The Washington Post has an article asking the question "Which languages will dominate the future?" The answer depends on your interests: making money in growth markets; speaking with as many people as possible; speaking only one language while traveling; or learning about culture. As you might imagine, the article concludes
There is no one single language of the future. Instead, language learners will increasingly have to ask themselves about their goals and own motivations before making a decision.
[...] In a recent U.K.-focused report, the British Council, a think tank, identified more than 20 growth markets and their main languages. The report features languages spoken in the so-called BRIC countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China — that are usually perceived as the world's biggest emerging economies, as well as more niche growth markets that are included in lists produced by investment bank Goldman Sachs and services firm Ernst & Young.
"Spanish and Arabic score particularly highly on this indicator," the British Council report concluded for the U.K. However, when taking into account demographic trends until 2050 as laid out by the United Nations, the result is very different.
Hindi, Bengali, Urdu and Indonesian will dominate much of the business world by 2050, followed by Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic and Russian. If you want to get the most money out of your language course, studying one of the languages listed above is probably a safe bet.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Francis on Friday September 25 2015, @12:00AM
The reality here is that it's tough to predict what economy is going to be the up and coming one in the future. Even if you do choose correctly, you're likely to have to compete with all the other people that are chasing the popular one.
It's better to choose a language that you like and are going to actually stick with long enough to speak well. If you find you need another language after that, the 3rd language is almost always easier than the second.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @12:03AM
I like Ada. There are no jobs for Ada coders. Now I am unemployable. Your advice is shit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @12:55AM
found one for you: "Experience operating E-2 platform systems, programming with C, C+, [sic] C++, or Ada and software testing and analysis is a plus but not required"
http://class.somd.com/Jobs-and-Careers-Offered/ad/12652/Imagine-One-Now-Hiring-Software-Programmer.html [somd.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @01:06AM
C+, [sic]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Aighearach on Friday September 25 2015, @03:15AM
While that is true, another reality is that while the contemporary language of business has shifted to the largest economies, it was always the largest of the economies that is also a cultural center. Having a lot of people isn't going to make any of these places into a major business center. Regardless of the state of the Indian economy in 50 years, their languages are not going to achieve much use. They are a center of a lot of culture, but only for people already invested; they are not a casual source of culture. They would need 50 years just to get into a position to be in the running 50 years later. Indonesian... I'm assuming somebody did a population projection without considering land availability.
Portuguese has no chance, because most of the Brazil's neighbors speak Spanish and they're always going to be going into things using a third language. There is just not very much advantage to learning Portuguese as one of your first 5 languages, even if you do business with Brazil, unless you're a foreign specialist who only does business there, which is rare.
Arabic is a real wild card because of regional instability.
Russian will continue to decline, for numerous obvious reasons, such as: small population, not a cultural center or even well liked, not seen as being better at anything in business anymore, most of their economy is exporting natural resources, which gives no benefit at all to learning their language. They could turn all that around eventually, but it is a lot of different trend lines to reverse.
China continues to grow both in economic and cultural influence. The language is exceptionally difficult, though. Simply spending time learning it won't be enough for adults to pick it up well enough that Chinese business people are going to prefer it to English. So I expect huge growth here, but it won't become the default language. Though it probably will be the default business language for speakers of many of the languages listed, like Bengali and Indonesian.
The extrapolations are not impressive. I think a language like German has a better chance; it is already a major international 2nd language, it is fairly easy to learn and speak, easy to translate from text, and computers can translate it fairly well. Because of the tradition as a scientific language, it already has the full range of technical words and concepts. Germany continues to be a major business and scientific influence. A future integrated EU nation-state might have German as the main language.
Many of the languages proposed are simply not very good for business because a lack of specific literal terms related to business.
Time will tell if Arabic wealth evaporates after the oil market crashes. Once poor people in the west are buying used electric cars, and Chinese middle class are buying electric as their first car, some parts of these maps might change drastically.
