A good percentage of the Indians I have known speak English better than I do, and it's the only language I know.

byofrcs wrote:English is perfectly pukka for a nation like India that I think has prevented its Balkanization.

Imagine you're in your pyjamas on the veranda looking out over the other wallahs going about their work.

The beauty of English is that no one actually cares about adding new words. Dictionary compilers love it - every new edition means new words and new sales.

LOL par example.

cavarka9 wrote:Considering that we have gotten into a language game where I answer to your 'whole replies' and you are answering to my 'partial replies'. I suggest that you read and reply to me on the whole. Else perhaps I too shud break your sentences down.Now I dont need to.

Oh, so you don't like the way I reply? I suggest you tell somebody who gives a flying fuck. I will reply in whatever way I see fit, and when you make individual points that I do not agree with, I will respond to those points on their own. Giving point by point replies means that I don't overlook or misrepresent anything you say. If you don't like that, fuck off and get into a discussion with somebody whose replies you like, because I reply my way, and I suggest you just suck it up, because I'm not changing it for you, capiche?

Tell me about this case for everyone to have one single language spoken by everybody,

Is it necessary? yes or no?.

Necessary? Who the fuck said anything about necessity? I am talking about utility.

If there are only a few contenders, what makes the selection possible among those few.

Utility, applicability, and malleability.

why has english become frontrunner?.

Utility, applicability, and malleability.

Or put it other way, why has spanish become frontrunner in south america?

It hasn't. You'll actually find that a huge portion of the population of every country speaks English as a second language.

and why cannot that become a front runner?

Well, a case could certainly be made for it, but it lacks some of the features listed above.

But of course, if you wish to continue by chopping sentences, then I wudnt mind that.

Thank you for your permission to do what I see fit.

hackenslash wrote:

cavarka9 wrote:Considering that we have gotten into a language game where I answer to your 'whole replies' and you are answering to my 'partial replies'. I suggest that you read and reply to me on the whole. Else perhaps I too shud break your sentences down.Now I dont need to.

Oh, so you don't like the way I reply? I suggest you tell somebody who gives a flying fuck. I will reply in whatever way I see fit, and when you make individual points that I do not agree with, I will respond to those points on their own. Giving point by point replies means that I don't overlook or misrepresent anything you say. If you don't like that, fuck off and get into a discussion with somebody whose replies you like, because I reply my way, and I suggest you just suck it up, because I'm not changing it for you, capiche?

Tell me about this case for everyone to have one single language spoken by everybody,

Is it necessary? yes or no?.

Necessary? Who the fuck said anything about necessity? I am talking about utility.

If there are only a few contenders, what makes the selection possible among those few.

Utility, applicability, and malleability.

why has english become frontrunner?.

Utility, applicability, and malleability.

Or put it other way, why has spanish become frontrunner in south america?

It hasn't. You'll actually find that a huge portion of the population of every country speaks English as a second language.

and why cannot that become a front runner?

Well, a case could certainly be made for it, but it lacks some of the features listed above.

But of course, if you wish to continue by chopping sentences, then I wudnt mind that.

Thank you for your permission to do what I see fit.

Well, I just thought you only lacked civility but it turns out what you actually do lack is the ability to 'understand others point of view' and your inability to show respect to anyone who is opposed to your view and makes better sense than you.
(I suggest the moderators and others to actually check if this is the case or not for themselves)

Now, utility , you fool, is what I implied, which I am sure any one who goes through will understand, but do not even in the slightest continue to embarrass yourself in assuming that a languages unique structure alone is good enough , english is not like maths, it is because of the power structures caused by colonialism and because of the scientific literature in present world.
Now, if you still believe in assuming that 'english is so speshul a language' that it alone wud have come to be a global language, then go fuck your self and all those whu believe in this stupidity.
Also, is not stupid to not spell a language as it is pronounced.That alone makes it ridiculous.

cursuswalker wrote:The thing with English, notwithstanding its having been spread by an empire, is that before that empire was even a possibility, it was the language of illiterates for 2 centuries, following the Norman conquest, during which time it lost much of the grammatical baggage that most languages have.

As a result it became easy to learn and also easy to adapt.

The result is that it is a language that consumes any word that doesn't run away fast enough, which means that a lot of the language comes form other languages anyway. And if you don't believe me then I recommend that you shampoo your hair in a bungalow in the company of a kangaroo.

It has become the ultimate adaptive language, by several accidents of history. And this is the real reason why it remains so popular.

Y'get mi buana?

Read the little sentence which is in BOLD, ITALIC and UNDERLINED.
and if you continue to fool yourself in not giving due importance to the words which are bold, underlined and are also in italic, then I suggest you to also shampoo your hair in a bungalow in the company of a Kangaroo.

cavarka9 wrote:Well, I just thought you only lacked civility but it turns out what you actually do lack is the ability to 'understand others point of view'

On the contrary. I understand your view completely, because you have demonstrated that it stems from a misunderstanding of my position, as demonstrated by your attributing positions to me that I do not hold.

and your inability to show respect to anyone who is opposed to your view and makes better sense than you.

Let me know when one of those comes along. I'd hate to miss it.

(I suggest the moderators and others to actually check if this is the case or not for themselves)

Well, given the cheap ad hominem in your following paragraph, I'd have thought that the last thing you'd want is moderator attention. Up to you though.

Now, utility , you fool, is what I implied, which I am sure any one who goes through will understand, but do not even in the slightest continue to embarrass yourself in assuming that a languages unique structure alone is good enough , english is not like maths, it is because of the power structures caused by colonialism and because of the scientific literature in present world.

Well, cheap ad hom side, I am making no assumptions. Why do you think it is that scientific literature is so often presented in English? Is it because of colonialism?
(Oh, and I just love how you keep attributing a colonial attitude to me. That's just laughable, and it would be to you too if you knew much abut me and my political past).

Now, if you still believe in assuming that 'english is so speshul a language' that it alone wud have come to be a global language, then go fuck your self and all those whu believe in this stupidity.

Well, that's certainly one way to lose an argument. I'm not assuming anything. I have listed the attributes that, in my opinion, make English the best conteder for a global language. Where are the asumptions? Can you point to them?

