
English and Its Undeserved Good Luck - tintinnabula
http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2015/12/03/english-and-its-undeserved-good-luck
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cjensen
It says a lot about the broken sensibilities of higher education that an
Historian describing how an outcome occurred feels obligated to explicitly
dissociate herself with the outcome ("I don’t intend any of this in
triumphalist spirit"). Or for that matter, even to express an opinion on the
moral correctness of the outcome.

If an historian who happens to be from Egypt describes the governmental system
at the time of the pyramids were built, would we expect them disavow the
ancient regime? Even if they were describing the system under Nasser, a
disavowal would be weird.

~~~
guard-of-terra
Russian history in 20-th century is so awful that you've got to make some
statement about events.

Unfortunately, people learned nothing and we're on track to repeat.

~~~
Mikeb85
Russian history in every century is brutal. They've been fighting off invaders
pretty much since the beginning of time. From Mongol hordes to Muslim invaders
to European invaders, and so on. And of course you're right - in the 20th
century they had a world war followed by revolution followed by another world
war in which they lost 20% of their population, and an economic disaster in
which they lost half their GDP...

~~~
vdaniuk
>They've been fighting off invaders pretty much since the beginning of time

Right. Russian Empire has grown to the size of one sixth of all land on Earth
by _defending_ from invaders.

~~~
Nadya
Okay, so there's the Winter War and other battles throughout history where
they've won land as a result of an offensive. (see also: Siberia)

However, much of Russian land was claimed after winning decisive _defensive_
victories and then going over and saying "We won't kill you if you give us
[specific pieces of land]" to which the losing nation's army hands over the
land.

Something many nations _never learned_ was to not launch _offensive_ battles
_into Russian_ during _the goddamn Russian winter_. Napoleon wasn't the only
military leader to lose to the Russians because of that mistake.

~~~
vdaniuk
>much of Russian land was claimed after winning decisive defensive victories

Citations, please.

~~~
Mikeb85
> Citations, please.

Read a history book, please.

This is like asking for a citation when stating that Napoleon lost at
Waterloo, or that Istanbul was once Constantinople...

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cassieramen
While the loss of languages is certainly hard to stomach, the biggest
detriment to society is that is often signifies the loss of information. One
common language used globally dramatically decreases the chances of
information getting lost. It also has the benefit of increasing access to
information over time. A great breakthrough can be shared globally, not
insulated in one region.

I question the need to preserve a language if it inhibits the positive spread
of information. Why should a country hold on to their traditional language if
it holds back the potential of its citizens?

~~~
fao_
> I question the need to preserve a language if it inhibits the positive
> spread of information.

I think that language diversity is bad for the _communication_ of information,
but language _preservation_ is good because there are words in other languages
that are difficult to articulate in English. If you still have a few people
that speak their native language (Even as a second language), then those exact
concepts are preserved.

~~~
wnoise
> there are words in other languages that are difficult to articulate in
> English.

We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your
culture will adapt to service us.

~~~
mikeash
"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

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saosebastiao
Amongst global languages, English is unique in the sense that its arbiters of
correctness are _very_ weak. Many global languages have arbiter bodies which
are considered authoritative (for example, the Real Academia Española for the
Spanish language), whereas with English such institutions exist but they don't
have much influence outside regional standards for formal publications.

I would argue that the decentralized and weak arbitration of correctness is
what allows it to thrive in extremely diverse cultures, as there is no concept
of authoritative correctness that requires you to use a construct that is
cultural in nature.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
The two "arbiter bodies" for English are the BBC and Hollywood. They define
what "standard English" is for the world. (Actually, they define two, slightly
different, standard Englishes, but they're close enough to keep the language
unified, at least so far.)

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adrianN
German had a pretty good shot at becoming a lingua franca. It was the language
of science for some time and the Holy Roman empire and the later Habsburg
empire made it the predominant language in a quite large part of Europe. It
was also reasonably popular in the US.

Personally, I think English is an easier language than German so I'm glad that
German didn't win. It's sad though that Esperanto or one of the other
artificial languages isn't more popular.

~~~
Eridrus
Given the fact that German had a shot, I'm surprised the author expects
English to remain the global language. The number of native speakers is small
compared to Mandarin and as China modernizes it would be surprising if
economic gravity didn't shift in that direction.