Another factor is that because of the internet and international communication, the default language might have a lot more staying power; the shifting culture of the past might become a continuously-melting pot, where something like language becomes more difficult to change. In the past, there weren't large international libraries of data that would be lost when switching languages.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Friday September 25 2015, @03:45AM
I'd like to point out that learning minor languages means that while you can't use them everywhere, you do have a competitive advantage if you're doing business in that location.
Right now if you go to China and speak Mandarin you're going to have a lot of credibility with the locals in most parts of China, but in 10 or 20 years, that's probably not going to be the case. You'd have far more credibility in Guangdong by learning Cantonese, same goes for other areas that don't speak Mandarin as their first language. You'll be able to connect with the locals a lot more easily and show a willingness to invest in the relationships.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 25 2015, @01:16PM
I concur on Russian and Arabic. Once oil is passe, they're passe.
Chinese is not that hard to gain a grasp of, though. The grammar is simple and the pronunciation of the characters is consistent, not at all like Japanese, which chooses from multiple Chinese- and Japanese readings of kanji at seeming random. Chinese characters work rather more like a really big alphabet, and the radicals assembled to make an ideogram give you a real leg up to grasp the meaning, something about the pronunciation, and help a lot with recall in the same way that memory experts advise you to make up funny sentences or images to remember words or concepts. The hardest thing about Chinese is developing an ear for tones, and retaining it after you haven't been immersed in it for a while. Once swimming in it daily, though, it's easy to pick up the patter. That said, I do entirely agree that nobody's gonna learn Chinese unless China physically conquers the world and forces everybody to learn it in colonial fashion.
German is a great language, but despite the shared heritage with English and a lot of common vocabulary, the grammar is a bear. It's harder than English. Case declensions and funky word order complicate things a lot. Plus, nobody outside of Central Europe really speaks German. There's not much of a residual colonial past to help it out globally, the way there is for French. So it's much more likely to be like Chinese: great to know if you're there, but not much else.
Spanish will putter along as it always has, indispensible in Central and South America, not much use elsewhere.
Indonesian would tickle me pink, because you gotta love a language where to make something plural, you say it twice: "cewek" -- chick, "cewek cewek" -- chicks.
Nah, the real answer is English. English is still the language to learn and will be for a long, long time.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @12:01AM
The entire English-speaking world has already outsourced every industry to China.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @12:23AM
Well, until the next big thing becomes outsourcing to Africa. The PHBs will create another set of buzzwords for saving money by fabbing somewhere cheaper than China, then sell products back to the largest single market in the world.
When we are all old[er] and getting [more] curmudgeonly we will have to go through this process all over again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @12:55AM
> The PHBs will create another set of buzzwords for saving money by fabbing somewhere cheaper than China,
Its going to be robots. Africa will get used for raw resources. But the next big wave of manufacturing is going to be automation and the location is likely to be dictated by where shipping is cheapest - either shipping raw material to the factory or shipping finished materials to the market.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @01:11AM
The US started heavily automating manufacturing in the late '70s and early '80s. People in craptastic countries were cheaper than robots, even with shipping across the pacific.
The same will happen to every country until there isn't a single place in the world where humans are cheaper than machines.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @02:55AM
That analysis presumes that automated manufacturing never gets cheaper. That's demonstrably false.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @07:55AM
Yours assumes that no labor force is cheaper than China and thus outsourcing will stop with them. Both of those claims are demonstrably false.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @08:45AM
Economics in the end level out. When automated manufacturing gets cheaper, labor will eventually get cheaper too. But due to both getting cheaper, products get cheaper too. However, our central banks will add sufficient amounts of money to the money supply that neither will get cheaper but instead both will get more expensive. We call that inflation.
In the end more humans will probably do other kinds of work than what robots are better at. And our economies will be flooded with cheap and easy to manufacture automated-manufacturing made products (just like today already). The specialized things that require human creativity and ingenuity, the things that are uniquely built, will (just like today already) stay super expensive.
Nothing much will change.
(Score: 3, Funny) by TheGratefulNet on Friday September 25 2015, @12:26AM
russian would be useful, too. I'm seeing lots of outsource work being sent to russia and ukraine.
oh, and cobol. always some kind of need for cobol guys.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @12:28AM
You need some custom malware for industrial espionage, comrade?
