
Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet - nikbackm
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jul/27/english-language-global-dominance
======
geff82
I love the English language. It is expressive, it is the language of great
literature, and it is in no way „bullying“, no, it brings people all over the
world together. There would be no way to talk to a Chinese for me (German) if
he had only learned Japanese because Japan is the neighbour and if I had only
learned French or Polish because those are our big neighbours. No, English
brings us all together, it makes me communicate with ordinary people without a
translator anywhere on the planet. I do not care if everyone speaks English,
German, Hindi or Esperanto. But if English has the noble power to bring people
together, regardless of nation, religion or race, I applaud it, because this
is just a wonderful use for this little language that was once only spoken on
a medium sized Island in the Northern Sea.

Let‘s appreciate English, let us embrace it even a bit more, let us try to
speak it better each day for a world of mutual understanding. Maybe English
can be a driver for peace, at least to a certain degree.

~~~
tbrock
It’s also the lingua franca of tech. There isn’t any way to say “Linux Kernel
Networking Subsystem” or “8-Way associative cache” in French or any other
language without severe lingual contortions.

~~~
chrisper
Then explain to me why the French are using Go, To etc. instead of TB and GB
like everyone else?

~~~
moolcool
They actively avoid loan words from English
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Académie_française#Anglicisms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Académie_française#Anglicisms)

~~~
jgh
Except weekend. They couldn't come up with a better word for that ;)

~~~
enriquto
I use "fin de semaine" and people understands it perfectly.

~~~
felipemnoa
Which is almost the literal translation to weekend or "Week End". Pretty much
the same phrase used in Spanish (fin de semana) and I suspect in other romance
languages.

P.D. Funnily enough, I looked up the translation for weekend in Latin and
google gave me "volutpat vestibulum" and yet for Spanish, French, Portuguese,
Italian and Romanian I got a similar "Fin de Semana" phrase. I wonder why only
the latin translation looks completely different?

Here are the Translations for weekend for each Romance language and Latin:

French - fin de semaine

Spanish - fin de semana

Romanian - sfârșit de săptămână

Portuguese - final de semana

Italian - fine settimana

Latin - volutpat vestibulum

Notice how only Latin looks completely different. I wonder if google translate
is broken.

~~~
mc32
Isn't it vacancelle in French? Never heard fin de semaine... although most
just say le weekend.

~~~
briandear
I have never heard vacancelle in France. But le week-end all the time. Even my
kid’s school teachers used it. “Bon week-end!” Never heard fin de semaine even
among my old country neighbors in Provence. My anecdote doesn’t make it fact
of course. Most French people I know don’t pay any attention to the Academie
Française.

------
wallflower
In many European countries, you cannot get a good job (like one with an
international company) unless you can communicate in English at CEFRL B1
proficiency [1].

China may very well become the largest economy in the world, and there is no
way that Chinese, as a multi-toned, symbolic language, will ever become the
Lingua franca, as it is near impossible for most adults to learn, in contrast
to English [2].

It can be argued that the European Union has failed/is failing, at least
partially, because of a lack of a common language. In the peak periods of the
Roman Empire, Latin was the Lingua franca that enabled business transactions,
along with Roman law, the precursors of civil law as a framework.

In many states in India, people speak many languages just to navigate life on
a daily basis.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_R...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Reference_for_Languages#Common_reference_levels)

[2]
[http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html](http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html)

~~~
craftyguy
It's mildly interesting how you (and the article) use 'Lingua franca' (Latin)
and not it's English meaning of 'common language'.

Edit: s/Italian/Latin/

~~~
toasterlovin
English speakers are not snobs; we borrow nice words and turns of phrase from
wherever we encounter them. It's why English spelling is such a mess.

~~~
dragonwriter
> English speakers are not snobs; we borrow nice words and turns of phrase
> from wherever we encounter them.

“We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages
down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new
vocabulary.” —James Nicoll

------
opportune
The best point that the article touches on is that English is a good "neutral"
language for countries like Sudan and entities like the EU with many different
languages spoken. There is a bit of a snowball effect where any language
having the advantage of being spoken as a cross-cultural communication
language further incentivizes learning that language for people wishing to
communicate in that manner. I think such a universal language existing is good
for the world, it's just somewhat unfair _how_ such a language gets chosen.
English is an adaptable language, but I think much more importantly, English
has been native language of one superpower or another for the past 200 years

I completely understand how someone would feel attacked by the fact that their
children or grandchildren may not fluently speak the same language due to the
influence of English. But at the same time, though the author somewhat
dismisses it, this seems pretty nationalistic - though we shouldn't ignore
that promoting English due to chauvinistic nationalism is just as silly.

I do think in the end, people will glad if in X*100 years the vast majority of
the world will be able to communicate with each other in one language. The
main unfairness is that the way that language was chosen (assuming it is
English) was through militaristic and economic domination

~~~
physicsguy
I'm a native (British) English speaker, and I actually can find it quite hard
to communicate with non-native speakers, because they don't understand my
accent. It's not particularly strong as British accents go (nothing like
Glaswegian or Geordie for example), but it really caused problems when I moved
to a research group which was made up of primarily English-as-a-second-
language speakers. The other thing I found was that while their speaking
ability was good, their written grammar was generally poor; I'm the resident
proof reader in each of the places I've worked.

