Nils, "You can never understand one language until you understand at least two." -Ronald Searle (1920- ) That quotation might be debatable. What is not is that the major languages, especially English, dispersed world wide via the Internet, are putting pressure on minority languages far more than previous electronic media such as TV (see below). So, it's not just a matter of language adaptation, but rather of survival. German will adapt and survive, as will other major languages like French and Spanish. They will be interesting case studies. But aboriginal languages worldwide are threatened, as are many in Africa and South America, which is a loss of cultural diversity (as suggested by the Safir quote someone posted). Yes, for better or worse, English has become the lingua franca, more so than Latin or French ever were.........Alex Kuskis Minority languages at risk: UNESCO Last Updated Tue, 21 Feb 2006 15:54:11 EST CBC Arts More than half of the world's nearly 6,000 languages are in danger of disappearing, pushed aside by dominant languages such as English, UNESCO warned Tuesday. A group of linguistic specialists gathered in Paris Tuesday for a conference marking the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's sixth annual International Mother Language Day. When a language dies, "it's a vision of the world that disappears," UNESCO director general Koichiro Matsuura said, according to Agence France-Presse. Delegates at the conference discussed new initiatives to protect linguistic diversity worldwide, including a plan for an Italian museum dedicated to languages and the elevating of the African Academy of Languages to a more significant role in the African Union. Participants, who included delegates from Europe, Africa and Latin America, shared stories about the difficulties faced by those who speak minority languages. Former Iceland president Vigdis Finnbogadottir, who led the country as its first female president from 1980 through 1996, also presented the 2005 Danish documentary In Languages We Live - Voices of the World, which examines the impact of disappearing languages through the stories of individuals. This year, the conference also looked at the specific issue of linguistic diversity on the internet. "It is not necessary that these [minority] languages disappear under the weight of others," said Musa Bin Jaafar Bin Hassan, president of the General Conference of UNESCO. "They should be means of expression that live and exist alongside the major languages of the world." http://www.cbc.ca/story/arts/national/2006/02/21/unesco-languages-disappear.... Alex, you just indicated why English speaker indeed should learn another language, or why it is not such a bad idea, despite the fact that all the others do speak some form of English... the reasons to learn a language go beyond love or curiosity... to speak or understand a language - not the same thing necessarily - also means to understand a culture, or is at least a gateway to begin to understand... language also transports meaning and culture.. "The Internet is not static, continues to evolve, mostly out of the English- speaking realm where it's so integrated with the culture, " if this is true for the Internet, then other languages may give a hint on how these adapt to this technology, how they see the world etc... also we all can communicate with English as a lingua franca, we may not understand the other rightly.. just a thought.... best nilz
The downside of all this for the English-speaking world is that it reinforces mono-lingualism and language chauvinism. It's admirable to learn a language for love or curiosity, but the fact is that most people do it for economic advantage and up until recently, English speakers haven't had to.
-- Dr. Nils Zurawski Universität Hamburg Inst. für kriminologische Sozialforschung Allende-Platz 1 20146 Hamburg Germany tel. +49 (0) 40 42838 6185 fax. +49 (0) 40 42838 2328 Projekt zu Videoüberwachung: http://www.surveillance-studies.org