List of languages by time of extinction
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
As a native Russian speaker, I know just how excruciating learning English can get. I have been learning it for 12 years, and most of the time it was no fun. For example, I once literally memorised 1500 words over a few months. Still, I cannot say that I speak as well as native speakers do. Most Russians never make it past learning to say "I don't speak English" with a funny accent. By the way, if you are an English speaker, you probably don't realise what it means not to know English. Let me assure you: it's horrible.
Though I was once maybe 75% fluent speaking (and could understand 90% of what Gorbachev said - he speaks pretty fast), I haven't used it for 25 years and so have forgotten most of it. I do remember that it was easy to spell, especially compared to English. I also remember that Russian verbs of motion were hard to get right, and declining numbers and certain adjectives correctly was tough.
English has become the new lingua franca (still cracks me up to pause and consider that literally), for better or worse. For all its faults, English is very flexible and can be precise, despite the fact that it's not often used for that feature. Most native speakers I know would be surprised to learn how many verb tenses English there are, and even more surprised at their proper use. The MLA and AP styles haven't helped that cause any.
On a completely pedantic note, lingua franca doesn't actually refer to what I think most people associate it with (the use of French as the diplomatic language of the 18th and 19th centuries in particular). It actually means the language of the franj, the "Franks," or Western Europeans. The original lingua franca was a pidgin Italian with a lot of Arabic and Turkish loanwords, the result of the Venetian dominance of the Levantine sea trade. Of course, in a purely literal sense, using it in phrases like, "Gulf media Arabic is the lingua franca of the Middle East" is itself wrong.
Tiresome pedantry complete, please carry on.
Wikipedia users also make that mistake: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Common_language&r...
Yep. Russian speaker is always puzzled by North American obsession with "spelling". Spelling competitions etc. In Russian if you want to "spell" a word, just say it slowly. No big deal really.
It's funnier if you say "de facto lingua franca" :-)
But the strength of English is that you can freely mix in words from other languages and there is enough redundancy that your meaning will probably be understood anyway, and eventually the word will simply be absorbed - and that's where alot of the irregularity came from. There's no Academie Francaise equivalent to police it and no-one even wants one.
I personally tend to think about languages a lot in terms of grammar. The reason might be that in German (my native language) grammar plays a much larger role (four cases and lots of rules for declination and conjugation) than in English (also in Russian grammar plays a very central role, as far as I know).
As I have often written on Hacker News when learning German I would strongly recommend to get the grammar by heart (yes, it is complex and ugly), until you don't have to think about it anymore (if necessary by rote memorization) since
> trying to think in the target language
for German means thinking in the German grammar. Any approach that tries to skip grammar at the beginning will soon confuse learners, because for example verbs are typically associated with some class of object (either based on a case or a preposition) and if you use it wrong often the meaning can change. For example :
auf etwas warten (to wait for something) has to be used with an accusative, so
"Ich warte auf den Zug" (I'm waiting for the train) is correct
If you use a dative instead, this is also yields a correct sentence, but with a completely different meaning
"Ich warte auf dem Zug" means you are on the top of the train and waiting, since "auf" followed by dative is a local adverbial.
So learn the grammar correctly from the beginning.
I'll start my archaeology double major in short, and German seems to be quite an important language in the field, so I'll have to learn that. I'll use my way and see if you and the others who agree you are right that German requires heavy grammar. Though I can reasonably guess that I'll start reading research by the six months mark.
I'm now learning Spanish and I just can't stand books with grammar exercises or using Memrise for more than 10 days.
The problem is that compared to English there's not enough Spanish content I like (Reddit, HN, non-fiction books). So I'm going with news, doubled cartoons, and flashcards for tough words.
I also learned English a bit in primary school but the bulk of it while actively self teaching programming via tutorials and conference videos, and consuming other media in English too. And my English is near-native, which was the experience that encouraged me to do what I did with Italian.
> I just can't stand books with grammar exercises or using Memrise for more than 10 days... and flashcards for tough words.
