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Re: [lojban] decline of the english language

At 11:56 PM 05/19/2001 +0200, =?utf-8?q?Bj=C3=B6rn=20Gohla?= wrote:

coi rodo
in the lojban faq it reads:
        ...
        This dominance, and a heritage of colonialism
        and imperialism that built resentment towards American and European
        impositions on native culture, has caused recent movements in other
        countries away from English.  The rising influence of Japan and
other countries on world economics, science, and technology makes further 
        declines in English's universality likely.
        ...

when was this written?


First written in 1989, but still true today.


my experience is the exact opposite. in fact
being a cand. phys. all the advanced literature i use is in english, either
because it will not be available in german for a long time or it is cheaper
anyway.
In science, English is the dominant international language, but there has been a succession of international languages (Latin, then French, then German and Russian as well as English) so that it is hard to predict the future. But on the Internet, the percentage of postings not in English is rising steadily. 


i dare to say that over 90% of all natural science publications in
germany are written in english, some universities even accept diploma theses
in english. they are also working heavily on being able to offer
a certain number of lectures in english, and trying to introduce bachelor and
master degrees which are hardly known here in contrast to the usual diploma.
also english is pervading popular culure beyond rediculousness, stupid
advertivements introduce englisch words even for the most trivial things that
can be very well descibed in german, doing that they try to draw upon the
so called "american way of life". the abhominable "handy" (mobile phone) is
probably one of the less disturbing examples.
On the other hand, in some countries outside of Europe, Anglicization has been reversed. I was specifically told that in the Philippines, which has a large contingent of English speakers especially among university-educated, it was no longer politically correct to speak English - Tagalog has become the way to go. Meanwhile in Japan, while every kid supposedly is taught English for several years, few actually reach any level of skill in the language. Meanwhile some people in the US are studying Japanese even at the high school level, which was not even an option a couple of decades ago (the trend away from requiring foreign languages in US schools also seems to be reversing in the last decade, but not in favor of German or Russian which are being studied less than when I attended school in the 60s). 

lojbab
--
lojbab                                             lojbab@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
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