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That may be true, but in practice, US english has no taken over as the de-facto English. All thanks to the Internet. I am glad someone is pushing back on this,
by sgt 4mo ago
That may be true, but in practice, US english has no taken over as the de-facto English. All thanks to the Internet.
I am glad someone is pushing back on this, though, and I want more multi lingual sites on the Internet in general.
- mghackerlady 4mo agoNo, no I don't think it has. Americans are vastly outnumbered by commonwealth states using and teaching standard English
- sgt 4mo agoSee my other comment, the world follows the US. It's about where the influence is primarily coming from, and that is currently America. And in terms of English it has a distinct advantage in that it is full of native speakers. Many Indians are proficient in English but they're not native speakers.
- ChrisRR 4mo agoBy your logic, chinese english or indian english are the defacto as they massively outnumber american english You just mean that you visit more american sites than other non-US english speaking sites
- AnimalMuppet 4mo agoGo to France, or Japan, or Hungary, or somewhere like that. Someone there is visiting a web site that is in English. Now, what English is it most likely to be? My guess is US English, not UK English, not Indian English, not Chinese English. Sure, they may visit some of those sites, but I suspect that the most frequent will be US English.
- sgt 4mo agoCorrect, generally speaking they will have their own default locales on their computer and local sites will be in e.g. French but going to Instagram it will render in US English - unless the app has been translated, which it probably has so it's not the best example.
- edent 4mo agoI'm in IT right now having travelled through FR, DE, NO, PL and half a dozen more countries. When selecting the EN option on a website it is almost 100% of the time with a GB flag. The spelling is mostly en-GB as well.
- throwaway2037 4mo agoIn this case, Japan is special. There relationship (post WW2) with the US is unparalleled compared to France or Hungary. It will absolutely be US style. Japan was never very close with the UK.
- mghackerlady 4mo agoYeah, I think the only 2 countries that teach american english are Japan and the Philippines
- throwaway2037 4mo agoMost countries in North East Asia or South East Asia (exclude South Asia) teach US-style English. A few that come to mind: South Korea, Taiwan, Mainland China, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Indonesia.
- drnick1 4mo ago> not Indian English, not Chinese English There is no such thing as Chinese English, unless you politely mean "English as incorrect spoken by Chinese native speakers."
- mghackerlady 4mo agoThere's a national english for anywhere it's widely spoken, that's just how international languages like english and french work.
- sgt 4mo agoYou're confusing number of speakers with convention or standard setting power. Look at the places where US english has become the norm or convention; programming, media, apps, business, Internet in general. And the US is in unique position - it drives technology forward quite a bit, and it's also actual native English speakers. So in other words got more to do with technological and economic influence, not population size.
- pepperoni_pizza 4mo agoAccording to wikipedia, there's 128 millions of en-IN speakers, of which only few hundred thousands are native - while there's 248 million native en-US speakers.
- throwaway2037 4mo agoYou raise a great point here. At what point will a non-English speaking country become the nation with the most English speakers? In my mind, surely that is Indian by 2050. If they can become upper middle income by that time (I am sure of it), then I guess more that half of adults will speak English at least at elementary to middle school level. (Dear reader: Please don't read that as a slight against the English language skills of Indians. I know from personal experience: With five grade level language skills, you can get a lot done!) They would way out number the number of English speaking Americans.