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the advantages and disadvantages of english as a global language

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Alx

Member
TheRipDizz said:
He said as long as the first and last letters are in place. A word spelled in reverse would not usually qualify. Try again

Well if you look carefully he did keep the first and last letters in place, and only reversed the other letters.
(by the way it also works in all other languages, it's not specific to english)
 

numble

Member
iapetus said:
It's taivirl to dvorpsie yuor luorcidus cialm. Sltneiciffuy reredroed wdros - resreved, for elpmaxe mkae a mrekcoy of tihs troehy.

TheRipDizz said:
He said as long as the first and last letters are in place. A word spelled in reverse would not usually qualify. Try again
I think he did it correctly:

It's trivial to disprove your ludicrous claim. Sufficiently reordered words - reversed, for example, make a mockery of this theory.

He meant reversing the letters in between the first and last letters, which are still in place. I've done the same below.

Recnatsise - icainmosnc gemas fsrit lcnuah tltie, aeraeppd wtih the pnoitatsyaln terhe in nrebmevor. Dgnitrapeg form clufrolol vlausis atnerappt in tiehr eeilrar ptcudors, Recnatsise bhguort drekrar "ritsilaec" iregamy to its slitl facitsatnal "atanretle hrotsiy" snilyrote.
 

ourumov

Member
Even though I hate it I am afraid that the sole reason why it has to be the "GLOBAL" language is the fact that it's the most easy to learn.
I cannot see people learning Japanese, Spanish or Catalan with the same easiness.
 
If you look at the structure of the language, English is not the easiest language to learn. However, everybody in the western world gets hears the language since birth (tv, radio, internet, ...) so they learn it pretty fast either way.

From a non-english speakers prospective:
- Advantage: everybody knows the language + I can stil talk in my own language and Americans/English people won't understand it. :D
- Disadvantage: technically not the easiest language to learn.
 

tnw

Banned
Alx said:
It's been tried over and over (volapück, esperanto, ...) but it never worked. A language needs a culture to survive, a background, history. You can't just make one up and hope that everybody will learn it when it's not linked to a specific country/population.
Actually artificial languages like Klingon or Elvish kind of subsist (in a very small community, and maybe not for long) because people like Klingons and Elves, even if they're fictionnal, and can relate to them when learning the language. But people don't learn Esperanto to be able to visit "Esperantoland" or listen to "Esperantish" music.

mandarin is pretty much esperanto for china. seems to work there.
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
For all the arguments against English, it still is the best choice.

While the subtle nuances of English are incredibly hard to master for a non-native speaker, it's not that difficult to learn the basics. Additionally, English words (and words in any language using some kind of alphabet) are very easy to reference in a dictionary.

Being able to be understood by others does not require having perfect grammar or a comprehensive understanding of what the effects of slightly different sentence structure have on meaning.

It's easy to write. Word construction is relatively basic, and there aren't too many redundant letters. It's very internet and computer friendly, and, as I mentioned earlier, looking up words is easy.

Therefore, two basic students of English should have a fairly easy time (relative to other second languages) communicating simply in English.

Also, unlike other languages, English is not that closely intertwined with its nation of origin. English has a tendency to take on the characteristics of an adopted nation/culture, rather than the other way around. This is why you see so many different flavors of English, depending on region. There are no culturally intertwined elements in the English language that require a learner to understand in order to be proficient. In this way, it is more universal. (Mainly, I was thinking of Japanese for "culturally intertwined elements" in language, and needing to be mindful of cultural cues when dealing with such things as honoriffics, for example.)

Besides, in the global economy, English is the most dominant language, which is why it is already the "language of business". It makes more economic sense for others to learn English than for economically dominant English speakers to learn other languages. While arguably unfair from a morally relativistic, anglican-hegemony oh noes!, we are the world, give every language a fair shake sense of things, that's the way it is.

Language is subject to the forces of natural selection and evolution, just like the rest of us.

I must admit, though, that I could possibly be horribly biased in my view, since I already know English fairly well.
 

Alx

Member
tnw said:
mandarin is pretty much esperanto for china. seems to work there.

True. To be more correct, I'll say that an artificial language can work if its pushed by a central organization, mainly a country government (after all most European languages went through this phase, being pushed as the new official language and replacing local dialects).
So for a new language to be spread as a global language, you will need a global government first. And we're far from it.
 

cloudwalking

300chf ain't shit to me
RumpledForeskin said:
If by random you mean based on criteria, then yes, you can go fuck yourself silly.

in german there doesn't seem to be any criteria for certain words. plus there are 3 genders, male (der), female (die), and neutral (das).

if woman is "die frau" why is girl "das mädchen"?

mark twain said it best:

In the German it is true that by some oversight of the inventor of the language, a Woman is a female; but a Wife (Weib) is not -- which is unfortunate. A Wife, here, has no sex; she is neuter; so, according to the grammar, a fish is he, his scales are she, but a fishwife is neither. To describe a wife as sexless may be called under-description; that is bad enough, but over-description is surely worse. A German speaks of an Englishman as the Engländer; to change the sex, he adds inn, and that stands for Englishwoman -- Engländerinn. That seems descriptive enough, but still it is not exact enough for a German; so he precedes the word with that article which indicates that the creature to follow is feminine, and writes it down thus: "die Engländerinn," -- which means "the she-Englishwoman." I consider that that person is over-described.
 

iapetus

Scary Euro Man
Alx said:
Well if you look carefully he did keep the first and last letters in place, and only reversed the other letters.

Bingo. I considered stating that explicitly, but I was getting sick of reversing the internal sections of words. :D
 

Squeak

Member
Maybe it's easy for Germanic language speakers because it shares a lot of basic words with a common stem with the other Germanic languages and also the phonemes are very similar.
But for asian people and to a lesser extent Romanic language speakers have much more difficulty with pronunciation and grammar.
 
Squeak said:
Maybe it's easy for Germanic language speakers because it shares a lot of basic words with a common stem with the other Germanic languages and also the phonemes are very similar.
But for asian people and to a lesser extent Romanic language speakers have much more difficulty with pronunciation and grammar.

If it's a choice between the Germanic languages than English is objectively the easiest of the bunch for most people around the world. No gender, no grammatical case (well, there are some but very few), simplified conjugation and basic latin alphabet make up for the potential difficulties for some.

At least in terms of a working knowledge of English, not necessarily speaking it like a native.
 

DDayton

(more a nerd than a geek)
Advantages: Twain, Shakespeare, Carroll, Dickens, Doyle, Faulkner, Poe, Chesterton, Lewis, and others.

Disadvantages: Insanely nonstandard in all sorts of ways, making it more difficult for everyone else to learn.


I love English, but I can't logically say it's the easiest language for others to learn. Practically speaking, it is the dominant second language, and the American media being exported everywhere might well help it continue to spread.

There are several languages that are more consistent and logical to learn, and I'm sure you could come up with a better "world language" than English; however, realistically, at this point English is the second/international/whatever language.

Poor Francophones.
 

S-Wind

Member
laesperanzapaz said:
4 - it is a physicallly linear, purely left to right language. compare this with [all?] asian languages, for example, where the structure is more in 'blocks' of syllables. This is important in terms of space and legibility. This is highly important to Internet, for example, URLs.

What are you talking about?

If by "structure in 'blocks' of syllables" you mean agglutinative languages, then the Asian languages that are like that are Japanese, Indonesian, and Malay.

Not Chinese.
Not Korean
Not Thai
Not Vietnamese
Not Laotian
Not Cambodian
Not Tagalog (language of the Philippines)
Not Mongolian

Etc.

laesperanzapaz said:
5 - English is already truly widespread around the world. Yes, we have British and Americanophile domination to thank for that, but would that really have had happened if English was not a pretty simple and easy language to learn?