Many of the people spoke what is apparently described as 'Euro-English' which
has many borrowed phrases from other languages, or what native English
speakers would see as mistakes but which are relatively easy to understand
between non-native speakers.

~~~
albertgoeswoof
I’m a British native that works almost entirely with people with English as
their second language, mostly remotely. To be effective you need to adapt your
language and accent to fit the global English style, and adapt to individual
dialects on a country by country basis. It seems a little counter intuitive,
but English is genuinely a global language and not owned by the English
anymore, so it’s important to adapt to fit that if you want to be understood.

~~~
bunderbunder
> the global English style

What distinguishes the global English style?

US native here, so perhaps I'm just failing to see past the absence of
leftovers from Noah Webster's efforts to violently excise any evidence of
French influence from the language, but, to me, Southern English English seems
about right for that description.

~~~
Pissompons
> What distinguishes the global English style?

I'd say that it's basically just the lowest common denominator of English.
Imagine an English where any accent is acceptable as long as you're consistent
and any regional vocabulary is okay so long as it's well known (e.g. either
"torch" or "flashlight" is okay, "soda" is okay but "pop" is not). You then
have "global" English.

~~~
umanwizard
I’m American and I certainly don’t think “torch” to mean flashlight is well-
known. The overwhelming majority of people in the US would not understand it.

------
gabordemooij
Citrine ([https://citrine-lang.org/](https://citrine-lang.org/) I am the
author) tried to change this with respect to coding (it is a programming
language that allows everyone to code in their own language and translate
between parties). However, it has been ignored, ridiculed and hated (even
death threats). So it has failed and I realize that (I continue to finish it
until 0.9 though, because I cant stop in the middle - I am a very neurotic
person). It's hard for me. I feel hatred but I realize it just wasnt meant to
be (but for some reason if something like this happens and you read an article
like this the hate burns...). There is probably not even a way to save
European languages anyway. So I just wanted to share this comment to let you
know I was working on a technology that at least for coding tried to counter
the influence of the English language and allows people to write code in their
own language. However I also wrote this comment because I am very emotional
because of the failure of this project. When I read an article like this -
it's just ...unspeakable. Maybe I was too arrogant. Maybe the problem is too
difficult. Maybe I interefered with some globalist agenda, maybe it's just Don
Quixottish. Who knows? Anyway I had to share this train of thought. Maybe
people just deserve to have their language (and culture) taken from them.
Maybe it's just the way it is.

~~~
l9k
Not exactly programming, but Excel functions are translated in the local
language

~~~
laurentl
Which is a right pain, as excel formulas written in say the French version of
excel can’t be interpreted by the English version

------
sudosteph
I was surprised that such an in-depth article about linguistic dominance had
so little to say about Latin. Historically, Latin in Europe seems to have
filled a very similar role to that of English today, though not at the same
scale perhaps. Even languages that weren't full-on adaptations of Latin have
adapted Latin alphabets and words. The modern English we speak today has funny
little relics of Latin grammar norms that had been adopted for no apparent
reason other than to improve the "status" of English by making it more
latinized (things like, not ending sentences in prepositions).

Also, it's interesting that the author proposed > What if the pre-contact
languages of the Americas were taught in American high schools?

Because I recall actually reading an article about how some schools in France
were just now allowing the local language "Occitan" to be taught in some
schools again, but historically they were very harsh on not allowing it. The
fear back then was that if schools were allowed to teach in languages besides
French, that the students would never bother learning French and would not be
able to function as citizens. I think they've eased up, but I've seen that
China has many of the same concerns about Mandarin adoption, especially in the
far west portion.

I'm all for learning weird languages for the heck of it though. It's not like
most people can actually recall and use the Spanish or French they learned in
high school, so might as well teach something interesting to examine
linguistic principles in general. I'm a fan of Esperanto for this because it's
so easy, but every language has interesting differences (often with cultural
implications) that learners can enjoy. But again, this is coming from a
perspective of living in a country with the privilege of having English as the
most common native tongue.

~~~
NihilumExNil
> ... the "status" of English by making it more latinized (things like, not
> ending sentences in prepositions).

very interesting, that's something I'd really need to learn more about it.

But how much of that is common sense, or French influence?

~~~
sudosteph
Well my source is a Linguistics Textbook (Language Files, 11th Edition,
p15-16) but it says that these changes happened as late as the 17th and 18th
centuries because Scholars considered written Latin to be the ideal language
(likely because most historical works had been translated to Latin at some
point). So even though ending sentences in prepositions had been common for
centuries in spoken English, that became frowned upon because it was not
allowed in Latin.

