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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

#181

Post by jcranmer »

tbrock wrote: post #116
geff82 wrote: post #99

I love the English language. It is expressive, it is the language of great literature, and it is in no way „bullying“, no, it brings people all over the world together. There would be no way to talk to a Chinese for me (German) if he had only learned Japanese because Japan is the neighbour and if I had only learned French or Polish because those are our big neighbours. No, English brings us all together, it makes me…

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.

Système de réseau de noyau Linux? Cache associatif de 8 sets? Those aren't severe linguistic contortions...

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

#182

Post by CrystalLangUser »

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)?

With phonetic systems like Japanese and Korean, terms like this regularly get represented as-is in the script. Sometimes they don't get translated, as you can see plenty of jargon in this Korean wiki page on C++. [0]

One example is 'computer' -> 컴퓨터 in Hangul. It's still 'computer', just pronounced with the Korean pronunciation rules.

[0]: https://namu.wiki/w/C%2B%2B

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

#183

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

dorchadas wrote: post #176
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #70

I think instead of chiding people who use English as a second language "poorly", we should look at their mistakes for what they are - the influence of another language - and see if we can't incorporate the ideas that caused them into English, if the ideas are good. Newspeak isn't fiction, languages really do shape how you think. We should continue evolving English to be suitable for expressing more modes of thought.

> we should look at their mistakes for what they are - the influence of another language - and see if we can't incorporate the ideas that caused them into English, if the ideas are good. Except it doesn't work like that. Languages change because native speakers change them, not because some grammatical body adopts things and tries to force it on everyone. > Newspeak isn't fiction, languages really do shape how you th…

>Except it doesn't work like that. Languages change because native speakers change them, not because some grammatical body adopts things and tries to force it on everyone.

I'm not suggesting an institution should do this. I'm suggesting individuals do this.

>Yes, it is fiction, and no, languages do not shape how you think

I have anecdotal experience in thinking differently in different experiences, which doesn't say much for anyone else but makes me personally skeptical of your assertion. I don't think I would count this as "_thouroughly_ debunked", more like "extensively debated". I also don't put much faith in unpublished studies. Regardless, my main point stands even without invoking linguistic relativity.

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

#184

Post by Raidion »

opportune wrote: post #10
barking wrote: post #6

My 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 think having to memorize a (fairly) arbitrary masculine/feminine prefix/postfix for nouns makes quite a few romance languages harder than they "need" to be.

Would be nice to have some slightly more rigorous spelling and tenses in English, though almost all euro languages have some quite irregular verbs.

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

#185

Post by l9k »

chrisper wrote: post #120
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.

Then explain to me why the French are using Go, To etc. instead of TB and GB like everyone else?

Octet is actually a more precise word as it implies there are 8 bits (or people, or things...)

Byte only represents a group of bits.

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

#186

Post by dorchadas »

ythn wrote: post #59
xeeeeeeeeeeenu wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Every language has tradeoffs. Sure, Spanish might be easier to pronounce since the rules are more rigid, but on the other hand the information density is way lower. It takes 2-3 syllables of Spanish to communicate the same information as 1 syllable of English.

Yes, but the rate at which languages convey information is roughly the same [1]. So Spanish speakers just speak faster.

[1] http://ohll.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/fulltext/pellegrino/Pellegrino_...

The PDF linked is a draft of the paper, freely available; it's been removed from Academia, so here's the JSTOR link of the final release:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23011654

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

#187

Post by dorchadas »

always_good wrote: post #177
nutjob2 wrote: post #57

English is such a horrible language to learn, I pity non-native speakers. On that basis, the rule is: you're not allowed to criticize another person's English, unless it's their native one. They didn't ask for this language, it was forced upon them.

It's not as hard as you think. Compare all the tenses in Spanish to English, for example. I live in Mexico and my peers usually think English is relatively easy. Also, the US exports so many quality tv shows and movies that it's easy to find good English-native material for learning. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who doesn't know Disney movies. Meanwhile, try finding good Mexican television.

> Also, the US exports so many quality tv shows and movies that it's easy to find good English-native material for learning.

This is the most underrated factor when it comes to language learning in my opinion. It really does make a difference how much native material is available, and how interesting it is to the person learning the language.

Not because it makes the learning itself easier, but because it makes exposure once you hit the intermediate level that much easier, which means you can pass the intermediate plateau and reach a fairly advanced level without having to struggle through things you don't find interesting.

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

#188

Post by romwell »

sudosteph wrote: post #128
NihilumExNil wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... the "status" of English by making it more latinized (things like, not ending sentences in prepositions). very interesting, that's something I'd really need to learn more about it. But how much of that is common sense, or French influence?

Well my source is a Linguistics Textbook (Language Files, 11th Edition, p15-16) but it says that these changes happened as late as the 17th and 18th centuries because Scholars considered written Latin to be the ideal language (likely because most historical works had been translated to Latin at some point). So even though ending sentences in prepositions had been common for centuries in spoken English, that became fr…

>- Don't ending sentences in prepositions

>- Don't split infinitives

>- Don't use double negative

These seem to really be some rules that ain't nobody got time for!

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

#189

Post by l9k »

physicsguy wrote: post #73
opportune wrote: post #17

The 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…

I'm a native (British) English speaker, and I actually can find it quite hard to communicate with non-native speakers, because they don't understand my accent. It's not particularly strong as British accents go (nothing like Glaswegian or Geordie for example), but it really caused problems when I moved to a research group which was made up of primarily English-as-a-second-language speakers. The other thing I found wa…

You might find it hard, but I'm sure it's not harder than to learn another language, as those people did.

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

#190

Post by l9k »

physicsguy wrote: post #73
opportune wrote: post #17

The 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…

I'm a native (British) English speaker, and I actually can find it quite hard to communicate with non-native speakers, because they don't understand my accent. It's not particularly strong as British accents go (nothing like Glaswegian or Geordie for example), but it really caused problems when I moved to a research group which was made up of primarily English-as-a-second-language speakers. The other thing I found wa…

I don't think there is such thing as Euro-English, but a French-English, Spanish-English, Dutch-English, because every non-native speaker will make grammar/vocab/pronunciation mistakes depending on his/her primary language.
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