Re: World English (was: Fictional auxlangs as artlangs)

Hallo!

On Mon, 22 Dec 2008 17:27:57 +0000, R A Brown wrote:

> <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).
When it comes to chances of survival of minor languages,
a key issue is how much the language is considered worth
preserving by its own speakers, and AFAIK in Wales there
indeed is a strong awareness that the Welsh language is
worth preserving.  Such awareness is awakening in more
and more minor language communities, but there are others
where the local vernacular is considered rustic and
uneducated by its own speakers.

Second, the UK is a free country that no longer oppresses
linguistic minorities.  Everybody is free to use whatever
language he wishes to (with the only limitation being a
practical one: you need someone who understands the
language to talk to).  Some governments try to force
members of linguistic minorities to adopt the "national
languages".

What also helps in the survival of Welsh is that it is
spoken in a country where economic prosperity has spread
into every corner of the countryside, more or less, and
Welsh speakers are no longer forced to forsake their
local community to escape poverty and exclusion from
social progress.  This is not the case in developing
countries, where millions of minor language speakers
abandon their villages and move into major cities in
hope of a better life, and leave their native language
behind.

If the human race manages to make poverty and tyranny
history and create a world of global freedom and
prosperity, there is thus very much won for the survival
of minor languages.  People don't easily give up their
language; they only do so if they are either forced to,
or feel that giving it up is the price to pay for a
more dignous lifestyle.

> > 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.
>
> No - I suspect the world will remain multilingual, tho the number of
> languages will probably decline.
I think so, too.  And the freer and the more prosperous
the world will be, the more languages will survive.

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