Tower Of Babble: Non-Native Speakers Navigate The World Of 'Good' And 'Bad' English

General discussion about learning languages
Cainntear
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3469
Joined: Thu Jul 30, 2015 11:04 am
Location: Scotland
Languages: English(N)
Advanced: French,Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Intermediate: Italian, Catalan, Corsican
Basic: Welsh
Dabbling: Polish, Russian etc
x 8665
Contact:

Re: Tower Of Babble: Non-Native Speakers Navigate The World Of 'Good' And 'Bad' English

Postby Cainntear » Mon May 17, 2021 9:24 pm

tiia wrote:
Cainntear wrote:Then there's the soul-crushing phenomenon of finding your life and your social value purely dictated by language, with many people only talking to you to practice their English and losing all interest in the conversation when you try to use their language. It can be really wearing when you can't just relax and unwind because you're forced to always consciously moderate your language during your leisure time in exactly the same way you have to in your work time. And then you move home from Italy not having had any opportunity to really improve your Italian, having never been given your full pay by some shoddy little school that wasn't paying you much to start off with.

I'm sorry, but I think complaining about not being able to use your native language at a native level while living abroad is somehow ridiculous.

So do I. I was complaining about not being allowed to use one of my L2s: Italian.

So I have to disagree that people always just see an English-speaking native as free practise. At least here they do this with everyone regardless of their native language.

So as a non-native who's never had the experience of almost their entire social life being dominated by the expectation to offer free practice and free lessons, you're telling someone who's had the experience of almost their entire social life being dominated by the expectation to offer free practice and free lessons that you don't believe people have the experience of almost their entire social life being dominated by the expectation to offer free practice and free lessons...?

I mean, I'm talking about a situation that was horrible for my self-esteem and mental health, so basically you're gaslighting me now.

(I actually spoke almost as much Spanish in Italy as Italian, because one of the people in the group I tended to socialise with was from Venezuela, and she was pretty much the only person who wouldn't force the conversation back into English all the time.)
3 x

Cainntear
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3469
Joined: Thu Jul 30, 2015 11:04 am
Location: Scotland
Languages: English(N)
Advanced: French,Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Intermediate: Italian, Catalan, Corsican
Basic: Welsh
Dabbling: Polish, Russian etc
x 8665
Contact:

Re: Tower Of Babble: Non-Native Speakers Navigate The World Of 'Good' And 'Bad' English

Postby Cainntear » Mon May 17, 2021 9:43 pm

Le Baron wrote:
Cainntear wrote:Just because it isn't universal natural law and inviolable truth doesn't mean that it didn't emerge organically.

Well...'organically' might well be a slippery word here. There's absolutely no doubt that English was spread around the globe by force during colonialism.

I'm not talking about English's status in colonies, but English's status as an international language beyond the colonies.

Why did English spread beyond English-speaking colonies? It wasn't by design, it wasn't planned, it was an emergent phenomenon. It happened not because anyone went out trying to convince people to learn English, it's because US culture was considered "cool". And a large part of the reason US culture came to be considered cool is the fact that after the second world war, they were one of very few countries in the world that hadn't been economically and physically smashed to bits, so only the US had the time, money and mental health for the creative explosion of Hollywood and rock-and-roll.

But even at that, when I travelled through Europe as a kid in the 80s, English was still not all that common among the people we met.

It's only in the latter part of my life where English has exploded, decades after the end of the Empire, and with no conscious direction.

It is an emergent phenomenon -- not something "marketed" or designed.
4 x

Cavesa
Black Belt - 4th Dan
Posts: 4960
Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2015 9:46 am
Languages: Czech (N), French (C2) English (C1), Italian (C1), Spanish, German (C1)
x 17566

Re: Tower Of Babble: Non-Native Speakers Navigate The World Of 'Good' And 'Bad' English

Postby Cavesa » Mon May 17, 2021 9:58 pm

I don't think any anglophone can understand the pressure. It's not just about disagreement, it's simply about clear lack of first hand experience with the phenomenon. It's a mix of things, and the omnipresent marketing is a part of it and shouldn't be underestimated. It's just like claiming that the pink and blue colours for kid clothes or diamond engagement rings are naturally risen phenomena in the society. No, they are not. These things are now considered normal, you see ads with individual companies and no longer ads on these things in general. But there were huge marketing campaigns that contributed these things becoming so demanded.

