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EU Leader Says English Is Losing Importance (politico.eu)
An anonymous reader writes: Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, opted to deliver a speech in French on Friday morning because he said "English is losing importance" in Europe. He gave the comments, which are unlikely to mend fences after a war of words between Brussels and London over Brexit negotiations, at the "State of the Union" conference in Florence's Palazzo Vecchio -- an annual event for European dignitaries. Juncker said he was opting for French because "slowly but surely English is losing importance in Europe and France has elections this Sunday and I want the French people to understand what I am saying about the importance of the EU." He spoke in English.
Of course someone who speaks French thinks English is "losing importance." They've been asserting that for decades now, because they are delusional. Anybody who ever has needed to deal with software written in France by French companies knows just how arrogant they are about speaking and writing French and only French, even if it means inconveniencing literally everyone else around them.
This guy has a hate-on for the UK so hard he's bashing the language after they decided to leave.
He made those comments in English.
english is waning...you go right ahead and believe that
nothing to see here - move along
English is important, but if a language replaces it as a common tongue, it likely won't be a European language. If it shifts, it will be Mandarin/Cantonese, or Arabic. Maybe even Russian.
Eh no, he spoke in French - first line of the article.
What people may not be aware of, is that computer languages, especially HTML and JavaScript will require people who want to enter the IT field to know at least elementary English. The keywords in HTML tags recognized by all browsers around the word are in English, as is the JavaScript language. While there are some interpreters of compiled languages like C++ in other languages (Chinese for C++ examples exists) the more popular languages have English keyword bases. (see like of non-English based computer languages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...)
since this is the case, any country wanting "in" on the booming IT industry will have to know some basic English. The English speaking community got the core computer programming/formatting languages out first and as usual, first to publish will have more control it long term.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
Head of the Corner Burger Stand announces "McDonalds is losing importance."
If English is losing importance, then French isn't even on the "importance" list. It's not the 19th century. Maybe if Juncker had given the speech in Mandarin he would have had a point.
How many Chinese speak English compared with Français?
How many Indians speak English compared with Français?
How many Japanese speak English compared with Français?
C’est un homme stupide
Dave Barnes 9 breweries within walking distance of my house
Each new day yields another affirmation of the wisdom of UK deplorables.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Or spanish
Time to learn German!
Juncker is just afraid of a Frexit. Nothing more, nothing less. The hyperbole is an emotional appeal to the French to make it seem like France staying in the EU somehow makes English less relevant.
Based on what I read in Harford's _The Undercover Economist Strikes Back_ last night, it seems like Germany's Bundesbank is good for Germany and the countries in the north and not good to bad for all of the countries in the south. It's unfortunate that this version of the EU seems ready to dissolve, but I hope a better trading union could be set up in its place as a result.
English is important, but if a language replaces it as a common tongue, it likely won't be a European language. If it shifts, it will be Mandarin/Cantonese, or Arabic. Maybe even Russian.
If not English, Spanish would be the more logical choice, imho.
Mandarin/Cantonese and Arabic are complicated languages which are wholly unsuited to keyboards.
And Russian... why in the world would we want to speak Russian?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
EU Leader is Butthurt
Well to be fair, England leaving the EU does indeed make English less important in the EU.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
For the cyka blyat!
Qu'est-ce que tu as pu dire à propos de moi, petite chienne?
Que dice el artículo?
Funny, I was just thinking the EU was losing importance...
When they take over the world your wants won't matter.
This guy must be an idiot. The only language that is spoken by a roughly equivalent number of people in the world is Mandarin Chinese. Unless Junker intends to push for people switching to Mandarin, he should probably just sit down and stop making an ass of himself.
Its a good thing when there are fewer barriers to communication in the world. English for the most part, won on the global stage as the cross-over language. Short of another World War, I see little likelihood of this ever changing, especially when considering its embedded adoption in the technology sector.
Jean-Claude Juncke is attacking UK over Brexit. This is a meh.
Even Junke said this in English. He was in Florence, did he say it in Italian? No? Language isn't a bargaining position, and he needs to tone down his shit.
If you take English from the EU what do you have? Well Spanish is the next most spoken language with about 400 million speakers. He doesn't speak it.
A petty if not justifiable or desperate move from EU.
It's basically on the brink of collapse, and that's not exactly a good thing. If France elects Marine Le Pen and goes for Frexit, EU is basically over. I didn't think they'd make it this obvious, but of course the only move EU has right now is to the ego of the richest countries left.
Juncker is a braindead fucktard. By the way, IIRC as an EU citisen I'm not allowed to say that. The whole fucking committee (or whatever they're called) can suck my balls though. I love english.
So, if he want to talk about importance, he should speak in German.
Espronto.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Shocking. It's almost as if he's trying to push for people to vote for Macron instead of Le Pen, who wants to pull France out of the EU.
But no, I'm sure no one in the EU would try to impact nation-state politics, nor would they make sweeping nonsensical comments to make a different point.
Of course the statement was in English: it was meant to rub the UK's noses in it.
With the UK out, it makes less sense for English to be used as the Lingua Franca for the EU. Even Ireland insists it's major language is Irish. However, language by language, more people in the EU outside the UK will speak English (~40%) than French, German, or Italian (roughly 20% each). On the other hand, it would be foolish to assume that the EU without a single English country would not slowly reduce its official use of the language and that the utility of English would decline somewhat over the years.
The status of English as a universal language is close but not yet certain, and an economic disaster or rampant isolationism in the U.S. could drastically affect worldwide use in the next few decades.
With those cockroach refugees pouring in, better learn it so you know how to properly speak to your new Muslims masters.
Morons. Fuck'em.
Don't know if this is true, but it's a damn good story:
At a NATO military conference, the French admiral was complaining, "Why do we have to speak English at all of these events?"
The Dutch admiral replied, "Because the British, Canadians, and Americans made sure we don't have to speak German."
From the last paragraph of TFA:
The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said he would deliver his speech in English. “Obviously I want to be understood by the French, but it is equally important than I am understood by the British people,” he said.
Juncker gave his remarks in French.
English is the most prominent language because it is the fastest evolving language. As new concepts are introduced they are absorbed quickly into english. Think of how many french words are used in english speaking countries. We are moving slowly towards a common spoken language, but the basis of of that evolving human language is english, due to it's non resistance to change, and the early prominence of international business, and technological development in english speaking countries that started with latin, boomed with the trade and conquests of the english empire, and evolved faster than any other spoken language with the (sometimes forced #shadyhistory) mass migrations of many different cultures to the US and Canada in the late 1800's.
English is a bastard language. look at common spellings of words that are pronounced differently (tough, bough) etc etc, rules with exceptions, words that sound the same but are different (there, their)
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
When he realises English is the lingua franca in Europe I shall experience great schadenfreude.
lingua franca
Probably a Frankish language, or maybe even French?
