Lingua Franca
August 16, 2007 11:23 PM Subscribe
Will English be the dominant language of the world in 100 years?
This post was deleted for the following reason: This is pretty hypothethical; you're asking people to guess about something that's functionally unverifiable, arguably unpredictable, and doesn't present in any practical sense a problem to be solved. Please avoid this kind of chatfilter on AskMe.
No, Chinese will
In a hundred years? You have no way of knowing that.
posted by oaf at 11:39 PM on August 16, 2007
In a hundred years? You have no way of knowing that.
posted by oaf at 11:39 PM on August 16, 2007
I wouldn't bet on humans being the dominant species in 100 years.
posted by anazgnos at 11:47 PM on August 16, 2007
posted by anazgnos at 11:47 PM on August 16, 2007
I would have to say Spanish will be the dominant language language of 2107. With America being overcome by illegals, English most likely won't be the dominant language of the US 10 years from now.
posted by B(oYo)BIES at 11:51 PM on August 16, 2007
posted by B(oYo)BIES at 11:51 PM on August 16, 2007
If we're still around, still civilised, and still hyperconnected, it will probably be something like Blade Runner's 'cityspeak' - that is, a non-uniform mishmash of various languages.
Unless we connect to computers with our minds, and end up with new metalanguages for that purpose.
posted by MetaMonkey at 11:54 PM on August 16, 2007
Unless we connect to computers with our minds, and end up with new metalanguages for that purpose.
posted by MetaMonkey at 11:54 PM on August 16, 2007
Of course, "Chinese" is not a language - but Mandarin is the spoken dialect of the Sino-Tibetan language family in most parts of China experiencing rapid industrial and technological development. China also has a population of 1.3 billion people - so presumably their culture will be influencing the world at large in many ways, including language. Will it replace English? No, it too entrenched to be erased in a century - but more Chinese words will work their way into our accepted vernacular.
posted by dendrite at 11:55 PM on August 16, 2007
posted by dendrite at 11:55 PM on August 16, 2007
english is only powerful because it is simple and forgiving.
so the only way it is not going to be one of the dominant languages is if something simpler comes around.
posted by krautland at 11:58 PM on August 16, 2007
so the only way it is not going to be one of the dominant languages is if something simpler comes around.
posted by krautland at 11:58 PM on August 16, 2007
No good historian or social scientist is arrogant enough to claim that understanding the past will give them the ability to predict the future.
When I was young, everyone predicted that we would be speaking Japanese. English is currently a useful language in things like trade, diplomacy and technology but consider 100 years ago French was a major international language. English will probably still be an important language in one hundred years, but the dominant language - there is no way to know. Empires can fall in hurry and languages can largely disappear in a generation.
posted by Deep Dish at 11:59 PM on August 16, 2007
When I was young, everyone predicted that we would be speaking Japanese. English is currently a useful language in things like trade, diplomacy and technology but consider 100 years ago French was a major international language. English will probably still be an important language in one hundred years, but the dominant language - there is no way to know. Empires can fall in hurry and languages can largely disappear in a generation.
posted by Deep Dish at 11:59 PM on August 16, 2007
Arabic.
posted by Izzmeister at 12:01 AM on August 17, 2007
posted by Izzmeister at 12:01 AM on August 17, 2007
I'm gonna disagree with everyone else that's posted, and say that the idea of a 'dominant' language is a bit silly. Cultural influences; differences in the appropriateness of a given language for a given topic; aesthetics; all of these make various languages preferred in different contexts.
