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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

#381

Post by jonathanyc »

elgenie wrote: post #254
_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This is true these days but incredibly ahistorical; not sure where you got this impression.

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

#382

Post by Baeocystin »

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.

On the bright side (and I am saying this genuinely) if you enjoy wordplay, puns, and double-meanings, Mandarin is hilariously awesome at it, even compared to English, which is no slouch itself.

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

#383

Post by krylon »

felipemnoa wrote: post #283
enriquto wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In German it's Wochenende (Woche = week, Ende = end), which is literally the literal translation. ... de.wiktionary.org tells me it was adopted from English, too, after World War I.

Huh. I did not know it was such a young word. :)

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

#384

Post by krylon »

rumianteolor wrote: post #221
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.

Translation of "Linux Kernel Networking Subsystem" = Subsistema de red del núcleo de Linux. Translation of "8-way associative cache" = caché asociativa de 8-vías. I don't see severe lingual cortortions here.

> núcleo

I really like that word. I thought it was only used in IBM mainframe parlance.

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

#385

Post by [deleted] »

dzhshnacct wrote: post #377
dredmorbius wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The handicap for Chinese and Asian languages is charactersets and input. A finite phonetic alphabet is a tremendous technical advantage when keyboarding, and alternatives really haven't proved superior. (I'm entering this via soft-keyboard and stylus, painfully, with many typos. The fact that the interface could be trivially modified, but hasn't and isn't, and yet remains so deficient, doesn't speak well to prospects…

hey thats one of the things i've worked on see my first submission a few days ago on zh android ime with devanagari with zhuyin and alternatives chinese input is not a problem and this is going to even be less of a problem with voice input in future in fact the input problem only tightened the link chinese have to tech via their phones but pinyin needs to go away or chinese will lose their culture in the long term la…

[deleted]

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

#386

Post by Gigablah »

matz1 wrote: post #249
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 [2]. Is this true? I would think that english is just as hard to for chinese speaker to learn. Isn't all language has the same level difficulty? Is the preceived difficulty is m…

FWIW Chinese (Mandarin) is my native language and I still found it harder to learn than English. But that’s because I consumed mainly English media and pop culture growing up.

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

#387

Post by KozmoNau7 »

briandear wrote: post #361
devit wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it feels like gradually transitioning to English as the primary language would be the one of the best ways to improve the economy in most EU countries (as well as non-EU countries to some extent) since it would dramatically boost skilled immigration, and also make their citizens more educated and make communication with foreigner easier.

The French would lose their mind if they read your comment. It seems like France has a very strong linguistic inferiority complex compared to all other EU countries. English proficiency in France is among the lowest in the EU. I blame mandatory dubbing. I found it very difficult to find English movies in English, while in countries where subtitling is standard, English proficiency is higher.

I've noticed this in Germany as well. Most people over the age of 40-50 have quite poor English skills, at least outside of the largest cities. Even young people in their 20s are markedly worse at English compared to young people in Denmark or Sweden, where dubbing is only used for cartoons and movies aimed at kids.

Maybe dubbing is the reason, or maybe it's simply due to living in a country of ~85 million people with one language. When you have so much content and research in your native language, you can get quite far without having to learn any foreign languages.

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

#388

Post by malloryerik »

perfunctory wrote: post #378

> An increasing number of parents in South Korea have their children undergo a form of surgery that snips off a thin band of tissue under the tongue … Most parents pay for this surgery because they believe it will make their children speak English better Sigh

This isn't true anymore at all. See my comments above if interested.

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

#389

Post by krylon »

eftychis wrote: post #306
tomcam wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Could you give a couple of examples? Shakespeare, Vladimir Nabokov, Walt Whitman I believe that English has many problems, from crazy grammar rules to horrendously inconsistent spelling. But to say it is not expressive is absurd, and suggests that you haven’t read any great English literature. This is not to say that the cultures you mentioned and many other have not produce their own great literature, of course.

I meant examples of expressiveness over German. Edit: You were comparing English with other languages and implied it is more or as expressive as the majority of languages (or at least the ones you are familiar with). Thus my question.

I cannot think of a a good example right now, but as a native German speaker, I do sometimes find myself wondering how to express a certain thought in German.

English grammar feels more flexible to me than German, and English seems to be more suited for colorful idioms.

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

#390

Post by krylon »

zerb wrote: post #313
toufka wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For 'proper' language, maybe, but for intelligibility, not so much. Especially when spoken. "I want food", "Food, I want it.", "I am wanting food.", "Food for me; hungry.", "Want food.", "Me want food." Are all completely intelligible to most speakers, if many are not proper grammar. You can drop or add all sorts of articles and pronouns in there without really affecting basic intelligibility either.

But you can't say "Food want me". Whereas in Old English, the grammar had so many markings that poets could weave distinct phrases together and still convey their meaning. In practice, that would still be awkward for typical speech, but it's cool all the same.

That is one thing I like about Latin - you can (to a degree) completely rearrange the words in a sentence and still make sense of it.
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