

The Cosmopolitan Tongue: The Universality of English - tokenadult
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/2009%20-%20Fall/full-McWhorter-Fall-2009.html

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quant18
I've always thought that a world where English was every country's sole
official language would be _better_ for preserving small minority languages.
Typically, if you're a minority Kneebonian in Elbonia, you have a "triple
burden":

1\. You want to learn English or some other regional "useful language" to get
a good job in an international company

2\. You may want to learn/maintain your command of Kneebonese --- a "useless
language" economically, but it gives you ethnic pride and access to Kneebonian
community "social capital"

3\. Your government forces you to learn equally-useless Elbonese in the name
of "national unity", e.g. by making it mandatory for high school exams. But
learning it won't actually give you access to Elbonian "social capital",
because of discrimination.

In practise, a significant proportion of Kneebonian parents relieve their kids
of the "triple burden" by speaking Elbonese to them. Then 10-20 years later,
you get a lot of Kneebonian kids who feel they have no other means to "prove"
their ethnic identity, except demonstrating fierce "Kneebonian PrYDe4LyFe
bro!" at every opportunity --- usually in the form of anti-Elbonian prejudice.

So losing the language doesn't necessarily kill the culture, but it does mean
that it'll get twisted it increasingly ugly shapes by kids trying to
overcompensate for the loss of a big part of their heritage.

------
arihelgason
Preserving a language requires a very proactive approach. In Iceland
(Icelandic is spoken by not much more than 350,000 people) there is a
committee tasked with ensuring that new words are formed for new items, ideas
or concepts.

In Iceland, rather than letting the English word 'computer' catch on, a
linguist combined an old word for a witch (völva) with the word for number
(tala) to come up with 'tölva' which is now the word for computer. Today,
engineers often come up with clever new words for technical concepts.

With a proactive approach even declining languages can be revived (eg. Basque
or Gaelic in Ireland).

Small tribes unfortunately lack the impetus or resources to proactively
maintain their languages in this way.

~~~
blue1
The Vatican does this with latin too. It became a dead language nonetheless.

English always absorbed lots of words from many different languages. I suspect
that this is a better recipe for language vitality than the "National bureau
of new words" approach.

~~~
huherto
Latin lives on in Spanish, Portuguese, et al.

~~~
req2
And in the same sense, your great-grandmother lives on in you. I'm not sure
what you're getting at, especially because the Vatican has had an
imperceptible effect on Spanish, Portuguese, et al.

------
wglb
This oddly relates to <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=909449> where we
are concerned about increasing concentration in "centers" where in the other
article the "center" is the cities, and here the "center" is dominant
languages. And in both cases, there is the desire on the part of some to stop
this increasing coalescing.

------
catzaa
> What makes the potential death of a language all the more emotionally
> charged is the belief that if a language dies, a cultural worldview will die
> with it. But this idea is fragile. Certainly language is a key aspect of
> what distinguishes one group from another. However, a language itself does
> not correspond to the particulars of a culture but to a faceless process
> that creates new languages as the result of geographical separation.

Here I differ with the writer. Culture and language are completely
intertwined. I personally think that as globalization happens, culture is
disappearing. We are left with just a bad copy of American culture (as
exported by Hollywood).

A good example of culture and language being intertwined is my first language.
Culturally you are taught to have respect for people older than you, better
educated or more senior. You are not supposed to use the word “you” towards
those people but use another word (to signify respect). This cultural view is
completely lacking in English and especially in the English world view.

> English is very user-friendly as the world’s 6,000 languages go.

English may be not be as difficult as some languages - but it is definitely
not the easiest. English is a bastard language which is built from many
languages – therefore it is not that consistent.

~~~
req2
Language reflects cultural views, not the other way around. (Note how master
and mistress were gendered but equivalent terms, and how many similar
divergences occur, as with sir and madam.) Using "sir" in English can serve
some of the same respectful roles as an usted in Spanish, but there are many
other things as well.

Sapir-Whorf is a long discussed issue
[<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity>] and John McWhorter
[<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McWhorter>] is well versed in the
background.

~~~
catzaa
Language is a product of culture. A lot of things can be expressed in English
– but it is not normal to do so. For an Israeli Jew Hebrew isn’t just “another
language”. It never is – language is part of your inherently part of your
cultural and personal identity. Your culture shapes language – not the other
way around.

You can’t just anglicise and magically keep your culture and all other
cultural influences out. I have seen this in my own group – with Anglicisation
come American culture, norms and values. The dominant culture will always
drive out other cultures.

You can perhaps argue that it is theoretically possible for a culture to
remain during this process. But in practice it never happens. Another problem
with culture is that due to democracy in a multi-cultural environment the
dominant culture will always impose its values on a less dominant culture.

~~~
req2
_Language is a product of culture. [...] Your culture shapes language - not
the other way around._

I'm not sure why you would repeat what I said like this, except to buttress
the dubious claim you sandwich in the middle.

For a lot of New York Jews, Hebrew isn't just "another language", but simply a
decoder ring they use to read aloud in cultural rituals. They still have a
cultural and personal Jewish identity.

 _You can’t just anglicise and magically keep your culture and all other
cultural influences out._

You keep mixing up the chain of causality, and you fail to acknowledge any of
the presented arguments (i.e., you used my post to repeat what you wanted to
say, rather than mention anything I said, and the bountiful evidence of
English speaking African-American culture and English speaking Native American
culture negates your ridiculous claims).

If all you'd like is a soapbox, please just go write a blog.

~~~
catzaa
> For a lot of New York Jews, Hebrew isn't just "another language", but simply
> a decoder ring they use to read aloud in cultural rituals. They still have a
> cultural and personal Jewish identity.

Most have accepted a version of American culture and are completely ingrained
with American mainstream life.

> speaking African-American culture and

African American culture emerged in the USA. Not much of their pre-slavery
culture remains – they lost most (if not everything) of their pre-slavery
culture.

> you fail to acknowledge any of the presented arguments

The argument you mentioned (that there are roughly almost equivalent words in
English) does not hold water.

> If all you'd like is a soapbox, please just go write a blog.

You are turning nasty. I did not expect you to understand – but you could at
least have respectfully disagreed.

~~~
req2
I'm not sure why I'm doing this, but I'll try once more...

'My argument' was not that there are roughly almost equivalent words in
English. There are multiple things:

\- the case of linguistic relativity is largely resolved contrary to your
view, but you don't appear interested in talking on the level of the informed
intellectual debate

\- I cited a vertical example of culture shaping language, rather than some
other direction. However, the death of English would not mean the death of
misogyny.

\- Native Americans speak English, but retain a much different and largely
unchanged culture, but you didn't see fit to address it. This point alone
contradicts your claim of the "completely intertwined" nature of culture and
language. Note also that America dwelling English speaking Asians retain a
respect for elders and dutiful study habits, all while speaking not a jot of
their culture's original language (in the crude sense you'd want us to believe
it- no one's stuck on proto-Indo-European anymore). Various Amish communities
preserve _entire eras_ while speaking more and more English.

Could you elaborate on how 'usted', '-san', or 'Mr.' are necessary to a
specific culture, no substitutions?

------
Ras_
TED Talk: Jay Walker on the world's English mania (4 mins)
[http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jay_walker_on_the_world_s_...](http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jay_walker_on_the_world_s_english_mania.html)

Summary:

2 billion people are currently trying to learn English.

In China you are required by the law to learn English beginning from the 3rd
grade.

China will become the largest English speaking country in 2009

