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English language poised to lose its dominance
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| AmbiguousBliss |
Toronto Star
February 27, 2004
English language poised to lose its dominance
Randolph E. Schmid
Associated Press
WASHINGTON-The world faces a future of people speaking more than one language, with English no longer seen as likely to become dominant, a British language expert says in an analysis.
"English is likely to remain one of the world's most important languages for the foreseeable future, but its future is more problematic - and complex - than most people appreciate," language researcher David Graddol said. He sees English as likely to become the "first among equals" rather than having the global field to itself. "Monolingual speakers of any variety of English - American or British - will experience increasing difficulty in employment and political life, and are likely to become bewildered by many aspects of society and culture around them," he said.
The share of the world's population that speaks English as a native language is falling, Graddol reports in a paper in today's issue of the journal Science. The idea of English becoming the world language to the exclusion of others "is past its sell-by date," Graddol said. Instead, its major contribution will be in creating new generations of bilingual and multilingual speakers, he reports.
A multilingual population is already the case in much of the world and is becoming more common in the United States. The Census Bureau reported last year that nearly one American in five speaks a language other than English at home, with Spanish leading, and Chinese growing fast. And that linguistic diversity, in turn, has helped spark calls to make English the official language of the United States.
Yale linguist Stephen Anderson noted multilingualism is "more or less the natural state. In most of the world mutilingualism is the normal condition of people." The notion that English shouldn't, needn't and probably won't displace local languages seems natural to me," he said. While it is important to learn English, politicians and educators need to realize that doesn't mean abandoning the native language, he added.
Graddol, of the British consulting and publishing business The English Company, anticipates a world where the share of people who are native English speakers slips from 9 per cent in the mid-twentieth century to 5 per cent in 2050. As of 1995, he reports, English was the second most-common native tongue in the world, trailing only Chinese. By 2050, he said, Chinese will continue its predominance, with Hindi-Urdu of India and Arabic climbing past English, and Spanish nearly equal to it.
Swarthmore College linguist K. David Harrison noted, however, that "the global share of English is much larger if you count second-language speakers, and will continue to rise, even as the proportion of native speakers declines." Harrison disputed listing Arabic as a top three language "because varieties of Arabic spoken in say, Egypt and Morocco are mutually incomprehensible."
Even as it grows as a second language, English may still not ever be the most widely spoken language in the world, according to Graddol, since so many people are native Chinese speakers and many more are learning it as a second language.
English has become the dominant language of science, with an estimated 80 per cent to 90 per cent of papers in scientific journals written in English, notes Scott Montgomery in a separate paper in the same issue of Science. That's up from about 60 per cent in the 1980s.
There is a distinct consciousness in many countries, both developed and developing, about this dominance of English," Montgomery said in a telephone interview. "There is some evidence of resistance to it, a desire to change it." For example, he said, in the early years of the Internet it was dominated by sites in English, but in recent years there has been a proliferation of non-English sites, especially Spanish, German, French and Japanese. Nonetheless, English is strong as a second language, and teaching it has become a growth industry, said Montgomery, a Seattle-based geologist and energy consultant.
Graddol noted, though, that employers in parts of Asia are already looking beyond English. "In the next decade the new 'must learn' language is likely to be Mandarin." "The world's language system, having evolved over centuries, has reached a point of crisis and is rapidly restructuring," Graddol said. In this process as many as 90 per cent of the 6,000 or so languages spoken around the world may be doomed to extinction, he estimated.
He does have words of consolation for those who struggle to master the intricacies of other languages. "The expectation that someone should always aspire to native speaker competence when learning a foreign language is under challenge."
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Thoughts, anyone? |
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| Dj Smitty20 |
Interesting article...but as long as the western nations continue to rule the world (mostly the USA, though the UK is a major player too), English will be the world's tongue.
It's understandable why English is the international language...The British Empire called the shots for nearly 250 years and has been replaced by the American Empire since WW2. |
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| AmbiguousBliss |
| Personally, even if only for kicks, I've been tempted lately to add Mandarin to my collection of linguistic artillery. |
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| bass drive |
the problem with most Asian languages is that they don't have Latin alphabet. I am sure more people would be tempted to learn if they make a Latin version of Mandarin (or whatever). Something like Serbian and Croatian (almost)...
personally, I 'd like Italian to the international language :D |
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| Rocco |
if i had to, i would learn Greek or even Latin.
we should bring Latin into the scene! it was SOOO rich in vocab. |
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| AmbiguousBliss |
| quote: | Originally posted by Rocco
if i had to, i would learn Greek or even Latin.
we should bring Latin into the scene! it was SOOO rich in vocab. |
I would absolutely love to learn Latin! You're right; it's a fantastically rich language. As for Greek, maybe in another while. |
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| dEsidEL |
deseo aprender espaņol antes de que visite europa..
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| brunette |
^^ lol cute.. you do that 'cause locals in Spain have no desire for English :p
I believe that this relegation of English as a "world language" stems from the decline of American global hegemony. However, I don't think the importance of English will diminish. The expansion of Mandarin is proportional to increase of population in that part of the world, but I doubt Mandarin will have the influence of a global language as English did.
The rise in multilingual population is relative to easy movements of people and technology, of course.
| quote: | Originally posted by bass drive
the problem with most Asian languages is that they don't have Latin alphabet. I am sure more people would be tempted to learn if they make a Latin version of Mandarin (or whatever). Something like Serbian and Croatian (almost)...
personally, I 'd like Italian to the international language :D |
e viva l'italiano!
I *heart* Italian.
They didn't 'make' Latin version of Serbian and Croatian. That region was always on the crossroads between east and west.
Oh by the way, did you know that Serbian (Croats don't use cyrillic) is the only language in the world, to my knowledge, that uses two alphabets: latin and cyrillic. Yay! :D |
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| dEsidEL |
prepare for the rise of "Engwish"
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| bass drive |
| quote: | Originally posted by brunette
They didn't 'make' Latin version of Serbian and Croatian. That region was always on the crossroads between east and west.
Oh by the way, did you know that Serbian (Croats don't use cyrillic) is the only language in the world, to my knowledge, that uses two alphabets: latin and cyrillic. Yay! :D |
I meant Serbian and Croatian being almost the same language, but with different alphabets. I did't know that Serbians use latin alphabet too |
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| LoCa |
where the hell is french?!
ahhh im screwed... until i learn spanish properly... forget Chinese or arabic... too complicated :( |
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