4 ms·

As a native English speaker, I don't like English being the world language because I'm at a significant disadvantage because 1. I have zero incentive to learn

by olah_1 6y ago

As a native English speaker, I don't like English being the world language because I'm at a significant disadvantage because 1. I have zero incentive to learn another language 2. I do not have a secret/family language that I can switch into for strategic purposes 3. It gets watered down for the purposes of internationality to the point that we lose even our productive affixes. We can't even create meaningful names within English anymore. It loses its richness.

emodendroket 6y ago
> It gets watered down for the purposes of internationality to the point that we lose even our productive affixes. I have no idea what you're talking about. Nobody in English-speaking countries is changing the way they speak "for the purposes of internationality." And the way a bunch of languages are importing scores of English words wholesale isn't much richer in my view.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Tainnor 6y ago
  There have been studies, and I know this also anecdotally from native speakers, that e.g. "business English", at least in non-English countries, becomes its own, more restrictive variant of English because of the high percentage of non-native speakers. I know that some such native speakers have said that they feel their English got worse after living abroad for a while. Of course, overall, this is a very slow process. People don't stop applying the rules or simplify vocabulary over night or even within the span of a couple of years, but there is growing evidence in general that the more speakers a language has, the more it tends to simplify structurally, e.g. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.181274 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.181274
  - emodendroket 6y ago
    Sure, and materials produced by the government or for wide consumption are written in very simple language. But this is somewhat outside what "typical" native speakers are using.
umanwizard 6y ago
Nothings stops you from learning whatever second language you want. I think having English as a native language actually gives us a huge advantage: we can travel to a large chunk of the world and have a pretty good chance of being understood. We can work in globally relevant jobs with no language barrier. And so on.
- olah_1 6y ago
  > Nothings stops you from learning whatever second language you want. A lack of incentive is what stops most. > we can travel to a large chunk of the world and have a pretty good chance of being understood. We can work in globally relevant jobs with no language barrier. And so on. You described the benefit of knowing English, not being a native English speaker.
  - Viliam1234 6y ago
    The advantage of being a native English speaker is that you do not have to waste years of your life learning English as a second language. You could spend the same amount of time learning a different language... but you probably can find a better use for that time. In the time I spent learning English -- which is still far from perfect, especially in spoken form -- I probably could have learned quantum physics instead. Except, I realistically couldn't have, because good textbooks on this topic do not exist in my language, I wouldn't be able to learn more online, etc. Now imagine removing an equivalent amount of knowledge from your life -- that is the price you would have to pay for not being a native English speaker. (The idea of Esperanto as everyone's second language is that instead of some people spending 10+ years learning the common language, and some lucky people spending 0, everyone would spend 2 years instead. Until people would hopefully realize that private languages are useless, and then it would be 0 for everyone.)
- __sisyphus__ 6y ago