It's not that different. The ads on English in the 90's in my country really were just as much ads on the language (back then seen as important, new, cool, but not necessarily destined to win over German), as on the individual schools.

Cainntear wrote:Oh I understand that, but the thing that you don't seem to be aware of is how crappy a career English teaching actually is. Yes, it's a career that's easy to get into, but it doesn't generally pay a professional wage, so it's the middlemen that run the schools that get the cash, and quite a lot of them aren't English speakers anyway.


No, as long as an expat with a CELTA earns more in Prague than a doctor, it is not a bad career. And as long as they are automatically prefered and paid better than the non natives (non natives get only the less prestigious teaching jobs left, such as public schools).

I'd love to get an easy career to take a month long class and then go teach my native language abroad and get all the advantages, instead of suffering for a decade and sacrificing a lot just to save lives. But no, my native langauge doesn't give me that option, I need to do much more to be seen as valuable.

Then there's the soul-crushing phenomenon of finding your life and your social value purely dictated by language, with many people only talking to you to practice their English and losing all interest in the conversation when you try to use their language. It can be really wearing when you can't just relax and unwind because you're forced to always consciously moderate your language during your leisure time in exactly the same way you have to in your work time. And then you move home from Italy not having had any opportunity to really improve your Italian, having never been given your full pay by some shoddy little school that wasn't paying you much to start off with.

But they get away with it, because there's always been a steady stream of "gappers" ready to "do the TEFL thing" for a year that can be sold to clients as "native-speaking teachers", so you're never going to actually have to pay for the full value of a well-qualified, experienced teacher.

So yes, being a native speaker has a certain level of privilege, but the thing about privilege is that it's not a binary thing -- there are many forms of privilege, and many ways to lack it.


What is soul-crushing about that? You can always say no, you can insist on Italian. And are you really so interested in people, who are not interested in you? You can also improve your Italian first, so that there is no objective excuse for switching to English. All of these are bits of advice I got, when I was complaining about the French switching to English. And I am not even an English native.

I totally agree with you, that those not serious TEFL people are a huge problem, I see how than can be dragging even your value down. It is really weird, how many of them even admit going to TEFL just because they failed at something else and wanted a nice expat life :-D But you can do something about it, I can't. There are professional organisations, there are ways to call out the bad practices, and so on. If the more serious English teachers started complaining about the low quality ones flooding the market, it might change. Breaking the public image that a native teacher is automatically perfect, that would be actually very useful.

tiia wrote:Although I'm annoyed by the position of the English language, I do not agree that there's such an extreme amount of marketing and expensive classes everywhere.
For example, from people I know in real life, I have also just heard of one company (in Germany) that offered language classes for everyone. They offered French, not English.


It varies by country. The marketing is everywhere in the Czech Republic and it is also strongly present in France. It's interesting that Germany and Finland don't have the same amount of English ads everywhere, but rather logical. Both the Czech Republic and France are among the countries with real or perceived bad level of English in the population, and an inferiority complex because of it (the French are in general very proud of their nationality and culture, but they've totally resigned on being also proud of the language). I saw it even during my year in France, people take it as personal failure, that they cannot speak English too well (even if they don't need it at all), instead of actually caring to learn a language of a neighbouring country (even one 10km away) or of an important minority. So, of course the schools profit on this, advertise a lot, and further feed this inferiority complex.

In the Czech Republic, language classes paid by the company or even tutoring in the working hours (!) are a very common benefit. Offered even to people, who don't really need English (otherwise they wouldn't have been hired without knowing it), or those who speak English, but want to improve to face exactly the situation described in the article. Other languages are rarer, but sometimes offered too.

Jinx wrote:He went in and started talking to the employee in English, asking her for help. She replied (in German) "This is Germany, you have to speak German here", to which he responded by yelling "Xenophobe! Racist" at her, and proceeded to call the police on her.

Of all the people commenting on the post, I was the only one who dared to suggest that he learn the German for "I'm sorry, do you speak English? My German is not good."

I'm not sure, but the answer from the employee is definitely quite rude. It reminds me of the former minister of foreign affairs, who once said a similar sentence to a reporter from the BBC asking a question in English. Guess what? The public response was not quite positive.
I think the employee could have just responded in German "how can I help you?".


