you watch any sci fi... (Score:5)
Re:It ain't even the United States language. (Score:4)
Originally, the U.S. was a country that was founded upon immigration. In fact, immigration is a strength of a country, but too many people here look at it as a bad thing. Anyways, the thing is, when people come here from another country, their English may or may not be very good. These people are consumers, and need to buy groceries, get housing, work, etc. So, as a result of capitalism, businesses try to cater to the needs of the people. In the U.S. today, you see a lot of places that are bilingual, and have English and Spanish. That is only because there is a market that you need to advertise to native Spanish speakers. I see it like, if you were Buddhist, and a lot of other buddhists lived in your area, you're probably not going to celebrate Christmas. So, let's say Christianity is the official religion of the U.S., it won't matter. Businesses are not going to sell christmas trees in your area, instead they will sell little Buddha statues and such. This isn't infringing on any American's rights, it's just catering to the need of a specific group of people.
I also see this from a free speech point of view. Free speech is free speech, whether it is in English, Spanish, hax0r sp33k, or anything else. The government should never have the right to tell me what I can or can't say. There is no way to make an "official" English to use in all situations, as you will no doubt see from how different the dialects already are between the northeast, southeast, west, etc. I think that the whole "English should be our official language" dogma is often a mask for racism. I have not seen any place of business that has Spanish but not English. Sure, the people working there may not be masters of the language, but if you go to a Mexican restaurant and ask for a coke, they won't bring you sprite any more often than English as a first language waiters will.
lEt as fIks INglIx! (Score:4)
of course, you can read what I've written, and know that this is a horrible idea, but in the past 100 years, the english language(s) has metamorphed into so many different dialects that we may even put the chinese to shame. we have our share of slang and coloquialisms (sp?) too, and because the computer doesn't understand them, we are stupid for using them.
I agree with you completely. English is an entirely too irregular language to be used for global communication. Especially this horrible spelling system. Who else remembers learning "I before E, except after C..." in their school days and wondering why it had to be so confusing?
Well, we can du something abaut that. First off, let's meke sum sense aut uf thu vawels; no more uf this "I before E" crap, just plein Latun and short vawels. And wi can toss aut thos silli treiling E's whail wi'r at it.
Thu cansonants also niid tuu bi cliind up. No mor "GIF or JIF?" argyuments--wun saund pur kansonant hiir. And wi kan teik keir uv TH, SH and CH bai riuzing q, x, and c.
But qu vaulz ar stil kunfyuzing, so let's get rid uv kapitulizeixun. nau wi kAn yuz kApItUl lEtUrz for xOrt vaulz. And wi kAn also yuz kApItUlz for kansonants: N for "ng", Q for "qis" or "qat" (As apozd tu "qiN").
fainali, wi hAv klind ap QU spElIN Uv INglIx! nau If wi kAn onli gEt rId Uv al Qoz IdiUmz...
o, And dUz EniwUn no hau tu pronauns "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"? ai nEvr fIgyurd Qat wUn aut.
(Translation: Oh, and does anyone know how to pronounce "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"? I never figured that one out.)
Re:"English" outdated (Score:3)
While the spoken form of Norwegian doesn't sound a lot like English, the similarities in the written form are uncanny, far closer than French is.
I've never been to Frisia, (a province of the Netherlands) but I'm told that's even closer.
English is basically a creole of various Nordic languages (Saxon, Danish, Anglian, Frisian, etc) and old French, with a little bit of the original Celtic, and a dash of just about every other language on earth thrown in.
Interesting point on English (Score:3)
English as refered to on the internet (and in the case of computers in general, is more likely than not american english. I mean I can't tell you how many times I have had to run through pages and pages of manually written html files (written in a text editor not that gui dreamweaver/flash shit) and do a find and replace for align="centre" with align="center".
While this is a slight difference, it is significant, because there are a large number of non-American English speaking programmers out there and all these people have to learn how to program in one form of english and then go back to reading & writing in their native form of english.
What you end up with here is alot of programmers who end up being confused about which english language mode they're in most of the time which gradually leads to a degradtion in the quality of both written forms of english over time.
In this way, it could be argued (not that I neccessarily am) that the computers/internet/web are partially responsible for the gradual degradation of English as a whole - because it encourages inhomogeneity in the use of both forms.
By the way most of the design methodolgies I have been taught at uni - when it comes to computer (software) systems design - deal with design systems that use graphical methods with direct dependence on english language interpretations and uses. Has anyone seen any design methodologies that aren't actually in english ?
"Official" language doesn't tell whole story (Score:3)
Sure, plenty of less-developed countries have English as one of, if not the only, "official" language.
Does that mean that all or even a majority of the native population speaks it at all, let alone as a first language? Absolutely not!
(I wish I could find my sociolinguistics class notes *sigh*)
I do remember that in at least one case, English was designated the "official" language to keep a war from breaking out between speakers of the two main languages actually in use in the country in question.
The official language of Haiti is French. Do most Haitians speak standard French? No. Most Haitians speak a local creole that speakers of standard French would find difficult to comprehend.
Of course, given that these people don't generally have Internet access, they may not be seen as relevant to the discussion. I'm just pointing out that they exist in large numbers.
:)
Why the disparity? (Score:4)
Two major reasons:
1. Distance from concentrations of foreign language speakers. Since I live in New York, it would be fairly easy for me to drive to Quebec, but that's about it in terms of going someplace where the signs are all in another language (not counting the local alphabet-soup neighborhood). Contrast this with the much shorter distances between European countries.
2. Americans are damned arrogant and think the world should learn English to accommodate us, but we shouldn't need to do likewise. This is nothing new -- my mother was an exchange student in Belgium about 30 years ago when some of the other American students she traveled with walked into a post office and started loudly berating the man behind the counter because nobody there spoke English. Never mind that English isn't one of the two official languages of the country.
Rude. Very rude and arrogant. And the Internet seems to be making it worse, unfortunately.