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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

#251

Post by elgenie »

koboll wrote: post #87
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…

"The main unfairness is that the way that language was chosen (assuming it is English) was through militaristic and economic domination" These things choose language, geography, and culture for virtually everyone on the globe. The entirety of the Americas south of the US border speak the languages they do because of the rape and genocide of their ancestors on a colossal scale. Hell, English itself was borne out of re…

Don't forget the Viking raids and settlements. They left a good number of words behind in modern English.

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

#252

Post by nneonneo »

628C6l0 wrote: post #236
nneonneo wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Chinese, "Linux内核网络系统", literally "Linux Kernel Network System". Unlike Japanese and Korean, the Chinese language generally uses full meaning-to-meaning translations of technical terms as much as possible, and only occasionally uses phonetic nouns (e.g. 安卓 "Anzhuo" for Android) or English words (e.g. "Linux"). Chinese does, however, use phonetic transcriptions for proper names of people and places. This leads to s…

Chinese in many respects is a more explicit language. Variables are generally required to "wear their types on their names". All the disease names contain the word disease (imagine if we must speak of "rabies disease" and "AIDS disease" as opposed to "rabies" and "AIDS"). Country names in general contain the word country, so you can tell from the name that France (lawful country) is a country whereas Chicago is not -…

Although that is somewhat of a simplification, it is certainly more true of Chinese than of English.

The written language is also typed to a certain degree. Almost all disease words use a common radical (e.g. 癌症 for cancer), for example. As a more extreme case, every chemical element name in Chinese incorporates a radical that reflects the chemical's basic state - liquid (water), gaseous (air), metallic (gold), or non-metallic (earth) - symbolically connecting the old elemental system with modern chemistry.

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

#253

Post by dorchadas »

WalterBright wrote: post #231
dorchadas wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And maybe due to the fact that it didn't have a "standards body" (like the Académie Française) and much less "protection" than others meant it was more free to evolve. To be fair, they really don't have any effect on language as it's actually used. French people still say 'le week-end', despite how much the Académie raves about it. They still often drop the 'ne' in negative sentences as well, despite it being stand…

"Although the Chinese were using woodblock printing many centuries earlier, with a complete printed book, made in 868, found in a cave in north-west China, movable type printing never became very popular in the East due to the importance of calligraphy, the complexity of hand-written Chinese and the large number of characters. Gutenberg’s press, however, was well suited to the European writing system, and its develop…

It's more an issue of culture than anything. They preferred calligraphy, so not many things were done with moveable type (which did exist in China before Europe; it wasn't just woodblock printing). That said, there were still plenty of reports, up to the 19th century, of how widely things were printed and how cheaply they were available in China.

The bigger issue is what the culture valued more than anything.

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

#254

Post by elgenie »

_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #125
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…

> 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 While I agree it's unlikely that Chinese will usurp English's place as the global lingua franca (and the orthographic system is actually the main issue, but people could adopt Pinyin instead), it did function in this sort of role once in Eas…

It seems like it would be more accurate to say that the orthographic system was the lingua franca. The characters were used to communicate across vast distances between people that would not be able to talk at all to one another if sitting in the same room with their hands tied.

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

#255

Post by sergioj97 »

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.

In Spanish we have also technical terms for those. I guess it's the same with most other languages. However it's true that there are some terms without a proper translation and it's obviously more international to use the English ones.

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

#256

Post by nneonneo »

pertymcpert wrote: post #119
Symmetry wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that true? Chinese has tones but English has a huge number of distinct vowel sounds to distinguish between and often has syllables with both two consonants in front and two in back, like "thrones". In terms of bits per syllable they're both near the top, in contrast to languages like Spanish or Japanese. That's just spoken Chinese though. Writing in a language that doesn't use an alphabet or syllabary is of course…

There are some things easier in Mandarin, but I still think it's far more difficult than English. The number of homophones is much higher than English.

IMHO spoken Chinese is not so bad. The grammar is simpler than English (no verb conjugation is a big one), and with the exception of tones, the phonetic inventory is fairly straightforward to learn. Although individual characters are frequently homophonic, treating groups of them as words (as you do in English) reduces the number of homophones significantly. If you're only going to learn Mandarin without the written language, it's very much doable, and possibly even easy depending on how quickly you pick up on the tones.

Written Chinese is, of course, a totally different matter.

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

#257

Post by weberc2 »

jcranmer wrote: post #201
toasterlovin wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While Hollywood definitely takes into consideration foreign markets when making films, the idea that their agenda is to propagandize the rest of the world is laughable. They make what sells, because all they care about is making money.

Hollywood has in the past made films that were pretty explicitly propaganda. Look at all of the propaganda films of World War II, and those weren't forced production by the US government. Granted, at that point, the propaganda was for domestic consumption, not foreign consumption. Furthermore, other countries definitely use films and film exports for propaganda--China really comes to mind here.

I’m not familiar with such films. Are you positing that propagandist films are the norm or the exception?

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

#258

Post by coldtea »

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 is the language of great literature

One language, of somewhat good literature.

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

#259

Post by coldtea »

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.

Perhaps you don't speak French? Both of these are very easy and not contrived.

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

#260

Post by coldtea »

ralusek wrote: post #137
chrisper wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They haven't gotten over the whole "lingua Franca" thing.

Well, it will take the British and Americans a long time to go over the same thing as well when the time comes...
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