English is also nice in that there is no "baked in" formal or informal use of the language. I think it breaks down barriers in conversations with a superior or a random stranger. I wonder if this has any larger scale effects...
Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet
21–30 of 478 posts
Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet
#22My unsuccessful forays into foreign language learning have convinced me also that none are as simple and logical as our own beautiful language, English, innit?
English grammar has a lot of exceptions. Personally I think Spanish is much simpler than English, and has a much more logical spelling system as well. The main complexity Spanish introduces over English is the subjunctive mood , which is less complex than the many fine details of the English language, IMO (such as learning how to use the word "do" as a helping verb). The English language actually does still have the…
English has the subjunctive mood as well, though it is phasing out of use. If you were to express a hypothetical, you would use "were" as the subjunctive tense. For example, the song title "If I were a rich man" rather than "If I was a rich man", or the previous sentence in this post.
Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet
#23It is necessary that there should be a common global language that everyone speaks, in addition to their native tongue. It might as well as be English rather than any other language. The other options are Spanish, French, Hindi, Chinese, or Arabic. It makes little difference as each of these are not going extinct any time soon.
This is the idea behind Esperanto, the movement behind which further stipulates that the common second tongue should be universally second, to avoid privileging native speakers and promulgating hegemony. (Granted, Esperanto vocabulary and orthography is quite Euro-centric.) Learning a second language is difficult, especially one very unlike your native tongue. Native speakers of the de facto lingua franca always have…
The problem about Esperanto (aside from Eurocentrism) is that it has no real bulkhead to start from, unlike (to pick Esperanto-origin-era competitors) say French, English or Spanish.
Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet
#24My unsuccessful forays into foreign language learning have convinced me also that none are as simple and logical as our own beautiful language, English, innit?
English pronunciation is extremely hard. There are virtually no rules, you have to memorize pronunciation of each word individually. It is neither simple nor logical.
Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet
#25The best point that the article touches on is that English is a good "neutral" language for countries like Sudan and entities like the EU with many different languages spoken. There is a bit of a snowball effect where any language having the advantage of being spoken as a cross-cultural communication language further incentivizes learning that language for people wishing to communicate in that manner. I think such a…
Computers will translate in real time.
Binary is the universal language of classic computers based on electromagnetic physics.
Assuming quantum computing or some other unforeseen technology doesn’t replace other forms of computing then we will likely all be relying on binary in one way or another.
Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet
#26It is necessary that there should be a common global language that everyone speaks, in addition to their native tongue. It might as well as be English rather than any other language. The other options are Spanish, French, Hindi, Chinese, or Arabic. It makes little difference as each of these are not going extinct any time soon.
As something of an idealist I can’t help but think Unicode was a terrible mistake. We could have used ASCII as a carrot to get the whole World speaking a common tongue. Think of the wars that could have been avoided, the scientific progress.
You kinda did this, unintentionally mostly, which just resulted in every country coming up with their own incompatible encoding. Unicode tried to unify this mess again.
Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet
#27My unsuccessful forays into foreign language learning have convinced me also that none are as simple and logical as our own beautiful language, English, innit?
English grammar has a lot of exceptions. Personally I think Spanish is much simpler than English, and has a much more logical spelling system as well. The main complexity Spanish introduces over English is the subjunctive mood , which is less complex than the many fine details of the English language, IMO (such as learning how to use the word "do" as a helping verb). The English language actually does still have the…
I agree, it is very hard to master the special cases of English. A paper might communicate ideas with perfect clarity and still be filled with subtle mistakes. After entering STEM academia, I have been exposed to more English writing by non-native speakers. It made me appreciate the difficulty of mastering English. It also made me sympathetic to some deeper criticisms of English beyond the inconsistent spelling rules. For example, the overuse of articles and the verb "to be".
Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
English grammar has a lot of exceptions. Personally I think Spanish is much simpler than English, and has a much more logical spelling system as well. The main complexity Spanish introduces over English is the subjunctive mood , which is less complex than the many fine details of the English language, IMO (such as learning how to use the word "do" as a helping verb). The English language actually does still have the…
English has the subjunctive mood as well, though it is phasing out of use. If you were to express a hypothetical, you would use "were" as the subjunctive tense. For example, the song title "If I were a rich man" rather than "If I was a rich man", or the previous sentence in this post.
yes, I had just realized that and added it as an edit.
I'm pretty sure you can ignore the subjunctive and still have it be correct, i.e. I don't think there is anything grammatically wrong with saying "If I was rich", at least in the sense that it wouldn't be picked up on in casual speech
Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet
#29It is necessary that there should be a common global language that everyone speaks, in addition to their native tongue. It might as well as be English rather than any other language. The other options are Spanish, French, Hindi, Chinese, or Arabic. It makes little difference as each of these are not going extinct any time soon.
> It is necessary that there should be a common global language that everyone speaks,
It's obviously not necessary as it is still far from the case that everyone speaks English, nor has it been the case historically.
It is true that lingua francas, link languages which acquire large numbers of non-native speakers are a common feature over time, spreading from obvious utility (trade etc.)
Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet
#30Considering that English has basically emerged as a "pidgin" languages, taking elements from the languages of various peoples coming to the islands -- Britons, Romans, Saxons, Danes, French etc -- and being simplified in the process, it's only logical that it is adopted far more easily than other languages with even more speakers -- Chinese, Hindi, Arabic -- or that were expanded around the globe in a similar fashion…
Sure, that might be one factor, but the global imperialism of the British and United States is another huge factor.
On the other hand, global imperialism has always played a role in forging a lingua franca in many ages, just like Classical Greek in the Hellenistic period and Latin in Roman Empire. (Disclaimer: I'm not judging the morality of imperialism, just stating the fact.)