Errius wrote:

Hollywood must play a huge role in this. The whole world watches American movies.

It helped me tremendously that they didn't dub the movies/TV-shows here. I remember travelling around Germany in 2009 and I was appalled how badly (even young) people understood day to day English. Obviously you shouldn't be expected to speak English everywhere, but it just puzzles me how people don't learn it "by mistake" with all this information and available resources at their fingertips.

I've been into English since the second grade of school and eventually got a translator's degree (second higher education). Got mistaken for a native speaker once or twice, which is incredibly flattering 😁 It's awesome to go anywhere in the world and be understood, at least partially!

Apart from travelling and work, English is very practical in many other areas. I love to watch movies in English, to hear the voices of actual actors. Some of them are crappy in Russian (e.g. Doctor Who, you can't translate all the jibber-jabber and maintain David Tennant's awesomeness at the same time). And it's always fun to watch GoT before everyone else in English and have the infinite power of spoiling it for your all friends 😜 Funny thing btw, I noticed long ago that after a week or two I have no idea which language I watched this or that thing in, for me it acts as a self-observed proof against linguistic determinism. There's also one more area where knowing English is very useful. I'm a pirate, and when it comes to old, mainly DOS games, getting one in English is often the only available option. Quality localisations in Russia started to show up around 2000, and before that they were more or less a lousy and messy experience.

The old text-parser Sierra titles gave me my first real practice in English, plus other games where long textual descriptions played an important role. Not that Leisure Suit Larry would be the first thing I'd let a 7-year-old play, but hey... worked out for me!

There are obvious benefits to having a global language; OTOH its 'monopoly' is such that I doubt I'll ever have a real reason to acquire a fluent *third* language, which is rather sad. Diversity of cultures is actually an important thing (in its real, literal meaning - not in the Newspeak sense of "let's minimize all differences between people, so that the lowest common denominator rules all, and everyone can be a good little consumer"). 😉

what if the person used a translator ? I would feel like kind of a bit cheated.
My guess is that the english language is trying to make it's way as being something everyone on earth can understand and speak, so people are more into acceptation rather than reprehension. I am thinking the clash really is about the oriental way to communicate.

Errius wrote:

It won't involve a fish in the ear though.

Bummer.

sf78 wrote:

I remember travelling around Germany in 2009 and I was appalled how badly (even young) people understood day to day English. Obviously you shouldn't be expected to speak English everywhere, but it just puzzles me how people don't learn it "by mistake" with all this information and available resources at their fingertips.

Because everything is dubbed here and almost everything the general public needs is available in German. You're required to learn it in school, but like any skill, if it isn't used now and then...

Even some of our top politicians speak English badly 😠

politicians from east Germany learned Russian at school. How good is your Russian? 😉

robertmo wrote:

politicians from east Germany learned Russian at school. How good is your Russian? 😉

Ummm... nonexistant 😵

I've lived in the UK as a native for the last 46 years and I'm still learning the language!

Errius wrote:

We're very close to human-like realtime computer voice translation. When that arrives, you'll be able to speak to anyone anywhere regardless of language. It's going to be interesting.

It won't involve a fish in the ear though.

Or translator microbes? 😊

chinny22 wrote:

...Broken/poor English seems to be an easy language to understand compared to others. maybe because English is made up of a mix of other languages.

Yes this seems to be the case. English has a huge vocabulary and a vast reservoir of idiomatic phrases compared to many other languages, and paradoxically this may help non-native speakers. Since it's not necessary to know every word, that there are so many ways to describe the same or similar things increases the chances a non-native will "stumble" on a useful vocabulary, broken as it might be, fairly quickly. And despite tons of exceptions and curious grammatical rules, English is none the less quite flexible and forgiving in sentence structure as far as brute communication goes - again improving the chances a non-native will be able to convey a cogent thought. The language can tollerate a high "signal-to-noise ratio".

This doesn't explain why English is emerging as a default global language (lots of economic, cultural and population distribution factors at play here) but it may help explain why it's done a fairly good job at being one.

Errius wrote:

We're very close to human-like realtime computer voice translation. When that arrives, you'll be able to speak to anyone anywhere regardless of language. It's going to be interesting.

It won't involve a fish in the ear though.

You'd be surprised...

tincup wrote:

This doesn't explain why English is emerging as a default global language (lots of economic, cultural and population distribution factors at play here) but it may help explain why it's done a fairly good job at being one.

