Multilingualism - a waste of money?

Dughorm · 07-11-2015 04:26PM #1

Multilingualism is the European preference at the moment and the EU and governments pump billions into encouraging multi-language learning programmes, language exchanges, document translation and so on.

But is it really working? Will this be the case in 50 years?

There was a time when Esperanto looked like it might take off but the tide turned. I think Multilingualism is slowly giving way to English only which I think is a pity.

So what do you think? I've put up a poll with 4 options
1. Multilingualism - keep things as they are
2. Everyone should speak English - because it's the language of business, only have English documents and invest in helping everyone speak English -
3. Everyone should speak in a different language e.g. French or German.
3. Give Esperanto another shot - it's fair for everyone.

LeTickler · 07-11-2015 04:36PM

Well ok within europe we should probably try for everyone speaking english.

But for the rest of the world dont even try. Spanish is probably the logical first choice for a world language.

sonny.knowles · 07-11-2015 04:38PM

Too many vested interests for this to change. Just look at Ireland and Irish.

biko · 07-11-2015 04:39PM

English is a minority language in Europe, but it's common as a second language.
We should all speak German, Adolf would have wanted it that way.

sonny.knowles · 07-11-2015 04:43PM

biko wrote: »

English is a minority language in Europe, but it's common as a second language.
We should all speak German, Adolf would have wanted it that way.

Someone should have told Merkel, she seems to have other ideas, looks like she want's Europe speaking arabic.

HalloweenJack · 07-11-2015 04:44PM

The world would be a very boring place if we all spoke the same language.

mzungu · 07-11-2015 04:46PM

Poll needs an option for Mandarin.

Eugene Norman · 07-11-2015 04:46PM

LeTickler wrote: »

Well ok within europe we should probably try for everyone speaking english.

But for the rest of the world dont even try. Spanish is probably the logical first choice for a world language.

English is the official or dominant second language in far more countries.

Not that I think that European countries are going to abandon their own languages of course.

4zn76tysfajdxp · 07-11-2015 04:47PM

biko wrote: »

English is a minority language in Europe, but it's common as a second language.
We should all speak German, Adolf would have wanted it that way.

sonny.knowles wrote: »

Someone should have told Merkel, she seems to have other ideas, looks like she want's Europe speaking arabic.

And Putin wants us to speak Russian! lol!

sonny.knowles · 07-11-2015 04:47PM

OSI wrote: »

5 posts in. Nice.

Well the thread had already been Godwinned in 4, needed to work hard to top that.

Captain Chaos · 07-11-2015 04:47PM

LeTickler wrote: »

Well ok within europe we should probably try for everyone speaking english.

But for the rest of the world dont even try. Spanish is probably the logical first choice for a world language.

Air traffic control world wide common language is English so there is a start. It's not Spanish for a reason.

The Randy Riverbeast · 07-11-2015 04:49PM

English would probably make the most sense as it is already learnt by a lot as their second language . I like the idea of something like Esperanto but I doubt it would take off.

Dughorm · 07-11-2015 04:50PM

Eugene Norman wrote: »

Not that I think that European countries are going to abandon their own languages of course.

I think it's quite possible that will happen - give it two generations - will say young Swedes, Finns, Dutch bother using their own language when their opportunities, entertainment and business will be conducted through English most likely?

Junkyard Tom · 07-11-2015 04:51PM

Well if you ask me I believe the children are our future. What we should do is teach them well and let them lead the way - show them all the beauty they possess inside, give them a sense of pride to make it easier, let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be.

Red Kev · 07-11-2015 04:53PM

Leave things as they are. People should speak first, second and third languages as they see fit or need to. It would be entirely unpractical to get everyone speaking the one language, or their dialect of it.

LeTickler wrote: »

Well ok within europe we should probably try for everyone speaking english.

But for the rest of the world dont even try. Spanish is probably the logical first choice for a world language.

No. It's English.

Spanish is spoken in Spain, Latin America, parts of USA, parts of South America and a handful of other places. Even in the Philippines its being overtaken by English in a short space of time.

English has become the default language of business, science and technology and as such its by some distance the largest language to choose to study worldwide. (Something we should be grateful for!)

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1 · 07-11-2015 04:55PM

LeTickler wrote: »

Well ok within europe we should probably try for everyone speaking english.

But for the rest of the world dont even try. Spanish is probably the logical first choice for a world language.