I too dislike grammar books and I have stopped using Memrise. It was too much work to 'water the plants' and just answering a question required excessive game playing (multiple choice etc.). With flashcards, if it has not already been imparted to you, please write down the entire sentence. Context is so important.
> The problem is that compared to English there's not enough Spanish content I like (Reddit, HN, non-fiction books).
Yes, it is true that the overwhelming majority of medium and long-form content is posted in English. Because that is what the majority of the target audience can understand.
Here are some Spanish speaking websites for you to read:
Reddit/Digg like:
Meneame - Sort of like Digg, in that it has short article summaries across many topic areas (including technology and general interest news).
Barrapunto - The Slashdot equivalent. Biased towards sysadmin-type articles and knowledge.
Subreddits in Spanish
https://www.reddit.com/r/espanol (like Reddit in English (cat pictures LOL etc.) but Spanish sourced
Country/region-specific subreddits For example, Chile https://www.reddit.com/r/chile/
Comics Mafalda - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafalda Very famous Argentinian comic book.
Non-fiction books Gutenberg Press (Spanish). Most are out-of-copyright old. https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/languages/es
Ted talks in Spanish
http://tedxtalks.ted.com/browse/talks-by-language/spanish
Short-form content (Twitter, Facebook)
Register another Twitter account and just follow people/news who tweet in Spanish. It is quite easy to find these accounts - search for keywords like 'noticias' (news), 'ciencia', (science), 'creo que' (I believe), 'la crisis' (the 2006/2007 financial crisis), (your own keywords)
Warning, understanding the Spanish used in short tweets can be quite challenging as it is very terse and concise.
For the biggest challenge, microcuentos (also on FB, hashtags, instagram, etc.)
My macOS is also in Spanish. I'm doing as much as possible to get out from the English "vendor lock-in" but it's quite hard even in Spanish-speaking country since I work from home and my friends know English.
I'm going to give it to you straight. You're going to need to actively leave your comfort zone of your friends and your working from home. You're going to have to mess up again and again and eventually you will become correct and smoother. You don't need to speak grammatically correct Spanish right away. You can get to that along the way. For now, just 'abra su boca'. They will make fun of you and eventually you will be good enough that they won't make fun of you.
Even if you have friends who speak English (and prefer to), you can go out with them and speak Spanish to the people around you. You won't feel alone and they (your English-speaking preference friends) will eventually feel 'left out' and speak to you more in Spanish.
Even if you work from home, you can go out and have lunch or coffee in a public area. Just like you would in English, try to strike up a conversation by making an observation (try to avoid questions - in all languages, no one wants to be interrogated).
You: 'Me gusta este cafe porque hay demasiado tomas de corriente disponsibles. Them: 'Si. Ayer fui un cafe y no tenía las mesas disponsibles.' You: 'Algun veces, me levantaba y trabajaba con mi ordenador encima de la cabeza de alguien.' Them: '¿En serio?' You: <una pausa> No (laugh) Hopefully they laugh
Make jokes, be self-deprecating. Never make fun of someone else. Especially with the translation difficulties.
The best way to learn a language is still to memorize grammar and 2000-3000 words, then read.
If you want to do things like pass the SAT, even native English speakers have to sit down and memorize about 6000 words over the course of a year or two.
Learning a language sucks. Period.
I don't think it's troubling that languages rise and fall, and many die out. Rather, it's the intangible heritage of humanity and particular cultures in danger that should attract our attention. Language is an element of this, but more important is the substance of their stories, their oral and written traditions, their values, and their way of live. We should work on preserving this heritage possibly at the expense of their language, if that's our only viable method.
(disclaimer: previously posted by me here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11904129#11904318)
The organic evolution of languages at the word level is determined by word choice, and every time we utter anything, by exercising choice we're contributing to the sustenance of the expressions we just used.
It's the same at the language level. I could choose to speak English or Japanese, but I can never speak both simultaneously at any moment. Choice is mandatory.
People choosing to speak English is the force that corresponds to the greater sustenance of English, or any language X.
