6 ms·

Why Write in English?

34 points by lermontov 11y ago

d33 11y ago
My impression (and I believe that it's a good thing) is that English is swallowing languages word for word. Polish for example - Poland is a country pretty much positively obsessed with US, especially the older people. There's a lot of concepts that we literally take over from English, for example "pro choice". We're living in an increasingly Western global culture. It's surprising that we're seeing so much Chinese influence in our languages.
- mchaver 11y ago
  >> It's surprising that we're seeing so much Chinese influence in our languages. What languages, outside of neighboring ones, are being heavily influenced by Chinese?
  - d33 11y ago
    I'm saying that it's surprising to me given their population and economic force. This is the moment I realized that they have gone a completely different direction.
    - ghubbard 11y ago
      Is the initial comment "It's surprising that we're seeing so much Chinese influence in our languages." missing a 'not'?
etatoby 11y ago
The article is about writing, in the higher sense of book authoring, in a second language and the emotional issues related to that. I can't fully identify with it, as the most I've written in my second language are posts and comments like this one. But there's something to be said about the connection between a language and the culture that shapes and is shaped by it. I believe they form an ensemble, so much so that our emotional response to one is inevitably tied to the other. For example, I spend more time reading and writing in English than in my native language, which happens to be Italian, even though I live and work in Italy. This has certainly a lot to do with the subject of my education, job and interests (guess what...) but I cannot exclude that it's also based on a certain feeling of "otherness," or alienation, from my country's mainstream culture. That being said, I do consider contemporary English to be technically superior to Italian in almost all respects. It's easier, more flexible, more expressive, more concise, and more complete. The only exception would be its utter, inexcusable, almost criminal, irregular spelling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonemic_orthography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonemic_orthography
- wolfgke 11y ago
  > That being said, I do consider contemporary English to be technically superior to Italian in almost all respects. It's easier, more flexible, more expressive, more concise, and more complete. The only exception would be its utter, inexcusable, almost criminal, irregular spelling. For German I consider it exactly the other way round. German is much more exact: Long compound substantives are very easy to express in German but difficult in English (in this sense I consider German as more expressive and concise). The grammar in German might be ugly and unforgiving (it really could be simplified - just my opinion) but makes it much more complicated to express sentences that can be misunderstood. English might be easy to learn at the beginning, but becoming really good in English takes a horrible amount of time. For example it is in my opinion much easier to become good in French than in English. Additionally there is no really "standard English" as there is in French or in German (Hochdeutsch). What is actually the authoritative ressource for English to clear up what spelling, punctuation etc. really is the correct one?
  - kwhitefoot 11y ago
    The correct one is whichever works best at the time. In English it is, or use to be, common to use different registers for different occasions.
    - wolfgke 11y ago
      How can one even say then that a spelling a punctuation is wrong in English if there is no authoritative ressource with which one can answer the question?
      - unlikelymordant 11y ago
        as long as you are consistent, it really doesn't matter. Even in academic or technical writing (i am in Australia), you can use american spellings or british spellings and noone really cares. Perhaps you have to let go of the "one true way" of spelling/grammar, if things seem to work fine without it.
larrysalibra 11y ago
Network effect.
guard-of-terra 11y ago
More interesting question - why sing in English? There is a huge number of bands around the world who end up singing in English, as if they never considered using their native tongue. And it's not that they have anything unique to say in English! You could make something that stands out but you end up sounding like a clone of clones. This puzzles me to no end.
- algebras 11y ago
  Also, why do British singers (at least some of them) sing in American accent? Adele for one. Her spoken speech is so different for her singing one.
  - mafribe 11y ago
    why do British singers (at least some of them) sing in American accent? To increase the probability of appealing to customers in the (currently) largest and most profitable market. Moreover, singing with a US accent does not endanger sales elsewhere, including the UK.
- mafribe 11y ago
  This puzzles me to no end. The answer is economics. When you want to sell a product, it makes sense to fine-tune it as much as possible to the largest, most profitable market, and then re-use the product infrastructure (e.g. production, design, marketing, delivery) to other markets. For a very long time, starting with the British empire, the largest, most affluent market has been English speaking, and since the end of WWII it was the US. This lead to the emergence of a US-focussed music industry that resells its goods in the rest of the world . A similar phenomenon is at play in other domains like films. As US customers can always easily access products tailored to their preferences, which includes a strong preference for English-language lyrics, it has become economically essentially impossible to be globally successful with (non-instrumental) pop music that is not sung in English. This is a self-reinforcing phenomenon. Interestingly, the dominance of English as voice of pop-music, evaporates as soon as instrumental music is considered: Techno, House, DnB, Dubstep etc shows no dominance of native speakers of English. For a variety of reasons, I expect that English will not be as dominant in the future: - Rise China as biggest, most affluent unified market for pop-music. This will lead to a preference of the Chinese customer for music. This market will be so large and lucrative as to compensate for the lack of Chinese as second-language, which is powerful for English. - The massive lowering of the cost of music production, marketing and (in particular) distribution. The more cheaply we can produce music, the more it makes economic sense to target niche markets.
mlvljr 11y ago
И правда :)
tmptmp 11y ago
Straightforward reason: English is now the true globally significant language. Another point, English is the most prestigious language in most parts of the world. In Asia, where I am from, English has already become or is fast becoming the most prestigious language. So, you gain lots of more respect, larger audience and more consequent benefits if you write in English rather than in any other language. It may be bad for many other languages but that's one of the facts.
dave2000 11y ago
Very similar reason the answer to "why are manhole covers round" is that manholes are round; because you want to make money by selling your English test to the large number of people who read English.
wimagguc 11y ago
Writing in your non-native language: * Czech-born Milan Kundera started to write in French after having moved to France. * Jack Kerouac was born to French-Canadian parents and brought up speaking French; yet, he wrote in English. "French novelist Proust said that a novelist that wants to have a defined style should write in a foreign language," said Algerian-Italian writer Tahar Lamri. "That's because a foreign language forces the author to hunt for the proper imagery because they don't have an extensive vocabulary at their disposition." (From DW's article "Non-native authors bring fresh perspective to language", http://www.dw.com/en/non-native-authors-bring-fresh-perspective-to-language/a-14910840 http://www.dw.com/en/non-native-authors-bring-fresh-perspect...)
rabboRubble 11y ago
English is a hub language. I travel outside of the US, I meet the locals, I meet other foreigners also visiting, and chances are we all speak English. Learning a foreign language is a time consuming and expensive endeavor. If you are not blessed to have English as your native language, and you are struggling financially but interested in upping your skill level or marketability, which language do you study? Which language makes the most sense? In many cases, the answer to those questions is English. I also pity students of English. It's a horrible, horrible language as a student. I say this being a native English speaker with moderate literacy in Japanese and Chinese.