Specific examples in the book of "rules" applied to English to match written
Latin include:

\- Don't ending sentences in prepositions

\- Don't split infinitives

\- Don't use double negatives

The chapter as a whole was actually about linguistic prescriptivism, but the
Latin examples are pretty interesting nonetheless. 17th and 18th century seem
pretty far past the point at which French would be the big influencer, but
there's no doubt French did influence English as well (though more vocab it
seems).

~~~
romwell
>\- Don't ending sentences in prepositions

>\- Don't split infinitives

>\- Don't use double negative

These seem to really be some rules that ain't nobody got time for!

~~~
dorchadas
Because they were never really rules at all in English, until those
grammarians decided to try to make the language conform to Latin's rules.

~~~
sudosteph
I think the comment above was in jest. It's actually a pretty good little
joke.

------
_rpd
The internet is mentioned in passing, but the reason that English is
dominating is that the vast majority of science, engineering and academia in
general is published in English, and then is quickly added to the English
language Wikipedia. If you want to be at the cutting edge of global
technology, it is just easier (and sometimes important) to be able to read
English directly. Translations can be problematic, particularly for technical
subject matter.

As others have mentioned, other languages have played this role in the past,
and probably will in the future.

~~~
anonytrary
Interesting -- do you think translators will slowly become obsolete before
software "solves" the translation problem? Do you ever think there will be a
point in the future where everyone can speak fluent English? It would seem the
path of least resistance would be to eliminate the need for translators, and
I'm not sure we'll live in a future where everyone speaks N languages, and
just uses an app to translate between people.

------
malloryerik
The article is incorrect in its description of South Korean children
increasingly having their tongues snipped in order to pronounce English words
better.

That procedure was only done rarely, as far as I can tell from about 2002 to
2004. Immediately attracting heavy news attention there was even a government-
sponsored video to scare people away from the procedure, which is virtually
non-existent today. Fret not, there are still plenty of other opportunities
for plastic surgeons in South Korea...

One thing to notice, however, is that Korean people would even consider that
their tongues aren't naturally suited for speaking English, that's to say that
their tongues could be different from other tongues. The idea of _minjok_ (민족,
民族), meaning ethnicity or race -- the word itself a loan from fascist Japan
during the Japanese Empire when Korea was annexed, though most Koreans are
unaware of this --, is so strong in South Korea that indeed it might not seem
strange for Koreans to believe foreign pronunciation naturally unsuited to
Korean tongues. Similarly I recently saw Korean packaging that portrayed
Korean digestive tracts as longer and more complex than those of "foreigners".
In the South this "race"-based consciousness is fading away, in part surely
because of English, the language that allows South Koreans to connect to the
world. In North Korea it is far far stronger. There, along with the cult of
the leader, the _minjok_ really is the national religion, adapted from fascist
Japan, which itself learned it from the German military (which trained the
Japanese Army, which occupied and ruled Korea) and more generally the racist
West of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Not that they didn't have their own
home-grown prejudices in the region. Far from it, sadly.

Edit: All this said, it's both hopeful and ironic that even in North Korea the
kids study English.

~~~
briandear
I love Korea, but it is literally the most racist and nationalistic place I
have ever been. Japan might be just as racist, but in my experience, they are
exceptionally polite about it.

------
BerislavLopac
Considering that English has basically emerged as a "pidgin" languages, taking
elements from the languages of various peoples coming to the islands --
Britons, Romans, Saxons, Danes, French etc -- and being simplified in the
process, it's only logical that it is adopted far more easily than other
languages with even more speakers -- Chinese, Hindi, Arabic -- or that were
expanded around the globe in a similar fashion -- French, Spanish.

~~~
blt
Sure, that might be one factor, but the global imperialism of the British and
United States is another huge factor.

~~~
weberc2
Or even just the cultural exports due to British and US media (BBC, Hollywood,
etc) or the desire to do business in wealthier markets.

~~~
knuththetruth
Many of the “cultural exports” are, however, essentially propaganda to glorify
the power and righteousness of the American empire.

History has proven that this “soft power” approach to be incredibly effective.
After all, we still study and celebrate similar texts from the Greek and Roman
empires, even though they’re 1000s of years dead. Much less so those who they
conquered, exploited, and enslaved.

~~~
toasterlovin
While Hollywood definitely takes into consideration foreign markets when
making films, the idea that their agenda is to propagandize the rest of the
world is laughable. They make what sells, because all they care about is
making money.

~~~
jcranmer
Hollywood has in the past made films that were pretty explicitly propaganda.
Look at all of the propaganda films of World War II, and those weren't forced
production by the US government. Granted, at that point, the propaganda was
for domestic consumption, not foreign consumption.

Furthermore, other countries definitely use films and film exports for
propaganda--China really comes to mind here.

~~~
weberc2
I’m not familiar with such films. Are you positing that propagandist films are
the norm or the exception?

------
cafard
Leading off with a word long naturalized from Hebrew suggests that perhaps the
English language has all along been letting the planet take it over.

~~~
nkrisc
English is the Borg of languages.