I wouldn't be surprised if English (as well as other languages) picks up a lot more loan words - we have a rapidly changing vocabulary due to technology and it's influence on communication - but this has been going on to some degree since the birth of language. Think about how many monolingual Americans you know who are familiar with words and phrases like chutzpah, schadenfreude, c'est la vie, and the like.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 12:03 AM on August 17, 2007
I wouldn't be surprised if English (as well as other languages) picks up a lot more loan words - we have a rapidly changing vocabulary due to technology and it's influence on communication - but this has been going on to some degree since the birth of language. Think about how many monolingual Americans you know who are familiar with words and phrases like chutzpah, schadenfreude, c'est la vie, and the like.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 12:03 AM on August 17, 2007
You know, when I was traveling in Europe everyone always spoke the same language, no matter where they were from - broken English, present tense only. Some of the French kids I met even had a name for it: "Globish". Wikipedia tells me that Globish is actually a deliberate subset of English taught in France, but the French kids' Globish sounded just like the English spoken by the Swedish, Argentinian, Korean, Brazillian, Italian, etc... people that I met.
posted by PercussivePaul at 12:15 AM on August 17, 2007
posted by PercussivePaul at 12:15 AM on August 17, 2007
I am currently reading Empires of the Word, an excellent book which looks at the history of languages and attempts to tease out reasons for their growth and decline.
I am only part way through, and it is already obvious that there is no one factor, and that chance plays a huge role. I can look at the suggestions earlier in this thread and find a counter example for all of them. For example, Chinese has historically never been a success in countries outside its imperial reach, and even there, only as a source of loanwords, not replacing original languages. The Chinese diaspora has always learned to trade in the languages of surrounding communities. Simplicity may be helpful, but that doesn't explain why Latin and Greek, both of them having complex inflections etc, were so successful across the Roman Empire - political and trading considerations were clearly at work there. And so on.
Izzmeister: I absolutely don't believe Arabic will get much more territory. Arabic as a daily use language stopped pretty much with areas that already spoke a Semitic or Afro Asiatic language (eg Aramaic, Coptic, Berber) and even though the Turks and others have spread Islam beyond the original Arab conquests, where they did change the local language it wasn't to Arabic.
I suggest the poster read this book in lieu of an answer to their question.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 12:46 AM on August 17, 2007 [3 favorites]
I am only part way through, and it is already obvious that there is no one factor, and that chance plays a huge role. I can look at the suggestions earlier in this thread and find a counter example for all of them. For example, Chinese has historically never been a success in countries outside its imperial reach, and even there, only as a source of loanwords, not replacing original languages. The Chinese diaspora has always learned to trade in the languages of surrounding communities. Simplicity may be helpful, but that doesn't explain why Latin and Greek, both of them having complex inflections etc, were so successful across the Roman Empire - political and trading considerations were clearly at work there. And so on.
Izzmeister: I absolutely don't believe Arabic will get much more territory. Arabic as a daily use language stopped pretty much with areas that already spoke a Semitic or Afro Asiatic language (eg Aramaic, Coptic, Berber) and even though the Turks and others have spread Islam beyond the original Arab conquests, where they did change the local language it wasn't to Arabic.
I suggest the poster read this book in lieu of an answer to their question.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 12:46 AM on August 17, 2007 [3 favorites]
I teach English to speakers of other languages.
I bet we'll see some fusion of words from different languages, or English words being written and pronounced in quasi/non-English ways in non-English languages, though preserving their meaning - basically transliterating English words into another language's orthography. Consider Loisaida, a term for the Lower East Side of Manhattan among certain Spanish-speaking communities in New York City.
I'll also submit what I think is the very cool anecdotal example of tengkyu, an Indonesianization of thank you which is popular on radio stations, in text messages, online, and on MTV Indonesia...here are a few Indonesian sites where you'll find it:
tengkyu to all
tengkyu yo mas dab.:) thenks
GOOD TO SEE YOU (..again..), & tengkyu, Malaysia..!!! once again.. very tengkyu!!
The third link is to an awesome indieish electronica group called Goodnight Electric which is huge all over Indonesia (and which I saw live). Check out a pretty cool breakdown of Indonesian slang on Wikipedia here.
But the thing about the spread of English in Indonesia is this: pretty much everyone who attends school gets some introduction to phrases and greetings, but the skills of the students are only as good as their teachers (who are underpaid and often have problems getting quality, non-rote based materials). I've found that if students are able to dig through the crappy textbooks, practice on their own, expose themselves to and create new language in media, AND can speak and listen to English as much as possible, then they end up sounding relatively coherent to native speakers. But again, that's a minority of the already comparatively small number of people who can pay school fees, as well as pay for their own books and media to practice, and maybe hire a tutor (who will probably be another teacher looking for some extra money) for some overtime lessons.
