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| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| How English Is Evolving Into a Language We May Not Even Understand |
| 2008-07-08 |
| The targeted offenses: if you are stolen, call the police at once. please omnivorously put the waste in garbage can. deformed man lavatory. For the past 18 months, teams of language police have been scouring Beijing on a mission to wipe out all such traces of bad English signage before the Olympics come to town in August. They're the type of goofy transgressions that we in the English homelands love to poke fun at, devoting entire Web sites to so-called Chinglish. But what if these sentences aren't really bad English? What if they are evidence that the English language is happily leading an alternative lifestyle without us? Thanks to globalization, the Allied victories in World War II, and American leadership in science and technology, English has become so successful across the world that it's escaping the boundaries of what we think it should be. In part, this is because there are fewer of us: By 2020, native speakers will make up only 15 percent of the estimated 2 billion people who will be using or learning the language. Already, most conversations in English are between nonnative speakers who use it as a lingua franca. In China, this sort of free-form adoption of English is helped along by a shortage of native English-speaking teachers, who are hard to keep happy in rural areas for long stretches of time. An estimated 300 million Chinese — roughly equivalent to the total US population — read and write English but don't get enough quality spoken practice. The likely consequence of all this? In the future, more and more spoken English will sound increasingly like Chinese. Energy independence achieved by harnessing rotational energy of HW Fowler spinning in his grave. |
| Posted by:Nimble Spemble |
| #16 Hey Joe, I give you sucky-sucky, I love you long time. T.M.I. Get a room! |
| Posted by: Omomoter Sforza1119 2008-07-08 23:49 |
| #15 Hey Joe, I give you sucky-sucky, I love you long time. |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2008-07-08 23:09 |
| #14 many years ago I had a friend from Texas (Huge good humored) who met anothe friend (Short, female NewYorker) I had to translate |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2008-07-08 20:01 |
| #13 Ima thinkrn same Oldspook. |
| Posted by: Frank G 2008-07-08 19:57 |
| #12 /miss muck-lish |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2008-07-08 19:53 |
| #11 It wants me to be Phuth Black5892 today. P'rhaps it's the thunderstorm overhead. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-07-08 19:08 |
| #10 Somehow I briefly became Phuth Black5892. No doubt I pressed a wrong button or something. LOL cat speek is as difficult a language as JosephMendiola or muck4doo, .5MT. One can't blame the heathen chinee for being stymied. ;-) |
| Posted by: Phuth Black5892 2008-07-08 19:07 |
| #9 http://engrish.com/ nuff said |
| Posted by: Frank G 2008-07-08 18:59 |
| #8 It's Wired Magazine. It would be unfair to expect one of their journalists to understand a complicated subject like linguistics. Old English gave us Beowulf; it then evolved into Middle English, giving us the Canterbury Tales; finally we have Modern English, with Shakespear, Thomas Jefferson, Jane Austen, and Robert Frost. Whyever should English cease to evolve now, just because the cutting edge intellectuals at Wired finally learnt how to write in complete sentences? |
| Posted by: Phuth Black5892 2008-07-08 18:53 |
| #7 Chinee can't do LOL cat speek |
| Posted by: .5MT 2008-07-08 18:44 |
| #6 So in the future we're all gonna talk like characters from Firefly? |
| Posted by: Abdominal Snowman 2008-07-08 17:37 |
| #5 All my KATUSAs, the local merchants and the bar girls [short time or overnight] spoke very good English during my stay at Tongduchon :) |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2008-07-08 17:04 |
| #4 In the postwar period, all Koreans and Japanese have gotten English language instruction, all the way to college. That's roughly 120m people right there. How many speakers of English have you encountered among Koreans and Japanese? |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2008-07-08 15:44 |
| #3 An estimated 300 million Chinese -- roughly equivalent to the total US population -- read and write English but don't get enough quality spoken practice. The likely consequence of all this? In the future, more and more spoken English will sound increasingly like Chinese. That's moronic. These people get English language instruction. That doesn't mean they speak English, any more than Americans who get far superior high school Spanish instruction speak or read Spanish. It becomes just another useless course they take in school, alongside geography, history and political indoctrination. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2008-07-08 15:42 |
| #2 I don't have a problem with this and besides its an old problem. English always has had variants. Irish speaking english with gaelic grammar and constructs, ditto Indians, malays and Singaporeans, and even I have trouble decyphering the pidgin english spoken in the south pacific. In fact, less than a hundred years ago, people from different parts of Britain had trouble communicating because of differences in their english. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2008-07-08 15:13 |
| #1 Already, most conversations in English are between nonnative speakers who use it as a lingua franca. Except in the United States, where the NEA and other education 'professional' still push bi-lingual indoctrination. However, thanks to Hollyweird movies and television and whole sell black marketing of pirated DVD and the like, the American form of English is likely to remain generally consistent. Outside those bi-lingual encumbered students. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2008-07-08 14:12 |