------
ochoseis
The article glosses over the fact that the US (and to a lesser extent UK) is a
great exporter of its culture and language through movies, TV, and music. This
is aided by the fact that the US has a values-based society where you don't
need to be of a particular race or ethnicity to identify with it. I can't tell
you how many people I've met traveling abroad who learned English by watching
American shows and films.

~~~
adventured
> I can't tell you how many people I've met traveling abroad who learned
> English by watching American shows and films.

That essentially encompasses everyone that learns English well. It's the
exception that doesn't aggressively use English media to accelerate their
learning of the language. On a basis of living in the language to learn it,
consuming US & British culture through media is the single best and easiest
way to do it (if you aren't able to constantly be around other English
speakers). Plus, it's a lot more fun than doing it solely the rote way.

------
vanilla-almond
English has also spread due to the enormous influence of English-speaking TV,
film, radio and popular music. The internet has only accelerated this. But
it's not all in one direction. People also have much more exposure to non-
English media too.

I think many native English speakers probably don't realise just how smaller
the internet feels when you're browsing in a language with a much smaller
number of speakers than English.

------
saget
English is also nice in that there is no "baked in" formal or informal use of
the language. I think it breaks down barriers in conversations with a superior
or a random stranger. I wonder if this has any larger scale effects...

~~~
YaxelPerez
There used to be:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%E2%80%93V_distinction#Englis...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%E2%80%93V_distinction#English)

~~~
jessaustin
It's funny that "thou" seems so formal now.

~~~
dorchadas
And it's all because of the King James Bible! They used 'thou' there when
talking to God because they wanted it to seem informal and portray him as a
friend. It's quite funny how after it fell out of use, it was reinterpreted as
the exact opposite, with people being more formal when talking to God.

------
WalterBright
The article laments the loss of oral languages as if this was a modern
phenomenon. Oral languages were always being lost, for the simple reason that
they drift. It's doubtful an oral language would be intelligible to its
descendants after only a century or two.

Writing slows this down a lot, but what really slowed it down was the advent
of the printing press.

It's still drifting. New words like "sexting" appear, and just read some
Shakespeare for lost words.

~~~
ryl00
I suspect the advent of recorded sound has had a huge effect on slowing down
the drift or oral languages as well.

Just think, in the 1930's people wouldn't really know what people sounded like
in the 1850's, unless they had a very long-lived relative. Here in the 2010's,
we have those sound movies from the 1930's to refer to, even though most of
those actors and actresses are long gone now. (And they're still perfectly
intelligible, even if the slang is sometimes odd to our ears). And hopefully
in the 2090's, they'll still have those 1930's movies around...

------
jejones3141
The influence still goes both ways--I read that American movie studios cut out
dialogue that they don't think foreign viewers will understand because of
English-specific wordplay or culture-specific references. (See
[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-01-10/saving-
ho...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-01-10/saving-hollywood-
from-the-chinese-box-office))

~~~
intopieces
Ever since I saw the movie Pacific Rim (2013) I have suspected that dialog in
very expensive movies (that one was $190m) was a bit simplified so that
translation could be easy for the Chinese market.

~~~
elgenie
That movie was about robots fighting monsters and was named for its intended
market as much as its subject matter: expecting complicated dialog given that
seems ambitious.

------
devoply
It is necessary that there should be a common global language that everyone
speaks, in addition to their native tongue. It might as well as be English
rather than any other language. The other options are Spanish, French, Hindi,
Chinese, or Arabic. It makes little difference as each of these are not going
extinct any time soon.

~~~
colanderman
This is the idea behind Esperanto, the movement behind which further
stipulates that the common second tongue should be _universally_ second, to
avoid privileging native speakers and promulgating hegemony. (Granted,
Esperanto vocabulary and orthography is quite Euro-centric.)

Learning a second language is difficult, especially one very unlike your
native tongue. Native speakers of the de facto lingua franca _always_ have a
first-order advantage.

~~~
kzrdude
English is actually fulfilling the original goal of Esperanto:

> Zamenhof's goal was to create an easy and flexible language that would serve
> as a universal second language to foster peace and international
> understanding.

We should be amazed at the global convergence on a language, even if it's not
Esperanto, and it can accomplish all the same things.

~~~
LetUnityBlossom
English becomes Esperanto [https://www.economist.com/books-and-
arts/2016/04/23/english-...](https://www.economist.com/books-and-
arts/2016/04/23/english-becomes-esperanto)

What Belgium’s World Cup team says about the spread of English across Europe
[https://qz.com/1319430/belgium-world-cup-2018-what-
belgiums-...](https://qz.com/1319430/belgium-world-cup-2018-what-belgiums-
world-cup-team-says-about-the-spread-of-english-across-europe/)

As Britain leaves, English on rise in EU — to French horror
[https://www.politico.eu/article/french-english-language-
brex...](https://www.politico.eu/article/french-english-language-brexit-
european-parliament-ecj-commission-eu-next-waterloo/)

------
NegativeLatency
If you're interested in this topic, you might like this podcast:
[http://historyofenglishpodcast.com](http://historyofenglishpodcast.com)