34 points by lermontov 11y ago

d33 11y ago

My impression (and I believe that it's a good thing) is that English is swallowing languages word for word. Polish for example - Poland is a country pretty much positively obsessed with US, especially the older people. There's a lot of concepts that we literally take over from English, for example "pro choice". We're living in an increasingly Western global culture. It's surprising that we're seeing so much Chinese influence in our languages.

mchaver 11y ago
>> It's surprising that we're seeing so much Chinese influence in our languages. What languages, outside of neighboring ones, are being heavily influenced by Chinese?
- d33 11y ago
  I'm saying that it's surprising to me given their population and economic force. This is the moment I realized that they have gone a completely different direction.
  - ghubbard 11y ago
    Is the initial comment "It's surprising that we're seeing so much Chinese influence in our languages." missing a 'not'?

etatoby 11y ago

The article is about writing, in the higher sense of book authoring, in a second language and the emotional issues related to that. I can't fully identify with it, as the most I've written in my second language are posts and comments like this one. But there's something to be said about the connection between a language and the culture that shapes and is shaped by it. I believe they form an ensemble, so much so that our emotional response to one is inevitably tied to the other. For example, I spend more time reading and writing in English than in my native language, which happens to be Italian, even though I live and work in Italy. This has certainly a lot to do with the subject of my education, job and interests (guess what...) but I cannot exclude that it's also based on a certain feeling of "otherness," or alienation, from my country's mainstream culture. That being said, I do consider contemporary English to be technically superior to Italian in almost all respects. It's easier, more flexible, more expressive, more concise, and more complete. The only exception would be its utter, inexcusable, almost criminal, irregular spelling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonemic_orthography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonemic_orthography

