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World Languages? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| 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 41 of 58 01 January 2012 at 7:36pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Arabic is in a profoundly different situation from Spanish with respect to diglossia.
I'm guessing it accounts for about one-fifth of world trade, in the sense of "world trade" being trade that occurs within the world. Obviously you were referring to international trade, in which case, if it weren't for Taiwan and Singapore, and considering trade between the Mainland and Hong Kong to be internal, Mandarin would probably rank behind Dutch. That said, trade amongst the PRC, Taiwan, Singapore, and Sinophone Malaysia is still pretty extensive in its own right.
I don't believe anyone's disputing that... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| rivere123 Senior Member United States Joined 4642 days ago 129 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 42 of 58 02 January 2012 at 12:29am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I don't know too much on this situation, but I don't feel that if they use some other language for business it's a huge difference. Vulgar Latin was laymen speak and it has had a hand in creating the languages spoken by a massive part of the world's population, not to mention its influences, so it could've been called as much a "world language" as Latin back then. Not sure why I'm defending Arabic though- I am not a student of it. :D But yeah, I'd like to know more about Arabic diglossia. Edited by rivere123 on 02 January 2012 at 12:32am 1 person has 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 43 of 58 02 January 2012 at 1:15am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Diglossia exists in Arabic on several levels. Regionally, the vernacular varieties spoken in the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, the Levant, Egypt, and the Maghreb differ from each other to varying levels of mutual intelligibility, unlike Spanish, whose regional variations are typically a matter of relatively insubstantial differences in pronunciation and vocabulary. With respect to formality, the language that Spanish speakers use to write, listen to the news, read newspapers, and read the Bible are all not only essentially one and the same, but also congruous to their vernacular speech. But spoken vernacular Arabic typically isn't a written language, and thus Arabs write, hear mass media (like the news), and read contemporary literature (like newspapers) in MSA, and additionally use Classical Arabic, the archaic ancestor of MSA, for Quranic reading and recitations. Finally, as if that wasn't enough, you're indeed right that business and other more formal (i.e., higher education) or even secular cultural matters are often communicated in French in the Maghreb and in English in the Gulf region. So a Spanish speaker may speak informal Spanish with friends and family, speak formal Spanish at work, speak formal Spanish at business meetings, hear and read formal Spanish at the church, read and type highly informal Spanish on the Internet, and read formal Spanish at the bedside. Meanwhile, an "Arabic" speaker may speak informal colloquial Arabic (عاميات المتنورين) with friends and family, speak formal colloquial Arabic (عاميات المثقفي) at work, speak English (if from the Gulf) or French (if from the Maghreb) at business meetings, hear and read Classical Arabic (فصحى التراث) at the mosque, read and type highly informal Arabic (عاميات أميي) on the Internet, and read Modern Standard Arabic (فصحى العصر) at the bedside. *That* is why Spanish and Arabic aren't very comparable. Edited by nway on 02 January 2012 at 1:41am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| espejismo Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4863 days ago 498 posts - 905 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Spanish, Greek, Azerbaijani | Message 44 of 58 02 January 2012 at 1:25am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Mandarin might become an international language in the future, but currently it's not. Let me list some of my accidental encounters with French in the course of last year. It was the only language used besides Portuguese in three museums and a movie theater in São Paulo, Brazil. In Rio de Janeiro, a missionary used French to convince me to become a Jehovah's Witness because it was the only language we had in common. A local doctor preferred to use French in a provincial coastal town in Mexico even though my Spanish was better. A disheveled Frenchwoman came up to me during some horrible afterparty in New York, and when she realized that I recognized the Dalida song she was humming, she proceeded to tell me my future while performing a few more Dalida songs (she was clearly on ecstasy). Mandarin would not randomly come up like that. If anything, Yiddish is more international than Mandarin. Edited by espejismo on 02 January 2012 at 1:30am 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 45 of 58 02 January 2012 at 1:38am | IP Logged | ||||||||
It seems even too obvious to mention, but apparently it's necessary to point out how regional of a matter this is. In my entire life of living in the United States, I've heard Mandarin spoken probably a hundred or so times. I've heard French spoken perhaps twice. Yiddish, never. There are roughly 40 million overseas Chinese. They don't all speak Mandarin, but a good chunk of them do, and many of the younger ones are learning it as a second language. I think that qualifies it as being more international than Yiddish, which has at most a few million speakers—just under 200,00 of which were recorded in the US in the 2000 census. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| espejismo Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4863 days ago 498 posts - 905 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Spanish, Greek, Azerbaijani | Message 46 of 58 02 January 2012 at 1:52am | IP Logged | ||||||||
No, you're obviously right. I live not just on the East Coast, but in New York. I hear French every single day. The Yiddish bit was not entirely serious. It's certainly not a language you hear on the streets, and I can think of a reason or two as to why it's more of a "secret language"... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| rivere123 Senior Member United States Joined 4642 days ago 129 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 47 of 58 02 January 2012 at 1:54am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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MSA and the dialects are Arabic. They are both widely considered by linguists one language. While you could say this makes it different from Spanish, it does not in the way I was referring too, which was demographically and geographically. They both cover a huge area and have several million speakers worldwide. The only real difference is that case of diglossia in the Gulf and Maghreb. This diglossia doesn't exactly represent the Arab-speaking world as a whole, but I'll admit this is a big blow to it being considered a World Language.
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| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 5873 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 48 of 58 02 January 2012 at 2:14am | IP Logged | ||||||||
And Oceania. It is one of the official languages of East Timor.
The number of Portuguese language speakers in Africa is roughly equivalent to that of Spanish in Europe, so if you want to count Spanish in Europe you would have to count Portuguese in Africa. Of course, many other persons speak Spanish in Europe (myself included), which is not true to Portuguese in Africa, but please don't discard the five countries (some significant in numbers) where it is spoken. And a sixth where it's an official language. Edited by Luso on 02 January 2012 at 2:29am 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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