English, The Global Internet Language?

dsplat writes: "Atlantic Monthly has a story about the role of English as a global language. Most of the first two parts would be of interest only to a minority of Slashdot readers. However, the third part concerns the effects of technology on both the spread of English and the very nature of what we call English. It discusses the current uses of Machine Translation, Text to Speech and Speech to Text and the power of connecting the three. It also points out the error rates involved. Nearly every point made in the article was obvious to me, but I have both the background and the interest to follow a lot of it. The beauty of this is that it conveys this information accurately in a way that my parents could follow."

There are a number of interesting links there as well, including one to an interview with David Graddol of The English Company U.K in which he comments:

The type of language switching and word borrowing that typically goes on in any multilingual community is now happening on the Internet on a massive scale, and it is difficult to know what long-term impact this might have on the way the international community will use English.

The main article stated, "As has been widely noted, the Internet, besides being a convenient vehicle for reaching mass audiences such as, say, the citizenry of Japan or Argentina, is also well suited to bringing together the members of small groups -- for example, middle-class French-speaking sub-Saharan Africans." The two comments together paint a picture of various communities across the net infecting each other with their jargon as the members they have in common carry linguistic information with them from place to place on the net. Because the net is notoriously devoid of geographical places, the divisions are solely on the basis of interest and language. Sufficient interest will motivate the transfer of ideas, although I can't see how sufficient fluency will overcome lack of interest. That implies that those people who do not participate in online culture will be the last to adopt the linguistic innovations that spread from here. And conversely, we will adopt their linguistic creations only when they don't attempt to replace one of our own. After all, how many regular Slashdot users mispronounce "Internet" as "Information Superhighway"?

Comments

China!

[Sleepy]

Face it, "English" really means US English.

Westerners (I am one) typically base world languages against their own personal experience. That is, English to be #1, Spanish is #2, and French is a quaint but dying language (grin)

I would not be totally surprised if China someday unseats the US as a world power, and having totally devestated their own country's ecology, they look to Sibera, Alaska, northern India and Russia for land to rape and "resettle".... like they are doing to Mongolia and Tibet.

Chinese as a world language is usually dismissed on the bases that the concentration of speakers is localized - but what if they weren't? We're talking about over 1/4 of the world's people under the thumb of a dictatorship always looking to distract their people. As the population gets on the net and becomes dissatisfied, one could speculate that a nice diversionary war would fan the flames of nationalism (remember the near-riots after the US bombed the Chinese embesy in Yugoslavia?).

More accurately, English is the world's BUSINESS language. I don't expect that to change in the next few hundred years however...

Re:China!

[fluxrad]

US English is a little too encompasing for your purposes i would think. Are you talking southern US English? Californian english? New England English, etc? And who's to say that "US English" and "British English" are really all that different?

In response to your post, I don't think chinese is going to become a global language for a couple of different reasons.

1)When you say Chinese - are you speaking of Mandarin or Cantonese (i would assume Mandarin)?

2)Before china unseats the US as THE super-power, it needs to go through the same time of issues as the old soviet union did. I honestly don't see a communist dictatorship moving into the big seat any time soon. Russia is a slightly different beast, and they were never really on par with the states....that was more of an assumption, as they sacrificed almost everything internally for things like sputnik and the nuclear arms race.

I think one of the main reasons that people say chinese is going to become the main language of the world because it's the most spoken language in the world currently. Remember where most chinese speakers live...in China. The language is way too concentrated currently. Additionally, by that rational, Hindi has a high likelihood of becoming the global language as well. I find that idea laughable.

Oh well, let's just pick a frickin' language and be done with it.


FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

Well... BASIC English

[aralin]

I am natively speaking Czech/Slovak and my primary and secondary language are German and Russian, but you cannot help it. If you work around computers, you simply HAVE TO learn english. There is no way how to get around it. I have few friends that tried, but either they overcome incredible difficulties or they just gave up. But however english is my third foreign language, it soon became the one that I use most.

There is several reasons why english spread so much, but I think one is really important. You can learn just 3000 words to be able to fully express yourself in most cases. Basic english is something that really helps this language to spread. When you count into it kind of easy grammar...

And I especially like that there are no special symbols, special characters, just all the basic latin characters and thats it. Don't even talk about ease of computer recognition ...

But what I think will move english forward is the fact that more and more 3rd world countries use english as their official language. And these countries are now stepping forward too...

when in rome

[fluxrad]

To be perfectly honest, i think that we're only going to go so far without a global language. As sad as it is for some "other-continenters" to face, english is just slipping into that role. You can argue about how this came about, but it's probably going to continue that way untill the US is no longer the #1 power in the world.

The issue is also this, while the US does not hold a monopoly on goold old DARPA Net, it was the first. and it comes to an argument of "when in rome..." If the internet was created by the spanish and everyone started to adopt that, i'm sure the language of the internet would be Spanish. (This is not to say that the de facto language right now IS english, but for all intents and purposes, english is the beast that rules).

