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Let's look at spoken language. As humans move from a type 0 to a type 1 civilization [borrowing terminology from Michio Kaku], English is becoming the global l

Let's look at spoken language. As humans move from a type 0 to a type 1 civilization [borrowing terminology from Michio Kaku], English is becoming the global language. It's certainly possible to never learn another language after English and be well off in a global economy. Advantages of English [paraphrased from "ESB" on antimoon]: -Germanic base has been mixed with the Roman vocabulary, giving it the best of both worlds -English is succinct. Sentenced translated from English into other languages take up at least 30% more space. English words are concise and so are its sentences. -Absence of sophisticated grammar systems. A noun can be easily turned into an adjective or a verb and vice versa. [ LISPy, eh? ] -It's spoken by the most influential and powerful countries on earth. This is not accidental, but perhaps an important underlying cause for their success. Just as English is dominating and will far outlive anyone's lifespan, the same could happen with a programming language as our languages continue to mature. Python is incredibly close to Psuedocode and LISP\LISP-variants are extremely flexible. It could be quite possible to get by without learning a new language until you either A) die or B) a paradigm shift occurs.

adimitrov 16y ago
I'll disagree. The features you listed apply to other languages much better than they do to English (except the bit about influential countries.) Chinese has a richer vocabulary, is more succinct and has a much less sophisticated grammatic system than English. If you want to get rid of the daunting logosyllabic way of writing, go Korean. Almost the same advantages, with one of the most beautiful and simple alphabets in the world. If you want an even easier language, Bhasa (Indonesian) is probably your choice. Don't forget there's Esperanto, too. Arguably much better suited as a 'world' (or at least pan-Euro-American) language. In fact, English sucks as a `common' language from a lot of perspectives: it's got a very peculiar grammar. In fact, linguists concentrating their efforts on English has crippled a lot of research, and people are realizing (have been for a while, outside of the Anglo-Saxon area) that the paradigms that worked for English are pretty misplaced for other languages. English is an almost isolating language with a lot of inflection-based traits, a weird and very specific tense system, remnants of case that confuse the hell out of people, a fiendishly difficult preposition-system to replace case (including weirdness such as preposition stranding and long-distance dependencies,) very rich and productive idiomatic mechanisms and one roller coaster of an orthography (mostly due to its uncompromisingly inconsistent way of adoption of vocabulary.) Don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on English. All languages are beautiful (except Volapük.) I'm just sick and tired of people with, very often, little to no linguistic authority making claims about the language's viability or suitability to be a language spoken world wide. As a linguist, you hear that all the time, and you just get tired of it :-( The only bit that matters - the reason I (an expat from an ex-socialist country living in western Europe, but not England) am talking to you over the Internet in English - is the cultural (and primarily militaristic!) dominance of the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants (i.e. Britain, America, Australia.) In fact, it's probably mostly due to Britain's vast empire in post-medieval times.
- metamemetics 16y ago
  Exactly, English isn't perfect, yet it's still a great example of how something that's "good enough" can become dominant. I'm not saying it should be dominant, but that it is and will inevitably continue to be (there are more students taking SATs in China in ENGLISH than in the US+Britain). Also I would argue it's not just due to Britain's empire, but Rome's and Germanic tribes creating a long evolutionary path up to American web pages. Regardless LISP variants are still closer to all spoken languages you mentioned than other programming languages. The main difference why the linguistic languages don't look like LISP variants is that languages can only be processed sequentially\linerarly one sound\word\morpheme at a time, this restriction isn't strictly required for a programming language that is primarily absorbed visuo-spatially. LISP is more similar to ALL spoken languages, so there is a lot of evolutionary indicators pointing to the possibility of long term [ > avg human lifespan ] dominance by a LISP implementation.
  - adimitrov 16y ago
    "Good enough" is a curious notion. I'm an advocate of "good enough" is good enough, but sometimes it can be quite tricky to decide when something is good enough. And if. Sometimes, you figure it out down the road; and you'll be in deep trouble if you find out it wasn't! Anyhow, there have been many "good enough" languages — mostly, it depends on cultural factors. Latin is still present in today's traditional sciences (biology, medicine,) French is the language in arts and cuisine, Italian is dominant in music theory, Greek infests philosophy and logics, as does German, which also has a strong foothold in engineering and mathematics. And what do we learn from that? There is no one language. There cannot be one. At least, we haven't figured out a way. Over time, dominant languages rise and fade. That's why I loved Firefly for incorporating Chinese :-D English will fade (most probably.) Also most probably, it will stay in the computing sector, just like Italian did in the music sector. > there are more students taking SATs in China in ENGLISH than in the US+Britain Yeah, that's like saying more Indians write Java code than Americans. What does it mean? Java is "good enough?" For some tasks, but not for all. That Rome to WWW line of yours is quite eurocentric. Can't put my finger on it, but "American web pages" look different in Asia than they do in the West. The cultural values of ancient Rome had no real influence there — except you mean to imply Babbage influenced C#. My knowledge of LISP doesn't go beyond programming-book examples. I somehow never got into it — I blame Haskell!. But you're certainly mistaken that language recognition is sequential. For all we know, it most likely isn't. And for Chinese, for example, it really definitely isn't. Reading a Chinese poem is reading backwards, across, down, and up at the same time in order to get the full meaning. I don't get how LISP is closer to natural languages than to programming languages? Anyhow, my take on the situation of the OP: if he stays in the sector he's in and doesn't move out before retirement, he's found his last language. Otherwise, different tasks and developments are going to force him to adapt. There is no one best language. We've been trying to find it for thousands of years, and it's been rather fruitless so far.
gordonguthrie 16y ago
English is not dominant because it is a 'good enough' language - its dominant because the 2 successive superpowers in the last 2 centuries speak English. There are nearly 200 countries in the UN and about 70 of them are former British colonies. Are you seriously arguing that in, say Nigeria, there was a 'fair' or 'utilitarian' trial of languages and English 'just happened' to be better than the dozens of languages there (repeat this argument 70 times). > It's spoken by the most influential and powerful countries on earth. This is not accidental, but perhaps an important underlying cause for their success. This statement is demonstrable nonsense - you are confusing correlation with causation. With the appropriate infrastructure ANY LANGUAGE can be made to support all the intellectual pursuits of the modern world. Anything from Nuclear Physics to Psychology can be appropriately represented in ANY human language - including ones that don't yet exist - with the application of sufficient resources. The example that demonstrates that is Gallaudet University n the US - the Deaf University http://www.gallaudet.edu/ http://www.gallaudet.edu/ All the courses are taught through the medium of Sign Language (the written language is English because Sign doesn't have a written form). Interesting enough fact fans, Deaf Americans speak French, not English (or more accurately British Sign Language).
loewenskind 16y ago
English is currently hot, just as e.g. French was before it, but I'd expect that to start changing within the next, say 20 years. I'd expect the US to lose more and more relevance while China is gaining. Something could screw that up, you can never predict the future with any accuracy but I would give these events a higher probability than English becoming the global language.