More people speak Spanish but more countries have French as their Official language. But English tops them in both categories.

Red Kev · 07-11-2015 04:57PM

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

Well if you ask me I believe the children are our future. What we should do is teach them well and let them lead the way - show them all the beauty they possess inside, give them a sense of pride to make it easier, let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be.

*looks for cigarette lighter to hold in the air, (fails to find one.)

4zn76tysfajdxp · 07-11-2015 04:57PM

Dughorm wrote: »

I think it's quite possible that will happen - give it two generations - will say young Swedes, Finns, Dutch bother using their own language when their opportunities, entertainment and business will be conducted through English most likely?

Amongst themselves? Probably.

sonny.knowles · 07-11-2015 04:58PM

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

Well if you ask me I believe the children are our future. What we should do is teach them well and let them lead the way - show them all the beauty they possess inside, give them a sense of pride to make it easier, let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be.

Wow, that's almost poetic. You have great talent, you should consider a career in poetry, or song writing if you are more commercially minded.

Dughorm · 07-11-2015 04:58PM

Red Kev wrote: »

English has become the default language of business, science and technology and as such its by some distance the largest language to choose to study worldwide. (Something we should be grateful for!)

Perhaps we're highly evolved in the language stakes in Ireland - give the other countries some time to catch up and we'll see that their native languages for hundreds of years will be struggling for survival too in a few decades!

Junkyard Tom · 07-11-2015 05:21PM

sonny.knowles wrote: »

Wow, that's almost poetic. You have great talent, you should consider a career in poetry, or song writing if you are more commercially minded.

Pretty good isn't it?

Further thoughts:

I think what we need is a great big melting pot. Ideally it would be big enough to take the world and all it's got, we'd keep it stirring for a hundred years, or more, and turn out coffee coloured people by the score.

LeTickler · 07-11-2015 06:32PM

Eugene Norman wrote: »

English is the official or dominant second language in far more countries.

Not that I think that European countries are going to abandon their own languages of course.

Captain Chaos wrote: »

Air traffic control world wide common language is English so there is a start. It's not Spanish for a reason.

Red Kev wrote: »

Leave things as they are. People should speak first, second and third languages as they see fit or need to. It would be entirely unpractical to get everyone speaking the one language, or their dialect of it.

No. It's English.

Spanish is spoken in Spain, Latin America, parts of USA, parts of South America and a handful of other places. Even in the Philippines its being overtaken by English in a short space of time.

English has become the default language of business, science and technology and as such its by some distance the largest language to choose to study worldwide. (Something we should be grateful for!)

Dorian Grumpy Senior wrote: »

More people speak Spanish but more countries have French as their Official language. But English tops them in both categories.

Tl;Dr - Non/No/Nao/No = No.

Re: premier choice for a world language.

Spanish belongs to a group of languages known as 'indo-european romance'
Also in this category is French, Italian, Portuguese.

English itself is strongly influenced by Latin/Romance linguistics. (linguistico)

If you are looking to implement a world language people will have to learn.

if you look at a map of the world which shows areas which speak a variation of indo-european romance it covers almost all the western hemisphere from italys heel to california. A good 75%.

The few remaining areas speak english which is itself a mix of Romance/Germanic.

So roughly half the globe already has a common linguistc root : indo-romance.

The largest language by quite a stretch in this group is Spanish.

Spanish is therefore the primero/premiere/primeiro/premier choice as it will be the most easy* for the grestest number of people over the greatest geographical** area.

*facil/facile/facil/facile
**geographico/geografico/geographique/geografico

meeeeh · 07-11-2015 07:21PM

I speak a language that survived Germanic , Italian domination, Napoleon was sniffing around and some nationalist tendencies after second world war. I certainly wouldn't want it disappear because One Direction sing in English.

IvyTheTerrible · 07-11-2015 07:30PM

There are many advantages to being bilingual. I can't post a link as I'm on my phone but I will later.

Aongus Von Bismarck · 07-11-2015 07:36PM

I live in Germany and am fluent in the language. That said, it would be easier for me to work here in Frankfurt without being strong in German, than it would be for my German colleagues who aren't fluent in English. It's the language of business. There's no doubt about that. I attended a conference in Vienna earlier this week, and all of the roundtable discussions and presentations were conducted exclusively through English.

