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Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet

theguardian.com

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Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet

#161

Post by dorchadas »

raverbashing wrote: post #135
danieltillett wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have always found the Irish approach to Gaelic amusing - you have a whole country that can speak a language that almost nobody actually does.

"you have a whole country that can speak a language" Yeah, not really (for both parts) But there are small parts that are (natively) Irish speaking, called Gaeltacht

> But there are small parts that are (natively) Irish speaking, called Gaeltacht

Unfortunately they're likely to be gone within 50 years or so. The government really doesn't care about them, and just pays lipservice to the language.

Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet

#162

Post by reustle »

acchow wrote: post #149
tbrock wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also the lingua franca of tech. There isn’t any way to say “Linux Kernel Networking Subsystem” or “8-Way associative cache” in French or any other language without severe lingual contortions.

> “Linux Kernel Networking Subsystem” How do they say this in Japanese? In Chinese (Mandarin/Cantonese)?

Something like

リニキス　カーネル　ネットワークイング　サブシステム

It's basically English pumped though a lossy algo. I hate katakana and hope it dies soon.

Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet

#163

Post by intopieces »

jejones3141 wrote: post #66

The influence still goes both ways--I read that American movie studios cut out dialogue that they don't think foreign viewers will understand because of English-specific wordplay or culture-specific references. (See https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-01-10/saving-ho... )

Ever since I saw the movie Pacific Rim (2013) I have suspected that dialog in very expensive movies (that one was $190m) was a bit simplified so that translation could be easy for the Chinese market.

Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet

#164

Post by toasterlovin »

NegativeLatency wrote: post #7

If you're interested in this topic, you might like this podcast: http://historyofenglishpodcast.com It's a very interesting version of history as it relates specifically to the english language.

Seriously, people, this is a great podcast.

Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet

#165

Post by dorchadas »

jessaustin wrote: post #60
YaxelPerez wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There used to be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%E2%80%93V_distinction#Englis...

It's funny that "thou" seems so formal now.

And it's all because of the King James Bible! They used 'thou' there when talking to God because they wanted it to seem informal and portray him as a friend. It's quite funny how after it fell out of use, it was reinterpreted as the exact opposite, with people being more formal when talking to God.

Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet

#166

Post by kzrdude »

colanderman wrote: post #16
devoply wrote: post #5

It 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…

English is actually fulfilling the original goal of Esperanto:

> Zamenhof's goal was to create an easy and flexible language that would serve as a universal second language to foster peace and international understanding.

We should be amazed at the global convergence on a language, even if it's not Esperanto, and it can accomplish all the same things.

Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet

#167

Post by BerislavLopac »

nerfhammer wrote: post #68
protomyth wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." -- James Nicoll

Also (unusually?) English retains some semblance of the original spelling of words borrowed from numerous other languages and dialects

Not just that -- in some cases spelling of original English words was changed to align with certain political requirements. My favourite example is "queen": it was originally a perfectly norman Anglo-Saxon (i.e. Old English) word, "cwene" (pronounced more or less kweh-neh). When the French-speaking Normans conquered England, they accepted the local word for political reasons, but their scribes used the French way of spelling this group of sounds, that is using "que" like in Latin.

Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet

#168

Post by toasterlovin »

kharms wrote: post #146
jcranmer wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Double negatives are grammatically correct English. Consider the sentence, "I do not think that course of action would be unwise."--that is a double negative, and I know of no one who thinks there's even a hint of problem with that sentence. One facet of double negatives is that the English sense of negative + negative = positive isn't universal. In French, double negatives remain negative; consider "Je ne sais jamai…

>"I do not think that course of action would be unwise." That's a funny example, as it can be read both literally ("I like it."), and passive-aggressively ("I don't dislike it."). So while double negatives might not be grammatically incorrect, they are often ambiguous.

This is the kind of stuff the makes writing an art form.

Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet

#169

Post by bartread »

koboll wrote: post #78
wallflower wrote: post #63

In many European countries, you cannot get a good job (like one with an international company) unless you can communicate in English at CEFRL B1 proficiency [1]. China may very well become the largest economy in the world, and there is no way that Chinese, as a multi-toned, symbolic language, will ever become the Lingua franca, as it is near impossible for most adults to learn, in contrast to English [2]. It can be a…

This is what's left unmentioned in most articles excoriating the rise of English -- the benefits of a lingua franca far outweigh the detriments of English intrusion on other languages and cultures. Unfortunately the parallels to colonization make polemic takes irresistible to outlets like The Guardian.

> Unfortunately the parallels to colonization make polemic takes irresistible to outlets like The Guardian.

Quite. As I have observed before, The Guardian is all too often The Daily Mail for leftie intellectuals. These days, even as something of a leftie intellectual, I find myself often unable to tolerate it at all. And in general I have less and less patience with overly polemic or political points of view - it honestly just gets boring and doesn't make the world any better for anyone.

Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet

#170

Post by dorchadas »

RightMillennial wrote: post #43
louprado wrote: post #15

One complaint about English is that double negatives are not grammatically correct. The word "not" is so important it should be re-enforced in someway. Spanish supports double negatives. The French add redundancy with "ne" and "pas". It's worth noting that American gangsters often talk with double negatives and the U.S. military use the phrase "repeat NOT" since their discussions are often mission critical. But I am…

English does have double negatives, and they're grammatically correct when used properly. They simply cancel each other out which differs from Spanish where they add emphasis.

It actually depends on your dialect. Many dialects of English use negative concord [1], which is what exists in Spanish and other languages (not emphasis) instead of having them 'cancel each other out'.

For example, in my native dialect, "I ain't never had no need for none of them fancy toys" means "I never had any need for any of those fancy toys". It has nothing to do with canceling out other negatives or emphasis; if one thing is negative, they all need to be.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_negative

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