31–40 of 74 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. Latin was the lingua franca (or at least one of the major ones) in Europe until 1800 or so, more than 1000 years after the fall of the western Roman Empire.
Was Latin really the lingua franca, or just the language of liturgy, over that period?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The countries that don't have their own media import it, and will often learn other languages to access it rather than waiting for translations of varying quality. Also, even when such media cultures exist, they’re competing against the incredible might of Hollywood, Netflix, Disney, etc. It is very difficult to compete with the budget and production quality that these companies can maintain if you’re a smaller eco…
There must be more to this; places like Nigeria, India, China, Japan all make more feature films compared to the US. Countries like Spain, France, Germany, UK make about half as many. Mexico, Brazil are in the top 15.. But Anglo countries like Canada or Australia or New Zealand make many fewer. UK makes slightly less than the US. Population size probably matters more and gdp less but having some unique to say helps.
No surprise there. Same language (no translation barrier) and a shared background as former British colonies (well, or being British) really seals the deal there. But also there's really no language aspect to analyze here; we can't say that America's media culture undermined the local non-English speaking of say, New Zealand, because most of the people there already spoke English already.
Although the impact on accents is another matter, I am sure.
> There must be more to this; places like Nigeria, India, China, Japan all make more feature films compared to the US. Countries like Spain, France, Germany, UK make about half as many. Mexico, Brazil are in the top 15..
Some of those other countries definitely fall under my criteria. Japan and India both have their own traditions to preserve (Bollywood is a thing), and my understanding is that the CCP has made resisting Hollywood's influence an explicit goal.
The rest of it? Dunno. There's clearly just some other factor at play here that I don't have my thumb on. I can't explain why Brazil and Mexico produce that many movies, this is the first time I've heard that.
> Population size probably matters more and gdp less
I think that's really close, but not quite it. I think the real thing here is having the cultural and economic circumstances that allow people to go and produce media and art for consumption. For some forms of media (especially movies) this is going to largely be a factor of money and population, since that is expensive. But that might not be true for all types of national media. Manga in particular is a fairly small industry, with roughly 40,000 workers and a mere 4,000 artists. Hollywood alone is 10x bigger.
My mind also jumps here to Russia, and how important its literature scene is to both the country and the language. Population is certainly a factor, producing great literature at the country level is often about giving a lot of people the chance to try and seeing what happens, but money really isn't as much a factor given that novels are cheap to produce. Funding great novels is pretty cheap once you've identified worthwhile novelists, since it involves paying maybe the living expenses of a few people.
Perhaps my takeaway here is that Movies are the national media of America (and India too, to be fair), and what we're seeing in some countries is the competition between American movies providing pressure to move to English, and other forms of local media grounding the country in question in its native tongue. That idea might need more fleshing out.
> but having some unique to say helps.
Oh yes, that is certainly very important.
0 - Although for a short while the UK definitely punched above its weight, from the 60s until the 80s or so. The theory I've heard is that this was a side effect of having a really good welfare system; people were able to quit their jobs easily and create music and art, and some of it was really good.
The spread of Russian in Ukraine fits this model (coercion to establish dominance, then continued spread without coercion) very well. Urban areas in the East and Center became Russian-speaking through Soviet measures like mixing nationalities at work/army to force them to use Russian. There were other coersive measures like the central planning not providing not enough Ukrainian media (only folk music programs on TV…
It starts well before Soviet times: Wikipedia says the Ukrainian language was banned in the Russian Empire starting in 1804 when what is now Eastern, Central and Southern Ukraine were part of the Russian Empire.
Until the 1920s Ukraine was a mostly rural country and in the countryside Ukrainian was alive and well. After the wars and insurgency the Soviet government felt compelled to create a Ukrainian SSR and allow widespread use of Ukrainian. Most towns and cities spoke Russian (and also German, Yiddish and Polish), but then as industrialisation forced many peasants into urban areas, they quickly became Ukrainian-speaking. In this context a new wave of language repression began, which became really intense only in the 1960s and 1970s. Of course there other forms of repression besides language
The spread of Russian in Ukraine fits this model (coercion to establish dominance, then continued spread without coercion) very well. Urban areas in the East and Center became Russian-speaking through Soviet measures like mixing nationalities at work/army to force them to use Russian. There were other coersive measures like the central planning not providing not enough Ukrainian media (only folk music programs on TV…
Similar changes happened in Japan (Ainu and Okinawan languages displaced by Japanese) and Taiwan (Taiwanese language displaced by Chinese). In this aspect, I credit India for not coercing a national language to displace regional languages. But then such unification of languages may be a contributing factor to keeping country together and alleviate regionalism.
The keyword here is incentive, not coercion. Most of the world uses English as a second language because the British used to run a fairly large part of it and most of their former colonies still have a lot of English speakers and quite a few even maintain it as an official language. And then after two world wars, their former colony the USA of course became a super power. So, for the past few centuries, understanding…
Obviously as a software engineer it would be ridiculous to not at least read English, but I know for a fact there's great German language forums and learning resources out there. I imagine there exist programmers out there working in some deep and dark VW or Siemens lab that have been able to work for years without reading a full English sentence.
I'm pretty sure Berlin is also the only city (or one of very few) in Germany where you can actually live and work happily and productively without learning German.
The keyword here is incentive, not coercion. Most of the world uses English as a second language because the British used to run a fairly large part of it and most of their former colonies still have a lot of English speakers and quite a few even maintain it as an official language. And then after two world wars, their former colony the USA of course became a super power. So, for the past few centuries, understanding…
This summarizes. In India the union government is trying to push Hindi as the national language while the state governments are pushing back. This has been going for 70 years.
The interesting change is the due to jobs in south India north Indian state migrant workers moved to southern states. Their kids who go public school score higher in the native language classes than the native kids. This applies only for the low income migrant workers. The white collar job workers send their kids to private school and still learn Hindi.
In South India at least English is given more importance than the regional language.
PS: To those who are unaware of India, India has 23 officially recognized languages
What's already happening is that languages that aren't tied to their own unique literary cultures are slowly shrinking. The countries that don't have their own media import it, and will often learn other languages to access it rather than waiting for translations of varying quality. France, Germany, South Korea, Japan, and India all have enough unique, untranslated culture to get people to consider learning the langu…
India is different from the other countries that had been mentioned. India is a union of many larger states. The government of India is actually called as Union Government in the constitution. India has 23 officially recognized languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_India .
The keyword here is incentive, not coercion. Most of the world uses English as a second language because the British used to run a fairly large part of it and most of their former colonies still have a lot of English speakers and quite a few even maintain it as an official language. And then after two world wars, their former colony the USA of course became a super power. So, for the past few centuries, understanding…
The Americans gave us Cartoon Network. If the Germans had better cartoons we probably would be speaking German a lot better. In my opinion there's actually great economic incentive to speak German fluently. For me personally I've had multiple meetings with friends and business relations where I sometimes felt left out because I can't understand German well when it's spoken at native speed. Besides that I know of mult…
It wasn’t until you said this that I considered my motivation to learn Japanese as part of this conversation. My whole reason for doing so was for better appreciation of anime.
What's already happening is that languages that aren't tied to their own unique literary cultures are slowly shrinking. The countries that don't have their own media import it, and will often learn other languages to access it rather than waiting for translations of varying quality. France, Germany, South Korea, Japan, and India all have enough unique, untranslated culture to get people to consider learning the langu…
Even our own bodies will shrink unused muscles or organs, because the resources are needed elsewhere. As anyone who returned to a gym after a Covid pause found out.