With apologies to Billy Joel, we didn’t start the fire:
Raise your hand if you knew someone that worked at a Web 2.0? Do they work there anymore? No.
Via TechCrunch
January 11, 2009
Boom goes the dynamite
More on that open language you’ve probably heard about
If you’re interested in more statistics about the rise of English-as-a-second language be sure to check out:
- “The triumph of English: A world empire by other means” from The Economist (full text)
- “The Triumph Of English in the global marketplace” from Fortune magazine
- “Why global English may be the end of ‘English as a Foreign Language’” by English Next (pdf)
All of these are a few years old, so it would be interesting to see the updated numbers. Yet at the same time, some of the stats are – at least on paper – impressive: Mongolia is pushing for a completely bilingual society (with English) and more than 85% of all international governmental organizations conduct their business in English. And of all places (geopolitically speaking) even kids in Syria and Jordan are taught English beginning in elementary school.
Ignoring the economic and political aspects, there are several advantages that English continues to have, including the ability to incorporate words from other languages (e.g., loan words – a concept that killed French due to Parisian purists) and a self-reinforcing psychology (e.g., the belief that to conduct commerce on the Internet, you need to know English).
Arguably the biggest hurdle it will face in the coming years will be from a rapid increase in Spanish speakers (who really like to have babies) and Chinese Mandarin.
The reason India’s indigenous languages probably won’t be as big of a roadblock is because that none of them really have much traction in terms of global diplomacy, business, pop entertainment, etc. Furthermore, India itself is fractured into several large, competing dialects (Hindi, Marathi, Tamil) and as a result the one increasingly adopted language that brings these distinct tongues and cultures together is English. And while some Indians are reminded of the self-righteous Macaulay’s Minute of the colonial era, without its English-heritage much of the corporate outsourcing probably wouldn’t have ended up on the subcontinent.
The biggest drawback for Chinese as a whole is that there are numerous, unintelligible languages spoken throughout this large tract of East Asia (see this picture). Cantonese people (down in the south near Hong Kong) typically can’t understand what Taiwanese people say let alone those from Shanghai (Shanghaiese) or even Beijing. The one uniting aspect for everyone including the 56 ethnic minorities is the written language, yet even then there is a gulf between Traditional and Simplified Chinese (although typically if you learn one, you can usually guess what the lingo says).
In the year 2040
If I were a betting man I’d wager that Mandarin Chinese (of which the Beijing area is considered “the model”) will become increasingly important due in large part to China’s economic prowess, largest online population, and large overseas population (some 40 million from the diaspora). As a result, perhaps a hybrid Sino-XYZ world illustrated in Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age or Joss Whedon’s Firefly will take place.
The biggest wild card is Arabic, another diverse language that is somewhat splintered with regions that are not mutually intelligible. Yet, like Spanish, the population growth rate is huge and some regions are trying to diversify and open up to a global economy (e.g., UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait are trying to attract and develop industries outside of hydrocarbons).
One thing is just about certain, despite being sharing a homeland with two million industrial robots, the lingua Japanese is going to be sidelined in part because of the huge decrease in birth rate (it peaked at 127 million and is heading down to perhaps as little as 70 million in forty years). Similarly Korean is a dead end for the same reason, no one is having kiddos (it also didn’t help to have one-third of its speakers held captive in the North). And Russian? Unfortunately for Eastern Europe, Cyrillic is going the way of the silverback gorilla — conservationists are taking note. And don’t think that the other ‘Stans will be able to bail them out, it’s a (birth and immigration) numbers game now.
In contrast, in addition to institutional inertia and incumbency status, the one advantage that English and Spanish have, will be each other. They both use the Latin alphabet, have similar grammar/syntax rules, come from close branches of the Indo-European genetic tree and are both used in large, spread-out geographic regions due to colonization. Perhaps they will merge at some point… ¬øHablas Spanglish?
Hi, where can I buy some oily french fries?
A quick anecdote. Of the six airports I have been to in Asia, not only are all the signs in the local dialect and English, but I have always been able to count on the universal young woman that sits behind the information desk to speak crystal clear English. Will the leading indicator of “passing the torch” be when the young lady speaks the nuevo lingua franca crystal clear? Klingon, Esperanto, Elvish? Ceteris paribus, my money is on Beijing Mandarin — mixed with a megagulp of General American and un poquito español.
See also: Getting to know Korea
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