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World Languages? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Mad Max Tetraglot Groupie Spain Joined 4863 days ago 79 posts - 146 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, French, English, Russian Studies: Arabic (classical) | Message 17 of 58 29 December 2011 at 10:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
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1.IMHO a World language should have a great number of MOTHER TONGUE SPEAKERS.
So, only Mandarin Chinese (850), Spanish (425) and English (400) can be considered. For example, Modern Standard Arabic, the official language of some 25 countries, is spoken by NOBODY as mother tongue. If you study MSA you can't understand NOBODY in countries like Morocco or Algeria, but some minorities that can speak this language . They speak Moroccan or Algerian Arabic, a very different language. French is hardly spoken by 80 million as mother tongue. Russian is spoken by hardly 160 million as mother tongue. The same with Indonesian or Swahili. 2. Besides, the language must be studied everywhere. If you go to the Universities of Japan, Australia, Alaska, Chile, South Africa, Norway, etc, they probably teach English, Spanish and French. These 3 languages are official in almost all the World organizations and a lot of countries. In short, English and Spanish meet 2 requirement (they are very spoken as mother tongue and at the same time very studied). Chinese and French meet only 1 requirement. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| SmilingStraw Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4722 days ago 35 posts - 37 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Arabic (Written) | Message 18 of 58 29 December 2011 at 11:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
Interesting input, but you do have any experience in these languages? I think some of the things yu said about about Arabic, French, and Russian are off, and I think that there should be more requirements rather than just a super high number of speakers and studied everywhere. Just my opinion. Coll insight, though. =D 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4527 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese | Message 19 of 58 29 December 2011 at 11:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I consider Arabic a world language. Edited by fabriciocarraro on 29 December 2011 at 11:48pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5146 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 20 of 58 30 December 2011 at 12:13am | IP Logged | |||||
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This appears to focus on what we individually feel are world languages, and does not attempt to come up with a common definition.
In that spirit, a world language for me would be a language which both has a large number of native speakers, and which is being widely studied as a foreign language. According to that definition, I would include all the languages mentioned in the OPs post, except Hindustani/Hindi. I do not know of any school in Europe where they teach Hindi. And you may say that this is just Europe, to which I will retort that I am a European, and my view is based on that. I'll leave the floor open to people from other regions of the world to give their input. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5772 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 21 of 58 30 December 2011 at 1:34am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think we should be careful not to subconsciously define "world language" as "having characteristics of a European colonial language." For example, I think the whole element of being spoken on x amount of continents is given way too much importance in these kinds of discussions. Is Portuguese strengthened in any meaningful way by being an official language of Macau? Is French strengthened in any meaningful way by being the official language of several tiny Pacific islands? I think the answer to both of these questions is no.
Anyway, here are my candidates: English Chinese Spanish Russian Portuguese French Persian Arabic Hindi/Urdu Indonesian Japanese
What's the point of discussing global languages if you aren't going to even attempt to look at them from a global perspective? 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5227 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 22 of 58 30 December 2011 at 7:10am | IP Logged | |||||
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The word "world", used in this context, is itself an arbitrary geopolitical concept.
If all the Spanish-speaking countries consolidated into one single country, would Spanish cease to be considered a "world language", simply because it's only spoken in one country? If Brazil split into a dozen or so Portuguese-speaking countries, would Portuguese suddenly become significantly more of a world language? Many people here wouldn't consider Mandarin to be a world language. But if Mandarin's 800 million native speakers were geographically dispersed into regional communities of 133 million on each of the world's inhabited continents, would Mandarin suddenly gain world language status? The obvious answer is yes, but this implies that geographic centralization is therefore an impediment to a language being considered influential. But at what point does Dutch and its mutually intelligible offshoots (spoken across four continents) become more of a "world language" than German (spoken across but one continent)? 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6394 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 23 of 58 30 December 2011 at 7:21am | IP Logged | |||||
While I accept that there are still some people in Macau who speak Portugese, they are surely in the minority and I find it hard to believe it functions as a lingua franca. When I visited Macau I saw a lot of signs in Portugese, but I didn't hear a single person speak it. I heard a lot of Cantonese, some Mandarin and a little English. Stop a random person in Macau and I think chances are slim they can hold a conversation in Portugese. According to Wikipedia, Portugese is the home language of 0.6% of the population (same figure for English is 1.5%). Two people who do not have a common native language communicating in Portugese probably happens very infrequently. Edited by Ari on 30 December 2011 at 6:46pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5146 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 24 of 58 30 December 2011 at 7:54am | IP Logged | |||||
It is not a question of not attempting to look at it from a global perspective, it is a matter of knowing what you are talking about. I have travelled quite a lot in Europe, and I know a bit about the linguistic situation in Europe. Therefore I can speak with at least a hint of authority about what the situation is here. Could I do the same regarding Mongolia, Australia, Eritrea or Brazil? No I could not, but I feel confident that other natives of those countries, or people who know those countries well, can contribute with information from that perspective. And all together we can have an idea of what the "truth" is. You may of course argue that I should then leave the floor to those who have knowledge about the whole world, but the catch there is that this would be so few, that we would not get much of a discussion, and we would lose insight from people like me from other regions, who for instance would know a lot about what is taught at the schools in South Africa, but has no clue as to what is taught in France. The reason why I specified that I was speaking from a European perspective, was to avoid claiming the European view as a universal view, and to open up for more voices from the rest of the world. 6 persons have voted this message useful |
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