22 replies to this topic

[Mordent]

sknsoftwares, on Nov 25 2008, 11:42 AM, said:

Yes you are right english looks like the mostly used language but when you go remote in many a countries they did not use a single word of english. Obviously it is widely eccepted but even though in the top charts its third. So it will be difficult enough to grab the top status by english. As I said many other languages have made there position in charts and it is difficult to get rid of them as they are off other language speaking communities and so it will be difficult to make a chageover for them.

By no means am I suggesting that English is the most widely spoken language, but you'd have to admit that in terms of how prevalent it is in the modern world (the internet being a great example of how English is having an impact) it's certainly a forerunner.

As an example, while variants/derivatives of Chinese are, I'm sure, spoken by a hefty percentage of the world's population, you'd be hard pushed to prove that it is the most commonly spoken language by other frames of reference.

Using my previous example of the internet, while I'm aware that there are a whole host of Chinese internet sites out there I doubt they're as "international" (i.e. used by a wide range of nationalities and cultures) as English sites are. I haven't got any proof to back that up, but it's a pretty big hunch I have.

Again, though, we could argue about which language is the most common and therefore the "best" world language out there for years, my main argument, and the way this thread seems to be going, is in working out which language would make the best "international" language. Clearly there are many languages which stake a claim to being the best candidate, but does it really matter?

Given that the language would be introduced over time, after being approved by each nation that's interested, of course, why not construct the language from scratch? It would be just as difficult to learn for all nationalities (in theory), and would not be biased towards one particular nation in that they already know the language itself. As for the remote regions that basically have little/no contact with the rest of the world, does it matter? Whatever language is used as the international language, they wouldn't know any better any way.

[Nik]

Of course english is the global language. And about its future it will be as the local language in all countries.Even chinese people are also more excited to learn english. In my country I have observed many people wants to learn english and also they wants their child to complete their education only in english not in the local languages

[deadmad7]

Nik, on 17 August 2010 - 02:11 PM, said:

Of course english is the global language. And about its future it will be as the local language in all countries.Even chinese people are also more excited to learn english. In my country I have observed many people wants to learn english and also they wants their child to complete their education only in english not in the local languages

I don't think we should teach children only in English, English should merely be a Second Language if you are in non-english speaking countries. It is MORE important to preserve the local heritage and cultures. I would actually like it more if its diverse people from different part of the world rather than everybody speaking English and not knowing anything about their own country. Personally i believe that more LANGUAGES and MORE cultures that you know and have witnessed, the better life you would have.