Very good observation Gargamel, I think I oversaw that in my post! Oh no I mean Doctor Zorglub!

ElBrunzy wrote:

...I think I oversaw that in my post! Oh no I mean Doctor Zorglub!

hahah!.... signed Zorglub!

tincup wrote:

Yes this seems to be the case. English has a huge vocabulary and a vast reservoir of idiomatic phrases compared to many other languages, and paradoxically this may help non-native speakers. Since it's not necessary to know every word, that there are so many ways to describe the same or similar things increases the chances a non-native will "stumble" on a useful vocabulary, broken as it might be, fairly quickly. And despite tons of exceptions and curious grammatical rules, English is none the less quite flexible and forgiving in sentence structure as far as brute communication goes - again improving the chances a non-native will be able to convey a cogent thought. The language can tollerate a high "signal-to-noise ratio".This doesn't explain why English is emerging as a default global language (lots of economic, cultural and population distribution factors at play here) but it may help explain why it's done a fairly good job at being one.

I've read and re-read many (just twice really) your text, I found it hard to read it thinking you are an European native and so you speak french naively and you are such an advocate of the English language.

I agree with what you say and I'm thankful that you somehow put in words what I had in mind.

I use English, just as much as I use Danish, wich are my native language. For those two languages, I use a dictionary equally much.
My English is not pretty, nor is my Danish. And I would really suck at them both, when I had no dictionary.
That is, when I am explaining something in dept using eighter Danish or English. One could argue that both are my native language. 🤣

Then there is the German language. I can write and I can speak it. Though I have only spoken it once in the last 10 years.
I did however had a written conversation in german this year. It was short and not that much in dept.

To be honest. I think that the reason why English is so widely used today, are based on how large the English empire were 200 years ago.
Or it is just how things happened to play out globally. Yeah... An extremely large amount of factor's are at play here.

ElBrunzy wrote:

what if the person used a translator ? I would feel like kind of a bit cheated.
My guess is that the english language is trying to make it's way as being something everyone on earth can understand and speak, so people are more into acceptation rather than reprehension. I am thinking the clash really is about the oriental way to communicate.

Even google translate have a hard time translating a sentence from English to Danish. Danish is one of those languages, that you really need to know how things are spoken and how you place the words. That is why all those translationprograms such as Cortana from Microsoft are not avaliable in Danish. Not even Apple has cracked the nut on these things. As an example, you can not directly translate something like a "head-on-collision" as it will be the danish equivilant of a real human head or something. Meaning that the train's heads on top of their neck's will collide. Yeah... That sounds stupid right? To make a sentence in English, wich can somehow be directly translated, you would write something like this: The trains, had a frontal collision, wich resulted in a horrible...... (and then more). That can be directly translated. Yet a lot of Danish journalists do these kind of error's whenever they are writing an article. They just directly translate that stuff.

ElBrunzy wrote:

tincup wrote:

Yes this seems to be the case. English has a huge vocabulary and a vast reservoir of idiomatic phrases compared to many other languages, and paradoxically this may help non-native speakers. Since it's not necessary to know every word, that there are so many ways to describe the same or similar things increases the chances a non-native will "stumble" on a useful vocabulary, broken as it might be, fairly quickly. And despite tons of exceptions and curious grammatical rules, English is none the less quite flexible and forgiving in sentence structure as far as brute communication goes - again improving the chances a non-native will be able to convey a cogent thought. The language can tollerate a high "signal-to-noise ratio".This doesn't explain why English is emerging as a default global language (lots of economic, cultural and population distribution factors at play here) but it may help explain why it's done a fairly good job at being one.

I've read and re-read many (just twice really) your text, I found it hard to read it thinking you are an European native and so you speak french naively and you are such an advocate of the English language.

I agree with what you say and I'm thankful that you somehow put in words what I had in mind.

actually I'am an american and nowhere near and european as you seem to think. Now I just did read your text once, I'll reread it once again now

damn. .. ! I've read and re-reread that ... I'm not sure I did write that... really ? can I be that good ? it's so perfect it look like it's from an publicity engine

car aucune femme sur la planette ne sera jamais plus conne que son frere, a part bien sur madame tatcher.

ElBrunzy wrote:

actually I'am an american and nowhere near and european as you seem to think. Now I just did read your text once, I'll reread it once again now

I thought you were a Québécois. Technically part of North America, yes, but confusing to some who conflate America with United States of America. Am I on the right track?