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Friday September 25 2015, @12:55AM
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday September 25 2015, @12:50AM
Not quite everything.
Chem/pharma and IT went to India
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday September 25 2015, @11:29AM
And as India is prepared to move towards English as their de facto international business language, I think that keeps English in pretty good stead for a pretty long time. And I'm disappointed to see "Russian" on the list - aren't we trying to embargo that out of use until Vlad I's empire implodes?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Interesting) by goodie on Friday September 25 2015, @01:04AM
Perhaps, but I'm not particularly interested in moving to China or having my kids live there considering the levels of pollution, corruption etc. There's a reason (actually a bunch of them) why many Chinese try to leave China these days. It's like a teenager growing too fast in that awkward phase where you don't really know how tall they will be, what their face will look like ;). Joke aside, my school now offers Chinese for Business courses, it's pretty popular among execs and people in the MBA program.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Friday September 25 2015, @04:18AM
I liked China, but the parts of China that are worth living in tend to have very little money. The rural parts are actually really nice with friendly people everywhere. The cities though, are rather miserable. There's plenty of things to do, but the Chinese try to take advantage of foreigners, the corruption and the pollution are ridiculous.
But, the rural areas are great if you can speak some Chinese, things are relaxed and there's amazing food to be had.
Unfortunately, most foreigners never get to see that side of China and it's rapidly disappearing as development spreads and the people move to the cities in search of a better quality of life.
(Score: 2) by goodie on Sunday September 27 2015, @02:14AM
In 1982, my grandma took a trip there. She learnt Mandarin, and went on a 3 week organized trip. This was 1982, not something as easy as it is today. And she was in her early sixties. I'm always impressed by her achievements regarding this. Anyway more to the point. She showed me a few months ago her pictures from that trip after she found her albums and I swear I wish I would turn back time to see it then. It looked like the exotic, hospitable country that I imagined back when I was growing up and got interested in Asian cultures. It looked like old martial arts movies where people sit at a large round table, eat and drink tea, play games etc. But now they're running so quick to destroy all that that what took thousands of years to build and cultivate will be gone within a century or so at this pace... I find it very sad.
I have a coworker who's mother in law came to visit Canada once and she would spend 20 min washing vegetables before every meal and using boiled water to do it. The guy had to tell her, every time, that vegetables and water were a lot cleaner here. And yet I'm not sure I love our veggies that much here ;).
(Score: 2) by goodie on Sunday September 27 2015, @02:16AM
Oh and the lanscapes on those pictures... She took a cruise along the Yangtze river and the pictures were breathtaking. Now you're lucky if you can see the sky in Shanghai apparently...
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 25 2015, @12:54PM
China is as delightful as you describe. We can all truly look forward to a world with China at its center. Conveniently enough, it's already called "zhongguo," or "Kingdom at the Center" ('Middle Kingdom' is the literal translation, but the proper connotation doesn't carry over into English). To help enterprising MBAs with their business careers, here are some key phrases to use in China:
"Bu yao!" -- "I don't want it," typically yelled at street vendors trying to get you to buy jade pendants.
"Tai gui" -- "Too expensive," best said with a derisive laugh.
"Ni fangpi!" -- lit. "You're farting!", in essence "Bullshit!"
"Ni zougou zibenjia he yinggai mashangde kaishi ziping" -- "You are a running dog capitalist and should immediately begin a self-criticism (a Cultural Revolution-era practice)".
And the most important of all:
"Shi, laoban!" -- "Yes, boss!"
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Friday September 25 2015, @03:09PM
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 25 2015, @07:29PM
Yes, well, tone marks are useless to those who don't know them, and obvious to those that do. In either case, not worth the extra bother. The one longer phrase I cited was for comic effect, and you either know it, or you don't. The others you must instantly know if you speak Mandarin and know the English meaning. Context tells. "Tai gui" cannot reasonably mean "too demon!" in a business context. "Bu yao" cannot mean "don't shake" when speaking to street vendors. I know the difference, and your reply suggests you might, too, so implying that I don't is a not so clever attempt to say that I am not aware that tonal differences make a significant difference in a tonal language. "Mama ma ma ma?" can mean, "Does mother scold the horse?" or something quite different depending on the tones, but it's so idiomatic that phrase that should you pretend you don't know what's indicated without the tonal marks it establishes that you're being coy.