He said that English is losing its importance and then gave his speech in French? That sounds like a Monty Python joke.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
It's hilarious how bitter he is about Brexit. He's been continuously making childish digs at the UK, like criticising the quality of food he was served at Downing Street. He's like a baby throwing a fit because he didn't get his way.
It says a lot about the EU when the head behaves in such a manner. The EU isn't accustomed to the people being able to oppose its will since it is run by the unelected officials in the European Commission and the unelected judges in the European Court of Justice. The only people who are elected are the members of the European Parliament, which exists largely to create the illusion of democracy and is mostly powerless.
Now that the people have finally been given the opportunity to have their say on the EU, he can't hide his bitterness about the result.
Once the UK leaves, English will be the mother tongue of less than 1% of the EU. It's the Brexiters who are doing the bashing to their own language by reducing its relevancy.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
What gives you the idea that criticizing Mandarin and ignoring Russian means that I'm defending English?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
No disrespect to the French but this is pretty typical of the French politicians. As I recall, a previous French president was fluent in English but both spoke French and had a translator for anything public. It's just a matter of cultural/national pride for them. I understand why they do it and there is no need to hold it against them or the people of France.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I have a lot of French and Russian friends that i've made during my travels. One thing that i've noticed between them is a sort of mild cultural annoyance that their language isn't as dominant like English or even to an extent Spanish.
The UK was an EU anchor tenant. No amount of EU sour grapes will change that fact. Even without them, everyone will still be wanting to speak English.
He's not right yet
If you mean Esperanto, then yes. It would be a better choice than French for ease of learning, especially when it comes to pronunciation.
..he prefers his grapes sour.
So you're saying a Frenchman said English is losing importance?
Sounds like typical butthurt Frenchie behavior to me.
Disclaimer: I was born and brought up French. I think the language wars are fucking stupid and hate it when French people walk into a restaurant, making a scene at the fact the waiter doesn't speak perfect fucking French (add emphasis on the "fucking").
Fucking get over it!
I tend to rant.
The EU head honcho says English is losing importance after the UK leaves the EU.
It's left as an exercise to the reader to determine whether this message is backed by
a) reality
b) politics
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
English will be an important language for the next couple hundred years. Chinese recently became an important language to know (within the last 30 years). What English (as a language) is losing isn't important, but dominance. Twenty years ago, you would have heard that EVERYONE should learn English because it's the global language of business. Today, economics has changed and now you can be part of the global market while not knowing English. Moreover, with the (marginally) dominant nationalist/isolationist politics of Britain and America, globally minded countries will look to other countries (and thus their languages) for partnerships... but English will still be important.
While it may be technically true, the announcement makes him sound like a petulant child. Easily retorted with "Apparently being sober is losing importance in Junker's case"
English is falling out of fashion, not importance. It is purposefully being dropped out of disinterest & upsetness with England for leaving the EU.
So it's not a failing language. Europe is merely CHOOSING to have tempertantrums & retaliatory reactions is all.
For one, English is still the language of the United States who is still and exceedingly important trade and military partner with most of the world. That alone makes English pretty important. Likewise while the UK may be leaving the EU, they'll still be trading with the EU, nothing really changes there.
However the real importance of English comes not from the nations where it is the primary language, but all the nations where it isn't. The reason is that while English is only the 3rd or 4th most spoken first language it is, by a mile, the most spoken second language in the world. When people from different nations get together to do business, English is generally the language they use. Chinese is not widely spoken in Japan and Japanese is sure as hell not popular in China, but English is a common second language in both and so usually used when companies from the two nations do business.
In the EU it is even more important as there are a ton of primary languages. If you wanted to do business in the native language of all EU nations you'd need to speak Dutch, French, German (a couple variants thereof), Danish, Irish, Greek, Portuguese, Finnish, Swedish, Hungarian, Greek, Turkish, Czech, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Slovak, Slovene, Bulgarian, Romanian, and Croatian. While you can find people with that kind of language skill, they are very rare and very sought after. Getting one for your firm is unlikely... However English is a popular second language in all those places, so you can do business in that. You can have people from Germany, Croatia, Greece, and Spain all at a table and English is a language they can probably all use whereas the likelihood that they all speak each other's native tongue is pretty low.
English has become the language of common exchange, and nothing seems to be changing that. Should another language take over for that, French is not likely to be it, much though the French may wish it was.
Language complexity has nothing to do with its dominance. If say Chinese or Russians become dominant in business, military, science, I can assure, you everybody will start learning Chinese or Russian
I don't buy it. Travel across the world and you'll notice most airports will have both the native language and English. Same goes for a lot of historical sites and museums.
My wife is Taiwanesse and does a lot of international sales throughout asia, and the language they use the most often is English, second is Mandarin.
The keywords are irrelevant. It's simple enough to write a keyword translator. I wrote one that translated BASIC from a custom set of french keywords to English way back in the mid-80s for a friend. If you can't write a translator, or even just a series of macros or a regex or a perl script to do the job, you need to realize TIMTOWTDI.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Mother tongue huh? Well, my mother tongue is german, and I feel like 90% of germans around me, including myself, speak english most of the time. Even at the bar, because there is usually someone from the UK, who doesn't speak german quite as good, hanging out with us. Frankly, you're being ridiculous.
Over 50% of people in the EU will still understand English to a competent level because it is the language of international business and taught in many schools. It is true, statistically, almost no one will be speaking English as their native language once the UK leaves (although a decent % of Ireland speak English in their homes).
English will still be the most understood language in the EU even if not the native tongue.
German will be the most common native tongue in EU (as it already is).
French is only really important to France, parts of Belgium, and the parts of the world they once occupied.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Juncker: I will not speak the language of those filthy English pigs! I will program in French!
#inclure "stdio.h"
ent principale(eng argc, char *argv[])
{
impression("Bonjour le monde");
revenir 0;
}
Juncker: Why will it not compile?! English is of no importance!
English speaks for itself.
When Britain is out of the EU, that will be all the more reason for the EU to use English, because that way there is no favoritism to any one language group. That would be the most egalitarian. Except they need to kick out Ireland.
See title (written in English and understood throughout EU).
Arabic will soon be the official language of Europe.
The EU isn't important to the rest of us. Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.
To be a business language people have to be able to learn it as adults, and be able to identify documents using just a phrase book.
The written form has to be based on the Latin alphabet. The reason is simple; lots of languages already use it. So there is broad familiarity with the concept of having a phonetic encoding system using approximately these same letters. No other writing system has that.
Russian is not viable in a post-Soviet world. It is laughable.