The elites do two things: send their kids abroad or to international schools, or pay for private English lessons. I taught at a private English school and saw hundreds of people come in and progress through our classes and learn to orally communicate and get their point across in English pretty well, but developing reading, writing and listening skills was definitely on the back burner of my school's educational agenda, which was one reason I left; we were graduating students from our highest level who were speaking at a CEF C2 level but writing at a B1/B2 level, with no practice reading novels or anything longer than a long newspaper article.
So while there may be millions of people studying English all over the world, the vast majority of them, especially in developing countries, will probably not end up with the essentially constant practice needed to use it effectively, though many will end up confident enough to, say, give directions to a visitor to their country, help an expatriate English teacher try to sort out his bank account over the phone (*cough*), or chat and e-mail native speakers, who will be able to decipher meaning in ways that many beginning/intermediate-level learners could not were they to receive the same e-mail themselves.
It's a question of needs, really; very few English speakers possess the stylistic flair and essentially flawless language to, say, be an editor of a literary journal or write a critically-acclaimed novel, but very few of us need to do either of those things. And even people who hold jobs where many think English proficiency should be a given, like offshore non-native English-speaking call center staff, can usually get the gist of what a client is trying to accomplish and can provide at least some assistance to many customers.
Very cool question with so many answers - I hope it doesn't get deleted!
posted by mdonley at 1:04 AM on August 17, 2007
I bet we'll see some fusion of words from different languages, or English words being written and pronounced in quasi/non-English ways in non-English languages, though preserving their meaning - basically transliterating English words into another language's orthography. Consider Loisaida, a term for the Lower East Side of Manhattan among certain Spanish-speaking communities in New York City.
I'll also submit what I think is the very cool anecdotal example of tengkyu, an Indonesianization of thank you which is popular on radio stations, in text messages, online, and on MTV Indonesia...here are a few Indonesian sites where you'll find it:
tengkyu to all
tengkyu yo mas dab.:) thenks
GOOD TO SEE YOU (..again..), & tengkyu, Malaysia..!!! once again.. very tengkyu!!
The third link is to an awesome indieish electronica group called Goodnight Electric which is huge all over Indonesia (and which I saw live). Check out a pretty cool breakdown of Indonesian slang on Wikipedia here.
But the thing about the spread of English in Indonesia is this: pretty much everyone who attends school gets some introduction to phrases and greetings, but the skills of the students are only as good as their teachers (who are underpaid and often have problems getting quality, non-rote based materials). I've found that if students are able to dig through the crappy textbooks, practice on their own, expose themselves to and create new language in media, AND can speak and listen to English as much as possible, then they end up sounding relatively coherent to native speakers. But again, that's a minority of the already comparatively small number of people who can pay school fees, as well as pay for their own books and media to practice, and maybe hire a tutor (who will probably be another teacher looking for some extra money) for some overtime lessons.
The elites do two things: send their kids abroad or to international schools, or pay for private English lessons. I taught at a private English school and saw hundreds of people come in and progress through our classes and learn to orally communicate and get their point across in English pretty well, but developing reading, writing and listening skills was definitely on the back burner of my school's educational agenda, which was one reason I left; we were graduating students from our highest level who were speaking at a CEF C2 level but writing at a B1/B2 level, with no practice reading novels or anything longer than a long newspaper article.
So while there may be millions of people studying English all over the world, the vast majority of them, especially in developing countries, will probably not end up with the essentially constant practice needed to use it effectively, though many will end up confident enough to, say, give directions to a visitor to their country, help an expatriate English teacher try to sort out his bank account over the phone (*cough*), or chat and e-mail native speakers, who will be able to decipher meaning in ways that many beginning/intermediate-level learners could not were they to receive the same e-mail themselves.
