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From: ellis@flairvax.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: What base for an "international language"
Message-ID: <178@flairvax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 22-Jul-83 01:04:51 EDT
Article-I.D.: flairvax.178
Posted: Fri Jul 22 01:04:51 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 22-Jul-83 13:04:18 EDT
References: fortune.1276
Lines: 59


    In response to an article by Glenn (fortune!grw)...

    English does seem to have come closer to the status of `international
    language' than anything else around, in spite of the fact that `Chinese'
    (its `dialects' are actually separate languages) has more speakers.

    I believe this is clearly because we (we == Americans, British,
    Canadians and Australians) English speakers, as a whole, are temporarily
    on top of the heap, and have been for some time.  `International'
    languages have always been unofficially determined by the top dog(s),
    anyway.  Sooner or later, though...

    Now how long will an international language that achieved its status by
    power and money remain truly international ?

    Answer:  Until shortly after the power leverage is gone.  Since nothing
    lasts forever, I suspect that our temporary lead must disintegrate,
    though it may take centuries.  When this happens, I hope it will be
    because other cultures have caught up with, and not destroyed, ours.

    A genuinely international language should reflect all cultures fairly,
    not showing bias towards speakers with any particular vocabulary,
    syntax, or phonetic habits.  If this is not the case, then the favored
    culture will be more proficient and thereby become yet more powerful.
    Contrariwise, it will be rejected by those to whom it is alien -- and
    cease to be international.

    Short of genocide or subjugation, I see no way, in the long run, to
    establish a stable, voluntarily accepted international language without
    making major concessions to the languages of India, China, Africa and so
    on. How can (and why should) English hold its current predominance?

    As to your comment:

	   "Admittedly, English is a very kludgy language and thus not
            very easy to learn, and the spelling rules are even worse, but
            an international language could be built by using English with
	    phonetic spelling and fixed-up grammar."

    We all know that English spelling is quite horrible, probabably the
    worst spelled language in the world (except Gaelic).  But I believe its
    grammar is far simpler and more logical than anything else from Europe.
    Not klugy at all, perhaps even elegant.

    Did you ever see the (`orthogonal') English verb scheme expressed in
    phrase-structure notation?  Or the lack of pointless grammatical gender
    in nouns?  Or the paucity of inflections (word endings like -s and -ed)
    and inflectional categories ?  As far as being easy to learn (to speak,
    not write) English gets an A+ from me.

    For real elegance and simplicity, I'd check out the Chinese dialects,
    though. The worst obstacle I have here is the classifier concept,
    apparently (?) used to distinguish the many, many homonyms. But talk
    about being hard to write**!!

-michael

** in this case, really a strong point. But that's another topic.