Is the difficulty of Chinese writing enough to prevent it from becoming a
global language?

~~~
douche
I'm really not sure which way this could end up shaking out. English has some
bizarre spellings, due in no small part to the huge percentage of loan-words
it has vacuumed up from all over the world. On the other hand, if you can
speak it, and know the basics of how the phonemes translate to print, you can
generally make yourself understood - it mite not be kompleetlee korrect
allways, but thars a lot of error tolarenz.

On the other hand, Mandarin script is abstract enough that you can conceivably
use it to transliterate all sorts of languages. Historically, non-Chinese
languages, like Manchu, Mongolian, Turkic, Korean, and Japanese have been
written using Chinese characters. Not to mention its use as a written lingua
franca in the pre-modern period for all of the more-or-less incompatible
regional Chinese dialects. You do have to know thousands of characters for the
ideas that you want to express, rather than the few dozen letters and letter
combinations that English uses.

I think as long as English-speaking entertainment is dominant (Hollywood, the
music industry, television), English is going to continue to grow.

~~~
Eridrus
How does grammar carry over from non-Chinese languages to Mandarin script? It
feels like it could feel stilted if the grammar was sufficiently different.

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jinushaun
The article has a weird tone.

It seems fairly obvious to me that English and the dominance of the British
Empire in the 19th century followed by the rise of the USA as a superpower in
the 20th century just happened to coincide with the rise of globalisations in
the 20th century. It could've easily been any of the other previous
imperialist super powers (Spain, France, etc), but those empires just so
happen to have declined in power before globalisation.

So in short, luck.

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civilian
In the graphic of where English is the official language, Quebec should really
be colored grey. :D

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WalterBright
I don't buy that there's even a concept of a language "deserving" to be a
global language. A number of the linguistic faults the author attributes to
English are a consequence of it being a global language, for example, a great
many English words are adopted wholesale from other languages, spelling and
all.

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jerf
Is there a language that _deserves_ to be the world language?

I mean, not "would be a good one"... _deserves_?

(I'm sure many people would cite some beautiful language as a "good one", but
remember that in the process of becoming the "world language" it would cease
to be "beautiful" anyhow.)

~~~
guard-of-terra
I think Italian is way easier and contains more roots from Latin that other
european languages also spot.

But obviously Italian never come close to such capability.

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Zenst
Given English has had so many external influences from other languages over
time from invasion alone then English, isn't as geographic as inferred by
name. Even Shakespeare's time, the language then is not what is used to today
and it still evolves and with that.

Maybe English is were it is at because it adapts more quickly than other
languages and with that English has changed much as a language over time and
still does.

~~~
evincarofautumn
Languages are generally simplified by contact with other languages, and
because of the Norman Invasion, and later the British Empire, English has had
a lot of of contact. Inversely, the more isolated a language is (e.g., by
mountain ranges or seas) the more complex and idiosyncratic it tends to
become.

So yes, English has historically adapted more quickly than many other
languages, but this doesn’t have anything to do with the language itself.

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danieltillett
I can't believe that no one has mentioned the industrial revolution. The
nature of the industrial revolution is such that which ever country got there
first was going to dominate the world. The really interesting question is why
was England the first country in the world to pull itself out of the
Malthusian trap via industrialisation.

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anigbrowl
_But it was pure dumb luck for English that the British empire arose so
quickly and so late._

No it wasn't. Being an island nation and having both invaded and suffered
invasions during medieval times, Britain understood that sea power was key to
its security and invested heavily in naval power - as you'd expect an island
nation to do if it had the resources. This doesn't mean just investment in
boats and personnel, but in things like accurate clocks to aid navigation. The
government of the day offered huge cash prizes to anyone who could make a
chronometer that would reliably work at sea and technologists rose to the
challenge.

Britain did indeed benefit from a variety of other technological developments,
but they basically deployed their blue water navy and colonial efforts in much
the same way that the Romans did in the Mediterranean sea centuries before -
and the success of Roman and Hellenic civilizations is easily observed in the
ubiquity of Latin and Greek roots in the variety of European languages, and
our ongoing use of the Latin alphabet. If the Roman empire had not collapsed
in the 4th century (for reasons which are beyond the scope of this discussion)
most of the world would be speaking Latin today. As with English, Latin
thrived because the Romans were fairly skilled administrators of the
territories they took over, prioritizing trade and economic growth rather than
conquest and total destruction/

