I'm a professional translator and have worked with cutting edge machine learning/deep learning/"AI" translation engines, and their output requires so much editing that it is often quicker to just translate it all from scratch. Machine translation has a loooooooooooooong way to go before it can be used for anything outside of "travel talk" (simple greetings, asking where the closest stations is, stuff like that) and documents written specifically to be machine translated.

A significant portion of my work consists of translating research papers on machine learning/deep learning (sometimes even on machine translation). Anyone claiming machine translation is anywhere close to usable for anything that matters is trying to sell you something.

I suspect that it will still be worthwhile to learn to speak and read other languages for a long time, especially if you want to actually communicate with people from other cultures, or enjoy literature/film in other languages.

newtmonkey wrote on 2020-11-05, 04:13:

I'm a professional translator and have worked with cutting edge machine learning/deep learning/"AI" translation engines, and their output requires so much editing that it is often quicker to just translate it all from scratch. Machine translation has a loooooooooooooong way to go before it can be used for anything outside of "travel talk" (simple greetings, asking where the closest stations is, stuff like that) and documents written specifically to be machine translated.

I'm a librarian and I've worked with software for automatic indexing. It's been a while but afaik it's a similar deal where the best they can do is still only something like 50% accuracy. Not bad but not good enough to really be useful for anything.

Personally, I speak English at home because my wife is American. Her German is very good but somehow we mostly end up with English; except when I'm doing things that feel really "German" to me like home improvement and generally everything that involves tools 😀

Esperanto is for few geeks, but yes English has the potential to become the whole world language. But there is a problem, many countries(imperial) define themself by teir language. I know the French are bad. But then you have not lived besides USSR/Russian Federation. And i hear that even today China has camps to assimilate the minorities. And i am not even gonna talk about Arab world.... language plus fundamental religion. Well Poles allso banned all abortion sooo tey are allso fundamental 😁

As a former French and German teacher and native speaker of a form of English I can pretty much agree with all sentiments here about how English is in many ways the worst choice of an international language but the best we have.

When I am back "home" it takes me a few days to speak English like a "native" as I have spent nearly more of my life outside of my "home" country than in it.

I would argue though that English easy to learn but difficult to master.

I recently read Steven Hawkins last book and I had to re-read every single sentence several times because his command of the language was so dense (in a good way).

Tolkien is up there as well.

I have been a moderator on internet forums since 1991.

In general I would say most native speakers are speaking and writing a much more "dumbed down" version than say 20 years ago.

They fail to see how lack of punctuation, capitalization and general good spelling makes it very difficult to communicate.

Tetrium wrote on 2020-11-05, 01:39:

I wouldn't expect this to happen in just 100 years, even though within such a timespan a lot can change. Perhaps due to climate […]
Show full quote

Con 2 botones wrote on 2020-11-04, 19:58:

Not long along, French was the Diplomacy language. My elder brothers, who attented high school in the 80s, were still taught Fre […]
Show full quote

Not long along, French was the Diplomacy language. My elder brothers, who attented high school in the 80s, were still taught French as a second language, not English. It was in the 90s when learning English became more and more convenient and encouraged (...) to non-natives.

I like English and I guess it is easier to learn than Esperanto.
In fact, it seems a language easier to be learnt than many others.
It could also be argued that the reason English Language impossed as the main international one, is linked to the anglosphere power. Helped by , what Errius wrote before, certain Pop-culture being globalized.

That said, I believe the non-native speakers poeples of the world, should be able to remain speaking their native tongues as their every day one, if that was their will. Recurring to English to communicate easily when it is needed.

Nevertheless, since we are headed to a world of blurry borders and dissolving identities (...), it is probable we end up speaking only one language in a 100 years.

I wouldn't expect this to happen in just 100 years, even though within such a timespan a lot can change.
Perhaps due to climate change Russian may become a more important language, or perhaps Mandarin? Who knows, thought personally I'd prefer English if only because English is already something of a mixed language already and currently the infrastructure for English is there already 😜

And a lot of the smaller countries have populations that are usually profound at several languages. Here in The Netherlands, even though almost everybody here can speak and understand English, in our day to day lives it's all Dutch that we speak here (except maybe excluding the occasional hipster or something that tries to make a cocktail out of English and Dutch which doesn't sound for a meter 😜 )

I know you were sort of joking, but I doubt Russian or Mandarin/ Cantonese would be adopted as the main international Language. Its written form would be too heavy, too inaccessible for westerners and non-natives in general. Such would be the cases of arabic languages too. Although, provided China or Russia become too prominent in the international power landscape, there could be some slow shift in that direction (displace English as the international business/diplomacy language).

