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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

#281

Post by tobr »

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…

On the topic of English and speaking it better each day: the funny „upside down quotes” are an instant giveaway that you are German. It’s not really a correct typographic treatment of quotes in English (or almost any language except German, afaik).

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

#282

Post by matthewmacleod »

iosDrone wrote: post #274
627467 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU has/is failing? I guess - in a glass-half-empty way - like everyone around the world is dying. EU deliberately promotes multilingualism and, I'd argue, successfully[1]. English is (deservingly and also ironically) the most common language spoken in EU. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/sep/26/europe...

No, the EU is failing. Merkel has spearheaded the importation of millions of people who (along with their descendants) will NEVER thrive in the information economy, and who will accelerate their fiscal demise as their native population ages.

I mean that’s pretty much straight-up, no-ambiguity racism my friend. Kindly take it elsewhere.

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

#283

Post by felipemnoa »

enriquto wrote: post #277
jgh wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except weekend. They couldn't come up with a better word for that ;)

I use "fin de semaine" and people understands it perfectly.

Which is almost the literal translation to weekend or "Week End". Pretty much the same phrase used in Spanish (fin de semana) and I suspect in other romance languages.

P.D. Funnily enough, I looked up the translation for weekend in Latin and google gave me "volutpat vestibulum" and yet for Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian I got a similar "Fin de Semana" phrase. I wonder why only the latin translation looks completely different?

Here are the Translations for weekend for each Romance language and Latin:

French - fin de semaine

Spanish - fin de semana

Romanian - sfârșit de săptămână

Portuguese - final de semana

Italian - fine settimana

Latin - volutpat vestibulum

Notice how only Latin looks completely different. I wonder if google translate is broken.

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

#284

Post by enriquto »

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…

> 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

Ok for multi-tonal, but what is "symbolic" about Chinese?

On the other hand, I have known lots of Spanish and Chinese people who are utterly incapable of saying just a single English sentence which is somewhat comprehensible.

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

#285

Post by eftychis »

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…

Curious. How do you quantify expressiveness? English does not seem that expressive to me. English, German and Esperanto are way too related also to be making a comparison (which was kind of the criticism against Esperanto).

Could you give a couple of examples?

Also, I have to disagree with the statement that it is the language of great literature. I counter argue those would be French, German, Greek, Latin, Literary Chinese etc, depending on the period. I am not saying there is no great work in the English language, however your statement implies something different (the majority of great work in a period or style utilized that language).

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

#286

Post by jinder »

weberc2 wrote: post #264
blt wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, I agree British colonialism is not a sufficient condition for making English the dominant language. that does not invalidate my original statement.

I can’t imagine imperialism was a significant factor. Relatively few people need to interface with the imperialist power; but the new wealthy market imperialism makes available to you incentivizes you to learn the language of that market.

Imperialism was most definitely a huge factor - that's the sole reason so many countries have English as an official language.

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

#287

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

zerb wrote: post #280
_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're calling English and Chinese 'lossy' in terms of their (comparative) lack of morphology? (Natural language is pretty 'lossy' overall.)

They were saying each is tolerant of loss.

I don't know what that means.

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

#288

Post by eftychis »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #71
godzillabrennus wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Google translate does a just about acceptable job on Indo European languages. Diverge a little further and it often descends into comically poor. One of the most enjoyable things I used to find about travel was experiencing and dipping into other cultures and trying out a little local language picked up from phrase books etc. These days people seem to prefer practising their English on me as I'm a native English spea…

Google translate is really bad. Greek to English is terrible plainly. German to English the same -- was trying to prove a point about the meaning of a phrase and speed typed skipping umlaut. To this day I am not sure what the inference is to result in such a distant translation if you forget a single Umlaut. Every time I have to correct a friend's/family's work that used Google translate I facepalm. I suggest people learn to use dictionaries again (type of dictionary depends on application).

I wouldn't trust my life on Google translate, i.e. while traveling.

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

#289

Post by zerb »

MereInterest wrote: post #47
opportune wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

For the most part, yes. Though, if you flip the word order, it immediately sounds off. "Were I a rich man, I wouldn't have to work hard." sounds reasonable. "Was I a rich man, I wouldn't have to work hard." sounds rather jarring.

It seems there's a general trend in the development of English to remove tenses and moods in favor of instead more-strictly prescribing word order.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_language

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

#290

Post by eftychis »

autocorr wrote: post #245
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…

> It can be argued that the European Union has failed/is failing, at least partially, because of a lack of a common language. In the peak periods of the Roman Empire, Latin was the Lingua franca that enabled business transactions, along with Roman law, the precursors of civil law as a framework. The interesting thing though is that the Roman Empire is a great example of a bilingual state. Greek was known to all Roman…

I find your analysis and argument to the point!
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