It's a very interesting version of history as it relates specifically to the
english language.

~~~
toasterlovin
Seriously, people, this is a great podcast.

------
raverbashing
English is the PHP of languages. Good enough to solve your problem, and easy
to understand, but not really elegant (and not without its quirks).

And maybe due to the fact that it didn't have a "standards body" (like the
Académie Française) and much less "protection" than others meant it was more
free to evolve.

And not only that, I suppose languages based on the latin alphabet have an
intrinsic advantage. From the time of the printing press to the earliest 8-bit
computers. (Japanese systems had support for Katakana later, Cyrilic wouldn't
be so complicated and Arabic probably would have been harder, Korean would be
hard and Kanji would just be plainly impossible in 8-bit systems)

~~~
dorchadas
> And maybe due to the fact that it didn't have a "standards body" (like the
> Académie Française) and much less "protection" than others meant it was more
> free to evolve.

To be fair, they really don't have any effect on language as it's actually
used. French people still say 'le week-end', despite how much the Académie
raves about it. They still often drop the 'ne' in negative sentences as well,
despite it being standard. Academies really only affect the written standards
of a language, not how it's actually used daily.

> And not only that, I suppose languages based on the latin alphabet have an
> intrinsic advantage. From the time of the printing press to the earliest
> 8-bit computers.

Except movable type printing was available in China from the 11th century
onwards, and solely printed the Hanzi [1]. And, likewise, if the other
technology had been designed in China, it's likely support would have first
existed for the Hanzi over the Latinate Alphabet. It's not really an intrinsic
advantage as much a matter of coincidence on where things were developed.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_printing#Movable_ty...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_printing#Movable_type_\(1041\))

~~~
WalterBright
"Although the Chinese were using woodblock printing many centuries earlier,
with a complete printed book, made in 868, found in a cave in north-west
China, movable type printing never became very popular in the East due to the
importance of calligraphy, the complexity of hand-written Chinese and the
large number of characters. Gutenberg’s press, however, was well suited to the
European writing system, and its development was heavily influenced by the
area from which it came."

[http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180507-how-a-german-
city-c...](http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180507-how-a-german-city-changed-
how-we-read)

~~~
dorchadas
It's more an issue of culture than anything. They preferred calligraphy, so
not many things were done with moveable type (which did exist in China before
Europe; it wasn't just woodblock printing). That said, there were still plenty
of reports, up to the 19th century, of how widely things were printed and how
cheaply they were available in China.

The bigger issue is what the culture valued more than anything.

~~~
raverbashing
There is no cultural issue when one is between 10x and 100x harder than the
other

Metallurgy probably evolved as well between the Chinese and Gutenberg systems

~~~
WalterBright
The Gutenberg system used lead to cast the letters. As they wore down, they
were easily remelted and recast. If you visit the Gutenberg museum in Mainz,
they show how this works. It was a critical part of making the printing
process efficient.

I have no idea how the Chinese one was done.

------
doitLP
English: Diverse, comprised of many elements from many languages, lots of
little quirks, ability to express the same thing multiple ways, far from
perfect but totally dominant.

Javascript: ditto

------
wcoenen
Thought experiment, or maybe just a crazy thought: what if the European Union
would prefer to stop using English after a hard Brexit and starts looking for
an alternative _lingua franca_.

What if a EU directive was then issued, mandating Esperanto as a _de jure_
national language in each of the member states, in addition to the existing
national languages. Schools all over the EU start to offer it as the first
choice for a second language to learn. Cultural works in Esperanto are
subsidized.

Having established a big base of speakers and being constructed to be very
easy to learn, the language then spreads virally and becomes the new global
lingua franca.

Plausible?

~~~
raverbashing
Not plausible, they would still have 2 members where English plays an
important role: Ireland (though not the 1st official language) and Malta

~~~
danieltillett
I have always found the Irish approach to Gaelic amusing - you have a whole
country that can speak a language that almost nobody actually does.

~~~
raverbashing
"you have a whole country that can speak a language"

Yeah, not really (for both parts)

But there are small parts that are (natively) Irish speaking, called Gaeltacht

~~~
dorchadas
> But there are small parts that are (natively) Irish speaking, called
> Gaeltacht

Unfortunately they're likely to be gone within 50 years or so. The government
really doesn't care about them, and just pays lipservice to the language.

------
louprado
One complaint about English is that double negatives are not grammatically
correct. The word "not" is so important it should be re-enforced in someway.
Spanish supports double negatives. The French add redundancy with "ne" and
"pas".

It's worth noting that American gangsters often talk with double negatives and
the U.S. military use the phrase "repeat NOT" since their discussions are
often mission critical. But I am certain their are countless examples of harm
because someone in a hurry, omitted the word 'not' in a discussion or email.

~~~
jcranmer
Double negatives are grammatically correct English. Consider the sentence, "I
do not think that course of action would be unwise."\--that is a double
negative, and I know of no one who thinks there's even a hint of problem with
that sentence.

One facet of double negatives is that the English sense of negative + negative
= positive isn't universal. In French, double negatives remain negative;
consider "Je ne sais jamais rien." The literal translation is "I never know
nothing," but the correct translation into English is "I never know anything."

