What does the growing prominence of the English language mean to you? Is it all good, all bad, or are you, frankly, indifferent? If you were the Chief of the Language Police, how would you deploy your officers in investigating the death of thousands of languages throughout the world? Is mono-lingualism preferable to multi-lingualism? Please, I’d love to hear your ideas, thoughts, fears, inspirations…
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March 10th, 2010 at 12:59 pm
I am saddened by the loss of thousands of languages. Instead of English being the official global language I would prefer more of a United Nations stance with at least 4 global languages and preferably two of these not “Western” languages. Though I know there are non-English parts of the internet, I propose having specific fundamental parts of the web in various languages.
I would say all countries should require multi-lingualism then I realize that all countries but one have already done so.
Sadly, there are languages that will continue to die out until there are probably a 100 or so left with a hundred varying dialects.
Can old languages be resuscitated? Could that be a goal? Latin seemed like it was a decent enough language, why not bring that back?
China’s up-and-coming dominance and a global resistance to all things American will probably start stunting English dominance soon.
I’m working on Spanish and I have found memories of high school French.
May 12th, 2010 at 6:05 am
I think it’s fine to have English as *a* global language (and also for us to remember that it doesn’t belong to any particular group). The global language? I don’t know about that.
May 12th, 2010 at 6:28 am
Clarissa, you make a great point! What a BIG difference that article makes. My husband is Slovak and in his native language there are no articles, which means he still struggles (after over 15 years of English language immersion) with when to use ‘a’ or ‘an’ and when to use ‘the.’ Your comment is a great example of just how important an article can be. 🙂