Well, the situation is rather unfortunate on both sides. The local may have communicated differently, but calling the police just because someone doesn't want to speak English with you (in a country you willingly moved to, knowing it is not an anglophone one), that's mad. Really, such a person should have stayed at home.

Cainntear wrote:
tiia wrote:
So I have to disagree that people always just see an English-speaking native as free practise. At least here they do this with everyone regardless of their native language.

So as a non-native who's never had the experience of almost their entire social life being dominated by the expectation to offer free practice and free lessons, you're telling someone who's had the experience of almost their entire social life being dominated by the expectation to offer free practice and free lessons that you don't believe people have the experience of almost their entire social life being dominated by the expectation to offer free practice and free lessons...?

I mean, I'm talking about a situation that was horrible for my self-esteem and mental health, so basically you're gaslighting me now.

(I actually spoke almost as much Spanish in Italy as Italian, because one of the people in the group I tended to socialise with was from Venezuela, and she was pretty much the only person who wouldn't force the conversation back into English all the time.)


But the non natives face the same problem. We are expected to offer free English practice too, even if we are not natives, and not teachers. That's what you don't understand. Sure, there are other components to the problem too (such as misplaced good intentions), but the desire of the locals to practice their English is definitely contributing. And yes, it can totally dominate one's life, even a non teacher a non native, if you let it.

Yes, the Spanish natives tend to be excellent at this, I have the same experience. However, I have repeatedly had this experience with Italians too, being accepted and normally spoken to without switching. Perhaps you also had a bit of bad luck on people.

I totally emphatise with you, it does harm self esteem. I lived this experience too. Perhaps yours was even worse, as you are an English teacher, I totally believe that. But you became one by your own choice.

You could have sacrificed your youth and become for example a nurse. You'd surely find employment in Italy, if you had a nursing degree and a solid level of Italian! You'd definitely get the opportunity to really live your life in Italian and improve. But you'd have to invest much more into becoming a nurse first, you'd have a much less comfortable life, and you'd also get a lower salary.
1 x

User avatar
lysi
Yellow Belt
Posts: 98
Joined: Sat Mar 27, 2021 1:34 pm
Location: Ontario, Canada
Languages: English (N), French, Mandarin (Beginner)
x 300

Re: Tower Of Babble: Non-Native Speakers Navigate The World Of 'Good' And 'Bad' English

Postby lysi » Mon May 17, 2021 10:20 pm

Cainntear wrote:There's a human tendency to want to find someone to blame for everything and to ascribe intent to every undesirable outcome, but the world just doesn't work that way. The dominance of English is just another emergent phenomenon -- there is no intent and no central driving force; it is a self-sustaining meme. If you want to compare it to anything, it's like a superstition -- a folk belief that people undritically take as true, and will defend as true because they simply can't imagine it not being so.


It's incorrect to say that there is no intent. It's in fact the main intention of the British Council, and certainly has been since the end of WW2.

Cainntear wrote:Then there's the soul-crushing phenomenon of finding your life and your social value purely dictated by language, with many people only talking to you to practice their English and losing all interest in the conversation when you try to use their language.


This is my experience as well. I've spoken about this before but the only way I've managed to practice my French online without doing language exchanges is by just not saying I'm learning French and pretending to be a native. Not doing this either gets people responding to you in English or asking for constant help with English homework and hating you if you don't help. Even a fairly close friend refused to speak in French with me once I told him I was learning French - since his English was better (though honestly not overwhemingly better) than my French, isn't clear communication just more important? It is absolutely soul crushing.

Cainntear wrote:Why did English spread beyond English-speaking colonies? It wasn't by design, it wasn't planned, it was an emergent phenomenon. It happened not because anyone went out trying to convince people to learn English, it's because US culture was considered "cool". And a large part of the reason US culture came to be considered cool is the fact that after the second world war, they were one of very few countries in the world that hadn't been economically and physically smashed to bits, so only the US had the time, money and mental health for the creative explosion of Hollywood and rock-and-roll.


But that's not the entire reason. Look at "cool japan", Japanese content is widely popular all over the world and yet how many people really learn Japanese because of this? Certainly a lot, but proportionally, probably only 0.01% of the people who like Japanese content actually learn Japanese and a very small portion are actually successful.
4 x

User avatar
Le Baron
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3511
Joined: Mon Jan 18, 2021 5:14 pm
Location: Koude kikkerland
Languages: English (N), fr, nl, de, eo, Sranantongo,
Maintaining: es, swahili.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=18796
x 9390

Re: Tower Of Babble: Non-Native Speakers Navigate The World Of 'Good' And 'Bad' English

Postby Le Baron » Tue May 18, 2021 12:15 am

Cainntear wrote:I'm not talking about English's status in colonies, but English's status as an international language beyond the colonies.