It's a question of needs, really; very few English speakers possess the stylistic flair and essentially flawless language to, say, be an editor of a literary journal or write a critically-acclaimed novel, but very few of us need to do either of those things. And even people who hold jobs where many think English proficiency should be a given, like offshore non-native English-speaking call center staff, can usually get the gist of what a client is trying to accomplish and can provide at least some assistance to many customers.
Very cool question with so many answers - I hope it doesn't get deleted!
posted by mdonley at 1:04 AM on August 17, 2007
As an addendum, imagine the conversation you just had with your cubemate who went off for some coffee:
A: Coffee?
B: You going?
A: Yeah.
B: Sure then, thanks.
A: Milk?
B: OK, but just a little.
A: Sugar?
B: Nah.
A: Cool, be back soon.
There are infinitely more complex ways to say this, and in the classroom, you've got to teach people that "Coffee?" in this conversation really means "Hey bro, can I get you some coffee while I'm over by the machine?", but in real life, an English learner would have the benefit of context (working with other English speakers, having an empty coffee cup on his/her desk) and might not require such a long verbal cue. That's how fluency happens, I think - students take the language off the CD and the textbook page and use it as well as they can until they start making the same omissions of key words absent from the sentence above.
As a non-linguist, though, I could be wrong on all counts.
posted by mdonley at 1:20 AM on August 17, 2007
A: Coffee?
B: You going?
A: Yeah.
B: Sure then, thanks.
A: Milk?
B: OK, but just a little.
A: Sugar?
B: Nah.
A: Cool, be back soon.
There are infinitely more complex ways to say this, and in the classroom, you've got to teach people that "Coffee?" in this conversation really means "Hey bro, can I get you some coffee while I'm over by the machine?", but in real life, an English learner would have the benefit of context (working with other English speakers, having an empty coffee cup on his/her desk) and might not require such a long verbal cue. That's how fluency happens, I think - students take the language off the CD and the textbook page and use it as well as they can until they start making the same omissions of key words absent from the sentence above.
As a non-linguist, though, I could be wrong on all counts.
posted by mdonley at 1:20 AM on August 17, 2007
In reponse to B(oYo)BIES's hysterical anti-immigrant rant, it should be noted that Spanish-speaking immigrants to America are being assimilated into the body of English speakers much more quickly than other ethnic groups who came to America - the Germans, Italians, Polish and so on. So while Spanish may exercise a great deal of influence, it's actually abandoned by next generation immigrants faster than other languages by other ethnic groups were.
As you can tell, I speak English. Not as a native speaker. I also get by in many other languages and I am constantly learning. I'm in Romania learning Romanian and continuing my Hungarian, which I began studying last year in Hungary. Everywhere I've been, English is the de facto second language. This includes nearly all of Europe and Asia.
The advantages that English has over some of the other languages mentioned are:
1) As a primary language, it's really spread out - the US and Canada, South Africa, Guyana, New Zealand, Australia, the UK and Ireland - these countries are pretty spread out, and English is the dominant language in each.
2) English is the only language which is an official language on every populated continent on Earth - aside from the above, nations such as India and much of Africa count English as an official language.
3) In as much as Europe and North America dominate so much of the world in so many ways, it would make sense that the "de facto" common language in developed countries would be an Indo-European one, such as English - or French before it.
4) Because of reasons 1-3, it doesn't make sense for Japanese or Mandarin or Arabic to ever be able to exert such influence on the rest of the world. For as many speakers as any of these languages have, their geographic influence is limited (as with Mandarin and Japanese) or they rest in places where much of the educated population speaks some English (Japan, much of the Arab world) or the language isn't particularly uniform to the extent that English is (like Arabic or the many variations of the "Chinese" so-called language, which is actually many languages.
5) Its fairly analytic structure makes communicating with minimal English much easier for many people than more highly inflected languages do. (As a friend of mine once commented about Hungarian - "It's like you have to know EVERYTHING before you can say ANYTHING." This isn't true in English.)
