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English wasn’t the default due to a head start with the internet. It was dominant due to a British Empire that stretched across the world for CENTURIES. Englis

English wasn’t the default due to a head start with the internet. It was dominant due to a British Empire that stretched across the world for CENTURIES. English is still the predominant language for all international shipping, aviation, and financial transactions. This same type of talk occurred in the 80’s when folks were encouraged to learn Japanese as it would soon be the new lingua Franca. In the grand scheme of things, it obvious and not fairly deniable that pictographic languages are incompatible with a computer-based culture. While the spoken Chinese language will survive, the written form will be an unused relic in a century or two.

_4jlx 6y ago
English is indeed better suited for a conventional computer keyboard, coding, and reading left to right. However, to me it's still unclear how much of this advantage is due to the fact that computers were specifically designed for english speakers.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  It's not just that computers were specifically designed for english speakers. It's that, even trying to specifically design for chinese speakers, it winds up clumsy to use. It doesn't matter the input method - big 4, pinyin, bopomofo - they're considerably clumsier than just typing out english or spanish or icelandish on a keyboard. You may say that the problem is the small keyboard. But if you make the keyboard big enough, it takes three people to operate. (Literally - I have seen such a keyboard, for Kanji. It was huge. One person couldn't run it, because some of the shift keys were not within arm's reach of the keys they shifted.) So that's not an answer for most people. Ideograph-based languages are clumsier to type than alphabet-based languages. They just are, and there is no great solution. The very information density that you keep harping on works against them in this respect.
  - bobbyz 6y ago
    Hmm I seem to be misinformed. I totally forgot to think about pinyin. Apparently it's as fast or faster than english. For example, hitting "jtkqwrhyz" on your keyboard will give you "Jin-tian kong-qi wu-ran hen yan-zhong" which translates to "The air pollution is pretty severe today". I don't type in pinyin though.

_4jlx 6y ago

English is indeed better suited for a conventional computer keyboard, coding, and reading left to right. However, to me it's still unclear how much of this advantage is due to the fact that computers were specifically designed for english speakers.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
It's not just that computers were specifically designed for english speakers. It's that, even trying to specifically design for chinese speakers, it winds up clumsy to use. It doesn't matter the input method - big 4, pinyin, bopomofo - they're considerably clumsier than just typing out english or spanish or icelandish on a keyboard. You may say that the problem is the small keyboard. But if you make the keyboard big enough, it takes three people to operate. (Literally - I have seen such a keyboard, for Kanji. It was huge. One person couldn't run it, because some of the shift keys were not within arm's reach of the keys they shifted.) So that's not an answer for most people. Ideograph-based languages are clumsier to type than alphabet-based languages. They just are, and there is no great solution. The very information density that you keep harping on works against them in this respect.
- bobbyz 6y ago
  Hmm I seem to be misinformed. I totally forgot to think about pinyin. Apparently it's as fast or faster than english. For example, hitting "jtkqwrhyz" on your keyboard will give you "Jin-tian kong-qi wu-ran hen yan-zhong" which translates to "The air pollution is pretty severe today". I don't type in pinyin though.