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| [rant]why do english/chinese companies don't give a damn about other languages.. |
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| Gromitt:
--- Quote from: Tepe on March 24, 2020, 01:09:35 pm --- --- Quote from: wizard69 on March 24, 2020, 12:13:43 pm ---It is also why the best thing we could do is to get the rest of the world to give up on their native languages and make English a universal language. The trend of the last few decades to teach students in the USA a foreign language has been a huge mistake, a waste of money really. Instead we should have been raising a armies of English teachers to send around the world. --- End quote --- Glem det, mand - det kommer aldrig til at ske :P --- End quote --- Du har så rätt om det, kommer aldrig att hända! :-DD |
| Cerebus:
--- Quote from: wizard69 on March 24, 2020, 12:13:43 pm ---It is also why the best thing we could do is to get the rest of the world to give up on their native languages and make English a universal language. The trend of the last few decades to teach students in the USA a foreign language has been a huge mistake, a waste of money really. Instead we should have been raising a armies of English teachers to send around the world. --- End quote --- Hmm, it has its merits, but the thing is we tried this when there was a British empire that spanned the globe and still those pesky foreigners still insisted on sticking with their own languages. The French, Dutch and Germans tried it too before us and also failed. Remember too that before we could get started on the rest of the world, that we'd have the massive uphill task first of teaching you Americans to speak English too. |
| Cerebus:
--- Quote from: chris_leyson on March 22, 2020, 06:44:29 pm ---I think in Nigerian pidgin wey might translate as who. --- End quote --- That as well, I suspect (from examining some examples) that it's doing a lot of work in place of a lot of words. |
| CatalinaWOW:
--- Quote from: Cerebus on March 24, 2020, 02:38:20 pm --- --- Quote from: wizard69 on March 24, 2020, 12:13:43 pm ---It is also why the best thing we could do is to get the rest of the world to give up on their native languages and make English a universal language. The trend of the last few decades to teach students in the USA a foreign language has been a huge mistake, a waste of money really. Instead we should have been raising a armies of English teachers to send around the world. --- End quote --- Hmm, it has its merits, but the thing is we tried this when there was a British empire that spanned the globe and still those pesky foreigners still insisted on sticking with their own languages. The French, Dutch and Germans tried it too before us and also failed. Remember too that before we could get started on the rest of the world, that we'd have the massive uphill task first of teaching you Americans to speak English too. --- End quote --- Having studied a couple of languages other than American I find a lot of merit in learning other languages. It aids in understanding of how American English came into being and also provides insight into some different world views. Those world views are only a bit different for European languages, but get much larger for others. But I do agree it would be useful if everyone spoke a common language. And for all of Cerebus comment (which I am sure is somewhat tongue in cheek) if all spoke as close to a common language as Americans and British do it would serve the usefulness criteria. Even if a speaker of one of the extreme American dialects and one of the extreme British dialects found it totally impossible to communicate. People on this forum do pretty well and come from all parts of the former British empire. |
| Cerebus:
If we're seriously aiming for a new lingua Franca (literally latin for the French language, but intended to mean a common world language) then it ought to be Spanish. Of all the European languages that have taken hold in the rest of the world it is the most regular and the easiest to learn. English is the current defacto lingua Franca and is horrible from a language student's point of view, too irregular, weird spelling and pronunciation (even in Noah Webster's bastardized form). French is little better in regard to the same things. German's too much of a minority language to get out of the starting blocks (and putting the verbs at the end of sentences is just evil). Italian would be a good alternative to Spanish (simple spelling, reasonably regular grammar), but Spanish has got a huge head start on it. On headcount alone there's an argument for Chinese, but it's so different from most other languages (tonal pronunciation, ideograms) that it doesn't get out of the starting gate. |
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