Should we rescue endangered languages?

[c172]

I wonder what Americans will be speaking (officially, anyhow), in, say 200 years. That's almost a thread in itself. Maybe the USA won't be around as such.

[Tobie]

Fuck that shit . Make English the one global language and get this over with . The more standard language is the more practical and efficient we are .

English is (effectively) that already. In 50 years or so, I wouldn't be surprised if the global language ('Earthish'? 'Earthean'?) was some sort of Mandarin/English fusion.

Boru

It'd be called Chinglish

There is still a lot of French, Spanish and Arabic. I don't see any of those going anywhere fast, especially arabic, considering how resistant that area of the world appears to be to change.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

One of my favourite fictional characters, James Bolivar deGriz, was fond of telling people, 'I speak Esperanto like a native.'

Boru

[Diablo]

Fuck that shit . Make English the one global language and get this over with . The more standard language is the more practical and efficient we are .

English is (effectively) that already. In 50 years or so, I wouldn't be surprised if the global language ('Earthish'? 'Earthean'?) was some sort of Mandarin/English fusion.

Boru

Isn't there something called 'Globish' which is a cut-down version of English, 1500 words and 3 tenses, or something like that, which is used in business?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

English is (effectively) that already. In 50 years or so, I wouldn't be surprised if the global language ('Earthish'? 'Earthean'?) was some sort of Mandarin/English fusion.

Boru

Isn't there something called 'Globish' which is a cut-down version of English, 1500 words and 3 tenses, or something like that, which is used in business?

I believe so, but I was speaking of a sort of global lingua franca, which would also be the vernacular of most people.

Boru

[Anomalocaris]

English is (effectively) that already. In 50 years or so, I wouldn't be surprised if the global language ('Earthish'? 'Earthean'?) was some sort of Mandarin/English fusion.

Boru

It'd be called Chinglish

There is still a lot of French, Spanish and Arabic. I don't see any of those going anywhere fast, especially arabic, considering how resistant that area of the world appears to be to change.

Chinese is unsuitable as a global language because:

1. It's writing system does not lend itself to highly efficient machine input.

2. The tonal based sound structure of Chinese makes proper mandarin pronounciation difficult for native speakers of non-tonal languages to master. Furthermore failure to properly master tonal qualities of spoken Chinese often makes the speaker incomprehensible.

3. Chinese is linguistically distant from any other major language family, so natives of no other major language family is given a leg up on learning Chinese by virtue of having mastered their native language.

It should also be noted in East Asian areas where china enjoyed undisputed cultural dominance for many centuries the Chinese writing system proliferated and became the dominant writing system in Vietnam, Korea, and japan, But Chinese language did not follow. Everyone else went on speaking their native languages, only writing them in Chinese characters.

[Polaris]

Wow...this thread now reminds me of Firefly. Awesome.

[Diablo]

It's probably likely that local populations will go on speaking their language and that (probably) English will be used as the second language. As Chuck says, Mandarin is just too difficult. I read somewhere that it takes 18 years to learn properly!

In Barcelona, for example, people speak Catalan at home and Spanish at school.

[DramaQueen]

In my country libya, standard arabic is the official language. It is nobody's mother tongue, our first tongue are the dialects (except the berbers). It's a dead language and they try to make us speak it (libyan dialects aren't considered real, because they're not a written language and they say they lack grammatical rules, which obviously isn't true).
A contributing factor is the fact that the quran was written in classical arabic. One time someone I know said that berber shouldn't be official in their areas because it's not Allah's language.

I mean libyan arabic is easier, it doesn't have case endings, only three yous (the standard has five)... etc.

Anyway how did Europe abandon Latin, and adopted the vernacular?

How do you learn to spell irish (the pronunciation isn't that hard though, check libyan arabic)?

Ps. How good is my English?

[Tobie]

In my country libya, standard arabic is the official language. It is nobody's mother tongue, our first tongue are the dialects (except the berbers). It's a dead language and they try to make us speak it (libyan dialects aren't considered real, because they're not a written language and they say they lack grammatical rules, which obviously isn't true).
A contributing factor is the fact that the quran was written in classical arabic. One time someone I know said that berber shouldn't be official in their areas because it's not Allah's language.

I mean libyan arabic is easier, it doesn't have case endings, only three yous (the standard has five)... etc.

Anyway how did Europe abandon Latin, and adopted the vernacular?

How do you learn to spell irish (the pronunciation isn't that hard though, check libyan arabic)?

Ps. How good is my English?

It was only the educated people in Europe who could speak latin, and one of the points of the christian reformation was using the languages of the people in church, so in protestant countries, it wasn't used much.

Also, your english is good.