English language domination (English becoming the World Language... Goodbye French)

News24.com ^ | 2/12/05

[CzarNicky]

Hey algore invented the thing why shouldn't it all route through the US?

[PzLdr]

Eigtheenth Century. Frederick the Great and Catherine the Great both preferred French, and it was the common language of Diplomats.

[FormerACLUmember]

"US Internet imperialism"? Sounds like Ward Churchill or Howard Dean babbling away.

[bahblahbah]

I am an unabashed imperialist.

[An Old Marine]

French, she said, evoked "dreams, fashion, history, cooking and wine. and surrender

[robertpaulsen]

All those years learning Esperanto down the toilet.

[taxed2death]

yea, we have AlGore to thank for that right?

/sarcasm off

[Starwolf]

French has historically been the language all diplomat spoke. Chriac had a temper tantrum about the loss of usage a while back, in Vietnam of all places.

Despite English clearly being the dominant language there is clearly educational value in learning another language. For me it was French, for my daughters, its Spanish.

[Irene Adler]

English is indeed easy to learn to speak on a basic level which is what the author of the article said. The present-tense verbs are quite regular (compared to those in many other languages), and English has no gender for nouns. For very, very basic communication, the present tense is all that is required. It is quite easy for the average person to learn to speak some English.

[Wolfstar]

Well, here in Southern California, Spanish seems to be on it's way to being the dominant language. Sigh.

[jimbo123]

The French will all be speaking Arabic in ten years.

[jimbo123]

[familyop]

I'm glad that the academic (feminist, etc.) efforts to push that weirdo, pinko Esperanto as a worldwide language failed ("tey" as a unisex pronoun and all of that).

[RaceBannon]

Better tell that to the people who make ATM machines.....

[Cicero]

Because it draws on so many other languages, English is an exceedingly rich and subtle language. By comparison, French is impoverished. I forget the exact numbers, but there are more than 10 or 20 times as many words in English as in French.

The Academie Francaise has always been exceedingly inflexible about adopting new words into the language, and the government has repeatedly clamped down on the import of English words, for instance. So French is all the more impoverished.

It is, of course, America that has done most to spread English, coming on top of the Victorian English empire which spread English into India and parts of Africa. American inventiveness, in particular, as well as military and economic importance, has assured that as new fields arise they will use English as their primary terminology.

The Internet has probably put the lid on it. Other languages can be found on the net, but unless you learn English you are confined to tiny ghettos on it.

[familyop]

"I am an unabashed imperialist."

We "Yanks" are not.

On the Internet, it was first developed by our US Defense (ARPA). The US Government does not control the Internet, although socialist countries like China do block addresses of many sites from the computers of their populations. Standards for the Internet are developed by international groups. The workhorses of the Internet ("workhorses" so to speak: traffic servers, that is, like nameservers, mail transfer agents and the like) are UNIX servers, in perspective, as MS servers for such purpose don't handle much traffic or thorough security (see Internet land speed records, effects of worms on MS servers, etc.). Anyone can set up servers to route Internet traffic at low costs. IPV6, with its addressing standards, will provide for everyone on the planet, potentially, to have a unique address.

[Savage Beast]

If they think French is in free-fall now, just wait until Arabic replaces French as the national language of France!

[conejo99]

Mostly in your imagination.

[cccflo]

HAHAHAHA 'lingua FRANCa'? Get it? FRANCAIS? French? It is part of the latinate definition!!!!
Wow that was a really stupid comment, nice work.