6) No language has the advantage of media dominance like English. The number of kids with perfect English here in Romania who have never had an actual class, but learned good English from video games, MTV, the undubbed Hollywood films they show here (etc) would astound you.
7) Empires Of The Word was a great and interesting book, but I think the world is now "small" enough that some of the fantastic shifts in language change are almost impossible to imagine occurring today.
I'd bet on English above other languages, but I think it will change in ways we can't imagine (an idea presented beautifully in the fine film "Code 46") with the adoption of many new words, the elimination of some in favor of others, shifting grammatical structures and so on.
That said, I agree that we may not be the dominant species 100 years from now.
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 1:32 AM on August 17, 2007 [2 favorites]
As you can tell, I speak English. Not as a native speaker. I also get by in many other languages and I am constantly learning. I'm in Romania learning Romanian and continuing my Hungarian, which I began studying last year in Hungary. Everywhere I've been, English is the de facto second language. This includes nearly all of Europe and Asia.
The advantages that English has over some of the other languages mentioned are:
1) As a primary language, it's really spread out - the US and Canada, South Africa, Guyana, New Zealand, Australia, the UK and Ireland - these countries are pretty spread out, and English is the dominant language in each.
2) English is the only language which is an official language on every populated continent on Earth - aside from the above, nations such as India and much of Africa count English as an official language.
3) In as much as Europe and North America dominate so much of the world in so many ways, it would make sense that the "de facto" common language in developed countries would be an Indo-European one, such as English - or French before it.
4) Because of reasons 1-3, it doesn't make sense for Japanese or Mandarin or Arabic to ever be able to exert such influence on the rest of the world. For as many speakers as any of these languages have, their geographic influence is limited (as with Mandarin and Japanese) or they rest in places where much of the educated population speaks some English (Japan, much of the Arab world) or the language isn't particularly uniform to the extent that English is (like Arabic or the many variations of the "Chinese" so-called language, which is actually many languages.
5) Its fairly analytic structure makes communicating with minimal English much easier for many people than more highly inflected languages do. (As a friend of mine once commented about Hungarian - "It's like you have to know EVERYTHING before you can say ANYTHING." This isn't true in English.)
6) No language has the advantage of media dominance like English. The number of kids with perfect English here in Romania who have never had an actual class, but learned good English from video games, MTV, the undubbed Hollywood films they show here (etc) would astound you.
7) Empires Of The Word was a great and interesting book, but I think the world is now "small" enough that some of the fantastic shifts in language change are almost impossible to imagine occurring today.
I'd bet on English above other languages, but I think it will change in ways we can't imagine (an idea presented beautifully in the fine film "Code 46") with the adoption of many new words, the elimination of some in favor of others, shifting grammatical structures and so on.
That said, I agree that we may not be the dominant species 100 years from now.
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 1:32 AM on August 17, 2007 [2 favorites]
mdonley - I see what you're saying, but in reality that sort of dialogue is easy to understand - I could get most of it in a language I *don't* speak, but in which I may have some secondhand or cognate familiarity with words, such as Bulgarian or Dutch. Those sorts of single word cues and reductions of much longer and more "proper" sentences work the same way almost universally. I would have a hard time saying all those things properly in Romanian, for instance, but I could have spit out that exact dialogue after only a few days of study pretty easily. I think the harder part of language is filling in all those holes to where one is perfectly and unmistakably understood on a more precise level.
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 1:38 AM on August 17, 2007
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 1:38 AM on August 17, 2007
I think the post title -- Lingua Franca -- plus krautland's post on the simplicity of English is the key here. Just look at the dominance of English on the Internet: it's easier than Chinese, takes on loan words smoothly, and acquires neologisms like nobody's business. What's gonna compete with that? Esperanto?
posted by laconic titan at 1:57 AM on August 17, 2007
posted by laconic titan at 1:57 AM on August 17, 2007
Dee Xtrovert, great point about my less-than-perfect examples; it was much more succinctly said by your #5:
On the way back to my car, I'm waiting at the corner to cross the street. A woman pulls up and starts a sentence in Spanish with "Discúlpeme..." (excuse me) and proceeds to ask me for directions to a place I don't catch the name of; I'm not a local, so I say "Lo siento, no sé" (sorry, I don't know) - but just then a person who looks like a non-native Spanish speaker shows up, the woman in the car repeats the question in Spanish, and he seems to understand albeit with a furrowed brow, and the guy gives her directions in English: "oh, Los Angeles Street? Three blocks that way." She says "thank you!" in English and speeds off.
