(2) Language proliferation on the internet and in general
Note the date though:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2001/02/12/rover.t.php
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Online, and Off, English's Hegemony Is Challenged Globally</b>
By Barry James International Herald Tribune
Monday, February 12, <b>2001</b>
Has English become THE global language of communication and education? The question might seem obvious, but the answer is not so simple. Yes, English is the international language of commerce and science. And its utility has spread because up to now it has also been the prime moving language of the Internet. But this is beginning to change, and very fast.
"We are observing more and more that other languages are taking over the Internet," said Victor Montviloff, who is responsible for information policy in the communication and information sector at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization here.
Languages like German, Russian and Spanish are spreading at exponential speed on the Web, Mr. Montviloff said. French has lagged relatively behind, he said, because France until now has seemed more preoccupied with protecting its language against foreign invasion than promoting it. But now, the number of French-language sites also is fast multiplying.
Because the Internet makes it possible, other languages are also starting to challenge the hegemony of English in distance education. The Internet is helping to revive minority languages and cultures by bringing together widely scattered linguistic communities. Researchers note a sudden surge of interest in endangered languages, such as those spoken by indigenous groups in North America.
<b>Global Reach Inc., a market research company, estimates that English is now the mother tongue of less than half of all Internet users, and the proportion is falling all the time. </b>
An estimated 320 million people speak English as a mother tongue â fewer than those who speak Spanish or Mandarin â and demographic trends indicate that native English speakers will decline as a proportion of the world's population. Probably more than 1 billion people speak English <b>with varying degrees of proficiency as a second language.</b>
David Graddol, a language researcher and lecturer at the Open University in Britain, said that, on the one hand, English is becoming a language of everyday usage in some countries in Northern Europe. "Something like 70 percent of the Dutch population claim now that they can hold a conversation in English quite comfortably," Mr. Graddol said. "For them, it is not a textbook-based foreign exercise. They are already exposed to English in the environment. People have learned a little bit of it before they even get to school, and they can see immediately that it has some use in their lives. In countries like the Netherlands, Sweden or Denmark you need English to complete your education.
"In other countries, however, English is more truly a foreign language," said Mr. Graddol, whose consulting firm, The English Company, produced a worldwide report titled "The Future of English" for the British Council a few years ago. "In some countries, like China, there is not very much English in the environment and people may be learning it from teachers who may not speak English very well themselves."
In a third group of countries, like India and Nigeria where English has been used a long time, distinct local varieties of the language are emerging, complete with their own dictionaries, textbooks and literature.
"English is so important in these countries that people use it in part to create their own social and even national identity," Mr. Graddol said. "When that happens, the language starts going its own way. The variety of English that proficient speakers in such countries are learning may not be terribly useful in an international context.
"In England, people like Spencer and Shakespeare went on an inventive spree of creating new words and usages and made the language suitable for literature. We are seeing some of the new Englishes almost going through that stage. In India, authors are not just using the street language, but creating a literary version of the local English. This means that different centers of authority are starting to emerge. English, like Latin before it, has become a language that is no longer the property of its native speakers, and like Latin, it too may give way to a variety of vernacular tongues.
<b>"Thus, the very reason for the rise of English â its guarantee of mutual intelligibility among people of different cultures â could dissolve if the language continues to fragment into a variety of 'Englishes."'
"My view is that English will remain the world communication language, but we will all come together with our own kinds of pidgin,"</b> Mr. Montviloff said. Will this mean that one day there will be a movement for the protection of correct English? "There might be," he said, but who will decide what is correct?
Bertrand Menciassi, of the European Bureau for Lesser Used Languages in Europe, said the use of a world language both helps and hinders linguistic diversity. People can use English for their outside contacts, while cultivating their own tongue or dialect for use at home. On the other hand, he added, English is tending to push European national languages like Dutch or Danish into a corner.
"In the Netherlands, there was a proposal a couple of years ago to make English the language of instruction in all university teaching. That could be extremely dangerous, because the university is the brain of the country and this proposal raises the question whether Dutch continues to be an all-purpose language."Â <!--emo&:o--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/ohmy.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='ohmy.gif' /><!--endemo-->Â <!--emo&:o--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/ohmy.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='ohmy.gif' /><!--endemo-->Â <!--emo&:o--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/ohmy.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='ohmy.gif' /><!--endemo-->
(NOooooo! Beautiful Dutch, don't die. Never die.)
Maintaining linguistic diversity is an important aim of the European Commission, which is concerned that the increasing acceptance of English as the European lingua franca should not detract from the vitality of other languages. <b>The Commission argues that the ability to speak two or three tongues will give the Europeans economic and technical advantages over their monolingual American rivals in a world of diversity</b>, and is about to kick off "The European Year of Languages" in an attempt to promote multilingualism.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Great, so all us non-native English speakers will ever amount to is speaking pidgin (local variety of English). Oh, yay. That's what we're all trading in our languages for - rushing to speak a dumbed-down version of someone else's language?
The only peoples currently speaking pidgins are the peoples so far colonised that they had to relinquish everything. This includes enslaved people who were transported away from Africa into islands near the Americas. In such cases it's understandable because they lost their languages.
We survived colonisation and still have our languages - but not for long, if some Indians can help it...