Yes, I expect the Netherlands to remain speaking Dutch for long. I was just making assumptions, an excercise of what the future could be (judging by the pace they are pushing globalization).
I met a guy from the Netherlands like 10 years ago, he was dating a local girl I knew. Nice person.
To my untrained/uneducated ears, Dutch (Flamenco?) sounds not so different to scandinavian languages. I like it, a language with character. Watched a couple of movies from the Netherlands too. A Romance tongue, on the other hand, would be more likely to take over 😜

well Norwegian and Swedish and Danish sound similar but Dutch sounds like more of mixture of German and English with a little Scandinavian mixed in there. Talking about Chinese and Russian, we should start all using latin alphabet for starters. Some countries have transitioned by the way. Turkey the biggest. And some countries have not switched from cyrillic just because "retaining good relations with "good friend" russia" 😉

Cyberdyne wrote on 2020-11-05, 13:49:

well Norwegian and Swedish and Danish sound similar but Dutch sounds like more of mixture of German and English with a little Scandinavian mixed in there. Talking about Chinese and Russian, we should start all using latin alphabet for starters. Some countries have transitioned by the way. Turkey the biggest. And some countries have not switched from cyrillic just because "retaining good relations with "good friend" russia" 😉

Just "googled" it, your alphabet is latin besides 5 distinctive characters, correct?

Yeps we use the š ž almost never, those are only mainly for foreign words, and we even unofficially omit them sometimes. But yes we have 4 vocals that we use sometimes äüöõ. And the only letter that is only in our language, is õ. In reality we could merge ö and õ and nothing really will happen. And before there were any Estonian codepage we would replace õ with number 6 in old computers. Because others letters are present in standard ROM IBM ASCII alphabet.

Cyberdyne wrote on 2020-11-05, 14:19:

Yeps we use the š ž almost never, those are only mainly for foreign words, and we even unofficially omit them sometimes. But yes we have 4 vocals that we use sometimes äüöõ. And the only letter that is only in our language, is õ. In reality we could merge ö and õ and nothing really will happen. And before there were any Estonian codepage we would replace õ with number 6 in old computers. Because others letters are present in standard ROM IBM ASCII alphabet.

Interesting. Could you recommend a movie from Estonia to watch (art cinema, if possible)? I know Auli (band) from Letonia, anything similar I should know from Estonia?

If you like war movies then "1944". This is the name of the movie. I know it has english subtitles an is praised and well known. Most of our other movies are comedies, and contain lots of inside jokes, so really not enyoiable for foreigners. If you want to hear a good rock music mixed with our own old music, then youtube "Metsatöll".

Con 2 botones wrote on 2020-11-05, 13:38:

I know you were sort of joking, but I doubt Russian or Mandarin/ Cantonese would be adopted as the main international Language. […]
Show full quote

Tetrium wrote on 2020-11-05, 01:39:

I wouldn't expect this to happen in just 100 years, even though within such a timespan a lot can change. Perhaps due to climate […]
Show full quote

Con 2 botones wrote on 2020-11-04, 19:58:

Not long along, French was the Diplomacy language. My elder brothers, who attented high school in the 80s, were still taught Fre […]
Show full quote

Not long along, French was the Diplomacy language. My elder brothers, who attented high school in the 80s, were still taught French as a second language, not English. It was in the 90s when learning English became more and more convenient and encouraged (...) to non-natives.

I like English and I guess it is easier to learn than Esperanto.
In fact, it seems a language easier to be learnt than many others.
It could also be argued that the reason English Language impossed as the main international one, is linked to the anglosphere power. Helped by , what Errius wrote before, certain Pop-culture being globalized.

That said, I believe the non-native speakers poeples of the world, should be able to remain speaking their native tongues as their every day one, if that was their will. Recurring to English to communicate easily when it is needed.

Nevertheless, since we are headed to a world of blurry borders and dissolving identities (...), it is probable we end up speaking only one language in a 100 years.

