Will foreign people end up using English as their 1st language?

K.Raj   Thursday, October 28, 2004, 17:40 GMT
Language is the passport or identity of one's culture. If one's language dies,one loses his culture.A language should not be allowed to die.
Mxsmanic   Thursday, October 28, 2004, 19:56 GMT
Culture creates language—not the other way around. Preserving a language will not preserve a culture, but preserving a culture tends to preserve a language.
saya   Friday, October 29, 2004, 00:37 GMT
>My question is : Will the whole world end up speaking English?
>How do you feel about this ?

I'm a Japanese. I never thought and will never think that our language will be overcome by English in my country. If it happened, it's like we stop being Japanese. It's possible we stop being Japanese in a remote future before the time we Japanese all speak some language like a present day's English instead of Japanese but I think or hope at that time the language is not called 'English' but 'Globish'.

saya
Easterner   Friday, October 29, 2004, 07:30 GMT
K.Raj said: >>Language is the passport or identity of one's culture. If one's language dies,one loses his culture.A language should not be allowed to die. <<

I think this is true most of the time. We also have a saying in Hungary: "Language is the life of a nation", but there are some counter-examples as well, where culture is so strong that it may survive a language, or even create another one. The Irish, for example, were at the point of giving up their original Gaelic language completely in the second half of the 20th century, and there has been more than one shift among the Jews with regard to spoken language (Old Hebrew -> Aramaic -> Yiddish -> Ivrit), but both cultures preserved their distinct identity and sense of community in spite of more than one shattering influence from outside. In case of the Jews, I think it's true what Mxsmanic said: Yiddish is the product of a specific Jewish culture, even if it is based on a High German dialect, and the same is true for Ivrit, a revived version of Hebrew. So I also tend to think that culture is more primary than language, although language is an integral part of cultural identity (see the attempts at language revival in Ireland).
nic   Friday, October 29, 2004, 11:59 GMT
tO TISTE,


-Breton Absolutly don't agree
-Catalan Absolutly don't agree
-Channel Island French ???
-Occitan reborn
-Basque Absolutly don't agree



-Dalmatian dead
-Romansch Absolutly don't agree
-Francoprovençal which one?
-Walloon Absolutly don't agree
Tiste   Friday, October 29, 2004, 17:52 GMT
to nic:

-Breton , ENDANGERED
-Catalan , ENDANGERED
-Channel Island French ( I'll bet you don't even know what that is ... ),
ENDANGERED
-Occitan (spoken by elderly people, kids don't care anymore...),
ENDANGERED
-Basque , POTENTIALLY ENDANGERED
-Dalmatian ( I'm talking about the dialect , duh....), ENDANGERED
-Romansch , ENDANGERED
-Francoprovençal ( All the varaints are spoken by the elderly ) ,
ENDANGERED

-Walloon is recognized as a regional language by the Belgian Goverment
( I'm Belgian , I know these things )


You don't even know what you're talking about , do you ?
Give it a rest ,man. You know I'm right ...
Toasté   Friday, October 29, 2004, 20:01 GMT
So you're Belgian... oh, yes, now I see. I forgot that being Belgian automatically makes you the final judge on the life and death of European languages. No accident, I guess, that Brussels is the seat of the Eurocracy.
Tiste   Saturday, October 30, 2004, 10:47 GMT
To Toasté

What I meant was
I know about the Belgian regional languages...
( because I'm Belgian .)
And I certainly wouldn't be telling you about endangered languages if none of it was true ...
I just want to make this clear , It's not because I'm Belgian that I'm always right .I believe every one should have his own opinion about the things that
are beeing said here .

Plus , I was in a bad mood that day , so cut a guy some slack ;)

Greetzzzz ;););)
Sanja   Saturday, October 30, 2004, 11:51 GMT
"Sanja, has anybody ever considered using Arabic script for Bosnian Moslems? Or is everybody happy with Roman script?"

A long time ago people in Bosnia used a special variant of Arabic which was accustomed to our language, it was called "arabica". There was one more alphabet that was used in Bosnia, called "bosancica". But in these modern times everyone just writes Roman alphabet, but most people (at least literate ones) know Cyrillic alphabet too.
Sanja   Sunday, October 31, 2004, 18:36 GMT
Oops, I think "adjusted" would be a better word than "accustomed".....sorry.
Gee   Sunday, October 31, 2004, 19:56 GMT
Hey Sanja , wich nationality do you have ? ( I'm just curious , because you know so much about former-yugoslavia .... )
Sanja   Tuesday, November 02, 2004, 15:59 GMT
Gee, I'm from Bosnia & Herzegovina.
Paulski   Wednesday, November 03, 2004, 18:34 GMT
"They don't speak English if they can speak Dutch".

I don't entirely agree with this. (I live in Holland). Some of my Dutch friends will continue in English even when the 'foreigner' has left the room or conversation. English is used to express where Dutch may fail.
Paul   Friday, November 05, 2004, 15:57 GMT
English has a higher value than German, in Holland, for some strange cultural reason.
Even though a lot of people know German better than English.
Most Dutch people tend to be very practical about language, for some strange cultural reason. At least Standard Dutch, as opposed their local Language Twents, Frisian, etc.
Only about 1/2 the Dutch speak standard Dutch as there home Language.
Maybe it is a reaction to the Language crazyness in Belguim and to a lesser extent France and Germany.

Any first hand info?
I am puzzled.
Regards, Paul V.
Damian   Monday, November 08, 2004, 23:08 GMT