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> That is probably where the complaints comes from. You read something in a foreign language (English) that has become a lingua franca, and come across a unit e

by knolax 6y ago

> That is probably where the complaints comes from. You read something in a foreign language (English) that has become a lingua franca, and come across a unit expressed in what is not a lingua franca. I've only ever seen non-native speakers treat English as a lingua franca. Most native speakers I know view the ubiquity of English as fun trivia, and don't ascribe to the language the same type of importance that non-native speakers do. I remember once somebody posted open source code with non-English comments, and the people who were annoyed by that were almost exclusively non-native speakers. Personally I see it as a form of gate-keeping. People who went out of their way to learn English as a second language want to continue using it for everything because then they have a leg up over their non-English speaking countrymen. The US on the other hand doesn't even have a de jure official language. Most government forms come in both English, Spanish, and whatever language happens to be common in the local area. A while ago I was getting census ads in three differently languages. In high school they told me I couldn't work at McDonald's unless I spoke Spanish. It would be better for everyone if we just let go of the concept of "lingua franca" entirely.

tsimionescu 6y ago
> It would be better for everyone if we just let go of the concept of "lingua franca" entirely. That is like saying we should just give up on the idea of understanding each other. The reality is that cultures that come into contact need a language to understand each other. When there are more than 2 cultures coming into contact, the possibility of everyone just learning everyone else's language decreases dramatically. For example, I work in a Romanian company and I have to work closely with US colleagues, German colleagues, Indian colleagues, Chinese colleagues, and Italian colleagues. In school, I learned English and French. If we didn't have a lingua franca that everyone is expected to know, I would have had to learn 4-5 more languages when I joined this company. I don't even know if my Chinese colleagues speak Mandarin or something else, or if they at least speak the same dialect. And of course, everyone of them would have also had to learn 4-5 new languages as well. So unless you believe human beings can each easily learn ~20-30 languages (to pick some arbitrary low number), or unless you believe we should stop communicating across language boundaries, or hire translators, then we can't really let go of a lingua franca. > I remember once somebody posted open source code with non-English comments, and the people who were annoyed by that were almost exclusively non-native speakers. As a fun anecdote of my own, we recently implemented a clock feature in our app. During the demo, our US colleagues were confused why the clock feature was showing "16:23" instead of a normal hour.
- knolax 6y ago
  My grandfather never had a formal education and I've seen old articles of his with citations in three different languages. That was in the early 1900s. In the early 2000s the majority of my high school classmates were trilingual and most of the world is already multilingual[0]. So I don't think 4-5 languages is a big difference from the current status quo. Plus, you know, since it's a Romanian company you could all just learn Romanian in addition to the 2-3 languages you already know. Instead of only interacting with other cosmopolitans IT monkeys you could go interact with the locals and/or upper management for once. The local Romanian teenagers could get programming internships without having to learn English too. If fry-cooks can learn Spanish you can learn Romanian. Who knows how many potential Linus Torvalds are out there working menial jobs in rural Finland because they failed English in high school. [0] https://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/multilingualism https://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/multilingualism
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    I am Romanian, so I can speak it pretty well, and I am trilingual myself (though my French is pretty weak). The colleagues I was speaking of do not live in Romania though, and the Romanian company is just a subsidiary of a US company. All of the people I was speaking of live in their respective countries (the US, Germany, India, China, Italy). This is what I was getting at - if we have international trade and cooperation, we need a language to communicate across borders. Whether that is English or French or Mandarin is not the point, but that there must be 1 language that all of the people who want to participate in the conversation understand. And while in work conditions some amount of multilingualism could be required, there are other venues like trade conferences where trying to handle people speaking tens or hundreds of languages would quickly become untenable for all but the greatest polyglot. And Linus Torvalds is a great example. In a world without a lingua franca for IT, how could a Finnish student learn from and debate an American professor? Papers could be translated, but how would interactive discussion happen? Would Tannenbaum have learned Finnish or payed a Finnish translator if Torvalds hadn't known English?

by knolax 6y ago

tsimionescu 6y ago

> It would be better for everyone if we just let go of the concept of "lingua franca" entirely. That is like saying we should just give up on the idea of understanding each other. The reality is that cultures that come into contact need a language to understand each other. When there are more than 2 cultures coming into contact, the possibility of everyone just learning everyone else's language decreases dramatically. For example, I work in a Romanian company and I have to work closely with US colleagues, German colleagues, Indian colleagues, Chinese colleagues, and Italian colleagues. In school, I learned English and French. If we didn't have a lingua franca that everyone is expected to know, I would have had to learn 4-5 more languages when I joined this company. I don't even know if my Chinese colleagues speak Mandarin or something else, or if they at least speak the same dialect. And of course, everyone of them would have also had to learn 4-5 new languages as well. So unless you believe human beings can each easily learn ~20-30 languages (to pick some arbitrary low number), or unless you believe we should stop communicating across language boundaries, or hire translators, then we can't really let go of a lingua franca. > I remember once somebody posted open source code with non-English comments, and the people who were annoyed by that were almost exclusively non-native speakers. As a fun anecdote of my own, we recently implemented a clock feature in our app. During the demo, our US colleagues were confused why the clock feature was showing "16:23" instead of a normal hour.

knolax 6y ago
My grandfather never had a formal education and I've seen old articles of his with citations in three different languages. That was in the early 1900s. In the early 2000s the majority of my high school classmates were trilingual and most of the world is already multilingual[0]. So I don't think 4-5 languages is a big difference from the current status quo. Plus, you know, since it's a Romanian company you could all just learn Romanian in addition to the 2-3 languages you already know. Instead of only interacting with other cosmopolitans IT monkeys you could go interact with the locals and/or upper management for once. The local Romanian teenagers could get programming internships without having to learn English too. If fry-cooks can learn Spanish you can learn Romanian. Who knows how many potential Linus Torvalds are out there working menial jobs in rural Finland because they failed English in high school. [0] https://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/multilingualism https://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/multilingualism
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  I am Romanian, so I can speak it pretty well, and I am trilingual myself (though my French is pretty weak). The colleagues I was speaking of do not live in Romania though, and the Romanian company is just a subsidiary of a US company. All of the people I was speaking of live in their respective countries (the US, Germany, India, China, Italy). This is what I was getting at - if we have international trade and cooperation, we need a language to communicate across borders. Whether that is English or French or Mandarin is not the point, but that there must be 1 language that all of the people who want to participate in the conversation understand. And while in work conditions some amount of multilingualism could be required, there are other venues like trade conferences where trying to handle people speaking tens or hundreds of languages would quickly become untenable for all but the greatest polyglot. And Linus Torvalds is a great example. In a world without a lingua franca for IT, how could a Finnish student learn from and debate an American professor? Papers could be translated, but how would interactive discussion happen? Would Tannenbaum have learned Finnish or payed a Finnish translator if Torvalds hadn't known English?