Also, is not stupid to not spell a language as it is pronounced.That alone makes it ridiculous.

Actually, that's a point in it's favour, because rather than having words spelled as they're pronounced, spelling and pronunciation follow a few very simple rules. On a basic level, it's one of the easiest languages on the planet to learn as a result. The other problem, of course, is the subsumation of words from other languages, which often don't follow these rules of pronunciation.

hackenslash wrote:

cavarka9 wrote:Well, I just thought you only lacked civility but it turns out what you actually do lack is the ability to 'understand others point of view'

On the contrary. I understand your view completely, because you have demonstrated that it stems from a misunderstanding of my position, as demonstrated by your attributing positions to me that I do not hold.

Then do tell me my view completely and also do tell me how I have been attributing positions to you. All I said in my view is this,

There is no case for everyone to have one language, there is a case for people to be able to communicate with others and that means translation technologies. Second, english is not embracing new words as much as new words are entering into it given the huge number of non-english native speakers taking it. The rest comes from the number of people taking it, else wud you expect the same amount of words entering into it say 300 yrs ago?.
Power changes the world, they get to impose not just their language but also their culture, dressing styles and a lot more, it is due to the asymmetric power relationship.Otherwise people must choose(in which case it becomes random) or perhaps make a new language which is the best, but there is no scientific evaluation of which language is a better one.

Now, this is what I stick to, so do tell me how I attributed any of these to you.

byofrcs wrote:English is perfectly pukka for a nation like India that I think has prevented its Balkanization.

Yeah, if only they had a common language in the Balkans. Oh wait...

The beauty of English is that no one actually cares about adding new words.

As opposed to what? Icelandic?

What about Hindi-Urdu, for example? It's replete with loanwords from Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic and English. Or Tagalog, with its Spanish and English borrowings? English is hardly the only example of a language with mixed origins. All languages incorporate loanwords.

cursuswalker wrote:
It has become the ultimate adaptive language, by several accidents of history. And this is the real reason why it remains so popular.

I don't think this is the reason it is popular. The reason it is the world's most important language is that it's the national language of the world's superpower (i.e. the United States). Mandarin and Malay are less inflected (which can be interpreted as having a "simpler grammar"), and Tagalog and Hindi are at least as mixed lexically - but they're not in the position of becoming the world's lingua franca.

Natural selection does not apply to languages. Language expansion and decline are entirely sociological phenomena, as there is nothing that objectively makes one language more suitable than any other. Tribal languages like Khoekhoe and Yolngu might not be usable in educational or business contexts, but this is simply because no-one uses them in these contexts. It is relatively simple to create a huge new lexicon, just look at constructed languages like Esperanto. This can be done through borrowing (as English and Hindi-Urdu do) or through combining smaller words (as is more common in Icelandic, German and Tamil).

Saim wrote:

byofrcs wrote:English is perfectly pukka for a nation like India that I think has prevented its Balkanization.

Yeah, if only they had a common language in the Balkans. Oh wait...

The beauty of English is that no one actually cares about adding new words.

As opposed to what? Icelandic?

What about Hindi-Urdu, for example? It's replete with loanwords from Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic and English. Or Tagalog, with its Spanish and English borrowings? English is hardly the only example of a language with mixed origins. All languages incorporate loanwords.

cursuswalker wrote:
It has become the ultimate adaptive language, by several accidents of history. And this is the real reason why it remains so popular.

I don't think this is the reason it is popular. The reason it is the world's most important language is that it's the national language of the world's superpower (i.e. the United States). Mandarin and Malay are less inflected (which can be interpreted as having a "simpler grammar"), and Tagalog and Hindi are at least as mixed lexically - but they're not in the position of becoming the world's lingua franca.

Natural selection does not apply to languages. Language expansion and decline are entirely sociological phenomena, as there is nothing that objectively makes one language more suitable than any other. Tribal languages like Khoekhoe and Yolngu might not be usable in educational or business contexts, but this is simply because no-one uses them in these contexts. It is relatively simple to create a huge new lexicon, just look at constructed languages like Esperanto. This can be done through borrowing (as English and Hindi-Urdu do) or through combining smaller words (as is more common in Icelandic, German and Tamil).

Oh, I think he was comparing to klingon from startrek. I dont think this is a question of dispute, this is a question of linguistic and cultural supremacy irrespective of how they have come as though the question "How the geopolitical nature of the world has helped in the dominance of some countries over the others and hence some languages over the others" is meaningless.
I disagree however with the idea that natural selection does not apply, it applies really well.

cavarka9 wrote:Now, if you still believe in assuming that 'english is so speshul a language' that it alone wud have come to be a global language, then go fuck your self and all those whu believe in this stupidity.

My beleaguered colleague of that other dark continent: you may be overlooking some truths by obsessing over colonialism. English is my 5th language, and occasionally I resent it (irrationally) because in learning it, I forgot most of my French. But English is fundamentally special: it's a true hybrid, not homogenous in the least; its Norse and Germanic parentage gives us the terse, consonant-rich vocabulary of everyday things, things of the Earth, things we touch, and taste, and fight wars with; its Norman French parentage gives us a second language infused into the first from above: words for abstract ideas, and diplomacy, and poetry and philosophy. This hybrid nature of the language means it readily consorts (as some have already mentioned in this thread) with every new language it encounters, transforming that language and itself in the process. It's that malleability and adaptability, probably unrivaled by any other language, which gave English the inherent potential to transform and be transformed the way it has. English colonialism simply gave it the means by which to do so.

Also, aside from the many other brilliant writers who've promulgated the language in its various forms - many of them from your own country - there's Shakespeare! Idk if anything needs to be said about that. I'm a fanboi.

Also, is not stupid to not spell a language as it is pronounced.That alone makes it ridiculous.