I wouldn't expect this to happen in just 100 years, even though within such a timespan a lot can change.
Perhaps due to climate change Russian may become a more important language, or perhaps Mandarin? Who knows, thought personally I'd prefer English if only because English is already something of a mixed language already and currently the infrastructure for English is there already 😜

And a lot of the smaller countries have populations that are usually profound at several languages. Here in The Netherlands, even though almost everybody here can speak and understand English, in our day to day lives it's all Dutch that we speak here (except maybe excluding the occasional hipster or something that tries to make a cocktail out of English and Dutch which doesn't sound for a meter 😜 )

I know you were sort of joking, but I doubt Russian or Mandarin/ Cantonese would be adopted as the main international Language. Its written form would be too heavy, too inaccessible for westerners and non-natives in general. Such would be the cases of arabic languages too. Although, provided China or Russia become too prominent in the international power landscape, there could be some slow shift in that direction (displace English as the international business/diplomacy language).

Yes, I expect the Netherlands to remain speaking Dutch for long. I was just making assumptions, an excercise of what the future could be (judging by the pace they are pushing globalization).
I met a guy from the Netherlands like 10 years ago, he was dating a local girl I knew. Nice person.
To my untrained/uneducated ears, Dutch (Flamenco?) sounds not so different to scandinavian languages. I like it, a language with character. Watched a couple of movies from the Netherlands too. A Romance tongue, on the other hand, would be more likely to take over 😜

It could still be possible for a different language branch to become more dominant if the existing dominant language group(s) somehow lose their dominance. This is how things have gone for many hundreds of years, though circumstances will always be non-identical.

I mostly know about Danish. I know Norwegian and Swedish sound somewhat different from Danish. I can't really distinguish Swedish from Norwegian. Icelandic is somewhat different again (they have the rolling RRR like we have in The Netherlands) and I never heard Faraoese so can't comment on that.

THE language that sounds most similar to Dutch is unmistakingly Afrikaans. I don't really know about German sounding that similar as it's hard for me to judge that as I grew up bilingual (trilingual if if I count in the limited English I learned before school as well).

Danish and Dutch are not really mutually intelligible, but when it's written I can often make out simple stuff like "Good afternoon" and "Forbidden to turn left here" and the like. My impression is that culturally speaking Dutch and Danish can be quite compatible.

It's not surprising that for the untrained ear Dutch sounds similar to other Germanic languages. It's about the same for Dutch people who hear several different latin-based languages they probably never heard before like for instance Romanian or Rhaeto-Romanic (== minority language in Switserland).

Once the arctic ocean is largely ice free, think of all the extra usable coastline Canada and Russia will get, complete with river systems, enormous land areas which are virtually undeveloped right now. And both areas are mostly unpopulated at this time.

Cyberdyne wrote on 2020-11-05, 14:19:

Yeps we use the š ž almost never, those are only mainly for foreign words, and we even unofficially omit them sometimes. But yes we have 4 vocals that we use sometimes äüöõ. And the only letter that is only in our language, is õ. In reality we could merge ö and õ and nothing really will happen. And before there were any Estonian codepage we would replace õ with number 6 in old computers. Because others letters are present in standard ROM IBM ASCII alphabet.

I've been wondering for a while, in how much is Estonian mutually intelligible with Finnish?

We sound alike, and have similar words, some similar words have different meanings. Even inside Estonia we have older dialects that are more different.

English is the "Tower of babble".
People love other languages and traditions.
Why travel the world is everyone is the same ?

This is why the USA is so divides and confused ?

Why have many languages and fonts on a computer if everyone is the same ?

Why don't all computers look the same ?

USA will FALL like the " tower of babble ".

People are starting to realize that traditions and languages is very important and worth MONEY.

These American cookie cutter homes are going to be a thing of the past.

People want to be different and express this in how they live.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-11-09, 12:47:

English is the "Tower of babble". People love other languages and traditions. Why travel the world is everyone is the same ? […]
Show full quote

English is the "Tower of babble".
People love other languages and traditions.
Why travel the world is everyone is the same ?

This is why the USA is so divides and confused ?

Why have many languages and fonts on a computer if everyone is the same ?

Why don't all computers look the same ?

USA will FALL like the " tower of babble ".

People are starting to realize that traditions and languages is very important and worth MONEY.

These American cookie cutter homes are going to be a thing of the past.

People want to be different and express this in how they live.

I suspect your were trying to express the "diversity is our strenght" mantra is a lie and the cause of USA decadence.

USA started to fall in the 1980’s with the Universal Metric system. ( Asian and European cars )

And it accelerated when they switched from 486 to Pentium.

I only hate that in the dawn of home computer history we had that NTSC PAL 60/50Hz divide, so in principle we got more or less different computers even if the model name was the same.

Most of USA industry has moved to SI system by now, finally.

Tja, ik weet het niet, hoor. Het zou een stuk saaier worden als iedereen Engels sprak. 😉

Das finde ich auch. :)