> [mailto:CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu] On Behalf Of R A Brown
> <deinx nxtxr> wrote:
> [snip]
> >
> > Yes, English as a world standard will erode away even the bigger of
> > the local languages over time as the local languages become less
> > useful. It's just a matter of how long it will take.
>
> Welsh is still going well enough after some one and half
> millennia of coexistence with English on this small island.
> If Welsh can manage it, I don't see why others cannot (If I
> thought you & I would live long enough I was hazard a sizable
> wager that there will still be Welsh speakers about at the
> end of the current millennium).
Welsh is still alive, but only with political backing. Politics are fickle,
and someday these feel-good ethnic policies that support minority languages
are likely to disappear.
> > I'm betting on Spanish to have the
> > longest staying power.
>
> I see - altho there are far more speakers of Chinese and of
> Hindi than there are of Spanish? Do you really think these
> people with their long history will supinely give way to
> English? Also I find it very difficult to imagine that the
> Arabic speaking world will simply keep Arabic for reciting
> the Qur'an and use English among themselves as their daily language.
Mainly because Latin America has a lot of monoglots and seems to be the
slowest in accepting English. Nations like India and China are already on
the English bandwagon.
I would expect the liturgical languages to remain "alive" but only the
academic context, something like Ancient Hebrew is today. I wouldn't expect
it to survive as an L1.
> No - I suspect the world will remain multilingual, tho the
> number of languages will probably decline.
It's already declining, it's just a matter of how long it will take to get
down to 1.