Infuriating. It forces all sorts of concessions and strain upon the mind of someone approaching English as a 2nd language... or 3rd, 4th, or 5th. BUT. There's another side to that coin: it isn't alone in this, but English has an extraordinarily large range of vowel sounds (compounding the necessity for atrocious spelling rules). Most English speakers don't notice this. They think English has, at most, 5 or 6 "vowels", when in reality it has something like 20-30. Yet this is a source of potential strength. It means that the natural vowel range for an English speaker is quite large, and, ironically, should give him/her a minute advantage when attempting to pronounce other languages with equally nuanced vowel sounds. It's ironic because, seeing that English is so dominant usually turns a person off the prospect of truly immersing in another language - hence, although there's no physical excuse for it, Americans (for example) tend to be lazy with their 'foreign' language accents, and much more so with the learning of said languages.

Bottom line is this: it's a pity when any language is neglected, because it means we all miss out on something great. Languages die at the rate of about 2 per month - who knows how much knowledge and historical memory are lost with them? But there's no other shortcoming to this. If there's something inherently special about any language, then it will tend to leave its mark regardless of the politics that happen alongside it. I think English, regardless of empire, is like The Relic - and that's genetic.

arugula wrote:

cavarka9 wrote:Now, if you still believe in assuming that 'english is so speshul a language' that it alone wud have come to be a global language, then go fuck your self and all those whu believe in this stupidity.

My beleaguered colleague of that other dark continent: you may be overlooking some truths by obsessing over colonialism. English is my 5th language, and occasionally I resent it (irrationally) because in learning it, I forgot most of my French. But English is fundamentally special: it's a true hybrid, not homogenous in the least; its Norse and Germanic parentage gives us the terse, consonant-rich vocabulary of everyday things, things of the Earth, things we touch, and taste, and fight wars with; its Norman French parentage gives us a second language infused into the first from above: words for abstract ideas, and diplomacy, and poetry and philosophy. This hybrid nature of the language means it readily consorts (as some have already mentioned in this thread) with every new language it encounters, transforming that language and itself in the process. It's that malleability and adaptability, probably unrivaled by any other language, which gave English the inherent potential to transform and be transformed the way it has. English colonialism simply gave it the means by which to do so.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THE OTHER DARK CONTINENT?. IS THIS RACIAL?

What do you mean by overlooking truths by obsessing over colonialism?. In what context are you saying this?

Was the quote you just quoted made specifically to you?. Was it said in another issue made to someone else?

I said, there are bigger factors which give a greater lift than to merely consider a language's unique features when recognizing how this particular language has come to the place it has come?.

arugula wrote:

cavarka9 wrote:
Also, aside from the many other brilliant writers who've promulgated the language in its various forms - many of them from your own country - there's Shakespeare! Idk if anything needs to be said about that. I'm a fanboi.

And you think other writers in other languages were not brilliant enough or that many writers from my country are incapable of writing in any other language? What is the worth of the above sentence?

arugula wrote:

cavarka9 wrote:

Also, is not stupid to not spell a language as it is pronounced.That alone makes it ridiculous.

Infuriating. It forces all sorts of concessions and strain upon the mind of someone approaching English as a 2nd language... or 3rd, 4th, or 5th. BUT. There's another side to that coin: it isn't alone in this, but English has an extraordinarily large range of vowel sounds (compounding the necessity for atrocious spelling rules). Most English speakers don't notice this. They think English has, at most, 5 or 6 "vowels", when in reality it has something like 20-30. Yet this is a source of potential strength. It means that the natural vowel range for an English speaker is quite large, and, ironically, should give him/her a minute advantage when attempting to pronounce other languages with equally nuanced vowel sounds.

So you do agree to begin with but you change the tack to make an empirical claim and I am awaiting for evidence. Here, let me make another empirical claim which you can perhaps test after you have evidence for the first, that sanskrit speakers will do better in pronunciation!.

arugula wrote:

cavarka9 wrote:
It's ironic because, seeing that English is so dominant usually turns a person off the prospect of truly immersing in another language - hence, although there's no physical excuse for it, Americans (for example) tend to be lazy with their 'foreign' language accents, and much more so with the learning of said languages.



Bottom line is this: it's a pity when any language is neglected, because it means we all miss out on something great. Languages die at the rate of about 2 per month - who knows how much knowledge and historical memory are lost with them? But there's no other shortcoming to this. If there's something inherently special about any language, then it will tend to leave its mark regardless of the politics that happen alongside it. I think English, regardless of empire, is like The Relic - and that's genetic.

Another sanctimonious nonsense.

How much do you think has colonialism played a part in english becoming the dominant language it has become, On a scale of 10. Answer this question and then make your case. And what is your point, is your bottom line what you really wanted to state, if it is then cut the bullshit next time.

The rest does not matter much because poetry and prose are a part of every countries literature and are also dependent on other socio-political factors. As far as the uniqueness of english is concerned, so what? Did I ever express disgust to english as a language?. Do show me where?Do you think english would have become the dominant language of the world if it belonged to a tribe in amazon?.

How much has geopolitics played a role?

And this is the attitude which infuriates me, one of sanctimoniousness. Just like hack and others, you conclude by saying
"oh,its sad, its terrible that languages are dying but they will die and well...... we can still look forward to english"

That sums up the position that could be made on this issue and there can be no better a point people can further make.
Which is " Oh English is special and yes how it had come to take the place that it has is irrelevant, and yes while other languages are suffering, well..."

One of apathy and excuse, even you claimed that there is no physical excuse and yet you stated how lazy the americans are?. What a stupid excuse!
When I stated that this need not be the case, technology can be used, people still go on to claim that there is a case for everyone to have one common language and that must be english because of the present reasons.

It is to this I argued, is this your position too?.

If your claim is that english has something unique about it, so what?. Every language has got its own beauty and charm to it, nothing in it to be considered sacred or worshipped or to express hope that it must be the language of the world. I can admire it, yes, but not advocate it to become the language of the world.

Ultimately my point is not one of sanctimoniousness, I claim that technology can be used and when used, it could easily make people converse in 20 languages!.
As far as trying to show me as being beleaguered in the cheap quote above you picked.
Read this below where I clearly said I have no problem with English but on the drastic effects happening to other languages and expressed that technology can be used.
http://www.rationalskepticism.org/paran ... ml#p812797
So, no I do not pity because I can do something,save your pity because pity in this case is to take the position of sanctimoniousness.
So, let me ask you, once again, Do you believe that there is a case for humanity to have ONE language and do you continue to express the hope that it be English?.
Because if it is then I have nothing much to say but express my humble disgust and if you do not agree then you can advocate the use of technology to sort this issue next time you try to write another piece of nonsense like this.
Because that little quote you made had come within a conversation. And was not isolated as you seem to show and are replying to.