Why did English spread beyond English-speaking colonies? It wasn't by design, it wasn't planned, it was an emergent phenomenon. It happened not because anyone went out trying to convince people to learn English, it's because US culture was considered "cool". And a large part of the reason US culture came to be considered cool is the fact that after the second world war, they were one of very few countries in the world that hadn't been economically and physically smashed to bits, so only the US had the time, money and mental health for the creative explosion of Hollywood and rock-and-roll.

That's actually just rubbish though isn't it? It spread beyond the colonies for two particular reasons: 1. Those colonies (including the ones the U.S. later occupied or semi-occupied to 'rebuild') were large and impressed the language yet further upon their neighbours. 2. The presence of a language spread by actual colonialism and then economic imperialism by English-speaking countries made it 'de rigueur' for business. The thing about the U.S. not having been damaged in WW2 and therefore being considered "cool" is indeed relevant, but an after-the-fact case when English was already established.

Cainntear wrote:But even at that, when I travelled through Europe as a kid in the 80s, English was still not all that common among the people we met. It's only in the latter part of my life where English has exploded, decades after the end of the Empire, and with no conscious direction.

It is an emergent phenomenon -- not something "marketed" or designed.

This is only partially true. There was less English about, but there was also no internet/WWW and neither was there as much economic 'speed' as there is now. It would be easy to point to the internet and say it represents some organic adoption of English with no impetus behind it, but this would be incredibly naive. There are of course people who just follow the flow and fall in line with the trend, especially if it is a trend with a possibility for economic benefit - so teachers, textbook companies, course providers, swindlers and the students themselves. But also there is the deeper question of how a certain language is pushed into prominence. You can't just disregard the history of how English came to prominence globally and talk about the last 20-30 years. People didn't just start learning it for no reason; its prominence now stems directly from its history and the current global position of its biggest exporter the U.S. The direction is very conscious.
1 x

Cainntear
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3469
Joined: Thu Jul 30, 2015 11:04 am
Location: Scotland
Languages: English(N)
Advanced: French,Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Intermediate: Italian, Catalan, Corsican
Basic: Welsh
Dabbling: Polish, Russian etc
x 8665
Contact:

Re: Tower Of Babble: Non-Native Speakers Navigate The World Of 'Good' And 'Bad' English

Postby Cainntear » Tue May 18, 2021 8:33 am

Cavesa wrote:It's not that different. The ads on English in the 90's in my country really were just as much ads on the language (back then seen as important, new, cool, but not necessarily destined to win over German), as on the individual schools.

But why were they advertising the language? Because it had already risen to international dominance and was therefore perceived as being critical to commercial and critical success.

The importance of English perhaps became a self-fulfilling prophecy in the 90s, but that still counts as an emergent phenomenon.

Cainntear wrote:Oh I understand that, but the thing that you don't seem to be aware of is how crappy a career English teaching actually is. Yes, it's a career that's easy to get into, but it doesn't generally pay a professional wage, so it's the middlemen that run the schools that get the cash, and quite a lot of them aren't English speakers anyway.


No, as long as an expat with a CELTA earns more in Prague than a doctor, it is not a bad career. And as long as they are automatically prefered and paid better than the non natives (non natives get only the less prestigious teaching jobs left, such as public schools).

There's a difference between a good job and a good career. A good career gives you progression, recognition and (hopefully) security, not just a higher-than-average wage for the place you live in. There isn't much of that in TEFL.
What is soul-crushing about that? You can always say no, you can insist on Italian. And are you really so interested in people, who are not interested in you? You can also improve your Italian first, so that there is no objective excuse for switching to English. All of these are bits of advice I got, when I was complaining about the French switching to English. And I am not even an English native.

It took me long enough to find people to talk to in the first place. Sometimes it's a question of accepting the lesser loneliness.
You could have sacrificed your youth and become for example a nurse. You'd surely find employment in Italy, if you had a nursing degree and a solid level of Italian! You'd definitely get the opportunity to really live your life in Italian and improve. But you'd have to invest much more into becoming a nurse first, you'd have a much less comfortable life, and you'd also get a lower salary.