I guess it's just getting annoying that everyone keeps having an argument about why it's so bad that English is becoming the foremost global language. Personally, i'm getting sick of it. Let's just pick a fsckin' language, make sure everyone speaks it (i guess except for people in the south - i still can't figure out what language that is they're speaking), and be on our merry way. If it's english, great...a ton of us already know what one. If not....i'm not lazy, and i'm willing to learn.


FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

Re:a point to ponder

[uradu]

> and it said that percentage of Americans that new more
> than one language fluently was extrememely low

And the percentage of Americans that could spell their native language was even lower.

American English

[craw]

Only a putz would think that English is not the defacto language of the internet. Now I know that some of you European prima donnas might think that English looks rather passe when compared vis-a-vis to your rather bizarre languages. You do not have carte blanche to say this.

English is the grande dame of the internet, not some language du jour. English is not a kludge consisting of some funky words that we so irregardlessly made up. English is the Big Kahuna!

If you watch any sci fi...

[garagekubrick]

You'll know that English is the language of the future. How's that? Well it's pretty bloody obvious, aliens speak perfect English too.

Re:It ain't even the United States language.

[b0z]

We don't need any more laws. The U.S. does not have an official language for a reason.

Originally, the U.S. was a country that was founded upon immigration. In fact, immigration is a strength of a country, but too many people here look at it as a bad thing. Anyways, the thing is, when people come here from another country, their English may or may not be very good. These people are consumers, and need to buy groceries, get housing, work, etc. So, as a result of capitalism, businesses try to cater to the needs of the people. In the U.S. today, you see a lot of places that are bilingual, and have English and Spanish. That is only because there is a market that you need to advertise to native Spanish speakers. I see it like, if you were Buddhist, and a lot of other buddhists lived in your area, you're probably not going to celebrate Christmas. So, let's say Christianity is the official religion of the U.S., it won't matter. Businesses are not going to sell christmas trees in your area, instead they will sell little Buddha statues and such. This isn't infringing on any American's rights, it's just catering to the need of a specific group of people.

I also see this from a free speech point of view. Free speech is free speech, whether it is in English, Spanish, hax0r sp33k, or anything else. The government should never have the right to tell me what I can or can't say. There is no way to make an "official" English to use in all situations, as you will no doubt see from how different the dialects already are between the northeast, southeast, west, etc. I think that the whole "English should be our official language" dogma is often a mask for racism. I have not seen any place of business that has Spanish but not English. Sure, the people working there may not be masters of the language, but if you go to a Mexican restaurant and ask for a coke, they won't bring you sprite any more often than English as a first language waiters will.

lEt as fIks INglIx!

[achurch]

of course, you can read what I've written, and know that this is a horrible idea, but in the past 100 years, the english language(s) has metamorphed into so many different dialects that we may even put the chinese to shame. we have our share of slang and coloquialisms (sp?) too, and because the computer doesn't understand them, we are stupid for using them.

I agree with you completely. English is an entirely too irregular language to be used for global communication. Especially this horrible spelling system. Who else remembers learning "I before E, except after C..." in their school days and wondering why it had to be so confusing?

Well, we can du something abaut that. First off, let's meke sum sense aut uf thu vawels; no more uf this "I before E" crap, just plein Latun and short vawels. And wi can toss aut thos silli treiling E's whail wi'r at it.

Thu cansonants also niid tuu bi cliind up. No mor "GIF or JIF?" argyuments--wun saund pur kansonant hiir. And wi kan teik keir uv TH, SH and CH bai riuzing q, x, and c.

But qu vaulz ar stil kunfyuzing, so let's get rid uv kapitulizeixun. nau wi kAn yuz kApItUl lEtUrz for xOrt vaulz. And wi kAn also yuz kApItUlz for kansonants: N for "ng", Q for "qis" or "qat" (As apozd tu "qiN").

fainali, wi hAv klind ap QU spElIN Uv INglIx! nau If wi kAn onli gEt rId Uv al Qoz IdiUmz...

o, And dUz EniwUn no hau tu pronauns "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"? ai nEvr fIgyurd Qat wUn aut.
(Translation: Oh, and does anyone know how to pronounce "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"? I never figured that one out.)

Why the disparity?

[fable2112]

Two major reasons:

1. Distance from concentrations of foreign language speakers. Since I live in New York, it would be fairly easy for me to drive to Quebec, but that's about it in terms of going someplace where the signs are all in another language (not counting the local alphabet-soup neighborhood). Contrast this with the much shorter distances between European countries.

2. Americans are damned arrogant and think the world should learn English to accommodate us, but we shouldn't need to do likewise. This is nothing new -- my mother was an exchange student in Belgium about 30 years ago when some of the other American students she traveled with walked into a post office and started loudly berating the man behind the counter because nobody there spoke English. Never mind that English isn't one of the two official languages of the country.

Rude. Very rude and arrogant. And the Internet seems to be making it worse, unfortunately.