In India alone there are 22 official languages recognised by the Constitution and over 120 that are spoken by at least 10,000 people. Good luck with writing translation software that will bring all of those together, especially in poor towns and villages where many inhabitants don't even have access to basic literacy.

Most Indians have to learn Hindi in addition to their native language just in order to have access to their own national cultural and political life. I don't see them agitating for portable software to translate Hindi into Malayalam, to take just one example. So extend this concept to global cultural, political and scientific life. Is it easier to conduct this in one (or maybe two) globally common language(s) or to force everyone to carry a device that will translate several thousand languages into every other language?

Even if you only did this for 1,000 languages, do you know how many combinations that entails? Do the factorial of 1,000 and figure out how much computing power you would need. Clue: it's fucking astronomical.

Blackadder wrote:In India alone there are 22 official languages recognised by the Constitution and over 120 that are spoken by at least 10,000 people. Good luck with writing translation software that will bring all of those together, especially in poor towns and villages where many inhabitants don't even have access to basic literacy.

Most Indians have to learn Hindi in addition to their native language just in order to have access to their own national cultural and political life. I don't see them agitating for portable software to translate Hindi into Malayalam, to take just one example. So extend this concept to global cultural, political and scientific life. Is it easier to conduct this in one (or maybe two) globally common language(s) or to force everyone to carry a device that will translate several thousand languages into every other language?

Even if you only did this for 1,000 languages, do you know how many combinations that entails? Do the factorial of 1,000 and figure out how much computing power you would need. Clue: it's fucking astronomical.

Just because you cannot see does not imply that they dont exist, the world does not begin and end with your eyesight. Thanks, we will keep alive as many as we can and try save the rest, I believe thats my attitude, not to say "drop it, its hopeless, let pick one and dump the rest".And thanks for the luck, although it doest exist, an empty but nonetheless a positive word.

cavarka9 wrote:
Just because you cannot see does not imply that they dont exist, the world does not begin and end with your eyesight. Thanks, we will keep alive as many as we can and try save the rest, I believe thats my attitude, not to say "drop it, its hopeless, let pick one and dump the rest".And thanks for the luck, although it doest exist, an empty but nonetheless a positive word.

Clearly you have a problem with understanding plain English. Did I say that I cannot "see" other languages? Did I say "let's pick one and drop the rest"? What part of "most Indians have to learn Hindi in addition to their native language..." did you not understand?

My own family kept our native Indian language, learned Hindi/Urdu and also English. I have managed to acquire two other languages in addition and can hardly be accused of wanting to ditch non-English languages. But it makes compete sense to me to conduct global discourse in one widely spoken language. If by historic accident that happens to be English, so what? It could be Chinese or Spanish but it happens to be English. So what? The point is, that is more efficient than trying to translate every language into every other language in real time.

IRT cavarka9

I think you need less emotion, and more clarity (and I invite you to reduce the amount of underlining, exclamation, and other displays of "emphasis", and rely more on your arguments). There's not much I can do for you there, but I guess I'll respond to your misconceptions.

You're obviously not an approachable fellow, or at least you've made a strong effort to appear otherwise. Maybe you're having a bad day. I don't know. What I do know is that my response to you was, if not convincing, at least cordial. As for "that other dark continent" - I really wonder why you took offense to the phrase. I am from the "dark continent" (Africa), and I chose to refer to your subcontinent as "that other dark continent". We could probably explore the unconscious impetus you might have had to feel offended at the mere notion of your country being a "dark continent", but something tells me that discussion would leave me thoroughly bored, and yourself at a loss for equivocations.

My disagreement in the first response was one of emphasis. I think you overlook, or underplay, that crucial facet of English which I described before. Unlike what you claimed, English actually is "speshul" because it's a mongrel possibly unlike any other mongrel. All languages are amalgams in some way - English is a particularly incongruous, amorphous, non-homogenous amalgam. Its two largest halves (Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman) are still in conflict just beneath the surface, and have been for centuries. This makes it naturally a flexible, constantly malleable form, which absorbs new content more readily perhaps than most other languages.

On to Shakespeare. The "worth" of that sentence was to simply point out that I am a fanboi, and that it represents some of my enthusiasm for the language; but also, that you and anyone else who reads English, ought to appreciate Shakespeare. It's a narrow focal point, but let it marinate, and perhaps you will gradually accept an equally simple notion: If you love Shakespeare (substitute any English-language writer of your choosing), then you love English. And it's difficult, I imagine, to make the connection between one emotion and another, but I invite you to try anyway. It's not an objective undertaking. We're talking about a meme, anyway.

On to some random distortions:

1) I didn't claim that English-speakers do better with pronunciation - or even with vowel pronunciation, since vowels were my focus. I claimed that English-speakers, by virtue of having so many vowels in common usage, ought to benefit from it (though minutely) simply by being able to pronounce a large range of vowels. In practice, it's a different story, partly for the reasons I mentioned (the cultural disincentive of, for example, Americans to tackle other languages at all, and their apparent unawareness of the range of vowel sounds in their own language). Localization plays a role, too, which I'll mention below.

2) No, I did not "agree" that it's stupid to not spell a language as it's pronounced. I said the fact that English doesn't is infuriating - particularly to someone like me who had to learn it after other, more sensibly spelled languages. Once you get past that grammar-school infuriation, however, you'll notice something about English: there aren't enough letters in the alphabet to represent all the (vowel) sounds in the language. One way or another, to spell English as it's pronounced you'll have to invent letters, or employ seemingly unreasonable combinations of letters. For the most part, the spelling gumbo that is English has to do with the necessity of the latter, plus the mongrel history of the language itself in the spoken memory of its host nations. You've noticed, too, I'm sure, that there's a huge variety of "pronunciation" rules depending on the location and history of the speaker - something which will, in all cases, inform one's personal reaction to the spelling of English. Incidentally, Korean is widely regarded as having the most "sensible" spelling schema, and the most "scientific" of all scripts - but it's far from ideal... because no written language can hope to represent the spoken form in a simple manner.

