The world's most influential languages • Hacker News Board

Re: The world's most influential languages

#61

Post by batista » Mon, Sep 17, 2012, 12:10 PM UTC

rogerbinns wrote: post #46

batista wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> ... get their own "hollywoods" and music on, and they also get at least equal footing in the world trade-ways (commerce). And the way they do that is by including English. For example see the second paragraph of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bollywood or consider the recent Korean pop success "Gangnam Style".

Less and less as their regional and peripheral economies take the lead.

The english are a byproduct of the American cultural dominance in the pop field that is slowly corroded.

Re: The world's most influential languages

#62

Post by batista » Mon, Sep 17, 2012, 12:17 PM UTC

hugh4life wrote: post #18

batista wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Movies and TV shows will be the least of English hegemony. Science, Tech, and Business is where it rules and it will never be displaced by any language currently on earth. A future constructed language may have a chance though.

>Science, Tech, and Business is where it rules and it will never be displaced by any language currently on earth.

Never? The language of science, tech and business has already been displaced several times. It's far easier than you think. At some point it was Greek. Then Latin. Then French. Then English.

The Chinese, for one, could not care less about english content. They have their own "Google", their own forums, music, etc. One can imagine a near future where people from the west learn Chinese to communicate for trade and business and not the opposite. For example, language lessons from non existent and unimaginable in my (European) country, are all the vogue the last 3-4 years. And there is increased demand all over Europe and in the US too for Chinese language courses. From Wikipedia:

= = = = =

In 2010, 750,000 people (670,000 from overseas) took the Chinese Proficiency Test. For comparison, in 2005, 117,660 non-native speakers took the test, an increase of 26.52% from 2004. From 2000 to 2004, the number of students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland taking Advanced Level exams in Chinese increased by 57%. An independent school in the UK made Chinese one of their compulsory subjects for study in 2006. Chinese language study is also rising in the United States. The USC U.S.-China Institute cited a report that 51,582 students were studying the language in US colleges and universities. While far behind the more than 800,000 students who study Spanish, the number is more than three times higher than in 1986.

= = = = =

How will that play in 15-30 years?

Re: The world's most influential languages

#63

Post by batista » Mon, Sep 17, 2012, 12:19 PM UTC

mhartl wrote: post #28

hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #11

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".

There have been various attempts to make English the national language of the United States, but they have all failed, due in part to being perceived as vaguely racist or xenophobic. This is especially strange considering that virtually every other country does have an official language (or languages). That said, you (and your potential interlocutors) will likely benefit from using the lingua franca , which is curren…

>This is especially strange considering that virtually every other country does have an official language (or languages).

Yes, but then again virtually every other country also has a national history that spans more than 400 years, and one or two ethnicities living in it, i.e they are not a synthetic nation made from an influx of immigrants from all over the world.

Re: The world's most influential languages

#64

Post by NonEUCitizen » Mon, Sep 17, 2012, 12:55 PM UTC

corin_ wrote: post #57

mhartl wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been various attempts to make English the national language of the United States, but they have all failed, due in part to being perceived as vaguely racist or xenophobic. This is especially strange considering that virtually every other country does have an official language (or languages). That said, you (and your potential interlocutors) will likely benefit from using the lingua franca , which is curren…

> This is especially strange considering that virtually every other country does have an official language (or languages) My assumption for why it isn't strange is that most countries had an official language (whether at one point it was decreed, or if it just happened naturally) before a huge amount of immigration happened in the way that it has in America, i.e. that now there are huge numbers of Spanish speakers in…

That there are huge numbers of Spanish speakers in a number of states is not due to immigration. Most of these states spoke Spanish before they had an influx of English-speaking illegal immigrants. The English speakers (helped) split these states off from Mexico and made them join the USA. (Okay, the reason they spoke Spanish is due to the prior illegal immigration of Spanish conquistadors).

Which is why, in Silicon Valley, you have city names like San Jose, Santa Clara, Los Altos, Palo Alto, San Mateo, San Bruno, and San Francisco; and road names like Junipero Serra, San Antonio Road, and El Camino Real.

Re: The world's most influential languages

#65

Post by anamax » Mon, Sep 17, 2012, 2:22 PM UTC

NonEUCitizen wrote: post #64

corin_ wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is especially strange considering that virtually every other country does have an official language (or languages) My assumption for why it isn't strange is that most countries had an official language (whether at one point it was decreed, or if it just happened naturally) before a huge amount of immigration happened in the way that it has in America, i.e. that now there are huge numbers of Spanish speakers in…

That there are huge numbers of Spanish speakers in a number of states is not due to immigration. Most of these states spoke Spanish before they had an influx of English-speaking illegal immigrants. The English speakers (helped) split these states off from Mexico and made them join the USA. (Okay, the reason they spoke Spanish is due to the prior illegal immigration of Spanish conquistadors). Which is why, in Silicon…

> That there are huge numbers of Spanish speakers in a number of states is not due to immigration. Most of these states spoke Spanish before they had an influx of English-speaking illegal immigrants. The English speakers (helped) split these states off from Mexico and made them join the USA. (Okay, the reason they spoke Spanish is due to the prior illegal immigration of Spanish conquistadors).

