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You Say Tomato, I say Fan Jia Qie?
Troodon writes "The Guardian
reports
on
James Murdoch's
speech (
"You Say Tomato"
) to the
The Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival. In which he argues that given the
near-exponential internet growth?
of the worlds most popular language,
Mandrin (835 millon compared to 470 millon English speakers) and the potential of both
Spanish (330 million)
and
Hindi
(300 million), that the assumption that English (well
american-english
) is both the inevitable linguistic and cultural lingua franca of the modern age is flawed. That tailored localised content rather than some unthinking americanized homogenization is the way ahead, that "English will [sic] not become the "default language" of the digital world"."
...what's Mandarin for first post, then?
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You quote the numbers of Mandarin, Hindu and Spanish speakers as though that were somehow related to the point. English isn't widespread because it has so many native speakers. English is widespread because it is the language of the (current) World Empire. 1500 years ago "everyone" (who was anyone) spoke Latin. 1000 years before that, "everyone" spoke Greek. Today "everyone" speaks English.
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AFAIK, English is the worlds biggest second language. If two people from different countries want to communicate, english is the most likely common denominator.
As you are introduced to the larger world, t makes sense to learn the language used there. In order for this to be Mandarin, you'd need a massive influx of Mandarin speakers _and_ people learning to speak Mandarin as their international language. Not likely at the moment, but certainly possible later if China makes a big push for internet access for all. If, instead, they merely contine introducing people to the internet in dribs and drabs, the slow conversion will continue.
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This reminds me of the old joke:
Q: What do you call someone who speaks three languages?
A: Trilingual
Q: What do you call someone who speaks two languages?
A: Bilingual
Q: What do you call someone who speaks one language?
A: American
Perhaps it's time we admit that the North American continent isn't the center of the planet. For examples from history of those who lost thier perspective, consider the Babylonians, Alexandrian Greeks, Romans, and the various European maritime empires (no offense intended). The point is that the surest way to become irrelevant in the long run is to assume that it can't happen.
Ob-Tech-Relevance: Anybody remember the days of IBM's dominance? How about Microsoft's?
Cuando a un mensaje como este no le quiten puntos de moderacion solo por estar en espanol, sabremos que el ingles no es el idioma oficial de las nuevas tecnologias. Mientras tanto, es casi necesario saber ingles para poder estar al dia con el desarrollo tecnologico...
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
You have to remember, the guy who gave this speech has a great deal riding on whether what he's saying comes true or not; his company's website indicates that his job is to produce content for Asian markets (ironically, a quick scan of the website shows that they offer plenty of American shows and movies)
And his premise is pretty much wrong because, for good or ill, English is already the international language, and was long before the internet came about.
That said, he did bring up some good points. To tell you the truth, -I- can't bring myself to watch American TV, and I've lived here my whole life. I don't know how the rest of the world gets so addicted to it.
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I understand that a minority of the people on the planet speak English. I also understand that some of the world's most powerful militaries and richest economies currently speak English.
But, one thing hasn't been mentioned: English-speakers invented the technology. C, Unix, Windows, Perl, Python, HTML, etc. are all written "in english" -- that is, they use english words as their lexical basis. Until there is an All-Mandarin programming language, OS, etc. that takes the world by storm, I don't expect computers to be programmed "in mandarin." I imagine it is simply easier to cope with computer programming if you understand at least a little English. It doesn't have to stay this way, but I imagine it will be easier to move everything to another western language than to a non-Western one, for reasons of keyboards and alphabets.
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