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. […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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.