~~~
kharms
>"I do not think that course of action would be unwise."

That's a funny example, as it can be read both literally ("I like it."), and
passive-aggressively ("I don't dislike it."). So while double negatives might
not be grammatically incorrect, they are often ambiguous.

~~~
chrisseaton
> That's a funny example, as it can be read both literally ("I like it."), and
> passive-aggressively ("I don't dislike it.").

You seem to have those backward.

"I don't dislike it" is what it literally means. That's the opposite of being
passive! "I like it" is reading an implication which isn't literally there and
is more passive.

There'a a really important difference here. Someone can not think that
something is not unwise, but that does not mean they think it's wise. A double
negative does not cancel out - you loose important literal meaning when you do
that - not even just an implicit idiomatic meaning.

------
forkLding
This English dominance is pretty strong in coding, most Chinese coders in
China use English to code because programming languages are written in English
(aka the if loops and more advanced and they occassionally sprinkle in Chinese
characters as variables, comments can also be Chinese) and I've seen Latin
American friends using English as well to code when they come over and can't
speak English well even. It is pretty much the lingua franca in coding.

Its an expected but quite interesting phenomenon.

~~~
physicsguy
It can be quite difficult though; we had a Chinese PhD student in our research
group and while his coding ability was amazing and everything 'just worked',
decoding what he actually meant in many cases was very difficult.

~~~
kzrdude
There are many coders like that all over the world though :-)

------
oh-kumudo
I think this attitude, from more liberal media, towards English is
interestingly, alternative. I would say after WWII, in a post colonization
world, learning English, is a self-conscious, choice. It means access to, not
even arguably, the biggest/best/most up-to-date information pool, on this
planet, and the economical opportunity comes with it.

As a Chinese national, I would sincerely say learning English is probably the
best investment I made during my college, the ROI is incredible. Not to
mention, since it is so pervasive, learning English is actually much cheaper
than other languages, the barrier is much lower.

Whatever history behind it, English, for its current status in the world,
should be considered as an asset for us mankind, that we are finally blessed a
pragmatical global lingua franca.

------
danieltillett
English is a very easy language to learn the basics and be understood (say
unlike German), but a difficult one to master. It could do with some major
spelling reform and simplification of some of the archaic grammar, but overall
it is not a bad common language for the world.

------
Sir_Cmpwn
I think instead of chiding people who use English as a second language
"poorly", we should look at their mistakes for what they are - the influence
of another language - and see if we can't incorporate the ideas that caused
them into English, if the ideas are good. Newspeak isn't fiction, languages
really do shape how you think. We should continue evolving English to be
suitable for expressing more modes of thought.

~~~
dorchadas
> we should look at their mistakes for what they are - the influence of
> another language - and see if we can't incorporate the ideas that caused
> them into English, if the ideas are good.

Except it doesn't work like that. Languages change because native speakers
change them, not because some grammatical body adopts things and tries to
force it on everyone.

> Newspeak isn't fiction, languages really do shape how you think.

Yes, it is fiction, and no, languages do not shape how you think. This is
known as linguistic relativity [1] and it's strong form has been _thoroughly_
debunked, whereas the weak form is highly skeptical, with most arguments
coming from Lera Boroditsky, who fails to control for several factors and also
hasn't yet published her famous study on the matter (which was set to be
published roughly 16 years ago).

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity)

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
>Except it doesn't work like that. Languages change because native speakers
change them, not because some grammatical body adopts things and tries to
force it on everyone.

I'm not suggesting an institution should do this. I'm suggesting individuals
do this.

>Yes, it is fiction, and no, languages do not shape how you think

I have anecdotal experience in thinking differently in different experiences,
which doesn't say much for anyone else but makes me personally skeptical of
your assertion. I don't think I would count this as "_thouroughly_ debunked",
more like "extensively debated". I also don't put much faith in unpublished
studies. Regardless, my main point stands even without invoking linguistic
relativity.

~~~
dorchadas
There are literally no mainstream linguists that support linguistic
determinism, the 'strong' form of linguistic relativity. [1] That much is 100%
true; sure, you see articles about it pop up from time to time, but they're
often _not_ written by linguists, and are often quickly debunked.

As to the 'unpublished studies', that one was by Boroditsky, one of the, if
not _the_ , main proponents for the weak form of linguistic relativity.

But, your anecdotal experience doesn't really count for much when comparing it
to the studies that have been done on it. Anecdotally, I know someone who
didn't believe General Relativity to be true; that doesn't make it any less
true.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_determinism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_determinism)

------
ivanhoe
English gained popularity as it was THE language of popular movies, music and
then later Internet. Just like in the past you needed Latin to be able to read
books and communicate with educated people around the world, today you need
English. And in my eyes it's OK, we need some standardization in communication
to be able to understand each-other, and English is a good practical choice as
it's fairly easy to learn.

------
cageface
The trend towards English isn’t universal. In Vietnam universities have just
scrapped English as a requirement and replaced it with Chinese. And in tourist
areas all over the country people are scrambling to learn Chinese in order to
serve the deluge of Chinese tourists. I imagine this is going on in many other
parts of Asia too, accelerated by China’s “Belt and Road” policy.

------
FrozenVoid
The biggest advantage of English: no central authority or standard. You can
invent your own neologisms/slang/loanwords at your leisure and it will spread
virally if useful. There isn't any cultural resistance to language change, the
competition is for efficient/descriptive communication not adherence to
'correct/proper pronunciation'.

------
nutjob2
The internet has given impetus to the global adoption of English becuase that
is how most of the internet's functionality is exposed.

The internet supports many languages, but if you want the latest/best/coolest
stuff tends to appear in English, especially for young people, but they are
the ones who are most likely to adopt a new language.