From experience, I know that I do not prefer English at home or with family. So I will speak Japanese until I die. And I see this often. Most bilingual families speak non-English at home (privately), but speak English outside of home (publicly). This works extremely well, and we have no problem speaking multiple languages as long as there are enough natural and practical use cases throughout our lives.
But had I been born speaking only one language, then this choice does not exist. And since languages are really hard, unless you're immersed in language usage, transferring a language in its entirety through plain education is impossible. That's why languages die off with their communities and their cultures, and last just a while longer academically until the last speaking person dies. Or, in the case of second and third generation immigrants, they don't bring the culture with them, so family usage doesn't entail everything that language entails. You can't suddenly speak Japanese in a professional setting if all you've done is speak it with mom. So this limits usage, and is the beginning of the end. With less usage, there is less sustenance.
I think every day need of communication and convenience will define the result.
And this list, I think, is an evidence of that tendency.
that way everyone in the world only has to learn two languages and people dont have to waste their time learning 3-6 languages
brasilians I know typically know english and portuguese and they dont want to admit it but usually they know spanish. they just prefer brasilian or english.
overall if we just all agreed on english as the universal language (imperfect as it is) then it would save so many smart people so much time from needing to learn and translate between so many languages.
just from an efficiency perspective alone, humanity would see a major benefit, I believe.
> just from an efficiency perspective alone, humanity would see a major benefit, I believe.
I'm always surprised to see people accustomed to the world of computers say this kind of things. We know computer languages have different strengths, and we're often advised to learn some languages, not for the professional impact, but for the abstractions they teach.
In this context, I can't explain how people miss the fact that learning multiple languages is an enriching experience. And it is not only an abstract theory, considering the loan words every language has.
It is not only a matter of opening your thought framework, but also a matter of what ressource you have access to : the english language as we know it is very recent, and as a consequence, most of the world's intellectual output has been written in foreign languages. A world that switches to a single language as fast as we do is inevitably burning bridges with most of its knowledge.
Don't try to save smart people from diversifying their views, it's a bad idea.
Do we -all- have to spend all our lives learning -all- of these languages for us to communicate the greatness of each others' cultures and philosophies? Wouldnt it be better, given our finite time on this planet, to share all of these concepts more efficiently?
I don't see an easy way to get many growing and living cultures, and everyone sharing one language, cultural content, goals, etc. A society can't be homogene and diverse at the same time.
In 2002, the AP reported that 66% of children worldwide are bilingual. There are probably fewer people who speak a single language than 2 or more.
http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/06/19/language.glance/index.h...
I think it might be more correct to say that for every globalisation / unification force, there is an equal and opposite teapot in free orbit around the sun.
nonnative speakers of Chinese < nonnative speakers of English
If the vast majority of Chinese speakers are native, that means that not that many non-Chinese people are learning the language compared to English, and thus English is more attractive for interlingual communication.
China is big enough to be a world in itself, and for most of history has been so, but globalization means that it is part of a greater whole and competes on that level.
I think it is much more likely that we will have a small number of lingua francas (right now English, Spanish and Mandarin are the top three spoken languages and serve as the lingua franca in various locations) but a plethora of local languages will remain.
Many African countries, but also Latin America, the US and Canada are examples of that. South Africa is a stark example with 11 official languages. Many South Africans grow up bilingual. English is the lingua franca there, but neither Xhosa, Zulu, nor Afrikaans will die out any time soon.
Language forms reality and vice versa. It always adapts to the needs of the speakers. Just look at English used be lawyers vs engineers. Geography is not the only factor for diverging languages. Social differences are also a factor, e.g, sociolects are specific to a socioeconomic class.
So unless human societies become a lot more homogenous, I don't see a single language emerging.
A) The evidence is in the article. It's heading towards a small number very quickly.
B) Everyone is learning to speak English. Everyone in W. Europe under 30 speaks English fairly well. It's happening in M/E and Asia as well.
Once immigrants to W. Europe who speak English + some foreign language can get services in English - there's no point in learning the local language.
There are only 12 million Swedes. 10% of them barely speak Swedish - and the number is growing rapidly.
