English and its influence on other languages (was: Re: About linguistic (in)tolerance)

Orjan Johansen wrote:

> On Sat, 27 Mar 1999, John Cowan wrote:
>
> > According to the book, "the queen of affectations" is that of
> > pretending to have forgotten your own language.
>
> Who's pretending?  It happens frighteningly often that I can only remember
> the English word for something but not the Norwegian one.  Although I
> think the opposite still happens more commonly.  Of course it depends
> heavily on the subject matter.
Wow -- it's that bad?  What percentage of the Norwegian population
can speak English fluently?  I think I can perhaps grasp why so many
Scandinavians and Hollanders worry about the future of their language...

That level of English speaking seems something analogous to the frequency along
the US-Mexican border, where well over 3/4 of the people on the American
side are Spanish speakers, but their Spanish has become thoroughly Americanized:
_lots_ of borrowing (e.g., <jira> [xira], "heater", <charchar> "to charge [as with a
credit card]") and changes of meaning (e.g., <voltear> "to turn" [which can normally
only refer to motion] acquires the meaning of "become", as in English).   But I can
only speculate as to how English might affect European languages (in radically
different social environments).

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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: Deuterotom
Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."

There's nothing particularly wrong with the
proletariat. It's the hamburgers of the
proletariat that I have a problem with. - Alfred Wallace
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