~~~
NihilumExNil
not only that but it comes with access to learning material built in. Still
though, English is probably not the majority spoken language, much less
absolute majority, even on the net, especially if proficiency is a factor.

~~~
bhelkey
English is used by 52.9% of the top 10 million websites [1]. This doesn't
factor in proficiency but I don't see why that should be included.

[1]
[https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_language/a...](https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_language/all)

~~~
NihilumExNil
The linked page notes that the Alexa provided stats might be considered
inaccurate.

Either way, it has youtube.com on place 2. If that is counted as English,
which I simply suppose were the case, "English is used by ..." is highly
misleading in this context. Surely they don't analyze the video contents,
maybe comments as proxy, never the less for music and the like the language
doesn't even matter. Proficiency is a factor because a play button is neither
English nor Japanese.

Please see
[https://w3techs.com/technologies/cross/content_language/char...](https://w3techs.com/technologies/cross/content_language/character_encoding)

They compare UTF-8 to ISO-8859-1 (that's Latin-1) and a Cyrillic encoding.
That's it. They simply don't analyze the Chinese market. Which is not
surprising because Alexa is after all into advertising and focused on a target
group. They include baidu, but probably only for comparison. I can't explain
the mismatch any other way, that is the mismatch of English 50% compared to
.de, .cz, .jp, .ru etc. each only ca. 2%. .de on second place ... wut?

English speakers are highly biased to rest on the assumption, because it's
comforting. I can't even blame anyone for that. It's a shit language, but the
comfort is the language has the grammar that is an easy learning.

------
anotherevan
My favourite quote about the English language:

“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English
is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on
occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them
unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary.”

— James Nicoll

~~~
fifnir
But at least english pays proper tribute to the languages it took from (at
with greek that I'm personally familiar) by adopting specific spellings.

Words spelled with "ph" for the f sound are spelled like that because they are
derived by greek words. In latin languages elephant is spelled like elefant,
making tracing the history of the word much harder

------
rmason
It is all America fault. I think this British newspaper protests a bit too
much.

Who was it that spread colonies around the world? Colonies where all
schoolchildren were taught English?

America may get most of the credit or blame but the English did their part in
spreading the language.

------
kayamon
Behemoth is actually a Hebrew word.

~~~
adventured
That's the thief part of the article title.

------
perfunctory
> An increasing number of parents in South Korea have their children undergo a
> form of surgery that snips off a thin band of tissue under the tongue … Most
> parents pay for this surgery because they believe it will make their
> children speak English better

Sigh

~~~
malloryerik
This isn't true anymore at all. See my comments above if interested.

------
psergeant
> Elevating English while denigrating all other languages has been a pillar of
> English and American nationalism for well over a hundred years

I wonder if there’s a country without a manufactured language where that’s not
true.

------
rumianteolor
What I don't like about the English language is the pronunciation. I would
like to pronounce English like Spanish or any system in which every letter has
a unique sound.

------
barking
My unsuccessful forays into foreign language learning have convinced me also
that none are as simple and logical as our own beautiful language, English,
innit?

~~~
opportune
English grammar has a lot of exceptions. Personally I think Spanish is much
simpler than English, and has a much more logical spelling system as well. The
main complexity Spanish introduces over English is the subjunctive mood ,
which is less complex than the many fine details of the English language, IMO
(such as learning how to use the word "do" as a helping verb). The English
language actually does still have the subjunctive mood, but it is used in a
more limiting set of circumstances (If I _were_ you...)

~~~
blt
I agree, it is very hard to master the special cases of English. A paper might
communicate ideas with perfect clarity and still be filled with subtle
mistakes. After entering STEM academia, I have been exposed to more English
writing by non-native speakers. It made me appreciate the difficulty of
mastering English. It also made me sympathetic to some deeper criticisms of
English beyond the inconsistent spelling rules. For example, the overuse of
articles and the verb "to be".

~~~
physicsguy
Ha, I'm in a similar position - I'm a scientist and I work with two people who
speak Slavic languages, and they miss out 'the' and 'a' everywhere, because
they don't exist in that language family. I also work with a Chilean, and he's
the opposite - he adds in 'the' and 'a' everywhere, even when it's not
necessary! The Germans I've worked with have generally been the best I've
found both at speaking and writing.

