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Yeah, I feel like people forget about that whole British Imperialism thing too easily. We all speak English because at one point the English practically owned

Yeah, I feel like people forget about that whole British Imperialism thing too easily. We all speak English because at one point the English practically owned the entire planet.

junofan 3y ago
The competition was very aggressive, escalating into several Anglo-Dutch wars. The VOC absolutely outcompeted the EIC most of the time. How do you explain the staying power of English given that “imperialism” is the more appropriate context, not “British Imperialism”?
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_colonial_empire#/media/File:DutchEmpire15.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_colonial_empire#/media/F... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Empire#/media/File:The_British_Empire_5.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Empire#/media/File:The...
- Aicy 3y ago
  The Dutch and Portuguese outcompeted the British, until they didn't. In the 19th and early 20th century the British owned the seas, a post 1945 another English speaking country has - the United States.
F3nd0 3y ago
Compare English with Esperanto, which, in spite of being much easier to learn than English, still hasn't become anywhere near as widespread (at least in terms of number of speakers). Ironically the one biggest thing which presents an ideological advantage for Esperanto is that it's native to no nation, so all the people who speak it are closer to being equals in that regard; yet it is the imperialism and a large number of native speakers which has helped to make English so prevalent. So just being technically and morally superior doesn't win you adoption by a long shot, even if you try. And it may be of note for this post that the original author of Esperanto was very conscious of this whole formal/informal issue, which is why he opted to introduce only the plural second person pronoun into practice.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- rep_lodsb 3y ago
  Esperanto may not be native to any nation, but as far as I'm aware, it's heavily influenced by Latin and various European languages. Not saying that this is it's main problem, and other constructed languages like Lojban are probably even less relevant despite trying to be more "culturally neutral".
  - F3nd0 3y ago
    Yes, you are entirely correct. Making a language that’s fully ‘culturally neutral’ is likely impossible, but even so, Esperanto could have done much better in this regard (and as far as I know, some other constructed languages do much better in this regard). Even then, it's a very big jump from ‘people in some countries already know this and don’t need to learn at all’ to ‘people in some countries will have an easier time learning since they’ll recognise a lot of the words’; making this jump would already be a great improvement upon the status quo. Out of the languages which make the jump, Esperanto is by far the most widely spoken and otherwise used in practice.
- batch12 3y ago
  English is neither morally superior nor morally inferior to Esperanto.
  - F3nd0 3y ago
    In general? No, of course not; I feel that would be an absurd claim to make. But as an international language? I think having everyone learn something that is comparatively easy to learn is certainly more fair than having most people learn something that is comparatively hard to learn and understood by others from the get-go, thereby giving the latter an unfair advantage. And I feel that being more fair in this regard is indeed morally superior. (Then again, that might just boil down to one's own idea of morality. But I feel like this one shouldn't be all too uncommon, and the claim is entirely reasonable in its terms.)
8372049 3y ago
That's not universally true. In my country, German was the widely accepted and taught second language until WW2. Since then it's been English.
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  Well one empire (sort of empire) defeated another, so it’s related.
  - 8372049 3y ago
    The reason German(y) was widely unpopular after WW2 wasn't primarily because they lost. ETA: They lost WW1 too, but German remained our #1 foreign language.
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
      OTOH, the reason those feelings were free to be expressed...
      - 8372049 3y ago
        Yeah, we would all be speaking German now if they had won. But to put it another way, German remained the second language after they lost WW1.
        Hunpeter 3y ago
        >we would all be speaking German >now if they had won I hope you're saying this as a joke/deliberate hyperbole.
- Aicy 3y ago
  The relative power of German speakers (Germany) dropped massively after WW2 compared to English speakers (USA).
- OJFord 3y ago
nitwit005 3y ago
It is a bit more complex than that. My father (American) learned German because his mother considered it "the language of science". That attitude is mostly gone.
- skissane 3y ago
  > It is a bit more complex than that. My father (American) learned German because his mother considered it "the language of science". That attitude is mostly gone. When my dad did his chemistry degrees (a bachelors and a masters by research) in the late 1960s / early 1970s (Australia), they made him do a unit on how to read German, because that is the language of a lot of the older chemistry literature. I don’t think they care anywhere near as much about German in chemistry nowadays, although (from what I understand) learning to read German is still an expectation for some humanities PhDs (such as Egyptology)
- sib 3y ago
  When I studied computer science (which, at my university in the United States was still a part of the mathematics faculty), we were required to study one of German, French, or Russian, as those were historical languages of math. Seems a bit quaint now - but at least it got me to learn German and even spend six months studying at the University of Heidelberg.