Chinese or Arabic-speaking people can look up phrases in a Latin alphabet using a phrase book. And nobody else is going to easily use theirs. So it is not even viable. It is not even 1% chance. Plus, other reasons.
is that once the UK leaves, English will no longer be an official language of any UE member country. Ireland declared Irish and Malta declared Maltese as their official language for EU purposes, even if their people speak mostly English.
I really wish this were true, but it's just so far from reality. Political grandstanding of the worst order. As someone who speaks the broken English of a U.S. American, I think it is a terrible language and absolutely should not be the "universal" language of the world. It's just bad. Not particularly expressive, difficult for newcomers to learn, ridiculous, inconsistent grammar rules, etc. It is my hope that continued advances in machine translation will allow people to revert to using their own languages even more. Universal translators will one day be a thing. But today is not that day.
They don't have the population to take over the world, and if they blow up the world I still don't have to speak Russian!
Snails and frog legs are largely irrelevant as sources of protein outside of France.
...if the political leaders of this world are wondering why people are taking their stupid claims less seriously and turning toward other sources (ie the rise of "fake news")?
THIS would be the reason.
A major, possibly THE major political leader of the EU making a blanket, provably false statement.
Yet I expect Mr Tusk would also assert that because of his penchant for use of falsehoods, Mr Trump is "stupid".
What's "hypocrisy" in French, Mr Tusk?
-Styopa
Seriously, msmash? Bwahahahaha take libtard glasses off, occasionally.
Plus the set of keywords is small and easy to learn anyway. The keywords used in programming languages are English words and they kind of have a similar meaning but really they're not all that natural to native English speakers. If they were, we could all start writing webapps as soon as we graduated kindergarten. No what I expect to start seeing is programs using English keywords and UTF8 variables names but the comments all being in native languages. The English-only speakers will be at a slight disadvantage.
Bah. This twit has done more damage to the EU single-handedly than Orban, Le Pen, Petri, Wilders and all that scum together.
Setting up a tax haven in the middle of the EU (Luxembourg), living at the cost of others, then ramming Greece into the ground (and Portugal, and Ireland, and Spain, and...) with his liberal politics (not the only one, Schauble & co helped too).
To me, this guy should be behind bars.
What people may not be aware of, is that computer languages, especially HTML and JavaScript will require people who want to enter the IT field to know at least elementary English. The keywords in HTML tags recognized by all browsers around the word are in English, as is the JavaScript language. While there are some interpreters of compiled languages like C++ in other languages (Chinese for C++ examples exists) the more popular languages have English keyword bases. (see like of non-English based computer languages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...)
since this is the case, any country wanting "in" on the booming IT industry will have to know some basic English. The English speaking community got the core computer programming/formatting languages out first and as usual, first to publish will have more control it long term.
Computer Languages are made up of keywords. There is a constant struggle to make programming more accessible by making computer languages more readable by adding syntactic sugar. However for a people who grew up writing a language where every symbol is not a letter but a keyword , computer languages are as readable as their natural language. I expect languages to come out which use Chinese characters for Keywords.
**Life is too short to be serious**
This is demonstrable. Juncker's opinion is only an opinion, and a petulant one at that.
Are you going to write a keyword translator for stackoverflow too? You would need to translate much more than the code you write. Most documentation and code examples are in english. When you share a code snippet with someone to get help on it, are you going to translate it to english and then translate their result back.
And what of functions that don't have names that make sense. What would atoi() translate to?
Bwahahahahaha, no.
It's literally everywhere, including The New York Times. Please tell us how you have better sense of news than those guys.
Putonghua. /. ate the two of the accented vowels.
French is a dying language, spoken only in the former African and Southeast Asian countries, and a dying empire. Soon it will just be a stupid accent, which is too bad, I like Maurice Chevalier
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
On the world scale, the francophonie has more than 50 full members (84 if you include observers), even excluding the Central African Republic and Thailand (human rights violations).
Those countries comprise a billion people. Those "parts of the world they once occupied" are hardly insignificant.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
No people can match the annoying and utterly unjustified arrogance of the French.
I think the US should have backed Germany in the last two world wars. We wouldn't be hearing
so much French bullshit then.
"in Europe". Kinda important. You missed it.
Maybe because your head was even further up your arse than Farrage's. In Europe,it's likely either French or German, and French has more commonality with the southern parts, whilst German with the northern areas.
As far as number of countries speaking it as one of the native languages, it's more likely to be Spanish/Portugese, which most people forget about.
But the UK is leaving. Ergo he's RIGHT, English WILL be less important in Europe. For a start, it won't have to be one of the three mandatory languages for any EU report to be written in. BECAUSE THE UK IS FUCKING OFF.
And it's kinda dumb to think it's not mending bridges when we still let Farrage get paid in a "non job" peopled by humans who have had in many cases a much MUCH higher "REAL job" before taking the role than Chinless Nige did, and say the bullshit he comes out with.
He can't understand any language after lunch, as he is apparently usually drunk by then.
Scrabble is also much easier if you're not thinking of it as making words, so much as matching 26 tiles for the most points.
They lost more soldiers in the war and were invaded too. The USA not so much. Moreover, Germany declared war on the USA, not the other way round.
And the reason why you merkins speak American English rather than British English is because the French helped you massively to get independence from us Brits.
It's not like every question on stackoverflow is unique. There are plenty of sites in other languages with plenty of code snippets. The official french PHP documentation, also available in 9 other languages. You can find french versions for most programming languages, including c++ and java, just by searching $PROGRAMMING_LANGUAGE_OF_CHOICE examplaires . Or you can substitute the word "examplaires" for the the translation of the term "example" in the written language of your choice.
atoi()? Whatever your little heart and your imagination desires. For example, overload entier() to take strings in a header, and then a simple text substitution of atoi() to entier(). Or if you like conciseness, ent. 25% fewer letters than atoi.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
It's not the keywords, it's the comments.
I've had to work on several large programs written by non-native-English speakers. The code itself is fine, but when the variable names and especially the comments are all in French or in German, it's a bit of a challenge. (Although better than no comments at all.)
Since some languages/compilers support unicode, I can hardly wait for a program where the variables and comments are in, say, Chinese.
Yes but you had to WRITE the translator first. The base language wasn't changed, you just added a translator to it.If you have to read source code, you are helpless without the tools, or knowing basic English. That is how people get locked into platforms. In any even the world standard is pretty much established. Translators solidify that if anything.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
On the world scale, the francophonie has more than 50 full members (84 if you include observers), even excluding the Central African Republic and Thailand (human rights violations).
Those countries comprise a billion people. Those "parts of the world they once occupied" are hardly insignificant.
From a worldwide perspective outside those areas they are. Most of the French speaking countries outside Europe are impoverished and not very well connected globally. That might change in the future, but there isn't really anywhere near as much reason to learn French as an outsider than there is English.