  > Nothings stops you from learning whatever second language you want. You're right, nothing is stopping one from learning a second language; unfortunately not only do most english speakers lack incentive, but also they lack the ability to practice in the way most other languages do. Most of the time when you run into non-native english speakers, they would rather practice their english with you, even when in their country of origin. Additionally, there's very little lingual diversity in the US as it stands. Sure, there are plenty of spanish speakers, but early education doesn't really focus on teaching spanish with any sort of fluency as a true end-goal. So situationally it just makes learning a second language that much more difficult. Nonetheless, I do agree with you that there are obviously huge benefits to it; the few that you mention, along with many others.
dathinab 6y ago
At the same time you have a major advantage by most of the internet being (language wise) accessible to you from the get to go. I can just say that if I would have been able to speak english in my teenage years it would have majorly influenced my life in a likely positive but at least more interesting direction. Sadly back then I neither had any reasonable english skills nor was I aware of how much it would help me. Through I guess by now it has become quite obvious how use-full english is (wrt. IT/CS).
- olah_1 6y ago
  I’m sure that it is better to learn English from a young age, yes. But as it stands currently, you have an advantage over me.
- siltpotato 6y ago
  That actually brings up a point that upsets me somewhat: The Spanish Internet feels inaccessible to me because I don't know where the interesting parts of it are.
stereolambda 6y ago
I think that the advantages of being a native speaker in the end outweigh the disadvantages. You are exposed to the dominant economic and cultural ecosystems easier and much earlier. You may lack some ability to switch context and reframe things for different cultures, but it's not generally a practical necessity in life. On the other hand, you may sometimes be harder to understand for non-native speakers, especially if you speak some non-mainstream dialect or pronunciation. (Even standard British, in normal speech, is probably harder for me to process than American: depends on what you've been exposed to.) Coming from some other Latin script language, you'd probably have a better feel for oddities in English pronunciation (like 'thumb', or 'pseudo', etc.) and can easier adapt some more consistent 'euro' way of pronouncing as needed. Sometimes people won't understand you otherwise.
- claudeganon 6y ago
  >You are exposed to the dominant economic and cultural ecosystems easier and much earlier. I don't think that early induction into specific ideologies as something to be described as blanket good. This kind of monolingualism certainly hasn't helped the intellectual life of the average American or its society writ large.
  - stereolambda 6y ago
    In the big picture perhaps, but I tend to think about the raw economic and having-a-say-in-the-world status of an individual. In that sense, it's statistically better to be at the center and the mainstream. You can luck and hack your way into something from the periphery but it's harder. The wider benefits of cross-pollination is another discussion.
fr2null 6y ago
While you might have a slight disadvantage if you ever really needed to talk about someone while they are standing next to you, I personally feel like I have a much bigger disadvantage since English is not my native language. My English is at a C2 level, and as such I am able to understand and explain complex concepts with ease, however my debating and small talk skills are nowhere nears as good in English as they are in my native language. I find it much harder to convince people using English. I know that the only thing that will make it better is practice, but this takes a lot of time and effort.
mhh__ 6y ago
Re. Point 2 Move to glasgow if you want to be able to switch into a "different" language
JdeBP 6y ago
Have you tried Brummie? Non-native speakers often have significant trouble with England's non-RP accents.

