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That's news for me, and it's interesting to think on the implications. I'll point that next time an american complains to me on the web to "speak english".
Is this a winner-takes-all, network effects situation? Are we going to see the entire world speaking English as at least a second language in the next 50-100 years?
In others, such as much of the sciences, it is a de facto standard. Almost all high impact science journals are in English, for instance.
I suspect that what we'll eventually end up with is that most people will speak TWO languages as their native language. It's just so damned easy for kids to pick up two languages if they are exposed to both of them early.
We'll first go through a stage where English is widespread as a second language, learned in elementary school or high school. Arguably, we are getting close to that now in many countries, such as most of Western Europe and Scandinavia.
Many of those people will use English enough at home, either on purpose for their children's benefit or because of the large amount of English content on the internet, for their children to grow up bilingual speaking both English and their parent's native language.
What? The USA doesn't have an official language (like in one recognized by government)? That's news for me, and it's interesting to think on the implications. I'll point that next time an american complains to me on the web to "speak english".
Looking at the advances in machine translation and speech recognition in the last 10 years, how long before fluency in English becomes irrelevant? If any English that you hear, see, or read is instantly and perfectly translated to your native language, and vice versa, then all languages get equal footing. (Except perhaps for some primitive languages.)
Although I'd say human to human and human to computer communication are very different, I'd agree with you that some languages are objectively better. There are ancient tribes that don't have words for numbers above two. Esperanto seems to be one of the easier languages to learn, at least for those already fluent in european languages. But when it comes to adoption, culture and ubiquity seem to be the most important factors.
Looking at the advances in machine translation and speech recognition in the last 10 years, how long before fluency in English becomes irrelevant? If any English that you hear, see, or read is instantly and perfectly translated to your native language, and vice versa, then all languages get equal footing. (Except perhaps for some primitive languages.)
Well, not only that. English usage will also drop because of long term economic and cultural effects. English had commerce, hollywood and popular music going for it.
But billions of people in emerging middle classes now, e.g in China and India, get their own "hollywoods" and music on, and they also get at least equal footing in the world trade-ways (commerce).
With a large cultural industry and commercial opportunities, they'll be just like Americans that could not care less about non-english speaking content (movies, books, series, webpages, songs, etc).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The research the article talks about was done in 1990, so the dynamics as to the influence of top-spoken languages may well have changed. Chinese is presently the most spoken language in the world (native and secondary speakers combined), so if you suspect the winner is going to be a winner in some 'network effects' situation, it might be Chinese. [1] Chinese also has a very strong internet presence. [2] On a slightl…
"Chinese is presently the most spoken language in the world (native and secondary speakers combined), so if you suspect the winner is going to be a winner in some 'network effects' situation, it might be Chinese. [1] Chinese also has a very strong internet presence. [2]" Counting the total number of speakers is not a very smart way of thinking about "network effects" of languages. You should count the number of speak…
Looking at the advances in machine translation and speech recognition in the last 10 years, how long before fluency in English becomes irrelevant? If any English that you hear, see, or read is instantly and perfectly translated to your native language, and vice versa, then all languages get equal footing. (Except perhaps for some primitive languages.)
There are other factors - English speakers readily adopt words from other languages as needed. This makes it a lot easier to expand. Compare with the Académie française: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_fran%C3%A7aise
Look at what people all over the world are constantly bombarded with - Hollywood's output is shown (and popular) everywhere. As are words like Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Nike and Apple. Even Bollywood is including increasing amounts of English in its output. Popular entertainers in various countries have also taken to singing some or all of their songs in English.
Look at generating input. There is a bias to a reasonably small number of symbols. A 500 key keyboard isn't practical (although variations exist). Having many modes and switching amongst them isn't that pleasant either. We already see people dropping case from English where is it mostly cosmetic. (Of course voice recognition is always around the corner but isn't practical in many environments and has always been around the corner.)
It is acceptable to speak English "badly" - did I tell you about the time that: the mat cat sat upon? I've heard from speakers of other languages that just getting the gender wrong in a sentence is enough to make it extremely hard to understand.
My prediction is that the number of speakers of English as a second language will continue to climb since it is the most friction free way of communicating in many circumstances, and that will rapidly lead to their kids adopting it as a first language. Heck all the people I know who have a non-English language as their first language have their kids speaking English as their first language.
TLDR: English makes a very good lowest common denominator
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Chinese is presently the most spoken language in the world (native and secondary speakers combined), so if you suspect the winner is going to be a winner in some 'network effects' situation, it might be Chinese. [1] Chinese also has a very strong internet presence. [2]" Counting the total number of speakers is not a very smart way of thinking about "network effects" of languages. You should count the number of speak…
It's not the '60s - 90's anymore, when US had the stronghold on global cultural creation/consumption. There are many signs that this is starting to fade, and for huge masses of people it was never true in the first place. E.g Chinese people could not care less about english media and knowledge. But people wanting work in China/Asia might very well care about learning english.
Looking at the advances in machine translation and speech recognition in the last 10 years, how long before fluency in English becomes irrelevant? If any English that you hear, see, or read is instantly and perfectly translated to your native language, and vice versa, then all languages get equal footing. (Except perhaps for some primitive languages.)
> If any English that you hear, see, or read is instantly and perfectly translated to your native language, and vice versa, then all languages get equal footing. (Except perhaps for some primitive languages.) Well, not only that. English usage will also drop because of long term economic and cultural effects. English had commerce, hollywood and popular music going for it. But billions of people in emerging middle cla…
Спасибо за статью. Печально, что русский язык не входит в десятку наиболее используемых языков в Internet.
"Thank you for the article. It is sad that the Russian language is not included in the top ten most used language on the Internet."