I worked in IT before taking a career break teaching English. I found classroom teaching rewarding and decided to change careers. As you might have noticed, I'm going through a period of questioning my past choices at the moment.
3 x

Cainntear
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3469
Joined: Thu Jul 30, 2015 11:04 am
Location: Scotland
Languages: English(N)
Advanced: French,Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Intermediate: Italian, Catalan, Corsican
Basic: Welsh
Dabbling: Polish, Russian etc
x 8665
Contact:

Re: Tower Of Babble: Non-Native Speakers Navigate The World Of 'Good' And 'Bad' English

Postby Cainntear » Tue May 18, 2021 8:45 am

lysi wrote:
Cainntear wrote:There's a human tendency to want to find someone to blame for everything and to ascribe intent to every undesirable outcome, but the world just doesn't work that way. The dominance of English is just another emergent phenomenon -- there is no intent and no central driving force; it is a self-sustaining meme. If you want to compare it to anything, it's like a superstition -- a folk belief that people undritically take as true, and will defend as true because they simply can't imagine it not being so.


It's incorrect to say that there is no intent. It's in fact the main intention of the British Council, and certainly has been since the end of WW2.

That's fair. However, I'd still assert that this intent is largely irrelevant. The Alliance Française, the Goethe Institut, the Instituto Italiano di Cultura, the Instituto Cervantes, the Confucious Institute and others have essentially the same intent as the British Council regarding their language and culture and as I understand it similar funding, with the exception of the Confucious Institute, which I understand to be significantly better funded than its European counterparts.

lysi wrote:
Cainntear wrote:Why did English spread beyond English-speaking colonies? It wasn't by design, it wasn't planned, it was an emergent phenomenon. It happened not because anyone went out trying to convince people to learn English, it's because US culture was considered "cool". And a large part of the reason US culture came to be considered cool is the fact that after the second world war, they were one of very few countries in the world that hadn't been economically and physically smashed to bits, so only the US had the time, money and mental health for the creative explosion of Hollywood and rock-and-roll.


But that's not the entire reason. Look at "cool japan", Japanese content is widely popular all over the world and yet how many people really learn Japanese because of this? Certainly a lot, but proportionally, probably only 0.01% of the people who like Japanese content actually learn Japanese and a very small portion are actually successful.


"Cool Japan" has always either been a niche thing or a temporary fad. Japan has never had the cultural hegemony that English-language music + US cinema and TV had in the latter half of the last century. It took several decades of constant exposure to US culture before English got to the place it is now. Even if Japan overtook Hollywood tomorrow and then started down exactly the same path that English took, I'd be in an old-folks' home by the time it reached primary schools worldwide like English has.
3 x

Cainntear
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3469
Joined: Thu Jul 30, 2015 11:04 am
Location: Scotland
Languages: English(N)
Advanced: French,Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Intermediate: Italian, Catalan, Corsican
Basic: Welsh
Dabbling: Polish, Russian etc
x 8665
Contact:

Re: Tower Of Babble: Non-Native Speakers Navigate The World Of 'Good' And 'Bad' English

Postby Cainntear » Tue May 18, 2021 9:11 am

Le Baron wrote:That's actually just rubbish though isn't it?

Would you surprised if I was to say "no, I think it's not rubbish."...? Because, bizarre as it may seem to you that other people have different views on the world from you, we in fact do, and we actually believe the things we say -- we are not some faceless conspiracy of liars who know that LeBaron is correct and say otherwise for nefarious reasons.

It spread beyond the colonies for two particular reasons: 1. Those colonies (including the ones the U.S. later occupied or semi-occupied to 'rebuild') were large and impressed the language yet further upon their neighbours. 2. The presence of a language spread by actual colonialism and then economic imperialism by English-speaking countries made it 'de rigueur' for business. The thing about the U.S. not having been damaged in WW2 and therefore being considered "cool" is indeed relevant, but an after-the-fact case when English was already established.


Except that French was the established international language. How did English displace French?

t would be easy to point to the internet and say it represents some organic adoption of English with no impetus behind it, but this would be incredibly naive.

