I (sort of) agree that having many languages encourages diversity and coexistence of different cultures. However, I think that apparent drawbacks outweigh any potential benefits.
As a native Russian speaker, I know just how excruciating learning English can get. I have been learning it for 12 years, and most of the time it was no fun. For example, I once literally memorised 1500 words over a few months. Still, I cannot say that I speak as well as native speakers do. Most Russians never make it past learning to say "I don't speak English" with a funny accent. By the way, if you are an English speaker, you probably don't realise what it means not to know English. Let me assure you: it's horrible.
I'm a native English speaker who learned Russian. It has to be harder to learn English, though Russian was no picnic.
Though I was once maybe 75% fluent speaking (and could understand 90% of what Gorbachev said - he speaks pretty fast), I haven't used it for 25 years and so have forgotten most of it. I do remember that it was easy to spell, especially compared to English. I also remember that Russian verbs of motion were hard to get right, and declining numbers and certain adjectives correctly was tough.
English has become the new lingua franca (still cracks me up to pause and consider that literally), for better or worse. For all its faults, English is very flexible and can be precise, despite the fact that it's not often used for that feature. Most native speakers I know would be surprised to learn how many verb tenses English there are, and even more surprised at their proper use. The MLA and AP styles haven't helped that cause any.
>English has become the new lingua franca (still cracks me up to pause and consider that literally), for better or worse.
On a completely pedantic note, lingua franca doesn't actually refer to what I think most people associate it with (the use of French as the diplomatic language of the 18th and 19th centuries in particular). It actually means the language of the franj, the "Franks," or Western Europeans. The original lingua franca was a pidgin Italian with a lot of Arabic and Turkish loanwords, the result of the Venetian dominance of the Levantine sea trade. Of course, in a purely literal sense, using it in phrases like, "Gulf media Arabic is the lingua franca of the Middle East" is itself wrong.
It's funnier if you say "de facto lingua franca" :-)
But the strength of English is that you can freely mix in words from other languages and there is enough redundancy that your meaning will probably be understood anyway, and eventually the word will simply be absorbed - and that's where alot of the irregularity came from. There's no Academie Francaise equivalent to police it and no-one even wants one.
Yep. Russian speaker is always puzzled by North American obsession with "spelling". Spelling competitions etc. In Russian if you want to "spell" a word, just say it slowly. No big deal really.
Actually, declining numbers is something most native Russian speakers can't do. Even people on TV, whose job is to speak correctly, often struggle with it. Moreover, in the Russian translation of the Empire Strikes Back, C3PO's line "Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately three thousand seven hundred and twenty to one" has the number declined a wrong way.
> For example, I once literally memorised 1500 words over a few months.
If you want to do things like pass the SAT, even native English speakers have to sit down and memorize about 6000 words over the course of a year or two.
I've been using Duolingo to learn Russian every day for a few months. I'm just finally getting somewhat confident about all of the Russian characters, and the "weird" sounds made through the various character combinations that change the pronunciation of the individual characters. I'm no dumbass, being able to speak two other languages besides my native English (which weren't learned through Duolingo, though I really like it). There just must be something tough about learning the other, between Russian and English.
Memorising is such an ineffective way to study language, it's like cutting down a big tree with a pair of scissors. Lots of research has been done on the topic, and many methods invented. The key is skipping complex grammar and working on comprehension and production from as early as day one, every day and trying to think in the target language. It seems silly, but does work.
I personally tend to think about languages a lot in terms of grammar. The reason might be that in German (my native language) grammar plays a much larger role (four cases and lots of rules for declination and conjugation) than in English (also in Russian grammar plays a very central role, as far as I know).
As I have often written on Hacker News when learning German I would strongly recommend to get the grammar by heart (yes, it is complex and ugly), until you don't have to think about it anymore (if necessary by rote memorization) since
> trying to think in the target language
for German means thinking in the German grammar. Any approach that tries to skip grammar at the beginning will soon confuse learners, because for example verbs are typically associated with some class of object (either based on a case or a preposition) and if you use it wrong often the meaning can change. For example :
auf etwas warten (to wait for something) has to be used with an accusative, so
"Ich warte auf den Zug" (I'm waiting for the train) is correct
If you use a dative instead, this is also yields a correct sentence, but with a completely different meaning
"Ich warte auf dem Zug" means you are on the top of the train and waiting, since "auf" followed by dative is a local adverbial.
So learn the grammar correctly from the beginning.
Grammar is a science, and it's not necessary to speak a language. My mother tongue is Turkish, an agglutinative vocal-harmonising beast with hundreds of suffixes, yet I don't need any grammar while speaking nor while reading or writing.
I'll start my archaeology double major in short, and German seems to be quite an important language in the field, so I'll have to learn that. I'll use my way and see if you and the others who agree you are right that German requires heavy grammar. Though I can reasonably guess that I'll start reading research by the six months mark.
It's not silly, that's how people learn to speak in the childhood and how foreign languages were learned before books even existed. There's also a te
I'm now learning Spanish and I just can't stand books with grammar exercises or using Memrise for more than 10 days.
The problem is that compared to English there's not enough Spanish content I like (Reddit, HN, non-fiction books). So I'm going with news, doubled cartoons, and flashcards for tough words.
I did Italian just like that, as a student of Italian philology. Made lots of research before starting the school (about 2 years ago) and devised a self immersion method, and followed it religiously. In about a couple months I was reading news in italian okay, in six months I started reading actual literature, now I'm quite close to a C1.
I also learned English a bit in primary school but the bulk of it while actively self teaching programming via tutorials and conference videos, and consuming other media in English too. And my English is near-native, which was the experience that encouraged me to do what I did with Italian.
Paraphrasing the X-Files, the content is out there. It might not be exactly what you are seeking, but it is out there. It's not going to be 'Running Kubernetes in Production on a Roller Coaster' (note: this is obviously made up) - e.g. hip and timely - but maybe some articles that were translated/paraphrased/borrowed from the original English news. The key, as you may already know, is consistency of action day after day. Don't just do it once a week for 2 hours, every day for 10-15 minutes will work much, much better.
> I just can't stand books with grammar exercises or using Memrise for more than 10 days... and flashcards for tough words.
I too dislike grammar books and I have stopped using Memrise. It was too much work to 'water the plants' and just answering a question required excessive game playing (multiple choice etc.). With flashcards, if it has not already been imparted to you, please write down the entire sentence. Context is so important.
> The problem is that compared to English there's not enough Spanish content I like (Reddit, HN, non-fiction books).
Yes, it is true that the overwhelming majority of medium and long-form content is posted in English. Because that is what the majority of the target audience can understand.
Here are some Spanish speaking websites for you to read:
Reddit/Digg like:
Meneame - Sort of like Digg, in that it has short article summaries across many topic areas (including technology and general interest news).
Register another Twitter account and just follow people/news who tweet in Spanish. It is quite easy to find these accounts - search for keywords like 'noticias' (news), 'ciencia', (science), 'creo que' (I believe), 'la crisis' (the 2006/2007 financial crisis), (your own keywords)
Warning, understanding the Spanish used in short tweets can be quite challenging as it is very terse and concise.
For the biggest challenge, microcuentos (also on FB, hashtags, instagram, etc.)
Thank you a lot, I'm going to check it out! I'm already reading many of my Spanish-speaking friends on FB, subreddits in Spanish, and https://twitter.com/pictoline on Twitter.
My macOS is also in Spanish. I'm doing as much as possible to get out from the English "vendor lock-in" but it's quite hard even in Spanish-speaking country since I work from home and my friends know English.
> since I work from home and my friends know English.
I'm going to give it to you straight. You're going to need to actively leave your comfort zone of your friends and your working from home. You're going to have to mess up again and again and eventually you will become correct and smoother. You don't need to speak grammatically correct Spanish right away. You can get to that along the way. For now, just 'abra su boca'. They will make fun of you and eventually you will be good enough that they won't make fun of you.
Even if you have friends who speak English (and prefer to), you can go out with them and speak Spanish to the people around you. You won't feel alone and they (your English-speaking preference friends) will eventually feel 'left out' and speak to you more in Spanish.
Even if you work from home, you can go out and have lunch or coffee in a public area. Just like you would in English, try to strike up a conversation by making an observation (try to avoid questions - in all languages, no one wants to be interrogated).
You: 'Me gusta este cafe porque hay demasiado tomas de corriente disponsibles.
Them: 'Si. Ayer fui un cafe y no tenía las mesas disponsibles.'
You: 'Algun veces, me levantaba y trabajaba con mi ordenador encima de la cabeza de alguien.'
Them: '¿En serio?'
You: <una pausa> No (laugh)
Hopefully they laugh
Make jokes, be self-deprecating. Never make fun of someone else. Especially with the translation difficulties.
I learned that you can grasp English without learnig grammar (this is what they do in UK). But while it works for some people, it might not work for others. And it definitely wouldn't work for some more grammatically complex languages...
They do so because it's impractical to do one on one lessons with a classroom-ful of people. You can believe what you want but there is a lot of research on the subject that supports me instead of you. See e.g. Krashen.
Languages are tools for communication. Online, we have a much larger community to communicate with, so network effects apply for languages as well.
I don't think it's troubling that languages rise and fall, and many die out. Rather, it's the intangible heritage of humanity and particular cultures in danger that should attract our attention. Language is an element of this, but more important is the substance of their stories, their oral and written traditions, their values, and their way of live. We should work on preserving this heritage possibly at the expense of their language, if that's our only viable method.
The biggest problems with this are 1) that some things are untranslatable, and 2) the substance of the stories is best communicated with the words originally used. Translation takes something away every time. Although some translations become classics in their own right, such things are very rare.
While there may be value in preserving those cultures. What tends to happen is outsiders say "We want to preserve that interesting way of life in case it's useful to us oneday. Hey you natives with nothing better to do all day, why don't you keep using it so we don't have to? You won't need English in your remote tribe." Then the poorest people in the world end up lumped with the huge task of maintaining a language for the possible benefit or mere academic curiosity of others. Instead, they could just learn English as children and gain access to greater opportunities in the global economy.
The organic evolution of languages at the word level is determined by word choice, and every time we utter anything, by exercising choice we're contributing to the sustenance of the expressions we just used.
It's the same at the language level. I could choose to speak English or Japanese, but I can never speak both simultaneously at any moment. Choice is mandatory.
People choosing to speak English is the force that corresponds to the greater sustenance of English, or any language X.
From experience, I know that I do not prefer English at home or with family. So I will speak Japanese until I die. And I see this often. Most bilingual families speak non-English at home (privately), but speak English outside of home (publicly). This works extremely well, and we have no problem speaking multiple languages as long as there are enough natural and practical use cases throughout our lives.
But had I been born speaking only one language, then this choice does not exist. And since languages are really hard, unless you're immersed in language usage, transferring a language in its entirety through plain education is impossible. That's why languages die off with their communities and their cultures, and last just a while longer academically until the last speaking person dies. Or, in the case of second and third generation immigrants, they don't bring the culture with them, so family usage doesn't entail everything that language entails. You can't suddenly speak Japanese in a professional setting if all you've done is speak it with mom. So this limits usage, and is the beginning of the end. With less usage, there is less sustenance.
Both my parents spoke their grandparents' native languages at home (Swedish and Plattdeutsch) when they were very young, but stopped when their grandparents' generation passed. They passed on very little of that to me, so by third generation it seems to die out.
I think it is much more likely that we will have a small number of lingua francas (right now English, Spanish and Mandarin are the top three spoken languages and serve as the lingua franca in various locations) but a plethora of local languages will remain.
Many African countries, but also Latin America, the US and Canada are examples of that. South Africa is a stark example with 11 official languages. Many South Africans grow up bilingual. English is the lingua franca there, but neither Xhosa, Zulu, nor Afrikaans will die out any time soon.
Language forms reality and vice versa. It always adapts to the needs of the speakers. Just look at English used be lawyers vs engineers. Geography is not the only factor for diverging languages. Social differences are also a factor, e.g, sociolects are specific to a socioeconomic class.
So unless human societies become a lot more homogenous, I don't see a single language emerging.
"What evidence do you have to support your claim?"
A) The evidence is in the article. It's heading towards a small number very quickly.
B) Everyone is learning to speak English. Everyone in W. Europe under 30 speaks English fairly well. It's happening in M/E and Asia as well.
Once immigrants to W. Europe who speak English + some foreign language can get services in English - there's no point in learning the local language.
There are only 12 million Swedes. 10% of them barely speak Swedish - and the number is growing rapidly.
Once young people speak English fluently and services are in English - so much work will be in English ... Swedish loses all real utility. And utility is an important thing.
'Long term' I think a diaspora of languages is important, but people make short term decisions: 'what is important in my life'?
I fear in 20 years, in Sweden, young people will equate 'Swedish' with 'old, out of touch, nationalists and racists' - which is an unfair characterization but the perception is already developing: young urbanites speak English fluently, rural, less developed communities, less so.
Ad A) It's merely a list of extinct languages, an incomplete at that since we cannot possibly know all languages that were spoken 3000 years ago. So it does not even give you a rate at which languages go extinct. But, yes, as we see more mobility (geographically and socially), languages consolidate, but a consolidation to one single language seems extremely unlikely, as I explained before.
