Oh, it's easy [LWN.net]

Oh, it's easy

Posted Feb 11, 2008 10:35 UTC (Mon) by forthy (guest, #1525)
In reply to: Oh, it's easy by rsidd
Parent article: Interview: Mark "Markey" Kretschmann (Not the Gentoo Weekly News)

Tss, the English language is a lingua franca because the two last superpowers were Great Britain and the USA. So for two centuries, English was spoken by the most powerful nations in the world - no wonder it is now spoken by many people in ex-colonies or allies of these superpowers. France might think it is a superpower, but its century of power was the 18th. It's power is long past.

This century will be dominated by China, and you can expect that Chinese will be a lot more important at the end of this century than English. That's just how powers work.

(Log in to post comments)

Oh, it's easy

Posted Feb 11, 2008 14:52 UTC (Mon) by smitty_one_each (subscriber, #28989) [Link]

Your idea may carry out, but keep in mind that key features of English are:
-Roman alphabet
-atonal speech
-massive vocabulary
-extensive market penetration

Coming 'round to the Department of Unfair Analogies, English==Python and Ruby==Chinese.  Not
sure what the Rails equivalent for Chinese is, but the sooner they work that out, the better
their chances of growing their market share.

[OT] English features

Posted Feb 11, 2008 22:50 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

The roman alphabet was shoehorned into English and it feels -- that is why its devilish pronunciation is a major barrier to learners. In comparison, Spanish, Italian or German are spoken much as they are written, and even French has more or less rigid rules.

Not sure what you refer to with "atonal speech", but if you refer to intonation English and Scottish people certainly speak in a highly tonal way. In comparison, the Spanish (from Spain) or the Russians speak with much less intonation fluctuations. It is only in the US and only in certain areas with massive immigration where accents have been washed out.

As to vocabulary, English speakers always boast of their ample choice of words, but I believe what you really have is excellent dictionaries. In dictionaries for other, more formalized languages only "official" terms spoken by the majority are collected. The huge amount of slang terms which are produced in any geographically dispersed language is mostly lost on them.

In fact the best selling point of English is its almost trivial grammar rules, but you only get to appreciate them when you have learned the thing. So we are left with market penetration, which is of course why we are all learning English like crazy. Not one century ago people were praising French for its expressivity and musicality; at least now we can be honest about it. English (and in particular the US variety) is the language of business and technical endeavors, which is perfectly fine if you ask me.