Shi bu shi, tongzhi?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Saturday September 26 2015, @03:13AM
The tones are only obvious if you already know the words.
I used to study Mandarin years ago, forgot most of it since I never got a chance to use it, but I still know how to read pinyin.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by K_benzoate on Friday September 25 2015, @02:40AM
And the entire Chinese speaking world is rushing to teach their children English because that's where the cultural, scientific, engineering, artistic, design, and every other aspect of transmittable culture is headed. When a German and a Chinese business man want to speak together (without a terp) they use English. The English speaking Internet is larger than all the other languages combined. More books are published in English than any other language.
English is the first global lingua franca--partially because it's an amoeba that absorbs and assimilates any other language it encounters into something intelligible by native speakers, and partially because computers and the Internet are Latin Alphabet-centric. Any language that isn't usable with a standard QWERT(Y/Z) keyboard is fighting momentum and is destined to lose. Chinese is absolutely horrendous to use with a keyboard. Japanese is barely usable. A simple alphabet with roughly 2 dozen characters is ergonomic to human hands and thus is the natural winner. Chinese is simply inscrutable to anyone not deeply familiar with it (historically, it was somewhat intended to be) but English words are "discoverable" once you start learning roots and suffixes/prefixes--even if your knowledge is from a completely different language. I don't speak Spanish or even a Romance language, but a Spanish text is at least 50% understandable just because of the cognates.
It's not ethnocentrism; German, French, or Spanish could easily have been the winners. Accidents of history put English in the winner's circle. As a native English speaker, I am thankful, but I recognize it's largely an arbitrary quirk of pure chance.
Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.
(Score: 2) by linuxrocks123 on Friday September 25 2015, @03:46AM
You're generally right. Another example is that English is a widely used language in India.
However, you're dead wrong about keyboards. It is not at all difficult to use Chinese and other Asian languages with a keyboard. There are multiple ways to do it; one of the most popular for Chinese is to just type using a standardized transliteration of Chinese to the Latin alphabet and have software auto-convert that into the language's native script. I have seen this done and it works fine. Maybe in the days of DOS and teletypes you were right, but technology advances, man.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by moondrake on Friday September 25 2015, @09:09AM
I would still argue the system is somewhat cumbersome. You are typing the Latin alphabet, and then select the character you want from a (sometimes long) list. Since Chinese has many more sounds than English, its not that easy to transliterate and this makes it sometimes a bit cumbersome to find the character you want. Of course, computers get smarter and know from the context what you probably want to say, but we all know what kind of silly things are the result of word completion sometimes... This gets worse if you are actually not 100% sure the character you just typed is the one you wanted...
From anecdotal evidence, I get the feeling this system however has a very detrimental effect on peoples writing ability. I speak (not really write though) some Mandarin and worked for some time in China. I noticed many young people where having trouble writing non-trivial Hanzi (with a pen) because they are 99% of the time using it passively with a PC or phone. It also results in people more often guessing from the list, and using the wrong character for a particular sound. When this trend continues, I suspect that it will slowly erode some of the complexity of the language to be more convenient to use with electronics. That may not be a bad thing however:)
I have seen people suggest that the Japanese/Chinese should just drop their 'silly' characters, and just write the "sound" like we (mostly) do. This will not happen in the foreseeable future. The ability to write "meaning" instead of sound is a key part of the language and culture of these countries. A character is more than its sound and can convey some emotion. Compare it with this: what leaves more impact on you, the word "toxic" or the skull-and-crossbones symbol (☠)?
For Japanese especially it would be complicated anyway as there are so many words that are pronounced similar, that an advanced text would become ambiguous (and you cannot ask for clarification like in a conversation). To users of characters, an alphabet system may even seem vastly inferior as it merely conveys some sounds (and often imperfectly), instead of the actual content of a story. This makes the reading experience a very different thing (to me it results in no inner voice with sounds, just images of the things discussed).