Yeah, I feel like people forget about that whole British Imperialism thing too easily. We all speak English because at one point the English practically owned the entire planet.

junofan 3y ago

The competition was very aggressive, escalating into several Anglo-Dutch wars. The VOC absolutely outcompeted the EIC most of the time. How do you explain the staying power of English given that “imperialism” is the more appropriate context, not “British Imperialism”?

dragonwriter 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_colonial_empire#/media/File:DutchEmpire15.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_colonial_empire#/media/F... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Empire#/media/File:The_British_Empire_5.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Empire#/media/File:The...
Aicy 3y ago
The Dutch and Portuguese outcompeted the British, until they didn't. In the 19th and early 20th century the British owned the seas, a post 1945 another English speaking country has - the United States.

F3nd0 3y ago

Compare English with Esperanto, which, in spite of being much easier to learn than English, still hasn't become anywhere near as widespread (at least in terms of number of speakers). Ironically the one biggest thing which presents an ideological advantage for Esperanto is that it's native to no nation, so all the people who speak it are closer to being equals in that regard; yet it is the imperialism and a large number of native speakers which has helped to make English so prevalent. So just being technically and morally superior doesn't win you adoption by a long shot, even if you try. And it may be of note for this post that the original author of Esperanto was very conscious of this whole formal/informal issue, which is why he opted to introduce only the plural second person pronoun into practice.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
rep_lodsb 3y ago
Esperanto may not be native to any nation, but as far as I'm aware, it's heavily influenced by Latin and various European languages. Not saying that this is it's main problem, and other constructed languages like Lojban are probably even less relevant despite trying to be more "culturally neutral".
- F3nd0 3y ago
  Yes, you are entirely correct. Making a language that’s fully ‘culturally neutral’ is likely impossible, but even so, Esperanto could have done much better in this regard (and as far as I know, some other constructed languages do much better in this regard). Even then, it's a very big jump from ‘people in some countries already know this and don’t need to learn at all’ to ‘people in some countries will have an easier time learning since they’ll recognise a lot of the words’; making this jump would already be a great improvement upon the status quo. Out of the languages which make the jump, Esperanto is by far the most widely spoken and otherwise used in practice.
batch12 3y ago
English is neither morally superior nor morally inferior to Esperanto.
- F3nd0 3y ago
  In general? No, of course not; I feel that would be an absurd claim to make. But as an international language? I think having everyone learn something that is comparatively easy to learn is certainly more fair than having most people learn something that is comparatively hard to learn and understood by others from the get-go, thereby giving the latter an unfair advantage. And I feel that being more fair in this regard is indeed morally superior. (Then again, that might just boil down to one's own idea of morality. But I feel like this one shouldn't be all too uncommon, and the claim is entirely reasonable in its terms.)

8372049 3y ago

That's not universally true. In my country, German was the widely accepted and taught second language until WW2. Since then it's been English.

actionfromafar 3y ago
Well one empire (sort of empire) defeated another, so it’s related.
- 8372049 3y ago
  The reason German(y) was widely unpopular after WW2 wasn't primarily because they lost. ETA: They lost WW1 too, but German remained our #1 foreign language.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    OTOH, the reason those feelings were free to be expressed...
    - 8372049 3y ago
      Yeah, we would all be speaking German now if they had won. But to put it another way, German remained the second language after they lost WW1.
      - Hunpeter 3y ago
        >we would all be speaking German >now if they had won I hope you're saying this as a joke/deliberate hyperbole.
Aicy 3y ago
The relative power of German speakers (Germany) dropped massively after WW2 compared to English speakers (USA).
OJFord 3y ago

nitwit005 3y ago

It is a bit more complex than that. My father (American) learned German because his mother considered it "the language of science". That attitude is mostly gone.

skissane 3y ago
> It is a bit more complex than that. My father (American) learned German because his mother considered it "the language of science". That attitude is mostly gone. When my dad did his chemistry degrees (a bachelors and a masters by research) in the late 1960s / early 1970s (Australia), they made him do a unit on how to read German, because that is the language of a lot of the older chemistry literature. I don’t think they care anywhere near as much about German in chemistry nowadays, although (from what I understand) learning to read German is still an expectation for some humanities PhDs (such as Egyptology)
sib 3y ago
When I studied computer science (which, at my university in the United States was still a part of the mathematics faculty), we were required to study one of German, French, or Russian, as those were historical languages of math. Seems a bit quaint now - but at least it got me to learn German and even spend six months studying at the University of Heidelberg.