Just because Swedish might die (which I doubt, but that's beside the point), does not mean that all languages but one will die.
Language is more than just a way to exchange facts. If you want to say "I love you" to somebody, or reach an agreement to end apartheid, you better do it in the language that is closest to the emotions, which is the language learnt within the first few years.
"If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart." (Nelson Mandela)
"I fear in 20 years, in Sweden, young people will equate 'Swedish' with 'old, out of touch, nationalists and racists'".
interesting angle. I doubt that Swedish will ever lose its utility, but dividing the society along language lines and typecasting native speakers as racists sounds like a natural development of current trend.
Not a chance. For any globalisation / unification force there is an equal and opposite force pulling towards autonomy / authenticity / diversity. Language is a very core component of human identity.
>For any globalisation / unification force there is an equal and opposite force pulling towards autonomy / authenticity / diversity.
I think it might be more correct to say that for every globalisation / unification force, there is an equal and opposite teapot in free orbit around the sun.
For globalization in general - very possible you're right; if speak about aspects other than language I would probably agree. But language is changing constantly; all languages are influenced by surrounding countries / cultures, and by those which lead progress currently.
I think every day need of communication and convenience will define the result.
And this list, I think, is an evidence of that tendency.
Who does that? Most people learn only their own language. A substantial number learn one other language, generally English. My own experience (bi-lingual Brit living in Norway working with people from 17 different countries) suggests that a very small proportion go beyond that. I'm excluding those who have a smattering of another language such as most Brits like me who had to take French and Latin at school but never got beyond being able to ask for a beer in a bar. Some of my Polish colleagues can get by in Russian as well as English but not many of those under 30.
I live in Quebec. Everyone is bilingual (over 90% of the population). In my experience the only people who are mostly unlingual are people who's first language is something like english and they stay in english speaking countries (because you're bound to pick up a bit of other languages when travelling) or like mandarin staying in mainland china.
anecdotally I know several europeans where they know at least their language + english + at least one of (french, german, spanish, italian)
brasilians I know typically know english and portuguese and they dont want to admit it but usually they know spanish. they just prefer brasilian or english.
overall if we just all agreed on english as the universal language (imperfect as it is) then it would save so many smart people so much time from needing to learn and translate between so many languages.
just from an efficiency perspective alone, humanity would see a major benefit, I believe.
> overall if we just all agreed on english as the universal language (imperfect as it is) then it would save so many smart people so much time from needing to learn and translate between so many languages.
> just from an efficiency perspective alone, humanity would see a major benefit, I believe.
I'm always surprised to see people accustomed to the world of computers say this kind of things. We know computer languages have different strengths, and we're often advised to learn some languages, not for the professional impact, but for the abstractions they teach.
In this context, I can't explain how people miss the fact that learning multiple languages is an enriching experience. And it is not only an abstract theory, considering the loan words every language has.
It is not only a matter of opening your thought framework, but also a matter of what ressource you have access to : the english language as we know it is very recent, and as a consequence, most of the world's intellectual output has been written in foreign languages. A world that switches to a single language as fast as we do is inevitably burning bridges with most of its knowledge.
Don't try to save smart people from diversifying their views, it's a bad idea.
I would like to point out that learning a computer language usually takes between a week and a month, while learning a natural one takes about a decade. I agree that knowing a natural language broadens the mind to some extent, but spending so much time to get such little reward seems a bit wasteful.
Exactly, that's why engineered auxiliary languages have always seemed like such a great idea to me (like esperanto or Novial). But, none of the offerings ever appealed to a critical mass of people. And, if I understand the history correctly, not-invented-here syndrome caused most moderate successes to splinter when people decided they could come up with something better.
I deeply know the benefit of learning multiple languages. I know three myself. I was born in iran, and am fluent in spanish and english, so I have been exposed to all three cultures and languages all my life. I would love to know and learn from chinese, arabic, japanese, french, german, italian, portuguese, indian, american indigenous, etc.
Do we -all- have to spend all our lives learning -all- of these languages for us to communicate the greatness of each others' cultures and philosophies? Wouldnt it be better, given our finite time on this planet, to share all of these concepts more efficiently?
I understand that there is a desire to make things as efficient as possible, especially in our group. Diversity for a large part, stems from different experiences, especially experiences that stem from diverse society values, though.
I don't see an easy way to get many growing and living cultures, and everyone sharing one language, cultural content, goals, etc. A society can't be homogene and diverse at the same time.
Both links contain figures about non-native speakers. And it seems that native/non-native Chinese speakers are more numerous than native/non-native English speakers.