(Score: 2) by linuxrocks123 on Friday September 25 2015, @05:19PM
I've not personally used it, but, when deciding on how cumbersome it is, you have to remember that Chinese is a much compact language. So something like 50 characters per minute typing speed would be pretty good.
Note too that, in English, you don't use a "normal" keyboard when you need to type super-fast. You use a specially-designed chordal keyboard. This is how stenographers are able to keep up with the spoken word in courtrooms. The standard keyboard isn't that great.
There are also stroke-based methods to input Chinese, where you use a QWERTY keyboard to "type" the strokes needed to make the character you want.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 25 2015, @12:39PM
I speak a lot of languages and I agree with you: the language to learn is still English. Even if America fades as a global power, the chances are very good that English will persist in its current role because it's also what India uses, and they're ascendant. We also have history as our guide: Akkadian was the "global" language to learn long after its speakers had gone to dust, then Greek came along, which had a good, long run even after Athens and Sparta had become meaningless backwaters. Of course, Latin. The global language for a long time after the barbarians sacked Rome. English, too, has a ton of linguistic momentum--it's the language of business, science, culture, etc. Just one of those areas by itself could carry the language along for another 1,000 years.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @07:03AM
Which Chinese? It's a group of languages.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 25 2015, @12:33PM
Putonghua, of course. "Common Speech," aka Mandarin. Fun factoid: The CCP only made it the mainland's official language in 1988.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday September 25 2015, @07:14AM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 5, Funny) by Non Sequor on Friday September 25 2015, @12:07AM
It'll come around. I swear.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @12:14AM
Bonvolu literumi la nomon de la lingvo korekte.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @12:31AM
"literumi" ?
Erm . . . please be literate and spell the name of the language correctly ?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @12:44AM
OK
Se plaĉos al vi, silabu prave la nomon.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Non Sequor on Friday September 25 2015, @02:43AM
Mi nin estis conata cun ĉi dialektu
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 25 2015, @02:21PM
Hey now, can't we all sing "Jen Nia Mondo?"
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Friday September 25 2015, @05:47AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @07:06AM
well, if you do, it won't take you a lot of time to speak fluently so it's not a lot of time wasted if it doesn't become popular. It's engineered to be easy to learn.
(Score: 1) by lcall on Friday September 25 2015, @01:20PM
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 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_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.
I don't think aficionados usually 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 [wikipedia.org], or search https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto [wikipedia.org] for "native").
Then there's the side benefit of being by far the cheapest effective 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!
(PS: 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. Also, feel free to point me to how link text should be covered with a url when posting.)
(Score: 1) by lcall on Friday September 25 2015, @06:22PM
(Score: 2) by eof on Friday September 25 2015, @12:25AM
I submitted this. The summary provided misrepresents the article. The quote that it gives is from the section "You want to make money in growth markets? These will be your languages", which is the first of four. The article goes on to talk about people with other goals: speaking with as many people as possible; speaking only one language while traveling; or learning about culture.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @12:32AM
If you want better results, provide better submissions. You could have written just a little more in your summary and skipped the complaint in the comments.
(Score: 3, Funny) by frojack on Friday September 25 2015, @12:52AM
So maybe a little more time spent submitting would be do then?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday September 25 2015, @06:15PM
Wait, are you complaining about your own summary?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday September 25 2015, @06:15PM
Parent post is stupid!
(Score: 1) by Kenny Blankenship on Friday September 25 2015, @12:28AM
...or Python
Someday, even Killer Meteors must fail.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @12:30AM
Groovy
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @12:37AM
I'm pretty sure DNA will be rewritten in Javascript soon. Cause Javascript.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @02:38AM
No, in Powershell.
No one ever gets fired for choosing microsoft.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Covalent on Friday September 25 2015, @12:53AM
Just finished a long trip through Europe. Nearly everyone spoke English remarkably well.
The fact that they are learning it while we Americans learn nothing tells you all you need to know.
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday September 25 2015, @12:59AM
No, it doesn't. I still don't know who killed JFK.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday September 25 2015, @03:02AM
It's been in the news, duh... it was, like, Oswald! Everyone knows this because teh Warren Commission?!?
