Language

[Jacksgranda]

5 hours ago, Alert Mongoose said:

 

I agree to an extent but there must be large parts of the world who don't speak English.

 

F*** them, then

[Jacksgranda]

2 hours ago, Granny Danger said:

Most people hate Amercans.

 

But they can probably spell "Americans"...

[vikingTON]

1 hour ago, Shotgun said:

In our lifetimes, no. You don't think that will change with increased global communication over the next few hundred years though?

I'm not really interested in arguing the point but I personally believe global society will become more homogenized in the future, rather than less. Time will tell.

I'm really not sure how things are going to become 'more global' than, err the Internet and products such as Skype, that already allow hundreds of millions of people to talk to one another at the moment. But the vast majority of such communication occurs in an already acquired common language. 

1 hour ago, Shotgun said:

I work for a global company and have colleagues and clients around the world. International conference calls and emails are routine. I'm willing to bet that in his entire life, my great-grandfather never spoke to a single person from Brazil, or Singapore, Hong Kong or Japan, whereas I do it regularly. We all understand each other - not because I speak their languages but because they speak mine. It doesn't seem such a radical idea to say that as technology allows global interaction to become ever easier, so will the ability (and need) of people to communicate via a common language. I'm inclined to think this will be English but it could be something else.

We all know China is rapidly developing as an economic super-power. In years to come, we're going to be talking to these people and them to us.

Just because you met someone from Brazil once doesn't mean that you've established a universal language of communication among the millions of slum dwellers in Sao Paulo champ.  I reckon that Brazilian Portuguese is safe for the time being. 

 

[Fullerene]

I remember visiting Anne Frank's house in Amsterdam.

The whole operation is done in English - the signs, the ticket sales and everything.

I  recall an Italian couple struggling to buy tickets because they could not speak English.
They were given a reprimand:
"What is the idea visiting this country without at least making an attempt to learn the language."

I was very tempted to say "too bloody right" but I did not know how to say that in Dutch!

[Shotgun]

26 minutes ago, virginton said:

I'm really not sure how things are going to become 'more global' than, err the Internet and products such as Skype, that already allow hundreds of millions of people to talk to one another at the moment. 

That sounds like you're suggesting that the reach of human communication will advance no further than what we have today. I believe it will. In what way, I don't yet know. People who don't have access to those things today, will do in the future. Or to whatever technology is coming next.

26 minutes ago, virginton said:

But the vast majority of such communication occurs in an already acquired common language. 

Correct. And I'm saying that vast majority will become vaster still.

28 minutes ago, virginton said:

Just because you met someone from Brazil once doesn't mean that you've established a universal language of communication among the millions of slum dwellers in Sao Paulo champ.  I reckon that Brazilian Portuguese is safe for the time being. 

Which isn't even close to what I said.

500 years ago, only a tiny percentage of the world's population could read or write. 100 years ago only a few people had ever spoken to someone on another continent via telephone. 50 years ago, the idea of international video-conferencing was the stuff of science fiction and even today, only a comparatively small number of people use it regularly. Who knows how we'll be talking to each other in another 100 years but a higher percentage of the world's population will be using that "acquired common language", whatever that will be, than do so today. And it will be a much higher percentage than did so in the past. 

Which is not for a minute suggesting that people will stop speaking Portuguese, Ukrainian or Tagalog or whatever they do today. 

[Jacksgranda]

6 minutes ago, Shotgun said:

That sounds like you're suggesting that the reach of human communication will advance no further than what we have today. I believe it will. In what way, I don't yet know. People who don't have access to those things today, will do in the future. Or to whatever technology is coming next.

Correct. And I'm saying that vast majority will become vaster still.

Which isn't even close to what I said.

500 years ago, only a tiny percentage of the world's population could read or write. 100 years ago only a few people had ever spoken to someone on another continent via telephone. 50 years ago, the idea of international video-conferencing was the stuff of science fiction and even today, only a comparatively small number of people use it regularly. Who knows how we'll be talking to each other in another 100 years but a higher percentage of the world's population will be using that "acquired common language", whatever that will be, than do so today. And it will be a much higher percentage than did so in the past. 

Which is not for a minute suggesting that people will stop speaking Portuguese, Ukrainian or Tagalog or whatever they do today speak in Greenock

 

[Bold Rover]

3 hours ago, Cerberus said:

Remember Esperanto?

That and socialism. A swing and a miss.

 

3 hours ago, strichener said:

Shit drama by the BBC based in Spain?

Fortified wine popular in the seventies?

[Bold Rover]

3 hours ago, Shandon Par said:

Got this little running app thing. The voice was brutal (barking at you how far you'd run etc. Mucked about with some settings and it now has a French (or at least someone doing a very hammy French accent. Runkeeper app/settings/Madameoiselle if you want to try . Her saying "wow, you were fast" (even after a Nat Wedderburn-esque jog) is semi-inducing. Vive La France.

Don't you frequently have a Semillon?

[Hedgecutter]

I just enjoy speaking English on Air France flights. You can feel the seethe when you don't bother with any French and they're forced to talk back in fluent English knowing that it's the true world language at their own expense. Glorious.

[NJ2]

Do you get that a lot?

I’m sure he does, but not usually when he’s running

[Hillonearth]

Modern English is a complete mongrel of a language, and that's probably why it's been so successful.

The Germanic Old English we started out with maybe a thousand years ago has either borrowed or had imposed on it huge amounts of external vocabulary from Latin, Greek, French, Norse etc, and continues to happily lift from further afield even now.