Shenshen · 07-11-2015 08:12PM

I think English is the language of choice when two people speaking different languages meet and want to communicate.

But that does by no means imply that English will make other languages disappear. The vast majority of people are perfectly happy and capable to use English when it's advantageous, and still maintain their native language for communication with friends and family as well as day-to-day transactions.

I'm originally from Germany. The place has an official language - documented and recorded, in some aspects almost officially regulated.
Yet the regional dialects survive and thrive. The Southern ones are close enough to the official language with only some words and grammar differing, but the Northern ones would actually be closer related to English and Danish, with quite striking differences from the official language. And I won't even start on the Swiss dialects. I wouldn't be able to talk to someone from, say, Flensburg, unless we both resorted to the official language.

Language is something deeply personal to people, it forms an essential part of their identity. And from looking at Ireland and the efforts that have been made to try and make Gaelic more of a mainstream way of communicating for so many years now and with such limited success, I suspect any outside messing with languages is going to be a costly exercise in futility.

Shep_Dog · 07-11-2015 08:12PM

Dughorm wrote: »

Multilingualism is the European preference at the moment and the EU and governments pump billions into encouraging multi-language learning programmes, language exchanges, document translation and so on.
But is it really working? Will this be the case in 50 years?

Supporting multilingualism supports communication and interaction among people from different cultures. Learning another language is an intellectually profitable activity which can be very mind broadening. It's a generally good thing.

We could save money, though, by removing Irish from the list of languages supported in the EU as it's not spoken by a sufficiently numerous or distinct social group to justify the effort. Irish speakers would be disappointed, but I'm sure some of the money saved could be applied to the needs of genuine native speakers.

In 50 years time who knows? Whatever will be the case will be whatever people have chosen for the world they live in. Hopefully, the authorities won't interfere in this choice by forcing them to learn languages they don't wish to speak.

Dughorm wrote: »

I think Multilingualism is slowly giving way to English only which I think is a pity.

I don't think that the growth in English is a problem as it facilitates the exchange of ideas and understanding among people. Indeed, in Ireland, our use of English is a unifying factor and connects us to the outside world. It has facilitated social dialogue with our Northern Irish and English neighbours.

Eugene Norman · 07-11-2015 08:37PM

LeTickler wrote: »

Tl;Dr - Non/No/Nao/No = No.

Re: premier choice for a world language.

Spanish belongs to a group of languages known as 'indo-european romance'
Also in this category is French, Italian, Portuguese.

English itself is strongly influenced by Latin/Romance linguistics. (linguistico)

If you are looking to implement a world language people will have to learn.

if you look at a map of the world which shows areas which speak a variation of indo-european romance it covers almost all the western hemisphere from italys heel to california. A good 75%.

The few remaining areas speak english which is itself a mix of Romance/Germanic.

So roughly half the globe already has a common linguistc root : indo-romance.

The largest language by quite a stretch in this group is Spanish.

Spanish is therefore the primero/premiere/primeiro/premier choice as it will be the most easy* for the grestest number of people over the greatest geographical** area.

*facil/facile/facil/facile
**geographico/geografico/geographique/geografico

I'm pretty sure that nothing like 75% of the world population speak Romance languages (no need for the Indo).

What matters for lingua francas is how common they are as second languages, not first. English wins hands down on that.

Herb Powell · 07-11-2015 08:50PM

Multilingualism is the only fair way. Not everything is about money ffs.

wilhelm roentgen · 07-11-2015 09:20PM

Aongus Von Bismarck wrote: »

I live in Germany and am fluent in the language. That said, it would be easier for me to work here in Frankfurt without being strong in German, than it would be for my German colleagues who aren't fluent in English. It's the language of business. There's no doubt about that. I attended a conference in Vienna earlier this week, and all of the roundtable discussions and presentations were conducted exclusively through English.

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as 'Euro-English'.

In the first year, 's' will replace the soft 'c'. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy.

The hard 'c' will be dropped in favour of 'k'. This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome 'ph' will be replaced with 'f'. This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent 'e' in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing 'th' with 'z' and 'w' with 'v'.

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary 'o' kan be dropd from vords kontaining 'ou' and after ziz fifz yer , ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

EIN VOLK! EIN REICH! EIN FUHRER!

Corpus Twisty · 07-11-2015 09:29PM

Lol.^ Klas.

Multilingualism - a waste of money?

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