Man, where you been? Back and to the left????
:)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday September 25 2015, @04:35AM
:)
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Friday September 25 2015, @03:05AM
You don't need to know.
The Musk/Trump interview appears to have been hacked, but not a DDOS hack...more like A Distributed Denial of Reality.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday September 25 2015, @04:33AM
Of course, an authoritarian would say that. Since when it is you that defines my needs?
(that was a nice bridge - large trollish grin)
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @01:00AM
There is a lot of value in being able to speak a language but not look like you speak the language. My wife is indian born and speaks hinglish with her family, her parents barely speak english at all - just enough to run a convenience store. But she does not look indian at all and knows how to keep her mouth shut. And so she is constantly underestimated by native hindi and urdu speakers who think they can talk about their business in front of her with impunity.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @01:12AM
Wow, your wife is the exact opposite of Mindy Kaling, who looks Indian and sounds like a Valley Girl.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 25 2015, @12:29PM
I had this experience all the time in Japan. My girlfriend there was Japanese-Canadian and didn't speak a lick of Japanese. I did. Japanese would often turn to her and talk about me, not realizing we were together. She'd look at them blankly and I'd reply in Japanese. The double- and triple- and quadruple-takes they did were legendary.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday September 25 2015, @06:46PM
I had a similar experience in Florida, when a couple of Hispanics were making fun of English speakers. I laughed, and said "You guys sound pretty funny, too" in Spanish. Their faces turned red and their jaws dropped.
Spanish is a very useful skill in many American places, like Florida, Texas, California, Chicago...
It is a disgrace that the richest nation in the world has hunger and homelessness.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @01:14AM
...That Americans already know the only language they need and the 'language of the future' is English, be it American or British?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @01:23AM
America is #1 and always will be. Go-o-o-o-o-o Bama!
(Score: 3, Funny) by TheGratefulNet on Friday September 25 2015, @01:36AM
time for one of my favorite jokes-
"what do you call someone who speaks 3 languages?" ("tri-lingual")
"what do you call someone who speaks 2 languages?" ("bi-lingual")
"so, what do you call someone who speaks 1 language?" ("an american")
(somewhat true, actually).
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @04:47AM
Wow, it might even be funny if it were true, but it's not [nytimes.com]. Sadly, as usual, Europeans aren't as special as they tell everyone they are.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday September 25 2015, @06:20PM
That link definitely doesn't say what you claim it says.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday September 25 2015, @06:52PM
The above AC is either trying to snow you with headlines or didn't RTFA himself. What his linked article says is "we don't know". Direct quote: "The celebrated multilingualism of not just Europe but also the rest of the world may be exaggerated."
MAY be exagerrated.
It is a disgrace that the richest nation in the world has hunger and homelessness.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @04:08AM
What does it tell you? All it tells me is that where you have a bunch of different languages squished together, the people who live in those regions learn multiple languages out of necessity. When you have big, contiguous areas with one language, there isn't the need. You'd probably be very shocked to learn that in the regions where the US and Mexico share a border, a much larger percentage of the population speak multiple languages than they do in the center of the US. It isn't so shocking to me, but then again I'm not a dumbass who can't grasp these simple concepts.
Many people in Europe know English because they have to learn it. There are a lot of multi-lingual Swiss. It isn't because of some cultural superiority, it is because they have three fucking languages in that country. Did you know that there are a lot of bi-lingual people in Quebec? And there they have social pressures to make you only speak French. The rest of Canada doesn't speak French because, and I'll type this slowly so you can grasp it, there isn't a driving influence to.
It is such a simple concept that I am shocked it is so hard to grasp. No wonder the Europeans don't have the capability to create Googles and Facebooks.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday September 25 2015, @06:33PM
I really don't know but I'd bet a far larger proportion of Europeans speak a two or more languages than Americans. Here, Spanish is the obvious choice for a second language, because almost all of the countries to our south speak it, It was incredibly helpful to me when I worked at Disney, as there were a LOT of South Americans and even Floridians who knew only Spanish. I learned Thai when I was in the USAF because I was going to Thailand.