True, native + nonnative speakers of Chinese > native + nonnative speakers of English, but the relation I'm talking about is:
nonnative speakers of Chinese < nonnative speakers of English
If the vast majority of Chinese speakers are native, that means that not that many non-Chinese people are learning the language compared to English, and thus English is more attractive for interlingual communication.
China is big enough to be a world in itself, and for most of history has been so, but globalization means that it is part of a greater whole and competes on that level.
Funny to see that 'Latin' is not in the list. Sure there are plant names with names in 'latin' but not the same Latin as the Romans used. Does anyone actually converse in Latin outside of the classroom?
Until the Industrial Revolution came along most people identified themselves as from the town or county where they lived rather than a given nation. People rarely travelled further than the next village and language was extremely regional. Same in France, until Napoleon came along France had hundreds of languages/dialects rather than an identifiable 'French' that everyone knew. In the UK, before television, it really was not that easy to be understood in places like Liverpool if you were from a place like Bristol - accents were too different to make that easy in everyday conversation even if written words were the same everywhere. The railways were the start of this process of making English universally understood amongst the English, before that there really wasn't much need to bother to read unless you were a book-reading academic type.
I am pleased that English is lingua-franca(!) for planet earth when it comes to computer stuff, science and little things like air traffic control. English may not be 'strongly typed Esperanto' but it does not have to be. It is considered courtesy to try and speak in native languages for Brits abroad, however, beyond 'please and thankyou' I think it is much better to stick to English and, in the process, help others that want to learn English. Just speak s-l-o-w-l-y and remember that something like 90% of communication is body language when face-to-face.
I do a fair amount of translation in the day job, and, amongst the foreign-language speakers that I pester for words 'n' phrases, I frequently find people preferring English as they can express so much more in it than their native tongue. As far as my Italian friends are concerned, Italian might as well be FORTRAN or COBOL, i.e. not as good. Consequently I look forward to a world that speaks English, that English being British English, of course!!!
I have had many a conversation with non-native English speakers on this topic and one theme that crops up often is the idea that it is easier to think "advanced" thoughts in English than in their native language.
But digging a little deeper, I think what is really happening is that these people learned "advanced" topics from English-language textbooks, papers, seminars, etc. and so they only have English vocabulary, phraseology, idioms and context for that topic.
> I have had many a conversation with non-native English speakers on this topic and one theme that crops up often is the idea that it is easier to think "advanced" thoughts in English than in their native language.
I personally find it much easier to develop "advanced" thoughts in German than in English, since for example in German building compound words is a very natural thing while in English it is rather clumsy. The same holds for nominalization of verbs.
Compare it with using a programming language that allows one to express complicated concepts in a very logical way (say, higher-order functions in Haskell). So when I try to write my thoughts down (say, for a scientific text) I find it much more clumsy to express them in English than in German, since I often feel that English lacks features that would make expressing them a lot more easy.
> Memories of pluskvamerfekt are still haunting me at night.
Plusquamperfekt in German is about the same as past perfect in English in the way it is formed and used (OK, in German it depends on the verb whether Perfekt and Plusquamperfekt are formed using "haben" or "sein" - this is ugly, accepted). So I don't really understand why you feel haunted by the Plusquamperfekt.
Despite the well-known schoolboy doggerel (Latin is a language / As dead as dead can be. / First it killed the Romans / And now it's killing me!), there has always been a live community of Latin speakers, via the church. At no point was there a 'with the death of' at which the last speaker passed away.
As for English, it's jolly nice if one happens to have the world's lingua franca as one's native tongue, but surely we could wish for something better than English as the world's language? If nothing else the orthography could be both simpler and clearer.
> Funny to see that 'Latin' is not in the list. Sure there are plant names with names in 'latin' but not the same Latin as the Romans used.
Seeing as it's actively used by members of the Catholic church and taught all over the world, it's clearly not extinct.
Botanical latin is/was used not only for the names of plants but also for the formal description of the species in taxonomic publications (although, as of a few years ago, this is no longer required). BL is grammatically latin, but with some specialized vocabulary.
As a native Russian speaker, I know just how excruciating learning English can get. I have been learning it for 12 years, and most of the time it was no fun. For example, I once literally memorised 1500 words over a few months. Still, I cannot say that I speak as well as native speakers do. Most Russians never make it past learning to say "I don't speak English" with a funny accent. By the way, if you are an English speaker, you probably don't realise what it means not to know English. Let me assure you: it's horrible.