That "casual English" is somewhat part of the language of the new generation. They're more like catchwords, because people don't really speak the language. People, especially young urban folks, use it to appear "cool".
Also, back when tech meetups were more common, you would often have where the title and description were in English, and the talks in French.
It's a near global lingua franca and the Internet has only accelerated that.
I wonder how long it will be until English just sort of becomes first language in non-native English speaking countries with the current trajectory and momentum of English-first Llama.
Shame it couldn't be a more cohesive spoken language.
Kids becoming bilingual is a different thing. It’s sort of weird if that was what you were talking about.
It explicitly isn't. I'm talking about English becoming the first language in countries where the mother tongue is currently still the first language.
Yet by the time you’re an adult you’ll probably be indistinguishable from a native English speaker and likely use this as your primary language outside of your home. It really matters very little that English isn’t technically your “first” language in a situation like this.
People against that tend to lean totalitarian. People for a monoculture, that is. That is an inherently limiting philosophy which can only die out as it narrows the 'acceptable ideas' list over time.
Sapir-Whorf? Can’t that just be put to bed by now?
> People against that tend to lean totalitarian. People for a monoculture, that is.
On the topic of languages at least.
Some technologists seem to want to get rid of all ostensibly useless things. More than one language being one of them.
UG means Universal Grammar? I guess you have me pegged as a Chomskyist because it makes sense to me. But I can’t understand you taking a Chinese class made you an embittered opponent of some advanced, nerdy linguistic theory. For my part I wouldn’t be able to understand it at a technical level.
Said by someone who only speaks one language? Nice Idiom: shame if something were to happen to it.
It is SO EASY to prove this (literally just talk to any multilingual and watch their entire personality shift when they change languages {some languages have larger gaps}, they themselves don't often notice the effect)!
>On the topic of languages at least.
At least, you say... hmmm... why does that raise ALL THE RED FLAGS...
> Some technologists seem to want to get rid of all ostensibly useless things. More than one language being one of them.
which is why programmers keep inventing new languages (rust), which is the defacto standard everyone uses now. /s
Your arguments are as singularly cultured as what you argue for.... Which - as it so happens to be - (the quality of your arguments) is exactly my argument against such a future state.
And on one more note: Dave Ackley has some nifty ideas about the opposite of efficiency being robustness instead of waste. having a monoculture promises efficiency, but with that comes a brittleness that will cut us.
Sorry, tone is very hard on the internet sometimes.
Any sass would be directed at mono-lingual-future dreamers.
It's pretty obvious to anyone who learns math or programming, that once you find the right vocabulary or equation for something, that your brain chunks it, and it's easier to reason about that domain moving forward.
Of course it's not like if you don't have the word "blue" you are color blind, it's just that it's really hard to have a conversation about 10 different shades of blue if you don't even have a word for it.
The strong version of Sapir Whorf is obviously false because everyone has perceptions and feelings that they can't put words to.
[1] Which is more applicable than learning programming or math since this is linguistics.
I've been learning a lot of CAD and mechanical principles lately, and I can tell that my brain has some sort of kinematic/movement language that is expanding, and helping me understand how things work, and how to build more things.
People are pretty good at understanding English in Norway. But the only factor that introduces English into the conversation is when someone does not speak Norwegian. In my experience.
People are extrapolating from the fact that people use English-borrowed slang to these far-fetched scenarios. Yeah? Slang and words have always been borrowed. Not even medical doctors speak Latin to each other.
I never expected to be taken as declaring an objective fact; I just notice that this is already how workplaces are shaping up. I could easily be very wrong.
Anyway, with the internet the understanding of proximity changes. With an increasingly global economy everyone will be closer to people they only share english with. Or maybe mandarin, if you want me to emphasize skeptacism.
About 30% each of English vocabulary is to have been borrowed from French. That means the phrase "it's all French to me" in free standing could logically imply that you do have good idea of what is being said. That's obviously never the case.
That's because dictionary vocabulary is just an asset file for a language. It's a major, but still a part of a language. Integrating bunch of words into a language only inflates that dataset.
Dinitrogen tetroxide(N2O4) is apparently called "tetraoksid diazota" in Russian. Do memorizing bunch of those compounds in Russian makes you fluent in that language? I'd very much doubt it.
It is not logical to infer that because a word is derived from another language that you'd have any chance of understanding it. The phrase just is a cute recognition of the same derivation.
But you seem to imply monolanguage speakers think the opposite! I strongly suspect this is true of multi-language speakers that learned language through formal techniques. Language is so universal you cannot expect people to be ignorant of its complexity despite their never descending to its depths.
But I'd also like to point out French is occasionally quite understandable. It's when french falls into simple phrases that it becomes unintelligible. As an analytic language it's nearly as easy to decipher as latin is, although orthography is very difficult to learn.
Ultimately you have to choose a language that everyone can express themselves in and it sure as hell ain't Dutch lmao.
Though the German word for cell phone, “handy” is pretty great.
But it sounds rather silly in the standard German pronounciation of "henndii".
The rest of the world can't watch English TV with subtitles for a few months/years and come away with a passing understanding of English. It's a much steeper cliff.
The technical term is diglossia and it's much more common when the two languages are closely related. Latin being the written standard when the spoken language had evolved into Old French or Old Spanish is another classic example.
Do you have any insight into why so many signs are in English? I can understand maybe foreign brands, but local mom and pop stores have giant signs like "50% Off. #partytime" especially businesses where no one speaks english.