adimitrov 16y ago

I'll disagree. The features you listed apply to other languages much better than they do to English (except the bit about influential countries.) Chinese has a richer vocabulary, is more succinct and has a much less sophisticated grammatic system than English. If you want to get rid of the daunting logosyllabic way of writing, go Korean. Almost the same advantages, with one of the most beautiful and simple alphabets in the world. If you want an even easier language, Bhasa (Indonesian) is probably your choice. Don't forget there's Esperanto, too. Arguably much better suited as a 'world' (or at least pan-Euro-American) language. In fact, English sucks as a `common' language from a lot of perspectives: it's got a very peculiar grammar. In fact, linguists concentrating their efforts on English has crippled a lot of research, and people are realizing (have been for a while, outside of the Anglo-Saxon area) that the paradigms that worked for English are pretty misplaced for other languages. English is an almost isolating language with a lot of inflection-based traits, a weird and very specific tense system, remnants of case that confuse the hell out of people, a fiendishly difficult preposition-system to replace case (including weirdness such as preposition stranding and long-distance dependencies,) very rich and productive idiomatic mechanisms and one roller coaster of an orthography (mostly due to its uncompromisingly inconsistent way of adoption of vocabulary.) Don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on English. All languages are beautiful (except Volapük.) I'm just sick and tired of people with, very often, little to no linguistic authority making claims about the language's viability or suitability to be a language spoken world wide. As a linguist, you hear that all the time, and you just get tired of it :-( The only bit that matters - the reason I (an expat from an ex-socialist country living in western Europe, but not England) am talking to you over the Internet in English - is the cultural (and primarily militaristic!) dominance of the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants (i.e. Britain, America, Australia.) In fact, it's probably mostly due to Britain's vast empire in post-medieval times.