Note the date though:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2001/02/12/rover.t.php
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Online, and Off, English's Hegemony Is Challenged Globally</b>
By Barry James International Herald Tribune
Monday, February 12, <b>2001</b>
Has English become THE global language of communication and education? The question might seem obvious, but the answer is not so simple. Yes, English is the international language of commerce and science. And its utility has spread because up to now it has also been the prime moving language of the Internet. But this is beginning to change, and very fast.
"We are observing more and more that other languages are taking over the Internet," said Victor Montviloff, who is responsible for information policy in the communication and information sector at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization here.
Languages like German, Russian and Spanish are spreading at exponential speed on the Web, Mr. Montviloff said. French has lagged relatively behind, he said, because France until now has seemed more preoccupied with protecting its language against foreign invasion than promoting it. But now, the number of French-language sites also is fast multiplying.
Because the Internet makes it possible, other languages are also starting to challenge the hegemony of English in distance education. The Internet is helping to revive minority languages and cultures by bringing together widely scattered linguistic communities. Researchers note a sudden surge of interest in endangered languages, such as those spoken by indigenous groups in North America.
<b>Global Reach Inc., a market research company, estimates that English is now the mother tongue of less than half of all Internet users, and the proportion is falling all the time. </b>
An estimated 320 million people speak English as a mother tongue â fewer than those who speak Spanish or Mandarin â and demographic trends indicate that native English speakers will decline as a proportion of the world's population. Probably more than 1 billion people speak English <b>with varying degrees of proficiency as a second language.</b>
David Graddol, a language researcher and lecturer at the Open University in Britain, said that, on the one hand, English is becoming a language of everyday usage in some countries in Northern Europe. "Something like 70 percent of the Dutch population claim now that they can hold a conversation in English quite comfortably," Mr. Graddol said. "For them, it is not a textbook-based foreign exercise. They are already exposed to English in the environment. People have learned a little bit of it before they even get to school, and they can see immediately that it has some use in their lives. In countries like the Netherlands, Sweden or Denmark you need English to complete your education.
"In other countries, however, English is more truly a foreign language," said Mr. Graddol, whose consulting firm, The English Company, produced a worldwide report titled "The Future of English" for the British Council a few years ago. "In some countries, like China, there is not very much English in the environment and people may be learning it from teachers who may not speak English very well themselves."
In a third group of countries, like India and Nigeria where English has been used a long time, distinct local varieties of the language are emerging, complete with their own dictionaries, textbooks and literature.
"English is so important in these countries that people use it in part to create their own social and even national identity," Mr. Graddol said. "When that happens, the language starts going its own way. The variety of English that proficient speakers in such countries are learning may not be terribly useful in an international context.
"In England, people like Spencer and Shakespeare went on an inventive spree of creating new words and usages and made the language suitable for literature. We are seeing some of the new Englishes almost going through that stage. In India, authors are not just using the street language, but creating a literary version of the local English. This means that different centers of authority are starting to emerge. English, like Latin before it, has become a language that is no longer the property of its native speakers, and like Latin, it too may give way to a variety of vernacular tongues.
<b>"Thus, the very reason for the rise of English â its guarantee of mutual intelligibility among people of different cultures â could dissolve if the language continues to fragment into a variety of 'Englishes."'
"My view is that English will remain the world communication language, but we will all come together with our own kinds of pidgin,"</b> Mr. Montviloff said. Will this mean that one day there will be a movement for the protection of correct English? "There might be," he said, but who will decide what is correct?
Bertrand Menciassi, of the European Bureau for Lesser Used Languages in Europe, said the use of a world language both helps and hinders linguistic diversity. People can use English for their outside contacts, while cultivating their own tongue or dialect for use at home. On the other hand, he added, English is tending to push European national languages like Dutch or Danish into a corner.
"In the Netherlands, there was a proposal a couple of years ago to make English the language of instruction in all university teaching. That could be extremely dangerous, because the university is the brain of the country and this proposal raises the question whether Dutch continues to be an all-purpose language."Â <!--emo&:o--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/ohmy.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='ohmy.gif' /><!--endemo-->Â <!--emo&:o--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/ohmy.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='ohmy.gif' /><!--endemo-->Â <!--emo&:o--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/ohmy.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='ohmy.gif' /><!--endemo-->
(NOooooo! Beautiful Dutch, don't die. Never die.)
Maintaining linguistic diversity is an important aim of the European Commission, which is concerned that the increasing acceptance of English as the European lingua franca should not detract from the vitality of other languages. <b>The Commission argues that the ability to speak two or three tongues will give the Europeans economic and technical advantages over their monolingual American rivals in a world of diversity</b>, and is about to kick off "The European Year of Languages" in an attempt to promote multilingualism.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Great, so all us non-native English speakers will ever amount to is speaking pidgin (local variety of English). Oh, yay. That's what we're all trading in our languages for - rushing to speak a dumbed-down version of someone else's language?
The only peoples currently speaking pidgins are the peoples so far colonised that they had to relinquish everything. This includes enslaved people who were transported away from Africa into islands near the Americas. In such cases it's understandable because they lost their languages.
We survived colonisation and still have our languages - but not for long, if some Indians can help it...