Learning a language you'll never use is worthless. If I lived in the UK I'd probably learn German and French, simply because it would be useful.
If you don't use a language you've learned, you'll forget it, even your own native tongue! There's a Hispanic fellow who goes to the same bar I do who has been in the US for ten or twenty years, and forgot the Spanish word for "basement". I couldn't remember, and neither could another fellow who knew Spanish (I finally just googled it for him).
It is a disgrace that the richest nation in the world has hunger and homelessness.
(Score: 2) by penguinoid on Friday September 25 2015, @04:06AM
Learn the language of science, diplomacy, and commerce.
Remember, Rome died a long long time ago, but people are still learning Latin.
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @04:27AM
That would be, French.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday September 25 2015, @04:49AM
Leaving aside the Universal Translator ("Shaka, and the walls fell!) or the Babel Fish (so massively unlikely that, well, yes?), I was impressed with Joss Whedon's Firefly series on the Television. In the future, new colonized solar system, and the lingua franca? Chinese. Also the language that everyone knows how to curse in. Makes sense, when you do the numbers. England? Nasty, irrational off-shoot of German with the added complications of underlying Celtic languages, superimposed Norman French, erudite Latin, and even Greek for educated purposes? How did such a tiny country with such a bizarre language become the dominant language of the world? Oh, that's right, military conquest, and associated economic dominance. Most widely spoken language in India? English. I think everyone should read my language, just to be able to read Homer and Plato in the originals. They are divine writers. But if not that, Sanskrit. It is the most grammatically complete language. There are tenses that no one will ever use. You got to admire that in a language. Of course, not a lot of money in Sanskrit. You have to admire that in a language as well. Last thing we need is either a mercenary language, or a prostitute language. Amazing how often those two go together.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday September 25 2015, @06:54PM
That's the thing about English, it's made up of many other languages.
It is a disgrace that the richest nation in the world has hunger and homelessness.
(Score: 1) by purpleland on Friday September 25 2015, @05:48AM
It may seem obvious, I'd say follow what you're passionate about. Some of my colleagues, Americans and Brits don't just learn Mandarin but actually seem to enjoy immersing themselves by working for a period in China. One or two even end up marrying Chinese. My American manager speaks Russian, visits Russia frequently, and has friends he has fun speaking Russian with.
Not for the lack of trying but I've not done well learning new languages despite years of schooling in second languages. Learning a language simply because you think might be useful is a waste of time unless you're going to make a point of using it, or derive some pleasure from it.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @07:19AM
For a lot of people, it would be a good start if they learned to properly speak/write their native language.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @11:56AM
it's the language out of the above which has the most momentum right now.
Now, your kids should be learning Swahili in order to get other people to pay them to say Swahili is the language of the future 50 years from now.
(Score: 2) by Geezer on Friday September 25 2015, @12:30PM
The eras of Western civilization when a language achieved near-universality were characterized by overwhelming military and economic dominance. Latin became the lingua franca of its time because, well, Rome. Consider also the rise of English based on the heyday of the British Empire followed by by the American Century. The time of colonial world-conquering is over.
In a world of ever-increasing globalization coupled with advancing translation technologies, we may well never see another era where one nation-state's language achieves the influence seen in the past. China for now remains basically a gigantic self-ruled manufacturing colony, and Africa is just a raw materials source. India as a world power would make a great comedy.
Maybe the best language to learn is human understanding.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @01:50PM
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(Score: 1) by Osamabobama on Friday September 25 2015, @06:44PM
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @10:25PM
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(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Friday September 25 2015, @10:37PM
The tower of Babel, the curse of balal, however you look at it language is a bitch.
Thankfully, once you have (properly) learned one language, the second isn't that hard, and subsequent languages only get easier.
In practice, I think people will just start learning more languages, especially English or some pidgin version of it.
This is because the Internet is our Babel's tower [1], and the Internet, if it can be said to be located anywhere, is located in the US. Our tower of Babel was built using English and we cannot escape from that, for better or worse.
[1]: The tower was meant to unite all people, speaking one language.
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