These were the first times in 19 years of living in California that I was addressed in Spanish in a conversation; I'm of Irish and Italian descent with dark brown hair and eyes, and have quite the perma-tan after living in Indonesia for a year, so perhaps people think I'm Latino, but always address me in English because of the numerical minority of Latinos in my local suburban community.
And all this happened, mind you, in one of the largest centers of the global English-language media universe, Los Angeles...rather ironic, then, had to use my rusty high school Spanish or risk offending someone or not being helpful, two things I wouldn't want to do. English would have sufficed, and perhaps both women were expecting it, but damn, it felt good to reassert the awesomeness of being multilingual in a totally unexpected situation.
posted by mdonley at 2:38 AM on August 17, 2007
Its fairly analytic structure makes communicating with minimal English much easier for many people than more highly inflected languages do. (As a friend of mine once commented about Hungarian - "It's like you have to know EVERYTHING before you can say ANYTHING." This isn't true in English.)And another anecdote: I was in downtown LA yesterday getting some official documents sorted out, and as I'm leaving a particular office, this tiny old lady stops me in the hall and asks me in Spanish where the same office is; I point to the door that's closing and say "está allí" (it's there); she smiles, clasps my hand, and gives me the warmest "gracias" (thanks!) humanly possible.
On the way back to my car, I'm waiting at the corner to cross the street. A woman pulls up and starts a sentence in Spanish with "Discúlpeme..." (excuse me) and proceeds to ask me for directions to a place I don't catch the name of; I'm not a local, so I say "Lo siento, no sé" (sorry, I don't know) - but just then a person who looks like a non-native Spanish speaker shows up, the woman in the car repeats the question in Spanish, and he seems to understand albeit with a furrowed brow, and the guy gives her directions in English: "oh, Los Angeles Street? Three blocks that way." She says "thank you!" in English and speeds off.
These were the first times in 19 years of living in California that I was addressed in Spanish in a conversation; I'm of Irish and Italian descent with dark brown hair and eyes, and have quite the perma-tan after living in Indonesia for a year, so perhaps people think I'm Latino, but always address me in English because of the numerical minority of Latinos in my local suburban community.
And all this happened, mind you, in one of the largest centers of the global English-language media universe, Los Angeles...rather ironic, then, had to use my rusty high school Spanish or risk offending someone or not being helpful, two things I wouldn't want to do. English would have sufficed, and perhaps both women were expecting it, but damn, it felt good to reassert the awesomeness of being multilingual in a totally unexpected situation.
posted by mdonley at 2:38 AM on August 17, 2007
Are there many words from Mandarin/Cantonese making their way into English? I'm only aware of a very few (chi, chow, chop chop, kung fu, yin yang) and none are recent. I live in Vancouver Canada (in which english-as-second-language inhabitants outnumber english-as-first-language inhabitants), but see (I mean hear) no signs of pidginization. Also, it seems like virtually all second generation immigrants speak english that is indistinguishable from people who's great-great-greats etc. were Canadian.
Of course, the colloquial accent of today is dramatically different from that of even 20 years ago. I have no idea how much that is an effect of influx of speakers of other languages (as opposed to movies popularizing subculture vernacular)
Languagehat? Are there any signs that a bladerunner type thing is going on?
posted by lastobelus at 2:58 AM on August 17, 2007
Of course, the colloquial accent of today is dramatically different from that of even 20 years ago. I have no idea how much that is an effect of influx of speakers of other languages (as opposed to movies popularizing subculture vernacular)
Languagehat? Are there any signs that a bladerunner type thing is going on?
posted by lastobelus at 2:58 AM on August 17, 2007
I think you have to take into account various factors that make English the most evolutionarily adept language:
- massively easier to learn than Mandarin: do you know how much rote-learning of characters Chinese school-kids must do? With English it's 26 letters and away you go.