3) The "physical excuse" refers literally to the physiological - to the muscle memory of the speaking apparatus, and the molding of the corresponding areas of the brain. When a human learns language, the broad description of the mental process would be to say his/her language capacity is being narrowed - the range of possible vocalizations is being lessened, leaving an adult (for example) much less able to adapt to, and learn, new vocalizations. I referred to the "laziness" of Americans to learn new languages as a cultural, social, psychological consideration - and that's clear in my post. You erroneously bridge the two. Try to soothe your right cerebral hemisphere a little, and you may catch the meaning of people's words.

4) And spare me your myopia re: my view of languages. There's no u-turn involved, between lamenting the loss of languages (for their cultural content) and identifying the viral potential of languages such as English. One is a normative stance, the other isn't. At no point have I advocated for English as "the language of the world". The fact that you thought I did proves my point, which I expressed in the opening sentence of my post:

...you may be overlooking some truths by obsessing over colonialism.

You resent the Blob that is English. And it's making you blur the distinction between an is and an ought. Something for therapy, perhaps.

As for the proportion of the success of English as a global language being attributed to English conquest..? What a ridiculous question. Language is spread by contact between peoples, and the success of one language to eclipse, or to vie for brain space against, another language depends on many factors, conquest being probably the dominant one. It's the reason everyone in North Africa speaks Arabic, and almost everyone in southern Europe speaks a form of Latin, and most older Koreans speak Chinese.

And since all languages are rich testaments to our heritage as a species, and contain in some sense the physical memory of our past, they ought not to disappear. Nothing in my post contradicts this. If anything, your disjointed response serves to highlight that this is about strong feelings on your part, directed at a language, for which you can't reasonably account. And if you detach the final clause and apply it liberally, you will discover a double entendre. That's French, by the way. It means double entendre.

See what I did there?

Blackadder wrote:

cavarka9 wrote:
Just because you cannot see does not imply that they dont exist, the world does not begin and end with your eyesight. Thanks, we will keep alive as many as we can and try save the rest, I believe thats my attitude, not to say "drop it, its hopeless, let pick one and dump the rest".And thanks for the luck, although it doest exist, an empty but nonetheless a positive word.

Clearly you have a problem with understanding plain English. Did I say that I cannot "see" other languages? Did I say "let's pick one and drop the rest"? What part of "most Indians have to learn Hindi in addition to their native language..." did you not understand?

My own family kept our native Indian language, learned Hindi/Urdu and also English. I have managed to acquire two other languages in addition and can hardly be accused of wanting to ditch non-English languages. But it makes compete sense to me to conduct global discourse in one widely spoken language. If by historic accident that happens to be English, so what? It could be Chinese or Spanish but it happens to be English. So what? The point is, that is more efficient than trying to translate every language into every other language in real time.

clearly you cannot read what you just said. You said you did not see people agitating for translational softwares, it takes one to throw that out. Second, your family alone I believe cannot be sufficient in ensuring languages survival.Which makes your particular case statistically insignificant to the larger case to your own case.

Or as the above person said, people are lazy.

If people are lazy, why do you think people are learning english?. Even in europe?. It is science followed by business, as the business centre changes you can be assured that language of importance too shall change. Language is a softpower, do you know, statistically the difference that has come about in improving scientific literacy and its effects in technology development due to this particular language impairment? In short, who made a better killing by having scientific literacy primarily in one language?.

If it makes sense to you to have one language, then let me allude that people are generally not interested in learning languages, they are interested in acquiring something through that language. So, you do not have to translate everything to help in language survival, it just needs translation on science to a large extent. That is the primary reason why people are learning english. What is the utility of language?. It is primarily in acquiring information to ones requirement.

Add to that,then which part of technology can help converse in 20 others do you not understand? . Or you prefer that others also converse to you in that one language. This is an issue of choice which need not be made.

What is this drivel of one language being forced is not a problem enough but carrying a device is a problem to you?, do you carry a cell phone? or is someone forcing you to use one?. Efficiency is in greater ability to converse to wide ranging people at their own pace.Meaning, that it is not necessary or even efficient to teach one common language to all.It is efficient to let them learn and converse as they please.

Also, can you actually speak with full intellectual capabilities in hindi/urdu and other languages as you do in english, is that what you see in others too?. In simple, if a language is not in use, then it by definition becomes dormant and absurd to continue to have, if you take the efficiency as your criteria, then you wasted your time in learning other languages, why do it?.And why continue to show pity that languages are dying. I dont buy the lord of the rings bullshit of having to teach everyone one language.
Finally, I am at work, so some other time.

arugula wrote:IRT cavarka9

I think you need less emotion, and more clarity (and I invite you to reduce the amount of underlining, exclamation, and other displays of "emphasis", and rely more on your arguments). There's not much I can do for you there, but I guess I'll respond to your misconceptions.

You're obviously not an approachable fellow, or at least you've made a strong effort to appear otherwise. Maybe you're having a bad day. I don't know. What I do know is that my response to you was, if not convincing, at least cordial. As for "that other dark continent" - I really wonder why you took offense to the phrase. I am from the "dark continent" (Africa), and I chose to refer to your subcontinent as "that other dark continent". We could probably explore the unconscious impetus you might have had to feel offended at the mere notion of your country being a "dark continent", but something tells me that discussion would leave me thoroughly bored, and yourself at a loss for equivocations.

My disagreement in the first response was one of emphasis. I think you overlook, or underplay, that crucial facet of English which I described before. Unlike what you claimed, English actually is "speshul" because it's a mongrel possibly unlike any other mongrel. All languages are amalgams in some way - English is a particularly incongruous, amorphous, non-homogenous amalgam. Its two largest halves (Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman) are still in conflict just beneath the surface, and have been for centuries. This makes it naturally a flexible, constantly malleable form, which absorbs new content more readily perhaps than most other languages.