"No impetus" is different from "no intent". The internet is dominated by English in no small part because of the ignorance of the monoglot American techies that created the protocols it runs on. They wrote it for their own usecase -- 26 Latin letters, no diacritics etc -- and that made using it for other languages tricky. They didn't spec in protocols for automatically handling translated versions, and even now, multilingual websites use hacks and inconsistent techniques, and many people end up unaware that a version of any given site exists in their language.

It wasn't by design.
The direction is very conscious.

The direction certainly isn't random, but that doesn't mean that it's conscious.
1 x

User avatar
lysi
Yellow Belt
Posts: 98
Joined: Sat Mar 27, 2021 1:34 pm
Location: Ontario, Canada
Languages: English (N), French, Mandarin (Beginner)
x 300

Re: Tower Of Babble: Non-Native Speakers Navigate The World Of 'Good' And 'Bad' English

Postby lysi » Tue May 18, 2021 9:35 am

Cainntear wrote:"Cool Japan" has always either been a niche thing or a temporary fad. Japan has never had the cultural hegemony that English-language music + US cinema and TV had in the latter half of the last century. It took several decades of constant exposure to US culture before English got to the place it is now. Even if Japan overtook Hollywood tomorrow and then started down exactly the same path that English took, I'd be in an old-folks' home by the time it reached primary schools worldwide like English has.


I understand that Cool Japan has always been a niche/fad thing, but I don't think the example's value is diminished as a result. Instead, I was specifically trying to point to these niche groups (though perhaps they're not as niche as might be expected, given the popularity of anime) because I'm convinced that, for them, the cultural influence from Japan is almost certainly greater or at least as great as anything that the average person would have had from American culture at basically any point in time, and they really don't learn Japanese in any significant portion, or at least are not widely successful at it. A point could be made about the difficulty of the language/perception of its difficulty/availability of translations to English of basically everything, but fundamentally, cultural reasons on their own could not have the principal or major reason for the adoption of English. Certainly a supplementary reason, but no more. An economic angle seems far more adequate for examining this topic.
1 x

User avatar
Le Baron
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3511
Joined: Mon Jan 18, 2021 5:14 pm
Location: Koude kikkerland
Languages: English (N), fr, nl, de, eo, Sranantongo,
Maintaining: es, swahili.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=18796
x 9390

Re: Tower Of Babble: Non-Native Speakers Navigate The World Of 'Good' And 'Bad' English

Postby Le Baron » Tue May 18, 2021 5:30 pm

Cainntear wrote:Would you surprised if I was to say "no, I think it's not rubbish."...? Because, bizarre as it may seem to you that other people have different views on the world from you, we in fact do, and we actually believe the things we say -- we are not some faceless conspiracy of liars who know that LeBaron is correct and say otherwise for nefarious reasons.

I wouldn't say any of that. Just that your analysis is naive and incorrect. Views and opinions are lovely, but the harder facts of how English came to prominence and is maintained are more solid and more interesting.

Cainntear wrote:Except that French was the established international language. How did English displace French?

What? It was one colonial language among a handful. It and Spanish lost out to English. This is not news. The old 'French was the language of diplomacy' is a nice cultural touch for people to utter at dinner parties, but we know the truth about how colonial imperialism actually played out. Nonetheless France's hold (still) in Africa is really economic influence; via the currency they forced upon their African colonies 'du franc CFA', nowadays pegged to the Euro through France (see e.g. the recent book about it by Pigeaud & Ndongo). All this is hidden behind the façade of 'Afrique francophone' as some kind of cultural project. Nonetheless it is and was contained in pockets, not a 'world language'.

Cainntear wrote:"No impetus" is different from "no intent". The internet is dominated by English in no small part because of the ignorance of the monoglot American techies that created the protocols it runs on. They wrote it for their own usecase -- 26 Latin letters, no diacritics etc -- and that made using it for other languages tricky. They didn't spec in protocols for automatically handling translated versions, and even now, multilingual websites use hacks and inconsistent techniques, and many people end up unaware that a version of any given site exists in their language.

Yes indeed. Which is yet another case of English being given a priority leg-up. After all the early Internet kicked off just as enthusiastically in France, so what happened? (That's a rhetorical question, not a request). If your original 'view' was correct all the end users would be driving the language uptake, but on the whole they're not. Some are, but most are pursuing English to access the content, including the content of professional journals overwhelmingly in English.
2 x


Return to “General Language Discussion”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests