English as the World Language

Brooker

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Why do you think English has become the "world language". Is it because English has some advantages over other languages? Is it because of the status that English speaking countries have in the world? Is English a good choice as the world language? Or do you think that English isn't the world language?

:?
 
I think English as a world language would be a great idea. I find English the most easy learning language.
 
I agree with 60Yen.
And I think it does have a lot to do with the status of english speaking countries, especially the US.
And all the good movies that are being produced there help spread the language aswell.
It would be a good choice in my opinion to use english as a 'world language' since it isn't very difficult to learn, and it's already being used all over the world anyway...
 
I'm surprised to hear so many people say that English is EASY to learn! I had heard that English is very difficult to learn. It's often very illogical and it always breaks it's own rules. In many cases it seems that English is unnecessarily wordy. But I'm glad that people don't think English is as messed up as I thought it might be.
 
Maybe it's because I learned english so early on. I just know in the back of my mind when something is spelled wrong, I see it but I can't explain why it should be written in that way.
That was the only thing I had to study in english classes, because I couldn't explain in the tests why I wrote it that way...
 
Well, when britain had the british empire, we forced people to learn our language and i guess it al started from there !

btw rock, congratz on ya 4 balls
 
I heard that English is one of the better languages for technical things, because it is so easy to change and add new words. A lot of programmers from non-english speaking countries prefer to write their comments in English (or so I have heard).

It seems like English would be one of the harder languages to learn, with all it's wacky rules and whatnot.
 
cross-platform said:
I heard that English is one of the better languages for technical things, because it is so easy to change and add new words.
It's easy to add words to most languages although some (French) you might get sued to take them back out again. :D

With others (Japanese) the 'imported' words remain clearly distinct from 'native' words - but I'm not sure whether that counts as an advantage or a disadvantage. :relief:
 
English has become a world language because :

1) the British Empire made it an official or communication language in Canada, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Singapore, HK, most of Oceania, half of Africa and half of the Caribbean.

2) the US influence in the world since WWII

3) the richness of the English language, which by far the largest vocabulary of any languages in the world (estimated to be about 7x that of French or 4x that of German).

4) the flexibility of the English language. New words can be created all the time, nouns can serve as verbs and vice-versa ("do you yahoo ?", "I google this word....")

5) English's strategic position in Europe as a half-Latin, half-Germanic language, which makes it easy to learn most Western Europeans.

6) English's flexible pronuciation. It may be a drawback as there are so many different accents that it makes it more difficult to learn or understand, but it allows for more diversity, personalization, and tolerance over "mistakes" from learners (unlike French which should sound just as a native to be accepted by French people).

7) Easy, no-nonsensical grammar (almost no genders and plural, little conjugation, fexibility of the sentence structure...)

8) Recogniton of English as "official" language of computing, sciences, technologies, aviation, etc.

9) Success of music in English (rock, pop, rap, etc.) - not just from the UK and US, but also from countries where English is not an official language (Sweden, Denmark, Japan, etc.)
 
Brooker said:
I'm surprised to hear so many people say that English is EASY to learn! I had heard that English is very difficult to learn. It's often very illogical and it always breaks it's own rules. In many cases it seems that English is unnecessarily wordy. But I'm glad that people don't think English is as messed up as I thought it might be.
Really, English is easy compared to German or French. Oh my God, if I think back at the german grammatics, I have to vomit instantly ;)
 
The only reason why English became so important is due to the fact that when North America was colonialized, the British settlers became predominant, so English became the main language of North America (US and Canada), and they were powerful and influential enough to push English as the predominant language. The things Maciamo listened only happened as a consequence to this.
If, back then, the German settlers would have been predominant, then German would have been pushed, and all these things (much bigger vocabulary, popular for songs etc.) would now be true for German. Or, if the French settlers had prevailed, then French would now be predominant.

The English language is by far not all nice and dandy. Just take the atrocious, totally unphonetic spelling, even native English speakers often have a hard time with it.

60Yen said:
Oh my God, if I think back at the german grammatics, I have to vomit instantly ;)
Oh my God, if I think back at the Dutch pronunciation/spelling, I have to vomit instantly :p
 
Lina Inverse said:
The only reason why English became so important is due to the fact that when North America was colonialized, the British settlers became predominant, so English became the main language of North America (US and Canada), and they were powerful and influential enough to push English as the predominant language. The things Maciamo listened only happened as a consequence to this.