- absolute openness to new lexicon and all manner of influences: compare the ultimately self-defeating attempt by the Academie Francaise to preserve the purity of the tongue by inventing French equivalents for English neologisms.
- already the world's second language of choice (across the world, innumerable love affairs and marriages are now being conducted by partners who communicate in a second language: English), and the language of pop & hollywood culture, and the language of international business.
In other words, English is the most robust contender.
posted by londongeezer at 3:43 AM on August 17, 2007
- massively easier to learn than Mandarin: do you know how much rote-learning of characters Chinese school-kids must do? With English it's 26 letters and away you go.
- absolute openness to new lexicon and all manner of influences: compare the ultimately self-defeating attempt by the Academie Francaise to preserve the purity of the tongue by inventing French equivalents for English neologisms.
- already the world's second language of choice (across the world, innumerable love affairs and marriages are now being conducted by partners who communicate in a second language: English), and the language of pop & hollywood culture, and the language of international business.
In other words, English is the most robust contender.
posted by londongeezer at 3:43 AM on August 17, 2007
Are there many words from Mandarin/Cantonese making their way into English?
There's renminbi and dim sum. I much prefer the latter to the former.
posted by oaf at 4:30 AM on August 17, 2007
There's renminbi and dim sum. I much prefer the latter to the former.
posted by oaf at 4:30 AM on August 17, 2007
English also has the advantage of not being tonal.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 4:49 AM on August 17, 2007
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 4:49 AM on August 17, 2007
Mod note: a bunch of comments removed -- please stay on the (admittedly overbroad) topic or go to metatalk
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 5:51 AM on August 17, 2007
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 5:51 AM on August 17, 2007
I suggest the poster read this book in lieu of an answer to their question.
Seconded. It's an excellent book and will give you the tools you need to think about this question (which, obviously, has no actual answer).
massively easier to learn than Mandarin
Only if you insist on learning the characters. Mandarin and its siblings, like Cantonese, are extremely easy to learn as spoken languages (not perfectly, of course, the tones are tricky, but we're comparing pidgin/global Chinese with pidgin/global English, not the official languages). Given the right circumstances (which, of course, are unpredictable) Chinese could easily become a global language. (As, given considerably less likely circumstances, could Swahili, a much-simplified Bantu language which has already spread over much of East Africa.)
Whatever the dominant language a century from now, I guarantee that its well-educated native speakers are going to bitch and moan about "corruption" and "decay" and what the world is coming to; I'm just sorry I won't be around to poke a stick in their eye.
posted by languagehat at 6:01 AM on August 17, 2007
Seconded. It's an excellent book and will give you the tools you need to think about this question (which, obviously, has no actual answer).
massively easier to learn than Mandarin
Only if you insist on learning the characters. Mandarin and its siblings, like Cantonese, are extremely easy to learn as spoken languages (not perfectly, of course, the tones are tricky, but we're comparing pidgin/global Chinese with pidgin/global English, not the official languages). Given the right circumstances (which, of course, are unpredictable) Chinese could easily become a global language. (As, given considerably less likely circumstances, could Swahili, a much-simplified Bantu language which has already spread over much of East Africa.)
Whatever the dominant language a century from now, I guarantee that its well-educated native speakers are going to bitch and moan about "corruption" and "decay" and what the world is coming to; I'm just sorry I won't be around to poke a stick in their eye.
posted by languagehat at 6:01 AM on August 17, 2007
What if there is no dominant language because globalization collapses and dialectization occurs?
posted by melissam at 6:28 AM on August 17, 2007
posted by melissam at 6:28 AM on August 17, 2007
The dominant language will be English, with Chinese and Spanish plug-ins.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 6:38 AM on August 17, 2007
posted by ZenMasterThis at 6:38 AM on August 17, 2007
Chinese is probably an easier language to learn than English. No tense, no articles, no singular/plural, no irregular verbs (I think). The grammar is straightforward. The tones are a little tricky.