It could all be down to 19th century policies. The British knew their territories were too widespread to try to hold on to forever purely using military domineering, and so tried to make their presence at least partially tolerated by maintaining trade and cooperation. (not that Britain didn't do so terrible unspeakable acts- and conquering land in the first place could be considered impolite).
France, and Belgium showed little concern for the countries they occupied and were more brutal in their rape of those countries. They tried to make their territories too scared to rebel. The result is today, those countries are still recovering and relative backwaters.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
It was meant metaphorically.
The list of languages that should be considered world languages:
Russian (Russia)
English (United States, United Kingdom)
French (France)
Standard Mandarin (China)
Hindi (India)
Urdu (Pakistan)
Korean (North Korea)
Conveniently this list is also the list of nations with nuclear weapons. Theses are the languages where successful negotiation is vital to the survival of the human race. Any other languages we bother supporting is just a nice to have. Too bad Germany.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Alt the EU countries display a good understanding of English when it comes to asking the US to protect them from the evil empire slowly approaching them from the east. And France has always been touchy since they surrendered their country to the Germans and had to get England and the US to get their country back for them. That is not a slam on the regular French citizenry because they were betrayed by all the elite of their country who were more interested in playing internal political games than protecting their country. What remains to be seen is whether they have learned their lesson. Any country who lets internal squabbles override the security of the state from foreign actors usually do not survive long enough to pass their pearls of wisdom down to the younger generations. But the victors of such conflicts usually live long enough to pass down the glory of conquest to their younger generations and helps perpetuate the madness in the future.
I'm sensing a trend and preference to French here. Personal opinions are fine, but there is the basic fact that the methods are still in English and being objective. manuals are all nice, and the open source community has made great efforts to help there. But as long as the methods and core keywords of accept languages are English, you have to learn a little English. look, I've worked abroad in a couple places teaching ESL for awhile. And French is hardly the best example as there are many words that are similar to English or near cognates you can utilize there, but that is an isolated method. What about, say a language completely incompatible with romance languages. Say, Chinese. (I'd say Japanese but English has been integrated into a lot of common phrases in Japanese since WWII to the point an someone with no Japanese can pick out a few things accurately). The Chinese language is totally alien to English but a Chinese programmer is forced to learn many verbs and object names to program. A translator is likely to get it totally wrong as there are cultural elements to language as well. True Language is not just "grammar-translation" method which is abysmal for teaching communication anyway. It's true that programming keywords won't make someone fluent, but "Hello Word" examples has certainly gotten that basic meaning across. If you can apply your simple word translation in a meaningful way to languages like Chinese, Egyptian, or Swahili, koodos to you. Using the grammar-translation approach to getting keywords in an incompatible language makes it harder to program as you get an incorrect meaning of what it actually means. Sorry if English being important because of the tools is distasteful to you. I've thought about it for years. Bottom line, we have to accept something. And English was there first.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
English is a bastard language. look at common spellings of words that are pronounced differently (tough, bough) etc etc, rules with exceptions, words that sound the same but are different (there, their)
If that is your criteria for a "bastard" language, don't ever try to learn Chinese. There are hundreds of homophones (words that sound the same but have totally different meanings) and the writing is not related at all to the pronunciation (being a logosyllabic writing scheme)...
On the other hand if you combine all English and Chinese fluent (and semi-fluent) people in world they probably out number all other languages and the fact that millions of children successfully learn both languages all the time, it might be fair to ask what problem (if any) there might be with a
"bastard" language. French is after all kind of a "bastard" Celtic-Latin language...
Let's look at The Numbers:
Number of native English speakers: 500 million
Number of native French speakers: 80 million
Number of 2nd language English speakers: 510B
Number of 2nd language French speakers: 192M
My aunt having travelled a lot had this to say:
English primarily for business
French if you are a diplomat or statesman
Chinese when you order take out, but my version is Chinese Wen Yu order take out
And today's captcha is civilize
Why debate to use english or french, both are losing Importance, we already know that the most spoken language in the future will be emoji!
Chinese or Arabic-speaking people can look up phrases in a Latin alphabet using a phrase book. And nobody else is going to easily use theirs. So it is not even viable. It is not even 1% chance. Plus, other reasons.
Given the current trends in technology "phrase-books" are going the way of books (niche applications only). Even today, they have photo-translators (free apps available on Android anyhow, don't know about iOS) and they are only going to get better over time. Universal translators (good enough for identifying documents and traveling) are probably going to become ubiquitous in a few years.
Once the UK leaves, English will be the mother tongue of less than 1% of the EU. It's the Brexiters who are doing the bashing to their own language by reducing its relevancy.
Last summer my wife and I toured the Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, and Hungary. We encountered language barrier issues exactly zero times. Everybody we met - hotel staff, merchants, even random people in the street when we needed directions - understood and spoke English more than adequately for the purpose. Also true to a slightly lesser extent when we visited Amsterdam a few years back. I suspect tourism drives this as much as any other factor. We met a group of people travelling together who were from Sweden, and they spoke English so fluently and accent-free that I was shocked to learn where they were from (I had been guessing Canada).
Maybe you don't know it, but you're using a translater that someone else wrote for every single program that you write, whether translated at compile time or run time, unless you're punching in hex codes into ram. So what's your point. It only takes ONE person to write the language. Or to take the language compiler or runtime source code and change the keywords to keywords of their choice, and distribute the new compiler or runtime interpreter, in which case the extra translation stage is skipped, and there's no worry about clashes between the old and new keywords.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The highest population growth is occurring in many of those countries. Population pressure plus environmental degradation are going to lead to mass migrations and wars that will, either directly or indirectly, affect everyone who isn't part of the 0.1%.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
It seems like Esperanto should be everyone's 2nd language, simply because it's so easy to learn yet seems ~"complete", and more importantly, has been shown to make learning other languages easier to the point that overall you learn, say, more French if you learn Esperanto first, than if one spent the entire time studying French. So learn whatever you would have learned as a 2nd language, for the 3rd, and you saved time and got farther, overall (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto#Third-language_acquisition). And it seems to me the easiest way for someone to better understand the grammar of their own native language, by seeing a simple & clean example.
I don't think aficionados usually see it as a replacement for a first (or native) language, though that has been done intentionally by some (per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..., or search https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... for "native").
Then there's the side benefit of being by far the cheapest effective global route to everyone being able to talk to and understand each other, even if haltingly. For some people, learning English is simply too hard. For the rest, it's still a very big effort, and Esperanto is extremely easy by comparison. In terms of global cost/benefit, Esperanto seems like a big win. And it's fun!