On to Shakespeare. The "worth" of that sentence was to simply point out that I am a fanboi, and that it represents some of my enthusiasm for the language; but also, that you and anyone else who reads English, ought to appreciate Shakespeare. It's a narrow focal point, but let it marinate, and perhaps you will gradually accept an equally simple notion: If you love Shakespeare (substitute any English-language writer of your choosing), then you love English. And it's difficult, I imagine, to make the connection between one emotion and another, but I invite you to try anyway. It's not an objective undertaking. We're talking about a meme, anyway.

On to some random distortions:

1) I didn't claim that English-speakers do better with pronunciation - or even with vowel pronunciation, since vowels were my focus. I claimed that English-speakers, by virtue of having so many vowels in common usage, ought to benefit from it (though minutely) simply by being able to pronounce a large range of vowels. In practice, it's a different story, partly for the reasons I mentioned (the cultural disincentive of, for example, Americans to tackle other languages at all, and their apparent unawareness of the range of vowel sounds in their own language). Localization plays a role, too, which I'll mention below.

2) No, I did not "agree" that it's stupid to not spell a language as it's pronounced. I said the fact that English doesn't is infuriating - particularly to someone like me who had to learn it after other, more sensibly spelled languages. Once you get past that grammar-school infuriation, however, you'll notice something about English: there aren't enough letters in the alphabet to represent all the (vowel) sounds in the language. One way or another, to spell English as it's pronounced you'll have to invent letters, or employ seemingly unreasonable combinations of letters. For the most part, the spelling gumbo that is English has to do with the necessity of the latter, plus the mongrel history of the language itself in the spoken memory of its host nations. You've noticed, too, I'm sure, that there's a huge variety of "pronunciation" rules depending on the location and history of the speaker - something which will, in all cases, inform one's personal reaction to the spelling of English. Incidentally, Korean is widely regarded as having the most "sensible" spelling schema, and the most "scientific" of all scripts - but it's far from ideal... because no written language can hope to represent the spoken form in a simple manner.

3) The "physical excuse" refers literally to the physiological - to the muscle memory of the speaking apparatus, and the molding of the corresponding areas of the brain. When a human learns language, the broad description of the mental process would be to say his/her language capacity is being narrowed - the range of possible vocalizations is being lessened, leaving an adult (for example) much less able to adapt to, and learn, new vocalizations. I referred to the "laziness" of Americans to learn new languages as a cultural, social, psychological consideration - and that's clear in my post. You erroneously bridge the two. Try to soothe your right cerebral hemisphere a little, and you may catch the meaning of people's words.

4) And spare me your myopia re: my view of languages. There's no u-turn involved, between lamenting the loss of languages (for their cultural content) and identifying the viral potential of languages such as English. One is a normative stance, the other isn't. At no point have I advocated for English as "the language of the world". The fact that you thought I did proves my point, which I expressed in the opening sentence of my post:

...you may be overlooking some truths by obsessing over colonialism.

You resent the Blob that is English. And it's making you blur the distinction between an is and an ought. Something for therapy, perhaps.

As for the proportion of the success of English as a global language being attributed to English conquest..? What a ridiculous question. Language is spread by contact between peoples, and the success of one language to eclipse, or to vie for brain space against, another language depends on many factors, conquest being probably the dominant one. It's the reason everyone in North Africa speaks Arabic, and almost everyone in southern Europe speaks a form of Latin, and most older Koreans speak Chinese.

And since all languages are rich testaments to our heritage as a species, and contain in some sense the physical memory of our past, they ought not to disappear. Nothing in my post contradicts this. If anything, your disjointed response serves to highlight that this is about strong feelings on your part, directed at a language, for which you can't reasonably account. And if you detach the final clause and apply it liberally, you will discover a double entendre. That's French, by the way. It means double entendre.

See what I did there?

In short, you do not advocate english as the sole prominent language of the world, which is fine by me, second, you agree that conquest was the primary reason, which I agree and others before you have skipped that issue by trivializing it as though it didnt matter. Third, I am assuming you advocate use of technology. The other guy from whom you quoted wasnt satisfied by that.He wanted more.
But I dont believe I was too off the mark when I replied to the first post, the term dark continent is still racial. And yes, I am having few bad days which has had an affect on my mood it seems, so I do apologize for positions which seems to radiate from me. Will reply back.

Power changes the world, they get to impose not just their language but also their culture, dressing styles and a lot more, it is due to the asymmetric power relationship.Otherwise people must choose(in which case it becomes random) or perhaps make a new language which is the best, but there is no scientific evaluation of which language is a better one.

This was the quote which started it all and I will stand by it. And no if you have read the thread where I discussed with some one else, my attitude is not with a language, and not english either. It is with pseudo pity.

Blackadder wrote:The point is, that is more efficient than trying to translate every language into every other language in real time.

cavarka9 wrote:clearly you cannot read what you just said. You said you did not see people agitating for translational softwares, it takes one to throw that out.

No.

He said it's more efficient to communicate in a common language than to (persistently) translate many languages. That is not equivalent to saying that people do not "agitate" for such translation software. And by "not equivalent", I mean they are two very different meanings. And by "different", I mean not the same.

cavarka9 wrote:In short, you do not advocate english as the sole prominent language of the world, which is fine by me, second, you agree that conquest was the primary reason, which I agree and others before you have skipped that issue by trivializing it as though it didnt matter. Third, I am assuming you advocate use of technology. The other guy from whom you quoted wasnt satisfied by that.He wanted more.

I would like for all languages to be preserved somehow, in some way, and be accessible to all of us who want access to them - but that will be a tiny minority of us who happen to be interested in languages, and their cultural content. Those others (like yourself) who want specific languages to persevere for practical use, are expressing a different normative stance. I identified your particular motive as a resentment deeply entrenched in anti-colonialism (not that there's anything wrong with resenting colonialism... it essentially destroyed my country, for example). For others, the motive to 'oppose' English might be aesthetic, for others still it might have to do with the irritation of having to adapt to 'another' language. There are many motivations for wanting to preserve a language, but the list of motivations for wanting to prop up specific languages against specific other languages, that list is more narrow.