------
BEEdwards
I don't think this is so much as an argument against english as it is an
argument for a diverse language education.

------
nutjob2
English is such a horrible language to learn, I pity non-native speakers. On
that basis, the rule is: you're not allowed to criticize another person's
English, unless it's their native one.

They didn't ask for this language, it was forced upon them.

~~~
always_good
It's not as hard as you think. Compare all the tenses in Spanish to English,
for example. I live in Mexico and my peers usually think English is relatively
easy.

Also, the US exports so many quality tv shows and movies that it's easy to
find good English-native material for learning. You'd be hard pressed to find
someone who doesn't know Disney movies. Meanwhile, try finding good Mexican
television.

~~~
dorchadas
> Also, the US exports so many quality tv shows and movies that it's easy to
> find good English-native material for learning.

This is the most underrated factor when it comes to language learning in my
opinion. It really does make a difference how much native material is
available, and how interesting it is to the person learning the language.

Not because it makes the learning itself easier, but because it makes exposure
once you hit the intermediate level that much easier, which means you can pass
the intermediate plateau and reach a fairly advanced level without having to
struggle through things you don't find interesting.

~~~
omosubi
yes - so much this. I was just learning some European Portuguese before going
to portugal and had great difficulty finding any "real" non-brazilian european
portuguese to even get a feel for it. perhaps if people put together something
along the lines of those 'awesome-<language/framework/etc>' github repos for
language learning everyone could benefit :)

------
torgian
What a dumb article. You might as well put any language in there. Chinese,
Spanish, English or Farsi... trying to say English is a problem in its title
when it’s clearly people (and few, loud people at that) that are the problem

------
lcall
I'm a native English speaker who learned Spanish, and some Russian &
Esperanto.

I'm thinking about Esperanto. Perhaps most relevant to this discussion is its
benefit of being by far the cheapest workable global route to everyone being
able to talk to and understand each other, even if haltingly. For some people,
learning English is simply too hard. For the rest, it's still a very big
effort, and Esperanto is extremely easy by comparison. In terms of global
cost/benefit, Esperanto seems like a big win. (And it's fun.)

Further, I have started thinking that Esperanto should be everyone's 2nd
language, simply because it's so easy to learn yet seems ~"complete", and more
importantly, has been shown to make learning other languages easier to the
point that overall you learn, say, more French (or probably English) if you
learn Esperanto first, than if one spent the entire time studying French. So
learn whatever you would have learned as a 2nd language, for the 3rd, and you
saved time and got farther, overall
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto#Third-
language_acqui...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto#Third-
language_acquisition) [wikipedia.org]). And it seems to me the easiest way for
someone to better understand the grammar of their own native language, by
seeing a simple & clean example. (Some in one forum I saw dismissed the
studies, but when I read the dismissals it seemed a case of believing what you
want, with the studies being more persuasive to me as they put much more work
into it, but I would be interested in more info.)

(I don't think most users see it as a replacement for a first (or native)
language, though that has been done intentionally by some (per
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Esperanto_speakers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Esperanto_speakers)
[wikipedia.org], or search
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto)
for "native").

(There are other interesting constructed languages each with their pros &
cons, but none with nearly the same amount of traction or interest as
Esperanto. It's interesting to consider, given all that has been learned in
the field so far, how to "optimize" a constructed human language, considering
various factors like ease, familiarity, beauty, efficiency, computability, or
whatever one sees as most important. ... )

Claude Piron made an interesting/enjoyable video, I think in different
languages, showing some benefits of Esperanto. Here is the one in English:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YHALnLV9XU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YHALnLV9XU)

(edit/ps: I hope to use Esperanto when my personal organizer gets the ability
to use multiple languages for the same "knowledge". AGPL:
[http://onemodel.org](http://onemodel.org) .) (pps: had i noticed the "more"
button I would have realized others in the discussion already wrote about
this.)

------
gaius
English is the de facto lingua franca, and the fact I can use that phrase and
you all know what it means proves there’s no “taking over”, English is
uniquely welcoming to others

~~~
ajross
> English is the de facto lingua franca

The fact that the idiom you picked there uses Latin to tell us that English is
like French tells you everything you need to know about this status. It's
ephemeral in the long term.

I don't know what our grandkids' children will be speaking. It certainly could
be English or Mandarin. But languages change, even on this scale. Certainly
there's economic value in having a universal language (and a social loss when
languages fall into disuse, for that matter), but IMHO that's as far as it
goes.

~~~
megaman22
Mandarin is hamstrung by an impossible writing system, even in its various
alphabetization schemes, so I do not see that as a reasonable winner. It
simply requires too great an effort to reach functional levels of reading and
writing proficiency, compared to competitors.

~~~
ajross
Meh. They changed it once already in the last half century. They can change it
again. I'm no expert, but it's certainly not impossible to imagine a future
where all international business communication is in pinyin or a descendant.

------
iosDrone
The English language is a scalpel. It's more expressive than any other
language in history. As far as I'm concerned, the more widespread it becomes,
the better.