An excellent, persuasive explanation from Claude Piron: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
(PS: There are other interesting constructed languages each with their pros & cons, but none with nearly the same amount of traction or interest as Esperanto. It's interesting to consider, given all that has been learned in the field so far, how to "optimize" a constructed human language, considering various factors like ease, familiarity, beauty, efficiency, computability, or whatever one sees as most important. Also, feel free to point me to how link text should be covered with a url when posting.)
A Free, fast personal organizer for touch typists: onemodel
The real problem with your argument is that new computer languages arise all the time. Even now...
When Ruby first came out I couldn't even decide whether I was interested because everything was only in Japanese, and it's still true than many libraries are first released with only Japanese documentation, and the English follows later...sometimes over a year later.
The current generation of languages clearly favors English speakers, but it's not like the Air-Traffic controllers, there's no real need for new languages to be internationally intelligible.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Methods don't have to be in English. Take the compiler or runtime source code and you can make all the keywords in any arbitrary language. And no, a properly made code translator does not get it wrong. I've done it.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Poverty and population growth unfortunately almost always go hand-in-hand. I have seen predictions about French overtaking English globally as a first language in the coming century. I don't think that will push French into being the world's dominant language though. If as you say, there are mass migrations from those poor population growth areas, it's usually the people migrating to learn the new language.
The only way there is going to be more pressure for people to learn French as a foreign language is if those French speaking countries get out of poverty and become financially important players on a global stage.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Dutch :)
But seriously, based on the synopsis given above, it appears he is only saying this to try and push the french to vote for a non-Frexit candidate, under the mistaken belief that french lingual superiority will win out over English on the regional, if not international stage.
"English losing importance," says man in member state of a multinational alliance that relies on the United States to keep its defense costs at rock bottom.
Go to Little Italy in a city near you. Or Chinatown. Or parts of New York. Or Amish country. Or, if you're lazy, just watch Bladerunner. Languages have this nasty habit of hanging around as a way to preserve culture among minority groups.
Little Italy, no, I hardly ever hear Italian in little Italy any more. The Italians have been here too long; they all speak English now. Chinatown, yes, you hear some Mandarin, and quite a bit of Korean. But that is entirely from immigrants and first-generation Chinese ("ABC," in the jargon)-- by the second generation or so, they may know Mandarin, but only because their grandparents insist. They don't ever speak it of their own accord.
Amish country is an exception-- they work hard on preserving their peculiar dialect of old German. But to a large extent they do this by severely limiting the exposure of children to English speakers.
People who don't speak primarily English, often learn English because of tourism, trade and travel.
But sure, if you plan to not engage in the larger world economy, stick to whatever language your corner of the world speaks and bloviate about how Brexit is racist and nationalist.
Work Safe Porn
He has pulled that butthurt stunt before. Because he thinks that with the "brexit", the only country who speaks English are leaving.
He certainly going to alienate a lot more.
There's a lot of us who don't understand German or French and if they again threaten to drop English, there's a lot of us who won't be able to understand what the leaders of our country are saying.
It would be yet another nail in the EUs coffin, and even though I like the concept of the EU as it was originally sold. I don't want what we have now or where it's going. We where specifically told that it would NOT be the United States of Europe but a trade union.
But let them speak French, I will welcome that so that we can get rid of the EU.
Chinese grammar may be simple, but people who grew up with English have very bad problems mastering tones. And, of course, the written language is complicated.
Japanese is easier-- the syllables are very much like English syllables. (The trick is to focus on not adding tones, which English does for emphasis, such as marking a question.).
Kanji is much easier than Chinese, too-- they stripped it down to only the 1946 most important characters.
The difficulty in Japanese is so many levels of politeness. You'll have to probably just accept that you will speak in a particular somewht stilted diction; "the politeness level appropriate to foreigners."
This is a political statement which is very true. He's just stating again a well known fact that the Brexit cuts down the political power of both the UK and indirectly the US in the EU. Hence "The language looses influence ..."
The British politicians actually know that too but they can not come back to their steps without it being political suicide... even if many of them wanted to.
Sad enough the British people got "Trumped" first by a bunch of false promises and fake news. They are going to pay the actual price for the divorce...not the politicians..
If Esperanto was easy to learn to pronounce. Then why do all the Esperanto snobs complain about William Shatner in the movie "Incubus"?
pinyin allows you to type almost faster in Chinese than in English.
How was Mandrake Linux, when it was around?
At the top of your link: "all such lists should be used with caution." :-)
12% of the Eu's 510 million people have French as their mother tongue. That's over 60 million. Throw in 7 million in Canada, most who speak Quebec French (a variant of French, same as English Quebecers speak Quebec English and there are various variants of English in the UK). Hait has 10 million people, with mother tongue divided between "French" French and Haitian Creole (a local variant of French). We're already just 3 million under your 80 million native speakers.
Are you seriously going to maintain that the other 50+ countries of the francofonie have a total population of only 3 million people whose mother tongue is French?
The figure is full of shit.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Maybe. But if the EU continues its open doors policies w/ the Mohammedan world much longer, it won't be English against whom they'll be preserving their precious languages. They'll run the risk of being supplanted by Arabic, Turkish and Urdu.
Question is: will the French be as valiant in defending their language from being supplanted by Arabic, in the same way that they are vis a vis English? The Moors would be a lot more virulently anti French than the English ever were, even during the 100 years war.
If Esperanto was easy to learn to pronounce. Then why do all the Esperanto snobs complain about William Shatner in the movie "Incubus"?
I haven't seen the movie, but I suspect that has more to do with Shatner than with Esperanto.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
English is the only important language... you go right ahead and believe that
Okay, as someone who worked in Si Valley in the last decade - and I see no reason for that to have changed - the main languages that matter alongside English in the industry were/are Mandarin (maybe some Cantonese), Korean (to satisfy the hordes of Samsung, LG & Hynix), and Japanese. Oh, and Russian too, since Moscow is a major tech center, and Russian is the 2nd language in Israel
Anybody who thinks that languages like French, Arabic or German are anywhere near as relevant is fooling themselves. Spanish & Portuguese are there, for the Latin American market.
The Simpsons: Lisa was having some fantasy that she was Joan of Arc and exhorted the troops "Follow me oh Army of France and I will lead you to victory"... A soldier piped up and said "But we are French... we have no word for victory"
And yet if you weren't around, they wouldn't have been speaking English, would they? It's quite common for a group of people whose native language is $PICK_A_LANGUAGE to switch to English as soon as a single English-speaking person shows up. They aren't doing it to communicate with each other better - they're doing it because a hell of a lot of people whose first language is English simply cannot be arsed to learn a second language, or simply have passed the stage where they CAN learn a second language with any sort of proficiency.