How many here can name this logical fallacy?

laesperanzapaz said:
6 - this is a bit subjective, but i think Enlgish is very 'nice-sounding' and 'neutral.' Compare this with CHinese or SPanish, both of which are harsh and sharp.

Cantonese sounds harsh. But Mandarine sounds quite nice and flowing.

laesperanzapaz said:
9 - already, English has proven to be very flexible in both accepting foreign language words into ENglish vocabulary, and melding English vocabulary into foreign language. For all those whose first language isn't English, you know what i'm talking about.

I think that is one of English's greatest strengths, how easy it is to form new words, whether they are nouns, verbs, adjectives, or adverbs. We don't need an offical commitee to sit around and decide on a new word, its gender, what category of verb it is, how it's conjugated, etc. I'm looking at you, French!

laesperanzapaz said:
10 - This one's a bit subjective too but: there is something called a Sapir-Whorf principle, which states that our language is the thing that defines our culture, and defines our perception of the world. As most of the world's culture has historically been family-centered, community-centered, anti-rational, anti-individualism, conservative societies, the Americans have been one of the principle leaders in emphasizing individuality, independence, and rationality [ex: see point 3]. According to the SW principle, you see this in the English language, however miniscule or imperceptible it may seem. And although I have huge problems with American nationalism and general fuckedupness of today's AMerica, it is still far more open-minded and individual-centric than most of teh rest of the world.

I guess you are the English language's counterpart to the Japanophiles.

laesperanzapaz said:
11 - only 26 letters, with 5 vowels and 14 consonents, period.

Umm... Check your math. There's a lot more than 14 consonants in English.

A big problem with English is it's irregularity. As previously stated, there are a ton of exceptions to rules and spelling, and exceptions to exceptions to rules and spelling. One of the main reasons for that is that English is, in a sense, a mismash of so many other languages.

It is west Germanic in origin. It then mixed into it the language of the Anglos, the Saxons, and the Jutes. It then got a huge injection of French. Took in a shitload of Greek and Latin, and then stole words and terms here and there from where ever its speaker travelled to.

demon said:
languages with random gender assignments for words can go fuck themselves silly.

Quoted for truth!

aktham said:
English is already the most spoken in the world.

No.

Even factoring in people who speak English as a second or third language, Mandarin Chinese still has more speakers.

English is the simplest followed by German.

I have no idea what you mean by simple, but German is does NOT come to mind when I think of a language that is simple.
 

avaya

Member
I think Spanish is by far the easiest language to learn.

However English is so widespread now, it is the effective language of the internet (or rather the roman alphabet is) and probably recognised as one of the best languages for song.

It is horrendously difficult for foreigners to learn, like all Germanic languages.
 

M3wThr33

Banned
Definitely not the easiest, but one of the most free form languages. I love the freedom I have to reword sentences so easily.
 

avaya

Member
S-Wind said:
No.

Even factoring in people who speak English as a second or third language, Mandarin Chinese still has more speakers.

I'm pretty sure this is wrong thanks to the Asian Sub-continent alone whose >1.4bn population has a fair few English speakers.
 

S-Wind

Member
avaya said:
I'm pretty sure this is wrong thanks to the Asian Sub-continent alone whose >1.4bn population has a fair few English speakers.

I did a Google search. Every hit I got listed [Mandarin] Chinese in first place. Eventhough English is an official language of India, there are A LOT of Indians who don't speak English!

Some of them live here in Vancouver . . . . .
 

Azih

Member
Nope, English is not the most spoken language.

It is however the language of computer code. If then else where int string for double and many more are all in C, Java etc and come from English.

Plus if someone from Portugal wants to talk to someone from the Phillipines, it's really the only option.
 

womfalcs3

Banned
English is a great language for universal use for the following reasons (Many have already been said):

- No gender differentiation.
- Easy phonetics. (I speak Arabic, and even though it's not as bad as Hebrew, we have some very hard letters to pronounce if you're not a native speaker.)
- Simple letters.
- Simple grammar
- It's derived from other languages... so there's familiarity often.
 
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