The Spanish influence was largely via the Catholic Church. There's a whole chain of cities about a day's walk apart in CA, each with a mission.

That said, the Spanish weren't the only "invaders" for very long. Folks from other US states started showing up within a couple of decades. Spain made an official land-grab, extending from Mexico, but eventually lost a "war".

Also, even during the "Spanish" days, Spanish was only the language of those cities. The natives didn't switch, and there were a lot more of them (at that time).

Re: The world's most influential languages

#66

Post by meric » Mon, Sep 17, 2012, 2:42 PM UTC

archangel_one wrote: post #55

meric wrote: post #30

"It should be a sobering thought, however, to any triumphalist impulse that in 100 AD Latin looked set to dominate its slice of the world forever." The winner of the "Top Language of 100 AD" should go to Chinese circa 100 A.D. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Xenic The following languages are heavily influenced by written chinese: Korean http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanja Japanese http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji…

You can make a similar list for Latin though; the Romance languages are (by definition) descended from it; that's Spanish, French, Italian and Portugese, and English and German are heavily influenced by it. That's a significant majority of the score of the top ten languages from the article, so you can argue that by their standards Latin is more significant, even though it's no longer really a living language in its…

Good point; I thought the article missed out on analysis about indirect influence by a language through influencing neighbouring languages. Would've been nice have read about Latin's influence on other languages rather than have it being a mere footnote.

Re: The world's most influential languages

#67

Post by hetman » Mon, Sep 17, 2012, 3:41 PM UTC

guard-of-terra wrote: post #45

hetman wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be talking about a "potential" audience. Statistics for actual usage is quite different.

Nope. It's actual monthly audience. Got any (recent) data?

When of the other guys posted some stats in their post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4531152

Re: The world's most influential languages

#68

Post by alister » Mon, Sep 17, 2012, 5:24 PM UTC

rogerbinns wrote: post #17

alister wrote: post #8

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.)

Perfect translation is going to be hard. For an everyday most common 5,000 words that may be ok but anything outside of that would require the invention of many new words when English likely already has them. They don't really mean anything in English either - for example "quantum mechanics" are just two words, and have to be learned even for English speakers. When coming from another language you may as well use wha…

> did I tell you about the time that: the mat cat sat upon?

I'm not getting it. What was the bad English speaker trying to say?

Re: The world's most influential languages

#69

Post by dguaraglia » Mon, Sep 17, 2012, 6:04 PM UTC

zalew wrote: post #59

pjmlp wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, as Portuguese I also have an issue with his bias for Brazilian Portuguese, as there are many more countries speaking the language. - Portugal - Brazil - Angola - Mozambique - Green Cape - Saint Thomas and Prince - Guine-Bissau - East-Timor Probably a few others might still use some dialect of the language as well. Actually Portuguese was the same as Galician not Spanish. Spanish is actually Castilian from Castil…

I spoke Brazilian Portuguese and even back then it was relatively hard for me to understand Portuguese the original due to pronounciation/accent differences (by relatively hard I mean I had to focus). I had less problems understanding Spanish, say, in Uruguay. To this day, although I forgot the language, I can easily spot a Brazilian in a crowd of talking people while it takes me a moment to recognize someone speakin…

Hah, that's something that always amazed me: I lived in Brazil for 7 years (coming from Argentina) and became fluent in Brazilian Portuguese in the process. Funnily enough, I don't have any problem at all understanding most Portuguese people, whereas my wife wouldn't be able to understand half of what they said. How does that work? :)

Re: The world's most influential languages

#70

Post by pjmlp » Mon, Sep 17, 2012, 6:14 PM UTC

dguaraglia wrote: post #69

zalew wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spoke Brazilian Portuguese and even back then it was relatively hard for me to understand Portuguese the original due to pronounciation/accent differences (by relatively hard I mean I had to focus). I had less problems understanding Spanish, say, in Uruguay. To this day, although I forgot the language, I can easily spot a Brazilian in a crowd of talking people while it takes me a moment to recognize someone speakin…

Hah, that's something that always amazed me: I lived in Brazil for 7 years (coming from Argentina) and became fluent in Brazilian Portuguese in the process. Funnily enough, I don't have any problem at all understanding most Portuguese people, whereas my wife wouldn't be able to understand half of what they said. How does that work? :)

Having a few Brazilian friends, I would say they have some hard time getting our pronunciation, whereas foreigners seem to be more open minded, kind of.

I have lived this experience with French. I have less problems to understand French Canadian than my French friends.