It's a shame, because being able to communicate in two or more languages helps protect against the ravages of Alzheimers
Bilingual people with Alzheimer's outperformed single-language speakers in short- and long-term memory tasks, even though scans showed more severe deterioration in brain metabolism among the bilingual participants, the scientists said.
The ability to speak two languages appears to provide the brain with more resilience to withstand damage from Alzheimer's, said lead researcher Dr. Daniela Perani, a professor of psychology at Vita-Salute San Raffaele University in Milan.
The more often a person swapped between two languages during their lifetime, the more capable their brains became of switching to alternate pathways that maintained thinking skills even as Alzheimer's damage accumulated, the researchers found.
Previous studies have shown that lifelong bilingualism can delay the onset of dementia by as much as five years, Perani said. However, no one has yet examined what causes that effect in the brain.
The bilingual people dramatically outscored monolingual speakers on memory tests, scoring three to eight times higher, on average.
Bilingual people achieved these scores even though scans of their brains revealed more signs of cerebral hypometabolism—a characteristic of Alzheimer's in which the brain becomes less efficient at converting glucose into energy.
The brain scans also provided a clue why this might be. People who were bilingual appeared to have better functional connectivity in frontal brain regions, which allowed them to maintain better thinking despite their Alzheimer's, Perani said.
Constantly using two languages appears to make the brain work harder. During a lifetime this causes structural changes to the brain, creating a "neural reserve" that renders the bilingual brain more resistant against aging, Perani said.
Bilingualism also sets up a person for better "neural compensation," in which the brain copes with its own degeneration and loss of neurons by finding alternative pathways through which to function, she said.
Maybe the decreased brain capabilities of unilingual people is a factor contributing to both Brexit and Trumpism? Certainly when people can communicate outside their local linguistic community they have more opportunities to be exposed to new ideas. Plus imagine the money that can be saved by delaying Alzheimers, if you need a financial incentive?
Like taking kids to cancer wards to discourage their smoking, maybe we can take them to old age homes to show the benefits of a second language. Old age homes are depressing enough - we should be doing what we can to delay entry just out of kindness.
Maybe it's time to bring back foreign language training as part of the core curriculum in both countries?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I pretty much concur with this, as an Indian-American. The first generation of people who come to the US are bilingual, speaking Hindi/Telegu/Marathi/whatever at home, and English outside. Their kids however go to school where English is the only language - and maybe Spanish, and don't pick up the habit of talking in those languages. Over time, even with their parents, English remains the spoken language, and by the time they're grown up and married, they may be ethnically Indian, but English is the only language they know. Take them to Bangalore or Mumbai, and while they'll get by with their phone GPSs, they'll otherwise be totally lost if they have to talk to non-English speaking locals.
And when they have kids, they'll be even less likely to even know, much less speak, those original languages. By then, they'd be totally assimilated.
Perhaps your idea of expecting people that don't know how to write html to code a program to translate between different language tags for their html to work might be half-baked.
Maybe.
This French politician is not stating the obvious. He's not forced to speak in German. For that he needs to thank the....oh fuhgeddaboudit.
Haitian Creole (a local variant of French).
Hatian Creole is not mutually intelligible with French.
In West Africa, many people speak French, but few of them speak it as their mother tongue.
English is doing well, it's the simplest European language that is used and abused every day.
Also, Juncker is not a leader of any sort, he's just an example how European Union(don't confuse with Europe) is detached from reality.
For someone that seemingly the majority of slashdot despises due to repeated incompetence, politicizing, and clickbait, it's a wonder how your posts get any positive moderation at all, particularly when they do not add to the discussion.
It makes one curious where that moderation comes from.
Russian writing is a lot more phonetic than English. Rules are a lot more logical, to the point you actually have a chance to pronounce a word properly based only on how it's written without knowing it. While English is full of silly rules like 'i' for some reason reading like 'ay' in some context and like 'i' in others.
And yet if you weren't around, they wouldn't have been speaking English, would they?
That is what we call "an assumption", and it has the additional attribute of being entirely unrelated to the question of whether English is losing importance. I have no idea what they would have been speaking if I wasn't there, and neither do you; maybe they prefer Klingon. I can tell you, though, that the folks from Sweden I mentioned were speaking English among themselves before we introduced ourselves to them; if they'd been conversing in Swedish (or Klingon), we wouldn't have participated.
As for my personal language skills, I am able to limp along in Spanish. Unfortunately, not a language of much use in the countries I mentioned. But your snippet on the benefits of bilingualism makes me wonder if there's a similar benefit associated with being conversant in multiple programming languages.
For real, just look at Eurovision ... _everyone_ talks in English except the French tard who gets called for the numbers.
As far as translating English into local languages, I agree. I doubt many local languages will ever provide large enough data sets for translation from those languages to be any good.
It was in `98 I tried to speak to a Chinese student on the bus and she smiled and bowed a couple times speaking Chinese and then pulled out a phone-sized computer and started speaking into it, and the computer explained that she didn't speak English but had a translator device. It worked pretty well. We have lots of students that don't speak English. But only from China. Nobody else has advanced enough language support to get away with it, even now.
I nominate the black speech of Mordor ;)
I can't speak for Arabic, but Mandarin is fairly easy to type with modern input methods. You can even draw it onto your touchscreen (or onto your trackpad) if you're hardcore.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
This. GP does not seem to understand that if you're writing HTML, JS and CSS by hand in this day and age, you're doing it wrong. And you've been doing it wrong for a decade.
the only legitimate news sources to the Trump followers is Breitbart, stormfront or Fox News.
Would you say that people who want to enter the music field need to know at least elementary Italian?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Good luck actually learning that language from authoritative sources though. And forget about collaborating with international software efforts. Do you think Linux would have gone anywhere if Torvalds had used variable names and comments in Finnish?
But then has he ever actually ever had to deal with nations on another continent ?
Juncker is a stupid,arrogant moron who is enjoying his own little power trip,but is to thick to realise that behaviour and ideas like his (and others)are exactly the reason that not only is the UK giving up on the e.u,but also several others are seriously considering dumping the e.u !!
If he lives long enough he can enjoy being e.u president of a group of 7 countries,all of them reliant on Germany,which may just find itself embargoed from the rest of the ex-e.u ers and the rest of Europe..
I wonder who he would blame for the break up/down then ?
Do gets crossed the tanks accidently have a blue on blue incident right on the full commission and it's cronies at a full meeting in the very near future,perhaps if a flop 35 ever actualy gets into the air with some weaponry we can all pray it has another massive in flight engine/airframe failure.
Or an idea from a book I read recently the RAF have an "incident" while flying a Lancaster over Europe for a memorial flight with a "tallboy" bomb that was meant to be inert !!!
OOPS !!!