wolfgke 11y ago
> That being said, I do consider contemporary English to be technically superior to Italian in almost all respects. It's easier, more flexible, more expressive, more concise, and more complete. The only exception would be its utter, inexcusable, almost criminal, irregular spelling. For German I consider it exactly the other way round. German is much more exact: Long compound substantives are very easy to express in German but difficult in English (in this sense I consider German as more expressive and concise). The grammar in German might be ugly and unforgiving (it really could be simplified - just my opinion) but makes it much more complicated to express sentences that can be misunderstood. English might be easy to learn at the beginning, but becoming really good in English takes a horrible amount of time. For example it is in my opinion much easier to become good in French than in English. Additionally there is no really "standard English" as there is in French or in German (Hochdeutsch). What is actually the authoritative ressource for English to clear up what spelling, punctuation etc. really is the correct one?
- kwhitefoot 11y ago
  The correct one is whichever works best at the time. In English it is, or use to be, common to use different registers for different occasions.
  - wolfgke 11y ago
    How can one even say then that a spelling a punctuation is wrong in English if there is no authoritative ressource with which one can answer the question?
    - unlikelymordant 11y ago
      as long as you are consistent, it really doesn't matter. Even in academic or technical writing (i am in Australia), you can use american spellings or british spellings and noone really cares. Perhaps you have to let go of the "one true way" of spelling/grammar, if things seem to work fine without it.

larrysalibra 11y ago

Network effect.

guard-of-terra 11y ago

More interesting question - why sing in English? There is a huge number of bands around the world who end up singing in English, as if they never considered using their native tongue. And it's not that they have anything unique to say in English! You could make something that stands out but you end up sounding like a clone of clones. This puzzles me to no end.

algebras 11y ago
Also, why do British singers (at least some of them) sing in American accent? Adele for one. Her spoken speech is so different for her singing one.
- mafribe 11y ago
  why do British singers (at least some of them) sing in American accent? To increase the probability of appealing to customers in the (currently) largest and most profitable market. Moreover, singing with a US accent does not endanger sales elsewhere, including the UK.
mafribe 11y ago
This puzzles me to no end. The answer is economics. When you want to sell a product, it makes sense to fine-tune it as much as possible to the largest, most profitable market, and then re-use the product infrastructure (e.g. production, design, marketing, delivery) to other markets. For a very long time, starting with the British empire, the largest, most affluent market has been English speaking, and since the end of WWII it was the US. This lead to the emergence of a US-focussed music industry that resells its goods in the rest of the world . A similar phenomenon is at play in other domains like films. As US customers can always easily access products tailored to their preferences, which includes a strong preference for English-language lyrics, it has become economically essentially impossible to be globally successful with (non-instrumental) pop music that is not sung in English. This is a self-reinforcing phenomenon. Interestingly, the dominance of English as voice of pop-music, evaporates as soon as instrumental music is considered: Techno, House, DnB, Dubstep etc shows no dominance of native speakers of English. For a variety of reasons, I expect that English will not be as dominant in the future: - Rise China as biggest, most affluent unified market for pop-music. This will lead to a preference of the Chinese customer for music. This market will be so large and lucrative as to compensate for the lack of Chinese as second-language, which is powerful for English. - The massive lowering of the cost of music production, marketing and (in particular) distribution. The more cheaply we can produce music, the more it makes economic sense to target niche markets.

mlvljr 11y ago

И правда :)

tmptmp 11y ago

Straightforward reason: English is now the true globally significant language. Another point, English is the most prestigious language in most parts of the world. In Asia, where I am from, English has already become or is fast becoming the most prestigious language. So, you gain lots of more respect, larger audience and more consequent benefits if you write in English rather than in any other language. It may be bad for many other languages but that's one of the facts.

dave2000 11y ago

Very similar reason the answer to "why are manhole covers round" is that manholes are round; because you want to make money by selling your English test to the large number of people who read English.

wimagguc 11y ago

Writing in your non-native language: * Czech-born Milan Kundera started to write in French after having moved to France. * Jack Kerouac was born to French-Canadian parents and brought up speaking French; yet, he wrote in English. "French novelist Proust said that a novelist that wants to have a defined style should write in a foreign language," said Algerian-Italian writer Tahar Lamri. "That's because a foreign language forces the author to hunt for the proper imagery because they don't have an extensive vocabulary at their disposition." (From DW's article "Non-native authors bring fresh perspective to language", http://www.dw.com/en/non-native-authors-bring-fresh-perspective-to-language/a-14910840 http://www.dw.com/en/non-native-authors-bring-fresh-perspect...)

rabboRubble 11y ago

English is a hub language. I travel outside of the US, I meet the locals, I meet other foreigners also visiting, and chances are we all speak English. Learning a foreign language is a time consuming and expensive endeavor. If you are not blessed to have English as your native language, and you are struggling financially but interested in upping your skill level or marketability, which language do you study? Which language makes the most sense? In many cases, the answer to those questions is English. I also pity students of English. It's a horrible, horrible language as a student. I say this being a native English speaker with moderate literacy in Japanese and Chinese.