metamemetics 16y ago
Exactly, English isn't perfect, yet it's still a great example of how something that's "good enough" can become dominant. I'm not saying it should be dominant, but that it is and will inevitably continue to be (there are more students taking SATs in China in ENGLISH than in the US+Britain). Also I would argue it's not just due to Britain's empire, but Rome's and Germanic tribes creating a long evolutionary path up to American web pages. Regardless LISP variants are still closer to all spoken languages you mentioned than other programming languages. The main difference why the linguistic languages don't look like LISP variants is that languages can only be processed sequentially\linerarly one sound\word\morpheme at a time, this restriction isn't strictly required for a programming language that is primarily absorbed visuo-spatially. LISP is more similar to ALL spoken languages, so there is a lot of evolutionary indicators pointing to the possibility of long term [ > avg human lifespan ] dominance by a LISP implementation.
- adimitrov 16y ago
  "Good enough" is a curious notion. I'm an advocate of "good enough" is good enough, but sometimes it can be quite tricky to decide when something is good enough. And if. Sometimes, you figure it out down the road; and you'll be in deep trouble if you find out it wasn't! Anyhow, there have been many "good enough" languages — mostly, it depends on cultural factors. Latin is still present in today's traditional sciences (biology, medicine,) French is the language in arts and cuisine, Italian is dominant in music theory, Greek infests philosophy and logics, as does German, which also has a strong foothold in engineering and mathematics. And what do we learn from that? There is no one language. There cannot be one. At least, we haven't figured out a way. Over time, dominant languages rise and fade. That's why I loved Firefly for incorporating Chinese :-D English will fade (most probably.) Also most probably, it will stay in the computing sector, just like Italian did in the music sector. > there are more students taking SATs in China in ENGLISH than in the US+Britain Yeah, that's like saying more Indians write Java code than Americans. What does it mean? Java is "good enough?" For some tasks, but not for all. That Rome to WWW line of yours is quite eurocentric. Can't put my finger on it, but "American web pages" look different in Asia than they do in the West. The cultural values of ancient Rome had no real influence there — except you mean to imply Babbage influenced C#. My knowledge of LISP doesn't go beyond programming-book examples. I somehow never got into it — I blame Haskell!. But you're certainly mistaken that language recognition is sequential. For all we know, it most likely isn't. And for Chinese, for example, it really definitely isn't. Reading a Chinese poem is reading backwards, across, down, and up at the same time in order to get the full meaning. I don't get how LISP is closer to natural languages than to programming languages? Anyhow, my take on the situation of the OP: if he stays in the sector he's in and doesn't move out before retirement, he's found his last language. Otherwise, different tasks and developments are going to force him to adapt. There is no one best language. We've been trying to find it for thousands of years, and it's been rather fruitless so far.

gordonguthrie 16y ago

English is not dominant because it is a 'good enough' language - its dominant because the 2 successive superpowers in the last 2 centuries speak English. There are nearly 200 countries in the UN and about 70 of them are former British colonies. Are you seriously arguing that in, say Nigeria, there was a 'fair' or 'utilitarian' trial of languages and English 'just happened' to be better than the dozens of languages there (repeat this argument 70 times). > It's spoken by the most influential and powerful countries on earth. This is not accidental, but perhaps an important underlying cause for their success. This statement is demonstrable nonsense - you are confusing correlation with causation. With the appropriate infrastructure ANY LANGUAGE can be made to support all the intellectual pursuits of the modern world. Anything from Nuclear Physics to Psychology can be appropriately represented in ANY human language - including ones that don't yet exist - with the application of sufficient resources. The example that demonstrates that is Gallaudet University n the US - the Deaf University http://www.gallaudet.edu/ http://www.gallaudet.edu/ All the courses are taught through the medium of Sign Language (the written language is English because Sign doesn't have a written form). Interesting enough fact fans, Deaf Americans speak French, not English (or more accurately British Sign Language).

loewenskind 16y ago

English is currently hot, just as e.g. French was before it, but I'd expect that to start changing within the next, say 20 years. I'd expect the US to lose more and more relevance while China is gaining. Something could screw that up, you can never predict the future with any accuracy but I would give these events a higher probability than English becoming the global language.