Or I'm sure we could coax one last flight out of vulcan XH558...
If those French-speaking countries get out of poverty and become financially important players, they're going to have a lot of English speakers. Dominant languages have momentum.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
It is irrelevant what their mother tongue is, it matters what common language all the parties in the conversation speak.
When I visited Germany it was quite common to find people that spoke English. I spoke no German but I had a translation booklet. I know some Spanish but found no use for it. When in the vicinity of a major airport the signs had both German and English, because English is the mandated language for international pilots. Most everyone around the American military bases spoke English well enough to do business, there were even English language radio and TV stations. Even the French guy at the wine shop in Germany spoke English, which might have had something to do with its vicinity to the EU central bank in Frankfurt.
OPEC member nations use English as its official language, even though none of the member nations have it as their "mother tongue".
International banking is done in English. International air travel is in English. International oil trade is in English. English is the closest thing we have to a universal language right now. If some EU snob thinks that the "brexit" is going to diminish the importance of the English language in international trade then he's going to find himself getting corrected quickly. The UK may be leaving the EU but that does not mean that trade to the UK stops. Trade with other English speaking nations also continues.
When I visited my Army buddy in Germany I made a conscious effort to not look "American" since I knew Americans are often targets for violence and pickpockets. I did not wear any blue jeans, only khaki style slacks. I wore Doc Marten boots. The coat I wore was an Australian/Western style duster. I guess it worked because when in the airport security line to head back home I was in line behind a British family, which I thought might lead the people to at least ask what language I spoke when it came to my turn. The lady with the metal detector started to talk to me in German. When I replied in English she said, "Oh, you're English!" Yep, I'm "English". I'm of German ancestry so this tall and thin guy, with (then) jet black hair, and snow white skin follows a group of Brits I guess I looked more German than English. They were shorter, rounder, with a hint of red to their brown hair and faint freckles on their skin. That was the most memorable moment of knowing I fit in, people generally seemed to assume I spoke German but more often than not they switched to English when I tried to speak German back.
Another memorable moment was going to a restaurant to sit and have a drink while walking with my friend. We were greeted by a rather curvacious waitress and shown a table. We ordered in broken German and paid for our drinks. When we wanted a second drink a rather flat chested waitress started to take our order but she ran off suddenly. We were confused for a minute until she returned with the buxom one which spoke to us in English. I was doubly pleased with this, I didn't have to try to speak German and I got another look at the pretty girl.
That was another thing that struck me. Even though I apparently looked "German" enough that people thought nothing of it until I looked confused when spoken to, they switched immediately to English. I thought that given the proximity to France and Italy that people might first try French or Italian, maybe even Spanish which I studied in high school and college and thought I might have to rely upon. Nope, English was their immediate fall back.
I recall seeing a recent video on the French election in which the commenter made the observation that while the video was in English he knew it might get a lot of views in France since 40% of the people in France spoke English. So, I suspect even the French in Germany speak English. In every EU nation at least 20% of the population speak English, perhaps not as their "mother tongue" but they do speak it. A quick Wikipedia search tells me that roughly half of the EU population speaks English.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
The international technical conferences I go to in Europe and Asia are held in English. IETF RFCs are written in English. Internationally, pilots talk with air traffic control in English.
Even if the UK disappeared, English would still be relevant in the EU.
Let's be clear, Mandarin has 1.05 billion speakers. English has 1.01 million speakers. That is #1 and #2 worldwide.
French is way, way down the league tables, at 272 million speakers. Below Hindi, Spanish, Arabic, Malay, and Russian.
Over the next 20 years, French may gain another 20-30 million speakers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but English will gain similar numbers if not more from Nigeria and India.
Number of 2nd language English speakers: 510B
Number of 2nd language French speakers: 192M
Assuming the B stands for billions I'm sure many would like to know how far our galactic empire stretches. Realistically yeah I agree, if people speak a second language it's by far likely to be English.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Thailand is neither a member of the francophonie, nor was it ever colonized/occupied by European conquerors.
That is one reason why the Thai consider themselves so special.
While most Thai learn English, many speak several local languages and understand or even speak Mandarin.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Basically every 'arab' in France speaks French. What is your point?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
if there's a similar benefit associated with being conversant in multiple programming languages.
Of course it is.
However as most languages evolve into multiple paradigm languages (object oriented + functional + generic) and have higher level concepts in the libraries, this is less needed in our days (considering you are fluent in Java/Scala or C++).
Around 1995 I was on a talk in Frankfurt, Germany, by Bjarne Stroustoup.
His final words were something like:
"However everyone of us should learn more programming languages.
And natural languages, of course!"
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Why you believe that the Latin alphabet is easier for an outsider to learn than e.g. Sanskrit or Khmer or Arabic for you, is beyond me.
There are a few complicated alphabets, but if a 5 year old child of a camel herder, can learn the Arabic script in about a year, it says quite a lot about you that you believe you or any other adult westerner is less capable than a 5 year child.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Of the year.
Anyone working in a multinational company knows that English is not going away. If you want clear, concise instructions, you don't choose Italian, Spanish or Hindi.
Why?
Because it seems to be a part of the language to obfuscate everything you say in those, but not in English.
Perhaps that explains why English speaking dominates basically everything of importance.
or simply have passed the stage where they CAN learn a second language with any sort of proficiency.
One of the greatest myths of second language acquisition... Personally I learnt my second language to native fluency as an adult, starting my studies at 18 years old. However I have also met previously monolingual people who have learnt that second language in their 50s and 60s and are perfectly fluent by any reasonable measure. There is no cut-off point for learning a language unless your mental state is deteriorating rapidly such as Alzheimer's or another debilitating illness.
Mother tongue huh? Well, my mother tongue is german, and I feel like 90% of germans around me, including myself, speak english most of the time. Even at the bar, because there is usually someone from the UK, who doesn't speak german quite as good, hanging out with us. Frankly, you're being ridiculous.
In Australia the local SBS TV channel sometimes broadcasts crime dramas from places like Sweden and Germany in the original language, and I've been surprised that when they have to interrogate someone from a different country they switch to English without extra comment or exposition.
I think Australia has one of the lowest percentages of people speaking a second language, but considering our geographical position, which one should we choose? Chinese might make sense, but due to its tonal nature of verbal speech and the foreign characters it's bloody hard to learn as an adult if you don't have a gift for languages.
Juncker is sending a message to the remaining EU members and citizens: "The EU is strong and here for the long term".
All the member states are nervous. The EU leadership in Brussels is nervous. Brexit was a blow to the EU and was the first major setback of the EU project. For the first time since World War II, nationalism triumphed in a European state and won at the expense of a pan-European vision.
This has emboldened other nationalist leaders in places like France, Germany, Belgium, and so forth.