Saim wrote:

byofrcs wrote:English is perfectly pukka for a nation like India that I think has prevented its Balkanization.

Yeah, if only they had a common language in the Balkans. Oh wait...

Balkanization is a term used to describe the segmentation into smaller countries each with their own silo mentality when it comes to how they relate to the other. If you read the Wikipedia article you had linked to then you would see there is considerable confusion if you want to claim that it is a common language of the Balkans.

The beauty of English is that no one actually cares about adding new words.

As opposed to what? Icelandic?

What about Hindi-Urdu, for example? It's replete with loanwords from Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic and English. Or Tagalog, with its Spanish and English borrowings? English is hardly the only example of a language with mixed origins. All languages incorporate loanwords.

Well I was thinking about the French. but equally there are a large number of Language regulators

English doesn't have a language regulator and IMHO it should never have one.

cursuswalker wrote:
It has become the ultimate adaptive language, by several accidents of history. And this is the real reason why it remains so popular.

I don't think this is the reason it is popular. The reason it is the world's most important language is that it's the national language of the world's superpower (i.e. the United States). Mandarin and Malay are less inflected (which can be interpreted as having a "simpler grammar"), and Tagalog and Hindi are at least as mixed lexically - but they're not in the position of becoming the world's lingua franca.

Natural selection does not apply to languages. Language expansion and decline are entirely sociological phenomena, as there is nothing that objectively makes one language more suitable than any other. Tribal languages like Khoekhoe and Yolngu might not be usable in educational or business contexts, but this is simply because no-one uses them in these contexts. It is relatively simple to create a huge new lexicon, just look at constructed languages like Esperanto. This can be done through borrowing (as English and Hindi-Urdu do) or through combining smaller words (as is more common in Icelandic, German and Tamil).

Actually languages do have a linguistic evolution.

http://www.sciencecodex.com/harvard_sci ... past_tense

There are many other influences the largest of which is the British Commonwealth. The reason the US uses English is because of this influence. Until the US was a superpower then Britain ruled the world. The legacy is the US, and so the world speaks English.

The power of the printing press means that fonts have been developed for Latin script travel faster than other languages which have unique symbols. Fonts were expensive (still are) so any language with a smaller character set is going to win in the long run over one with many characters unique to its own language. Equally the freedom to print, either legally or illegally, and the ease of printing means that a smaller font set will win when it comes to the cost

English had a very low cost to print. The fonts were relatively cheap and the language itself is reasonably efficient. Obviously nowadays this is less of an issue but this ease-of-printing has had an influence right up to this day with the ASCII character set, UTF-8 and the late arrival of Unicode.

arugula wrote:IRT cavarka9

I think you need less emotion, and more clarity (and I invite you to reduce the amount of underlining, exclamation, and other displays of "emphasis", and rely more on your arguments). There's not much I can do for you there, but I guess I'll respond to your misconceptions.

fine

arugula wrote:
You're obviously not an approachable fellow, or at least you've made a strong effort to appear otherwise. Maybe you're having a bad day. I don't know. What I do know is that my response to you was, if not convincing, at least cordial. As for "that other dark continent" - I really wonder why you took offense to the phrase. I am from the "dark continent" (Africa), and I chose to refer to your subcontinent as "that other dark continent". We could probably explore the unconscious impetus you might have had to feel offended at the mere notion of your country being a "dark continent", but something tells me that discussion would leave me thoroughly bored, and yourself at a loss for equivocations.

You began by "dark" continent, what did you mean by "dark continent"? .where does dark emerge from?

arugula wrote:
My disagreement in the first response was one of emphasis. I think you overlook, or underplay, that crucial facet of English which I described before. Unlike what you claimed, English actually is "speshul" because it's a mongrel possibly unlike any other mongrel. All languages are amalgams in some way - English is a particularly incongruous, amorphous, non-homogenous amalgam. Its two largest halves (Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman) are still in conflict just beneath the surface, and have been for centuries. This makes it naturally a flexible, constantly malleable form, which absorbs new content more readily perhaps than most other languages.

You brought it to my attention now didnt you?. Thats a satire, now what do you wish me to say here, acknowledge it so that I show that I dont overlook it?.Then I have acknowledged it.

arugula wrote:
On to Shakespeare. The "worth" of that sentence was to simply point out that I am a fanboi, and that it represents some of my enthusiasm for the language; but also, that you and anyone else who reads English, ought to appreciate Shakespeare. It's a narrow focal point, but let it marinate, and perhaps you will gradually accept an equally simple notion: If you love Shakespeare (substitute any English-language writer of your choosing), then you love English. And it's difficult, I imagine, to make the connection between one emotion and another, but I invite you to try anyway. It's not an objective undertaking. We're talking about a meme, anyway.

Fine, i appreciate shakespeare and english for their aesthetic worth.

arugula wrote:
On to some random distortions:

Also, is not stupid to not spell a language as it is pronounced.That alone makes it ridiculous.

Infuriating. It forces all sorts of concessions and strain upon the mind of someone approaching English as a 2nd language... or 3rd, 4th, or 5th. BUT. There's another side to that coin: it isn't alone in this, but English has an extraordinarily large range of vowel sounds (compounding the necessity for atrocious spelling rules). Most English speakers don't notice this. They think English has, at most, 5 or 6 "vowels", when in reality it has something like 20-30. Yet this is a source of potential strength. It means that the natural vowel range for an English speaker is quite large, and, ironically, should give him/her a minute advantage when attempting to pronounce other languages with equally nuanced vowel sounds.

arugula wrote:
1) I didn't claim that English-speakers do better with pronunciation - or even with vowel pronunciation, since vowels were my focus. I claimed that English-speakers, by virtue of having so many vowels in common usage, ought to benefit from it (though minutely) simply by being able to pronounce a large range of vowels. In practice, it's a different story, partly for the reasons I mentioned (the cultural disincentive of, for example, Americans to tackle other languages at all, and their apparent unawareness of the range of vowel sounds in their own language). Localization plays a role, too, which I'll mention below.
.

