Subject: Re: [lojban] decline of the english language

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 May 2001 05:24:26 -0400

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 [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org