The EU is far from dead, but it is feeling vulnerable. My suspicion is that Brexit was a one-off and not likely to be replicated. Britain made sure to stay out of the Euro currency before this. Now they want an independent foreign policy, no Schengen rules at the border, and national regulation of things like the food industry (a continuing irritant, and not just in Britain).
Just sayin'.
You're halfway right - the keywords are irrelevant. But the APIs really aren't. There are millions of APIs out there, and nearly all of them are in English.
Re: every comment by you in this thread..
Please put the meth pipe down.
French is one of the official languages of Mali, which was once a French colony. There are numerous native languages with official status. English is NOT an official language.
However in Mali English is the common language for trade, business, and technology.
The same seems to be true for the other impoverished, post-french-colony nations.
English rulz.
What people may not be aware of, is that computer languages, especially HTML and JavaScript will require people who want to enter the IT field to know at least elementary English.
Spoken like someone who did not know any language other than English, nor any technical field other than IT.
It is like saying anyone who wanted to be a doctor or biologist must learn elementary Latin. Or anyone who wanted to by a Physicist must learn German (many quantum mechanics terms are in German). Or pianist must learn Italian. All of which, as everyone knew, was wrong.
The terms in the field, no matter it originated from Latin, German, or English, will be learned as part of the whole, without any need to understand the original language.
Every child in China has learned at least a few years of English since the mid 1980s, putting it somewhere around 500 million people who at least understand it somewhat - in one country alone. Add in India, and you easily have over a billion people who are somewhat capable in English right there. What India and China does basically dictates how "worldwide percentages go" and since English is THE chosen second language for those countries - it will continue to dominate the rest of the world. No matter what the French (or francophiles) desire.
Try to get around India or China speaking just French or German. Then try it with just English. It's orders of magnitude easier in English - heck, even the road signs are in Mandarin and English!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
In other news, EU losing relevance on the world stage.
Combined with the crazy demand to be paid for a country to leave the EU, this poor man is looking increasingly like a delusional fanatic. The EU project has failed. The social costs of keeping it limping along can be felt thoughout southern Europe. It's only a matter of time until it implodes completely, as the indebted institutions that currently resort to dubious, if not criminal financial meas to keep it limping along. Probably best to get out of it now, particularly when it is being run by crazies like this man. Who wants to be around when it implodes. If the EU won't negotiate a UK exit on non-punitive terms, no deal should be made, and the EU citizens living in the UK should be taxed at a higher level, or sent back. Mad EU unelected despots should not be allowed to impose their crazyness on any nation.
And yet if you weren't around, they wouldn't have been speaking English, would they?
Apparently, they were.
They aren't doing it to communicate with each other better
They are doing it to communicate with the whole extended group better, including the newcomer.
That's called showing courtesy. Something you appear to be uninterested in, in many of your posts. Unfortunately.
Agree fully on your section about the benefits of learning more languages, though. Spot on, there. Win some, lose some, I guess.
Jean-Claude Juncker and the other eurocrats have proven to be so self-centered and closed to criticism about their inefficient monthly moving back and forth between Brussels and Strassbourg, their huge salaries, huge allowances and free pension schemes, expansion into former USSR and middle East territory, inability to make southern countries to behave themselves financially, turning the border control in a ferryman operation to make human traffickers rich, and much more, that the only way to change the EU is to step out of it, and start a New EU.
The UK is the first of the net-contributing countries, a few more and the EU goes bankrupt. The New (or North) EU will consist of the net-contributing old-EU countries.
This message is brought to you from the Netherlands.
Nope, this language dig its own grave when it chose to use special snowflake letters with diacritics, with 2 distinct, common, romanisations.
He's also the man who, after a working dinner with the British Prime Minister called her "delusional" and "living in a different galaxy".
In public.
And whose staffers leaked extensively about this working dinner the day afterwards.
Yes, that Mr. Juncker. His words are definitely to be taken with a grain of salt.
More so after after a few glasses of wine and a copious meal.
Also true to a slightly lesser extent when we visited Amsterdam a few years back.
I call bullshit. I've never met a person in Holland who didn't speak English. ... embarrassingly enough. :-)
Hell many of them correct mine
Briton who actually can be arsed to learn the local languages here.
As often as not, when locals learn where I'm from and break out into English, they are doing it to use me as practice, not because they feel sorry for me.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
What do the French say for drop your gun and run?
French is no longer an important language in the world. No one outside France (and Quebec) care about learning French. English and Spanish are the languages of the world now. So wake up and move on.
Coming from a French guy. The guys jealous.
The worldwide air traffic control system might disagree with this.
... with the help of BabelFish, but then I remembered that Slashdot doesn't support Unicode.
It is 2017. This is supposed to be a site for nerds. How can it not support Unicode?
In most of the XXth century, the Spanish children had the obligation of learning French. When Franco's dictatorship finished and Spain opened to the world, we discovered horrified that this world out there was talking in English. So we were encouraged to change to English and invested a great effort to learn it, with terrible teachers (when I was 17, I was much more proficient in English than my English teacher!!!!). Now that most of us, even elder people, can at least read texts in English... we won't go back to French again!!
Who gives a toss what Drunker says?
Assuming the B stands for billions I'm sure many would like to know how far our galactic empire stretches.
ShanghaiBill didn't say human speakers. Perhaps you were unaware that mice speak English, as shown in documentaries such as Cinderella.
Plus the set of keywords is small and easy to learn anyway
Yes, and they have nothing to do with English grammar, or word inflections, or orthography (once you memorize that small set of keywords), or any of the other things that are important to learning English as a natural language.
The relevance of programming-language keywords to learning English is scarcely more the relevance of Greek letters in mathematical notation is to learning Greek.
Now, learning to read comments written in English in source code has some relevance to learning programming, since so much extant source has comments in English; and so some extent the same can be said for identifiers. But again there's a mighty gulf between having basic reading competency in a language and being able to speak or write it. I've had reading courses in French, but I never learned to speak it or even really understand any of the spoken language; and similarly the two years I had of Japanese made me much better at reading it than writing or speaking.
> Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, opted to deliver a speech in French on Friday morning
> He spoke in English.
Which is it?
English has been the generally accepted international language for a very long time.
Does the world really need to stop and change this now?!
Are there not more pressing global issues at hand?!
Would someone please pull Mr Juncker's head out of the sand?!
Sounds to me more like a stab at flinging contempt at the UK for BrExit!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
Not when they enter it, but after a while they have learned a number of Italian words. http://www.musictheory.org.uk/...
html doesn't have very many key words. CSS probably had a lot more. You dont need to know the whole language
Then click in and the article confirmed it. Now had it been an article about how Chinese is growing, it would have been a good article.