Once young people speak English fluently and services are in English - so much work will be in English ... Swedish loses all real utility. And utility is an important thing.
'Long term' I think a diaspora of languages is important, but people make short term decisions: 'what is important in my life'?
I fear in 20 years, in Sweden, young people will equate 'Swedish' with 'old, out of touch, nationalists and racists' - which is an unfair characterization but the perception is already developing: young urbanites speak English fluently, rural, less developed communities, less so.
Just because Swedish might die (which I doubt, but that's beside the point), does not mean that all languages but one will die.
Ad B) While English is probably gaining importance (speculating, I don't have a source), it is number 2 in total speakers after Mandarin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_num.... Even Everyone in W. Europe under 30 speaking English is an overestimation. If you look in less well educated groups, you will find more people not speaking English. Even Sweden shows ~5% of "Younger" not speaking English in http://languageknowledge.eu/countries/sweden. Austria even shows only 52.35% speaking English natively or learned: http://languageknowledge.eu/countries/austria
interesting angle. I doubt that Swedish will ever lose its utility, but dividing the society along language lines and typecasting native speakers as racists sounds like a natural development of current trend.
"If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart." (Nelson Mandela)
Until the Industrial Revolution came along most people identified themselves as from the town or county where they lived rather than a given nation. People rarely travelled further than the next village and language was extremely regional. Same in France, until Napoleon came along France had hundreds of languages/dialects rather than an identifiable 'French' that everyone knew. In the UK, before television, it really was not that easy to be understood in places like Liverpool if you were from a place like Bristol - accents were too different to make that easy in everyday conversation even if written words were the same everywhere. The railways were the start of this process of making English universally understood amongst the English, before that there really wasn't much need to bother to read unless you were a book-reading academic type.
I am pleased that English is lingua-franca(!) for planet earth when it comes to computer stuff, science and little things like air traffic control. English may not be 'strongly typed Esperanto' but it does not have to be. It is considered courtesy to try and speak in native languages for Brits abroad, however, beyond 'please and thankyou' I think it is much better to stick to English and, in the process, help others that want to learn English. Just speak s-l-o-w-l-y and remember that something like 90% of communication is body language when face-to-face.
I do a fair amount of translation in the day job, and, amongst the foreign-language speakers that I pester for words 'n' phrases, I frequently find people preferring English as they can express so much more in it than their native tongue. As far as my Italian friends are concerned, Italian might as well be FORTRAN or COBOL, i.e. not as good. Consequently I look forward to a world that speaks English, that English being British English, of course!!!
But digging a little deeper, I think what is really happening is that these people learned "advanced" topics from English-language textbooks, papers, seminars, etc. and so they only have English vocabulary, phraseology, idioms and context for that topic.
I personally find it much easier to develop "advanced" thoughts in German than in English, since for example in German building compound words is a very natural thing while in English it is rather clumsy. The same holds for nominalization of verbs.
Compare it with using a programming language that allows one to express complicated concepts in a very logical way (say, higher-order functions in Haskell). So when I try to write my thoughts down (say, for a scientific text) I find it much more clumsy to express them in English than in German, since I often feel that English lacks features that would make expressing them a lot more easy.
Plusquamperfekt in German is about the same as past perfect in English in the way it is formed and used (OK, in German it depends on the verb whether Perfekt and Plusquamperfekt are formed using "haben" or "sein" - this is ugly, accepted). So I don't really understand why you feel haunted by the Plusquamperfekt.
I don't know if they converse in Latin, but they do write in Latin.
http://www.vatican.va/archive/atti-ufficiali-santa-sede/inde...
Seeing as it's actively used by members of the Catholic church and taught all over the world, it's clearly not extinct.
Botanical latin is/was used not only for the names of plants but also for the formal description of the species in taxonomic publications (although, as of a few years ago, this is no longer required). BL is grammatically latin, but with some specialized vocabulary.
As for English, it's jolly nice if one happens to have the world's lingua franca as one's native tongue, but surely we could wish for something better than English as the world's language? If nothing else the orthography could be both simpler and clearer.