In fact, totting up that last sentence I typed, there are four French words, two Latin (four if you want to count etc.) and one Norse. We don't know we're doing it until we think about it, they're so intertwined with actual English now.

Getting back to the OP, there's a fair chance language evolved independently in several parts of the world - not all languages can be traced back to a common ancestor - but linguists have spent a lot of time over the years attempting to reconstruct the ur-language - Proto Indo European - that most modern European and Western Asian languages branched off from - not all of them to be fair. as nobody's got a scooby where the likes of Basque came from...it's not related to any other language.

 

 

[Bold Rover]

Are all the cunning linguists on here familiar with AWordADay? Daily email from them with a word and its etymology etc. Google it and subscribe.

[D.A.F.C]

Smartphone and google translate. Sorted.

[Enigma]

In a few hundred years the robots we created will communicate in the language of their alien overloads.

[Shandon Par]

Just saw a police car with POILEASE POLICE on the bonnet so did some googling.. Just in case an Gaelic speakers mistake it for a fire engine?

http://www.scotland.police.uk/whats-happening/news/2017/september/police-scotland-rolls-out-english-gaelic-logo

[Fullerene]

12 hours ago, Hillonearth said:

Modern English is a complete mongrel of a language, and that's probably why it's been so successful.

The Germanic Old English we started out with maybe a thousand years ago has either borrowed or had imposed on it huge amounts of external vocabulary from Latin, Greek, French, Norse etc, and continues to happily lift from further afield even now.

In fact, totting up that last sentence I typed, there are four French words, two Latin (four if you want to count etc.) and one Norse. We don't know we're doing it until we think about it, they're so intertwined with actual English now.

Getting back to the OP, there's a fair chance language evolved independently in several parts of the world - not all languages can be traced back to a common ancestor - but linguists have spent a lot of time over the years attempting to reconstruct the ur-language - Proto Indo European - that most modern European and Western Asian languages branched off from - not all of them to be fair. as nobody's got a scooby where the likes of Basque came from...it's not related to any other language.

 

 

I recall reading somewhere that in Basque if you say "I went to the shop to buy some cheese" will be said completely differently depending on whether the cheese is regarded as male or female.

Not sure if this is true or not. 

[vikingTON]

16 hours ago, Shotgun said:

That sounds like you're suggesting that the reach of human communication will advance no further than what we have today. I believe it will. In what way, I don't yet know. People who don't have access to those things today, will do in the future. Or to whatever technology is coming next.

They probably will, but they almost certainly won't actually use said technology to talk to some random punter in Blantyre. The ability to use a language of global communciation isn't universal; the need to do so is and will remain minimal. Which is why it will never happen. 

Quote

500 years ago, only a tiny percentage of the world's population could read or write. 100 years ago only a few people had ever spoken to someone on another continent via telephone. 50 years ago, the idea of international video-conferencing was the stuff of science fiction and even today, only a comparatively small number of people use it regularly. Who knows how we'll be talking to each other in another 100 years but a higher percentage of the world's population will be using that "acquired common language", whatever that will be, than do so today. And it will be a much higher percentage than did so in the past. 

Increasing use is categorically not the same as having a universal language of communication though, which is what you originally claimed was just around the corner. I also note that you have quietly ditched your other, laughable claim that said language would be a weirdo combination of English, Arabic and Mandarin. 

Thanks for playing anyway. 

 

[Hillonearth]

1 hour ago, Fullerene said:

I recall reading somewhere that in Basque if you say "I went to the shop to buy some cheese" will be said completely differently depending on whether the cheese is regarded as male or female.

Not sure if this is true or not. 

Basque is a really strange one – it doesn’t have any connections with any other language on the planet, in the same way that English is clearly related to Dutch and German, French to Italian and Spanish and so on.

There are some nutty theories that the Basques are descended from Atlantean survivors or relict Cro-Magnons who have continued to speak an archaic language, but a saner one is that they’ve continued to speak one of a family of languages which was formerly much more widespread but replaced elsewhere by Romance Indo-European languages  – quite possibly in Roman times since all the surrounding languages  are direct descendants of Latin.

[Fullerene]

15 hours ago, Hedgecutter said:

I just enjoy speaking English on Air France flights. You can feel the seethe when you don't bother with any French and they're forced to talk back in fluent English knowing that it's the true world language at their own expense. Glorious.

It is also the case that the pilot will be talking to the air traffic control in English, even if French is the first language for both of them.

A century or two ago - French was the "Lingua Franca" of the world - if a Russian officer met a British officer in the middle of Afghanistan - they would not know each other's language so they would talk in French.  Nowadays, that is far more likely to be English - much to the annoyance of the French. 

[welshbairn]

4 minutes ago, Hillonearth said:

Basque is a really strange one – it doesn’t have any connections with any other language on the planet, in the same way that English is clearly related to Dutch and German, French to Italian and Spanish and so on.

There are some nutty theories that the Basques are descended from Atlantean survivors or relict Cro-Magnons who have continued to speak an archaic language, but a saner one is that they’ve continued to speak one of a family of languages which was formerly much more widespread but replaced elsewhere by Romance Indo-European languages  – quite possibly in Roman times since all the surrounding languages  are direct descendants of Latin.

One guy thinks there's a connection with Dogon, a language spoken on the borders of Mali, Algeria and Mauritania. Another guy thinks he's talking shite.

http://www.eitb.eus/es/cultura/detalle/1304478/teoria-origen-euskera--xabier-kintana-euskadi-irratia/