why English use as an international Language

Factual Questions
41

Triskadecamus, this portion of your post: *However, there are another billion English speakers in Asia, not counting China at all. It is, after all, the official language of India. * – made me think that you were saying that all 1 billion English-speakers you were talking about were the 1 billion people of India.

I thought I said so in my post: There are about 20. English is given official status for administrative use, but it is not correct to say that it is “the official language of India” any more than it is to say that Telegu or Assamese or any other of the 20 languages is “the official language of India.”

42

Excalibre: From your sentence, here are in bold letters the words that are understandable to Romance speaking people, even if they haven’t learned English:

All the Western European languages share a **large amount ** of vocabulary, especially in **technical ** or **specialized ** fields. It’s interesting to contrast with Chinese, since the phonetic systems of the Chinese languages don’t accomodate these words, and thus they are all derived from native roots. And **English ** and French indeed have a particular intimacy, which **no doubt ** helps encourage English usage among speakers of Romance languages. I think that’s a **relatively minor piece ** of the puzzle, though, since English shows up in plenty of areas outside of those with significant shared vocabulary. And it **certainly ** doesn’t **indicate ** any **special ** willingness to borrow words, which is the point I was making.

43

English is a very powerful language. For example you can choose

hurl…throw with great effort for some distance

toss…throw for some short distance

fling…throw with some velocity

pitch…throw with accuracy

lob…throw with some elevation

Can you come up with French or German words to match that specificity?

–Robert McCrum, William Cran, & Robert MacNeil. The Story of English. New York: Penguin, 1992: 1

44

Excalibre
perhaps i’ve misunderstood you. did you say that in the unlikely event that chinese, or mandarin if you will, ever becomes an international language; the pinyin, or romanisation, would be used solely instead of in tandem with hanzi?

(if i got your post correctly) i was attending your hypothetical where chinese becomes an international language. it’s my opinion that chinese will be severely diluted in a pinyin-only form, and China itself will have to fall to dust before they give up their written form.

relative to this, imho it is more likely that hanzi would be adopted as the written form while regions either pick up the spoken form too or use their native pronunciations instead. this is akin to the japanese borrowing hanzi while using their own pronunciations (but in this case adopting chinese grammar and syntax instead of their own)

for example, the written form
美军承认对古兰经处理不当 否认将经书冲入马桶

might be read/spoken as
U.S. military admit for Koran handle improper, deny let Holy Book flush into toilet. *
on preview: ok forget it, i’m just translating. kindly ignore what i said about using local speech to read hanzi then, but pinyin-only chinese is still a no-no.

  • i still like the idea though. i think it’s quaint.