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Interesting stuff. Thanks for sharing! From my (limited) experience, it feels like small European languages are particularly susceptible to domain loss from E

Interesting stuff. Thanks for sharing! From my (limited) experience, it feels like small European languages are particularly susceptible to domain loss from English. Since they all share a common alphabet and the phonemes are "close enough", it's often trivial to grab a word or phrase from English when there isn't a proper native substitute. The technical fields are obviously going to go first, but other fields will follow as the world changes. English is a highly predatory language. It absorbs foreign vocabulary extremely easily, and the grammar is remarkably flexible. If a language doesn't cover some conceptual territory, odds are that English will step in to fill the gap. I can easily envision a world where most people eventually speak some kind of English creole. Oddly, the only major language (100 million+ speakers) I've seen that's resistant to English invasion is Chinese. The pictographic writing system, coupled with its monosyllabic tonal nature make it really hard for Chinese speakers to use unmodified foreign vocabulary. English has grabbed a number of Chinese words, but the transfer has been almost entirely one way. I'm sure there's other languages that are incompatible with English, but they're in a distinct minority. I think the rest are going to experience at least some domain loss to English.

eru 17y ago
What about the Japanese?
- jibiki 17y ago
  Japanese has tons of English words, even for some pretty basic concepts (チャンス, タイプ, etc.)
tokenadult 17y ago
the only major language (100 million+ speakers) I've seen that's resistant to English invasion is Chinese. This is not at all true of spoken Chinese. Having lived in east Asia for six years of my life, I can recall countless conversations I've overheard in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China in which English words were intermixed into Chinese sentences by native speakers of Chinese speaking to other native speakers of Chinese. I've also heard a lot of use of straight-up English in "Chinese-language" broadcasting for local audiences. After edit: I should point out too that most of the modern scientific vocabulary of Chinese is composed of compound words that are formed on the model of English or common European words for the same concepts. English ends up being a better launchpad for study of Chinese than I would have guessed when I began studying Chinese in 1975.
abrahamsen 17y ago
Domain loss doesn't mean importing single words. Importing new words, especially for new concepts, and adjusting them to the native grammar is just natural evolution of the language. Domain loss mean that we switch fully to another language, including grammar. This is very close to be the case at the Danish universities, where almost all research is published in English, and more recently, most courses are taught exclusively in English in order to attract foreign students.

eru 17y ago

What about the Japanese?

jibiki 17y ago
Japanese has tons of English words, even for some pretty basic concepts (チャンス, タイプ, etc.)

tokenadult 17y ago

the only major language (100 million+ speakers) I've seen that's resistant to English invasion is Chinese. This is not at all true of spoken Chinese. Having lived in east Asia for six years of my life, I can recall countless conversations I've overheard in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China in which English words were intermixed into Chinese sentences by native speakers of Chinese speaking to other native speakers of Chinese. I've also heard a lot of use of straight-up English in "Chinese-language" broadcasting for local audiences. After edit: I should point out too that most of the modern scientific vocabulary of Chinese is composed of compound words that are formed on the model of English or common European words for the same concepts. English ends up being a better launchpad for study of Chinese than I would have guessed when I began studying Chinese in 1975.

abrahamsen 17y ago

Domain loss doesn't mean importing single words. Importing new words, especially for new concepts, and adjusting them to the native grammar is just natural evolution of the language. Domain loss mean that we switch fully to another language, including grammar. This is very close to be the case at the Danish universities, where almost all research is published in English, and more recently, most courses are taught exclusively in English in order to attract foreign students.