However minute, an empirical claim, and I am waiting for you to show where the distortion is.

arugula wrote:
2) No, I did not "agree" that it's stupid to not spell a language as it's pronounced. I said the fact that English doesn't is infuriating - particularly to someone like me who had to learn it after other, more sensibly spelled languages. Once you get past that grammar-school infuriation, however, you'll notice something about English: there aren't enough letters in the alphabet to represent all the (vowel) sounds in the language. One way or another, to spell English as it's pronounced you'll have to invent letters, or employ seemingly unreasonable combinations of letters. For the most part, the spelling gumbo that is English has to do with the necessity of the latter, plus the mongrel history of the language itself in the spoken memory of its host nations. You've noticed, too, I'm sure, that there's a huge variety of "pronunciation" rules depending on the location and history of the speaker - something which will, in all cases, inform one's personal reaction to the spelling of English. Incidentally, Korean is widely regarded as having the most "sensible" spelling schema, and the most "scientific" of all scripts - but it's far from ideal... because no written language can hope to represent the spoken form in a simple manner.

You began with the term "infuriating" which is a negative emotion, I claimed stupid, so they are not same but both of them come under a negative class. but I dont see what is wrong in spelling a cat as kat. america as amerika.
Now it is upon you to show that all the words in english language cannot be spelt using simpler rules to a large degree without having to invent new letters,what words are you referring to and how many such words come up in general conversations. In specific till the college level books which students are supposed to have learnt as a base. However you do agree the effect of history and others. You are not being clear on this, is this negative to english or is it a positive, if it is a positive then back it up by evidence.
Also in a world which is looking to tap into natural processing languages, the languages with a better structure must have a greater advantages, do you agree?.

It's ironic because, seeing that English is so dominant usually turns a person off the prospect of truly immersing in another language - hence, although there's no physical excuse for it, Americans (for example) tend to be lazy with their 'foreign' language accents, and much more so with the learning of said languages.

arugula wrote:
3) The "physical excuse" refers literally to the physiological - to the muscle memory of the speaking apparatus, and the molding of the corresponding areas of the brain. When a human learns language, the broad description of the mental process would be to say his/her language capacity is being narrowed - the range of possible vocalizations is being lessened, leaving an adult (for example) much less able to adapt to, and learn, new vocalizations. I referred to the "laziness" of Americans to learn new languages as a cultural, social, psychological consideration - and that's clear in my post. You erroneously bridge the two. Try to soothe your right cerebral hemisphere a little, and you may catch the meaning of people's words.

It is extremely clear to me that the second para adds words which have qualitatively changed the meaning in the first para.And does it stop being an excuse?

arugula wrote:
4) And spare me your myopia re: my view of languages. There's no u-turn involved, between lamenting the loss of languages (for their cultural content) and identifying the viral potential of languages such as English. One is a normative stance, the other isn't. At no point have I advocated for English as "the language of the world". The fact that you thought I did proves my point, which I expressed in the opening sentence of my post:

...you may be overlooking some truths by obsessing over colonialism.

You resent the Blob that is English. And it's making you blur the distinction between an is and an ought. Something for therapy, perhaps.

And to show you wrong I quoted
http://www.rationalskepticism.org/paran ... ml#p812797
to show that my concern was with respect to other languages which are dying. Second, you began by taking a quote of a person who was advocating the position with the vigour of a salesman.

arugula wrote:
As for the proportion of the success of English as a global language being attributed to English conquest..? What a ridiculous question. Language is spread by contact between peoples, and the success of one language to eclipse, or to vie for brain space against, another language depends on many factors, conquest being probably the dominant one. It's the reason everyone in North Africa speaks Arabic, and almost everyone in southern Europe speaks a form of Latin, and most older Koreans speak Chinese.

And yet some people here weren't even interested in taking that explanation.

arugula wrote:
And since all languages are rich testaments to our heritage as a species, and contain in some sense the physical memory of our past, they ought not to disappear. Nothing in my post contradicts this. If anything, your disjointed response serves to highlight that this is about strong feelings on your part, directed at a language, for which you can't reasonably account. And if you detach the final clause and apply it liberally, you will discover a double entendre. That's French, by the way. It means double entendre.

See what I did there?

Then one must advocate ways and means to achieve this end with great vigor If they really believed in this, else I have a right to claim them sanctimonious.Except your quote below shows that you believe that there is no shortcoming to this.

Bottom line is this: it's a pity when any language is neglected, because it means we all miss out on something great. Languages die at the rate of about 2 per month - who knows how much knowledge and historical memory are lost with them? But there's no other shortcoming to this. If there's something inherently special about any language, then it will tend to leave its mark regardless of the politics that happen alongside it. I think English, regardless of empire, is like The Relic - and that's genetic.

Summary

So, your claim of distortions
1)You didnt claim advantages in pronounciation,

Yet this is a source of potential strength. It means that the natural vowel range for an English speaker is quite large, and, ironically, should give him/her a minute advantage when attempting to pronounce other languages with equally nuanced vowel sounds. I

2.)I claim the term 'stupid' with respect to not spelling as pronounced and you used the term 'infuriating'. Now, I consider that the term 'infuriating' is comparably a more negative a word than 'stupid'.
3)You explain the term physical excuse by filling it up with more words

although there's no physical excuse for it, Americans (for example) tend to be lazy with their 'foreign' language accents, and much more so with the learning of said languages.

4)Fourth is on advocating english to be the prominent language , here it is my mistake to assume that you were advocating that position.
And yet,see (6)
5). You accept that the question of dominance is a bigger factor.Here i mistook you considering that others never gave due importance to this issue.
6)You claim that there is no shortcoming this problem. And then comeback saying that I am mistaking your position.Also
from the post http://www.rationalskepticism.org/lingu ... ml#p832303 you conclude by saying

but the list of motivations for wanting to prop up specific languages against specific other languages, that list is more narrow.

[/quote]
I suggest you to read your post before and after
before
http://www.rationalskepticism.org/lingu ... ml#p832006
after
http://www.rationalskepticism.org/lingu ... ml#p832219
Now, can you honestly claim that there is no qualitative change in both. Does this in anyway testify your claim that I have distorted your position when your own position is markedly different.More of an explanation of a explanation.