"Oh, but all those Chinese characters" you're thinking. That's the writing system, not the language. And there's an internal logic to hanzi that isn't obvious until you wade into them, so they're not as hard to learn as you might think. And remember that English spelling isn't exactly consistent.
That said, I don't think Chinese is going to become a lingua franca in 100 years. Why?
1. India. India is almost as big as China, and at some point will start taking off economically. English is already the default neutral language in India. A prosperous India will only reinforce the dominance of English worldwide.
2. Time. There just aren't enough generations between now and 2107 for a worldwide spontaneous shift in language use to take hold. If there were a concerted global effort for everyone to start speaking a different language, maybe—in Singapore, you've got the remarkable phenomenon of a generation of children unable to converse with their grandparents. But that's an authoritarian city-state, not a crazy mixed-up world.
Add to that the fact that birthrates are declining worldwide, and humanity as a whole will probably go into negative population growth around 2050, and it gives more weight to the languages spoken by old people.
So my guess is that English will remain the lingua franca in 100 years. I'm not sure how other languages will fare. My guess is, because of the time factor, almost all of them will endure for 100 years. Languages with very limited populations have been dying out, but there's also an effort these days to keep them alive among the young. And in general, as people of different cultures mix and mingle more, they'll want to be able to speak to each other on their own terms. If you go to Thailand for a week-long generic tropical holiday, you're not going to bother learning Thai. But if you go there to live for a year or two, you may want to learn Thai because that will open the door to the culture in big ways and small. And that kind of thing will only happen more and more.
posted by adamrice at 6:51 AM on August 17, 2007
"Oh, but all those Chinese characters" you're thinking. That's the writing system, not the language. And there's an internal logic to hanzi that isn't obvious until you wade into them, so they're not as hard to learn as you might think. And remember that English spelling isn't exactly consistent.
That said, I don't think Chinese is going to become a lingua franca in 100 years. Why?
1. India. India is almost as big as China, and at some point will start taking off economically. English is already the default neutral language in India. A prosperous India will only reinforce the dominance of English worldwide.
2. Time. There just aren't enough generations between now and 2107 for a worldwide spontaneous shift in language use to take hold. If there were a concerted global effort for everyone to start speaking a different language, maybe—in Singapore, you've got the remarkable phenomenon of a generation of children unable to converse with their grandparents. But that's an authoritarian city-state, not a crazy mixed-up world.
Add to that the fact that birthrates are declining worldwide, and humanity as a whole will probably go into negative population growth around 2050, and it gives more weight to the languages spoken by old people.
So my guess is that English will remain the lingua franca in 100 years. I'm not sure how other languages will fare. My guess is, because of the time factor, almost all of them will endure for 100 years. Languages with very limited populations have been dying out, but there's also an effort these days to keep them alive among the young. And in general, as people of different cultures mix and mingle more, they'll want to be able to speak to each other on their own terms. If you go to Thailand for a week-long generic tropical holiday, you're not going to bother learning Thai. But if you go there to live for a year or two, you may want to learn Thai because that will open the door to the culture in big ways and small. And that kind of thing will only happen more and more.
posted by adamrice at 6:51 AM on August 17, 2007
The world of computers goes against it being Chinese, I think. There's going to be crap laying around forever that bears remnants of pre-Unicode encodings as far back as ASCII. My FireFox displays this in Wikipedia articles: (Simplified Chinese: 拼音输入法; Traditional Chinese: 拼音輸入法) For me those are question marks - I don't know if I'm copying and pasting question marks or something that might show up as Chinese if someone went to the effort to set that up on their computer.
Then, keyboards prefer languages that use close to the same alphabet as English.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 8:44 AM on August 17, 2007
Then, keyboards prefer languages that use close to the same alphabet as English.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 8:44 AM on August 17, 2007
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by growabrain at 11:33 PM on August 16, 2007