Latin and Greek are distinctive languages because they have a fully phonetic
alphabet, whereas many other writing systems struggle with notating foreign
languages. Ancient Hebrew, for example, derived from Phoenician writing and is
based on the writing of consonant sounds and so it retains a strong oral
tradition of Torah study because there are no letters for vowels and so the
meaning of a given word in Hebrew depends heavily on context, substantially
limiting its use by others lacking that oral tradition. The utility of an
easy-to-learn alphabet should not be underestimated; look at the time cost
involved in developing an adequate vocabulary in Chinese or some other
ideogrammatic language. Japanese uses Chinese symbols as _kanji_ (albeit with
different meanings from Chinese, though Japanese schoolchildren learn both
meanings) and has not one but two phonetic scripts, one for Japanese words (to
help kids look up _kanji_ in syllabic dictionaries) and one for foreign words.
Oddly, though, Japan doesn't have a punning tradition based on homophony
because the syllabic script came along much later.

I apologize for the extreme over-simplifications above, but this is really a
book-length topic that can't be properly argued in only a few paragraphs.

~~~
douche
I think you could argue that England didn't really become a naval power until
they realized that organized piracy could be wildly lucrative. The East India
company probably doesn't get founded if a British privateer doesn't capture a
Portuguese carrack loaded with spices and make everyone involved rich enough
to be a lord. For much of its early history, the merchant shipping of the
company heartily supplemented their more legitimate trading with raiding their
Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch competitors.

Even the Royal Navy was a pretty piratical endeavor. Reading through their
wartime exploits, there are a very few big fleet actions, some smaller single-
ship actions, and an enormous amount of prize-taking of enemy merchant
shipping. And it makes sense - the captain would get one-quarter to three-
eighths of the prize's value, with the remainder parceled out down the line to
the ship's officers and crew.

~~~
anigbrowl
Oh indeed. In fact I was thinking of Drake's defeat of the Spanish Armada as
the thing that secured the preeminent position of naval power in English
military strategy - and I think even most English people would cheerfully
acknowledge that Drake was a pirate.

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civilian
For more reading, the author recommends "English as a Global Language" by
David Crystal. It's available in pdf here:
[http://www.culturaldiplomacy.org/academy/pdf/research/books/...](http://www.culturaldiplomacy.org/academy/pdf/research/books/nation_branding/English_As_A_Global_Language_-
_David_Crystal.pdf)

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deadowl
There's a melting pot effect, too.

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jfaucett
Well, it is great we have a common language which facilitates scientific
communication, I don't really understand why the author seems so apologetic
about that.

Conversely, the fact that the standard is a language where some nations
inherently have an advantage over the rest of the world is an unfortunate
side-effect of historical events. I also don't see the advantages leveling at
any point in the future unless a country were to decide to completely give up
its entire cultural heritage, literature, etc. and adopt English in every
aspect of public life - and even then it would take minimally a generation
before most of the new culture was assimilated, and would only level the field
for said country.

Also I think there are two distinctions that need to be made. The first is
that there is a global lingua franca, namely English. Now the world has a new
standard language instead of French in which to communicate about everything.
I see this as a great win in the sense that we can all communicate with one
another, the only negative part is that its not a level playing field, but
this again is simply a discomfort, it was the same before when French and
Latin were lingua francas.

The second is the anglicisation of all cultures. Here in continental Europe
you can almost literally observe the change as you see how many
advertisements, marketing, technology, language, music, films etc. are
directly imported from the English speaking world, even to the point where it
now "sounds wierd" to use non-English words for certain things. Now you could
see this as positive or negative. For one if you go anywhere you know what to
expect, you have a universal culture to understand marketing, tech,
restaurants, ads, doctors, educational systems, etc.. Of course on the
flipside everywhere is the same, just as in the US you can travel thousands of
miles and the stores, language, and restaurants are all the same. So you are
getting sameness on a global scale. I see how the author could be sad about
that happening and I think thats what's making him so apologetic. I even
sympathize with him, English is great to communicate globally but I don't see
why it and its countries' cultures have to encroach on all others, it seems to
make the world a dimmer place.

I've often wondered why we haven't created a language based off of knowledge
gleaned from the cognitive sciences and universal grammar and phonology, to
create a language that was perfectly regular and maximally easy to learn
(orthography/phonology/syntax/semantics) for all speakers of any language. Its
certainly possible, you could even make it much more efficient for text-
processing and analysis purposes. You could likely cut down the time of
acquisition to less than 6 months for B2 level fluency. Of course all previous
attempts at synthetic languages tell us no one will use it. I wonder how easy
it would have to be to cross the threshold? Probably impossibly easy given the
number of rules required to generate an infinite set of discreet symbols...

