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Someone may have already picked up on this, but after a long Hallowe'en day, and some 100 posts to catch up on, I can't be bothered to check before committing the unhallowed YART-in-public. I urge all to read the cover story in November's Atlantic Monthly (a U.S. magazine): "What Global Language?"
There's a forum there for comments, also a thread here, which I have just created.

(BTW, Barbara Wallraff is their esteemed back-page 'Agony Aunt' on usage, and if you're cool you can join her Grammar Police Squad *proudly displaying my badge*)

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/11/wallraff.htm


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Whoa, Anna, that is a WAY LONG article, Sweetie!
I'll copy part of it:

"English is a system of communication, and highly germane to it is what or who speakers of English care to communicate with, and about what. The more we need to use English to communicate with machines -- or with people whose fluency is limited or whose understanding of English does not coincide with ours -- the more simplified the language will need to be.

And yet technology is expanding English, by requiring us to come up with new words to describe all the possibilities it offers. " She goes on to mention emoticons! (Question: did she know she was YARTing? )

At first I was thinking, "This is true", but then I realized that it is true for any language!

One of her main points was that there are more non-native-English speakers in the world than native English-speakers. She also mentioned something that I had been unaware of: that significant numbers of non-English users are now gaining access to the Internet.

But one thing that she didn't mention except tangentially, is something that I feel is very important in determining whether English will become "the" global language: the fact that this development, in my opinion, will be tied to
economics, and as far as I know, native English speakers have the majority of the world's wealth. I've always heard the expression, "money talks", and in this context it may
have a literal interpretation!

One thing this article gave me was a link to babel fish, so I added it to my Favorites. Maybe I'll eventually try to
figure out how to work it. It looked pretty daunting to me.



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One thing this article gave me was a link to babel fish, so I added it to my Favorites. Maybe I'll eventually try to
figure out how to work it. It looked pretty daunting to me.


Daunting? Babelfish is one of the funniest sites on the Web, IMHO. It and all its clones are hilarious! Try taking a favourite piece of poetry, translate it fromEnglish to anything else, then translate the result back into English, and you will see a painfully funny reminder of the limitations of technology as a replacement for the human intellect.


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if you're cool you can join her Grammar Police Squad

Sigh! When I read this I thought that perhaps there was a new Word Police exam out, but alas! No. There hasn't been a new exam in nearly five months, unfortunately.


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>There hasn't been a new exam in nearly five months...

actually, I preferred the site *before it went to the 'Word Police' format; to wit, the 'Word Fugitives' -- but I'm sure that doesn't surprise you.



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this development, in my opinion, will be tied to
economics


Jackie,
Whilst I agree that economics are a factor, and much as I love the potential literal truth of "money talks" , I think adoption of a language is dictated by far more subtle factors than material wealth. You'd have to ask "what's the value of people taking the effort to learn the language", and the higher the value, the better the incentive to learn the language well (or rather, according to the standards of the most valuable dialect - heck, this gets like swallowing a fur-ball).

The value of a language can be dictated (ouch) by such features as:
* the culture to which you can gain access (both in terms of technology and art),
* the ideas you can express (e.g. if Inuits have several words for different kinds of snow and a new Ice Age sets in, Inuit could be a valuable language),
* good friends and work colleagues who use the language (especially if you take a fancy to any of them ),

etc...

In other words, there's a whole bunch of "soft" criteria that come into the equation. This is appropriate if we see language as more organism than construction (mea culpa, folks).

Following on from that - and this is mentioned in the article - it's almost impossible to define an English speaker except by subjective means. Even if you could get people to do an official test, what variant of the language would you measure against? You'd probably have to pick a time as well as a place!

I'm sure that in a few years' time I'll have trouble understanding what my kids are saying to their friends, that's my opinion. Still, if I give 'em a dose of (by then ancient) AWADtalk it may serve to return the compliment.









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a long Hallowe'en day

Why doesn't that surprise me?


Hope you're fully recovered, and have brushed all the cobwebs away...


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Shona, does your comment mean I've graduated from "Aunt" to "Fish on a Broom"?


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Auntie, I was merely implying that your talents are indeed many and varied.
[worshipful]*

I couldn't possibly presume to tell you how to get around in the evenings.
[creep]*

* (c)2000 The Campaign For Real Emoticons



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Hi Anna
It took me a while to wade through the article and get at her meaning, but having done that I found she is talking about me! The thrust of her article is:

"English isn't managing to sweep all else before it - and it ever does become the universal language, many of who speak it won't understand one another"

This is my experience: English is not my first language (I had written that somewhere else) but my reality is a little more complex than that. It does not mean I am fluent in my native language (Marathi). My entire education has been in English. I speak English and Hindi with friends and colleagues. I speak Marathi with my family. I think in English. So English is the language I am most conversant in. (I cringe when I write that). All was fine and I slept well at night :), until I came on this board.

I found the English I spoke was so different from the English the others were speaking. I found the sentence construction I used and the way I used words was VERY different. At first it was a shock. I realised my knowing and speaking English did not necessarily make me conversant with the world. Then I had to decide whether or not to change my language style. The English I speak is perfect for within my country but inadequate outside it. Isn't that what the article says?

PS every post I make I work on the sentence construction and words so that it "fits in" better.


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