by olah_1 6y ago

emodendroket 6y ago

> It gets watered down for the purposes of internationality to the point that we lose even our productive affixes. I have no idea what you're talking about. Nobody in English-speaking countries is changing the way they speak "for the purposes of internationality." And the way a bunch of languages are importing scores of English words wholesale isn't much richer in my view.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Tainnor 6y ago
There have been studies, and I know this also anecdotally from native speakers, that e.g. "business English", at least in non-English countries, becomes its own, more restrictive variant of English because of the high percentage of non-native speakers. I know that some such native speakers have said that they feel their English got worse after living abroad for a while. Of course, overall, this is a very slow process. People don't stop applying the rules or simplify vocabulary over night or even within the span of a couple of years, but there is growing evidence in general that the more speakers a language has, the more it tends to simplify structurally, e.g. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.181274 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.181274
- emodendroket 6y ago
  Sure, and materials produced by the government or for wide consumption are written in very simple language. But this is somewhat outside what "typical" native speakers are using.

umanwizard 6y ago

Nothings stops you from learning whatever second language you want. I think having English as a native language actually gives us a huge advantage: we can travel to a large chunk of the world and have a pretty good chance of being understood. We can work in globally relevant jobs with no language barrier. And so on.

olah_1 6y ago
> Nothings stops you from learning whatever second language you want. A lack of incentive is what stops most. > we can travel to a large chunk of the world and have a pretty good chance of being understood. We can work in globally relevant jobs with no language barrier. And so on. You described the benefit of knowing English, not being a native English speaker.
- Viliam1234 6y ago
  The advantage of being a native English speaker is that you do not have to waste years of your life learning English as a second language. You could spend the same amount of time learning a different language... but you probably can find a better use for that time. In the time I spent learning English -- which is still far from perfect, especially in spoken form -- I probably could have learned quantum physics instead. Except, I realistically couldn't have, because good textbooks on this topic do not exist in my language, I wouldn't be able to learn more online, etc. Now imagine removing an equivalent amount of knowledge from your life -- that is the price you would have to pay for not being a native English speaker. (The idea of Esperanto as everyone's second language is that instead of some people spending 10+ years learning the common language, and some lucky people spending 0, everyone would spend 2 years instead. Until people would hopefully realize that private languages are useless, and then it would be 0 for everyone.)
__sisyphus__ 6y ago
> Nothings stops you from learning whatever second language you want. You're right, nothing is stopping one from learning a second language; unfortunately not only do most english speakers lack incentive, but also they lack the ability to practice in the way most other languages do. Most of the time when you run into non-native english speakers, they would rather practice their english with you, even when in their country of origin. Additionally, there's very little lingual diversity in the US as it stands. Sure, there are plenty of spanish speakers, but early education doesn't really focus on teaching spanish with any sort of fluency as a true end-goal. So situationally it just makes learning a second language that much more difficult. Nonetheless, I do agree with you that there are obviously huge benefits to it; the few that you mention, along with many others.

dathinab 6y ago

At the same time you have a major advantage by most of the internet being (language wise) accessible to you from the get to go. I can just say that if I would have been able to speak english in my teenage years it would have majorly influenced my life in a likely positive but at least more interesting direction. Sadly back then I neither had any reasonable english skills nor was I aware of how much it would help me. Through I guess by now it has become quite obvious how use-full english is (wrt. IT/CS).

olah_1 6y ago
I’m sure that it is better to learn English from a young age, yes. But as it stands currently, you have an advantage over me.
siltpotato 6y ago
That actually brings up a point that upsets me somewhat: The Spanish Internet feels inaccessible to me because I don't know where the interesting parts of it are.

stereolambda 6y ago

I think that the advantages of being a native speaker in the end outweigh the disadvantages. You are exposed to the dominant economic and cultural ecosystems easier and much earlier. You may lack some ability to switch context and reframe things for different cultures, but it's not generally a practical necessity in life. On the other hand, you may sometimes be harder to understand for non-native speakers, especially if you speak some non-mainstream dialect or pronunciation. (Even standard British, in normal speech, is probably harder for me to process than American: depends on what you've been exposed to.) Coming from some other Latin script language, you'd probably have a better feel for oddities in English pronunciation (like 'thumb', or 'pseudo', etc.) and can easier adapt some more consistent 'euro' way of pronouncing as needed. Sometimes people won't understand you otherwise.

claudeganon 6y ago
>You are exposed to the dominant economic and cultural ecosystems easier and much earlier. I don't think that early induction into specific ideologies as something to be described as blanket good. This kind of monolingualism certainly hasn't helped the intellectual life of the average American or its society writ large.
- stereolambda 6y ago
  In the big picture perhaps, but I tend to think about the raw economic and having-a-say-in-the-world status of an individual. In that sense, it's statistically better to be at the center and the mainstream. You can luck and hack your way into something from the periphery but it's harder. The wider benefits of cross-pollination is another discussion.

fr2null 6y ago

While you might have a slight disadvantage if you ever really needed to talk about someone while they are standing next to you, I personally feel like I have a much bigger disadvantage since English is not my native language. My English is at a C2 level, and as such I am able to understand and explain complex concepts with ease, however my debating and small talk skills are nowhere nears as good in English as they are in my native language. I find it much harder to convince people using English. I know that the only thing that will make it better is practice, but this takes a lot of time and effort.

mhh__ 6y ago

Re. Point 2 Move to glasgow if you want to be able to switch into a "different" language

JdeBP 6y ago

Have you tried Brummie? Non-native speakers often have significant trouble with England's non-RP accents.