Are you referring to points 3 to 7 about the richness, flexibility and other innate qualities of the English language or to the development British Empire over 5 contients ? :sorry:
 
Maciamo said:
English has become a world language because :

1) the British Empire made it an official or communication language in Canada, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Singapore, HK, most of Oceania, half of Africa and half of the Caribbean.

2) the US influence in the world since WWII
I think, these 2 are the major reasons, esp. #2. Before the WW German had a much larger influence. AFAIK, German was the scientific language before WWII. If the nazis had not driven out so many brilliant minds, that probably would have continued.

3) the richness of the English language, which by far the largest vocabulary of any languages in the world (estimated to be about 7x that of French or 4x that of German).
Mmmmh, I have some doubts regarding these relations (have written about that in another thread), but anyway this is a question of chicken & egg, I think. The heavy influence of Latin & French has contributed to the richness in the past, but if English were not spoken as widely as it is, the modern input of other languages into English would be much less.
 
English spelling makes no sense. It goes back to the old days when there were no official ways of spelling words, people just spelled everything phonetically any way they saw fit.

In a langauge like Japanese, spelling isn't even really an issue. But Japanese has other challenges.

3) the richness of the English language, which by far the largest vocabulary of any languages in the world (estimated to be about 7x that of French or 4x that of German).

4) the flexibility of the English language. New words can be created all the time

Just an observation....
If English didn't have #4, it wouldn't have been able to get #3 from other languages.
 
Brooker said:
English spelling makes no sense. It goes back to the old days when there were no official ways of spelling words, people just spelled everything phonetically any way they saw fit.
True to a degree, but there existed some standards even back then. The major reason for the strange spelling is that it was petrified while there was still a sound shift going on. The sounds changed, but the change was not reflected in the spelling.

RockLee said:
English is a worldlanguage already, but according to this article Chinese is the biggest worldlanguage followed by english.
Chinese has the most speakers, but is usually not considered a world language for being restricted mainly to ethnic Chinese.
 
Brooker said:
English spelling makes no sense. It goes back to the old days when there were no official ways of spelling words, people just spelled everything phonetically any way they saw fit.

You'd be surprised by how linguistically correct (logical, etymologic, etc.) English spelling is. Most words coming from Greek, Latin or French are spelt about the same way as the original, regardless of the pronuciation. So you still see clearly the roots. E.g. : philosophy from Greek philo + sophia; construct from Latin con + struct, etc.

Words from Germanic origins are more based on the phonetic and aribitrary decisions. So "house" in English and "Haus" in German are pronouced the same way, but spelled differently. Also note that the Normands tried to regularize middle English words' spelling based on the French spelling. Actually, "house" in old/middle English was pronounced "hus" (hoos), and the "ou" and final "e" come from the French spelling.

Incidentally, I find modern French's spelling much more difficult and irregulat than English' (especially double consonants, silent letters, grammatical changes, etc.)
 
It's the inconsistencies that make English spelling so goofy.

For example, the same sounds spelled diffrent ways....
peach & speech
bought, caught, & pot
etc.
 
Brooker said:
For example, the same sounds spelled diffrent ways....
peach & speech
bought, caught, & pot
etc.

This has the advantage of avoiding confusing written words that otherwise sound the same : beach/beech, write/right/rite, kernel/colonel, boat/bought, deer/dear, etc.

Then, there are about 13 vowel sounds (+diphtongs) and 24 consonnant sounds in English, but only 26 letters. As English does not use "accent aigue/grave/circomflexes", "umlaut", etc. there must also be different sounds for the same letters, and as English comes from several languages (Anglo-Saxon, Norse, French, Latin, Greek...), it's only natural that there are discrepancies in spelling.
 
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bossel said:
I think, these 2 are the major reasons, esp. #2. Before the WW German had a much larger influence. AFAIK, German was the scientific language before WWII. If the nazis had not driven out so many brilliant minds, that probably would have continued.
I disagree with you on this one Bossel. Germany was a technical country with much technical influence. Saying that it was the scientific language is not entirely true, because there was actually a technical battle raging between Germany and Britain, all based on patriotic feelings. Yes, German was (and is, I believe that if you want to be a mechanic, you've got to know German, at least here in the Netherlands) an important language. But I think it was inevitable, because America was becoming a superpower and their influence kept groing, especialy through the new information technology of today. Inevitable, just as Latin was a common Language when the Romans ruled...
 

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