Chinese Written Language To Dominate Internet 535
Zothecula writes "In the beginning, the language of the World Wide Web was English. Times change though, and the United States military's gift to civilization knows no national boundaries, and growing worldwide adoption of the internet has changed the audience make-up to such an extent that the dominant language of the internet is about to become Chinese. That's not to say the Chinese are all that comfortable with this either. There has just been an official decree requiring the use of Chinese translations for all English words and phrases in newspapers, magazines and web sites. While all countries have watched the unregulated global nature of the internet erode traditional cultural values and the integrity of national languages, it seems the Chinese powers-that-be have concluded that the purity of the Chinese language needs to be preserved."
Chinese or French (Score:2, Informative)
Keep in mind that the French are equally vehement about the purity of their language. This could be the next great war :|
Uh... (Score:2, Informative)
""In the beginning, the language of the World Wide Web was English.
Times change though, and the United States' military's gift to civilization"
The WWW was not US's military gift to civilisation. The internet =/= WWW. The author appears to use them interchangeably..
Re:Chinese or French (Score:4, Informative)
I fully expect them to fail as between India and the US you've got nearly a full quarter of the world's populatation there alone, and we both use English as our language for government and such.
French or Spanish could do that, but it's a pretty long shot that any of those could over take English for such matters. Considering how English is more or less the official language of quite a few things these days, whether or not that was a wise decision in the first place.
Re:b prpard 4 crap like dis! (Score:5, Informative)
Lesson two is how not to be a stupid gwailo and tattoo yourself with it [blogspot.com].
Re:Nope (Score:5, Informative)
200 years ago French was the language of world diplomacy, and for centuries before that Latin was the common language of Europe.
Don't get complacent.
Re:Not necessarily popular with the Chinese, eithe (Score:5, Informative)
You seem to look at Chinese words from Japanese perspective. Correction:
1. Chinese characters are logogram.
2. Classical Chinese is mainly monosyllabic, while Modern Chinese is mainly disyllabic for disambiguation purposes. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den [wikipedia.org]
3. Chinese characters *are* indispensable. Pinyin or other romanization techniques (plus tones) simply cannot convey the same meaning as the original characters, though you can guess. Remember that Chinese language is tonal and tones for one character can change depending on the other word(s) it is paired with. Even with the tonality marks, there are still ambiguities remain in the romanized version of the words. The same problems occur in other "simplification" or "phonetic abugidas" (e.g., bopomofo). Tonality does not exist in Japanese. See the wiki URL above.
4. Since Chinese characters are indispensable, you have to sight-read them. Yes, some phonetic clues do show up, but not always lead you to the right one. Also, there are false friends, alternative spelling (even worse in Japanese), and one dot or one slash difference may make dramatic differences in sound.
Re:Quantity, not quality. (Score:5, Informative)
"Lingua franca" is Italian, and means "Frankish language". According to my book (I'll copy the paragraph out if you ask), the Arabs used to refer to all Europeans as Franks, and the language they used to communicate was Frankish -- some kind of minimal common vocabulary for all the people from various countries.
English did not draw from other languages ... (Score:5, Informative)
As someone or other has said, defending the purity of the English language would be like defending the purity of a cribhouse whore
That would be James Nicoll, back in 1990 on rec.arts.sf-lovers; the complete quote is
The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary
English did not necessarily draw from other languages, it was not always voluntary. Germanic tribes conquered England, the vikings invaded and settled in some regions, and then the French (Normans) conquered England. All these invaders forcibly altered the english language. To illustrate the effect of the norman conquest one professor claimed that french words in the english language tend to be those of the ruling class and not so much those of the folks down on the farm. However during the imperial era English did voluntarily draw words from throughout the british empire and the quote is more accurate.
Re:Chinese or French (Score:4, Informative)
India has no defined national language. The two official languages for the entire country are Hindi, and... English. English is preferred in some situations because it does not disadvantage any specific culture where Hindi is not the dominant language in a region.