rdearman wrote:I think fight is just fighting for second place, aka the silver medal. Nobody means actual fighting the title would have been better using the word competition rather than fight.
This is the most important part. English is different. These two fight over the second place and still in just some regions. I think we have already agreed that in some regions, this match is not even being played and other languages take the silver.
kanewai wrote:I pretty much agree with everything Cavesa wrote ... but French has one advantage that I think is being overlooked. I find that Francophone countries have more economic and cultural connections with non-Francophone countries than Spanish-speaking countries do. The few times I've been to international environmental conferences the second language has been French. Part of this, I suspect, is that so many NGOs are based in Geneva or Brussels. My impression is that Spanish-speaking countries tend to interact more among themselves, creating a world that is somewhat apart. A city like Paris is like New York and London - a cultural center for the world. I can't think of a Spanish-speaking city that is on that level. Mexico City (CDMX), for example, is one of the world's great cities, and I love it - but it is a cultural center for Latin America rather than the world.
My personal guess is that the 'struggle' between Spanish and French for second place won't be decided anytime soon.
I'd like to agree back with Kanewai. French has the advantage of being established in places, where the Spanish speaking countries haven't pushed the language so much yet. It is a huge advantage in those important NGOs.
But I wouldn't say it is just an advantage. The Spanish speaking countries keep a lot of motivation for the language learners exactly thanks to being a bit apart. Paris being so international actually removes the reasons to learn the language.
A few days ago, I saw a nice video about Erasmus. It was a motivational video like "don't worry, not knowing a language well is not a problem" and France was the example country. Yes, I agree that you shouldn't worry too much. But you shouldn't worry about the language because it is not such a big deal to learn it (if you are able to study a demanding degree, the idea of you being unable to get to B2 in a mainstream langauge, if you really try, is laughable). They were instead sending the message "don't worry, everyone is ok with you not knowing much, and English is always an option anyways!". It is a huge problem, that France is removing incentives to learn the language. Spain or LA countries are not doing this.
I am not saying this to support the Fr vs Es vs English part of this thread, English has already won, the Winter is not coming, it has already come (GoT reference). But the silver medal won't go to the language attacking English directly, that is not likely. But it will definitely belong to the langauge that does allow English to push it away the least. The language that sticks to its own ground.
PeterMollenburg wrote:So to really guage the usefulness and importance of which is more useful outside of Latin America for example or being right next door to France, then not only do we need to look at L2 learners of each language, but also immigrants and tourist numbers. That’s of course also ignoring literature, film, internet and so on.
Yes. And that's why I think the silver medal can only be discussed regionally, not globally.
There are also several (not only two) types of immigrants. Whether or not they make the local population more likely to learn the language, and whether or not will they become a visible part of the local culture, that depends on many factors.
romeo.alpha wrote:I have way more Spanish co-workers than French. Infinitely more in fact. (And more Portuguese than Spanish, incidentally). I speak French on a regular basis, and I've never had to learn Spanish, because the Spaniards have learned German (or English, or French), and Spanish guests will also speak either French or English.
This is very interesting experience! I have always seen Spaniards, who were sticking together because of the language barrier. On several occassions. Basically during any student exchange and similar kind of experience. As a language learner, I love that about them The other exchange students stick together and speak English, despite it being nobody's first language. Both groups are of course failing to learn the local language, true. But the Spaniards are typical of this (seems to be a universal view on them), with Italians doing this to a lower extent.
But I guess that individual Spanish natives finding a job abroad are no less likely to be good at foreign languages than anyone else. Here, they often learn Czech without much of a problem.
javier_getafe wrote:[Here in Spain, at schools, people study english, english , and english.
Hmm. Interesting. I think Spanish is therefore not too endangered by English, if even the best students with so much English teaching behind them still suck at it. It was fascinating, when I was in Spain and heard the local medicine students. I didn't mind their bad (and in some cases horrible) English at all, as a Spanish learner. It was awesome for me!. But one guy's horrible English almost lead to him physically attacking a foreign guy (and I was then acting as an interpreter. My active skills were around A2/B1 back then, you can imagine what it was like )
So, if the students with extremely good grades during their whole schooling, therefore great grades during many years of English classes, struggle to put together a simple sentence, what does the rest of the population speak like?
Another fact. In primary and secondary school in Spain. Every student need to do the A2 exam in primary and First exam in secondary. And I am talking about official exam from cambridge. The spain government has a special agreement with Cambridge school in order to asses every boy in Spain.
If that works, it is certainly a great thing and should improve the English of the people. Just paying Cambridge to do the real exams is a better solution than to pay a lot to a weird private company that makes watered down dubious exams (that is the Czech Republic's "solution").
Let's hope it won't diminish the love of the Spaniards for their own language in the international situations.
And I hope they test girls too
romeo.alpha wrote: I've met quite a few Arabs for instance who speak French but no English.
The Arabs speaking French are speaking it as their second native language usually, not as a foreign one. Several Arabic speaking countries have at least a part of their education system running in French. So, what do the people in France want doesn't matter much. If you are an Algerian, Moroccan, or Libyan with ambitions, you're likely to need French whether or not you ever meet any foreigner at all.