What are the most important languages today globally?

[Austin]

English is number one obviously but is the other Spanish or Chinese or German?

I'm thinking Spanish second only because it has so many speakers in so many nations but economically obviously it isn't critical globally.

I put Chinese and German there due to their economies but I don't know many people who know German or Chinese and yet they seem to do international business fine just knowing English.

I know French is meaningless along with Italian but I am curious as to Russian and if it could become more important if Russia returns from the shadow.

[Psychonaut]

There is only one possible answer: Pǔtōnghuà.

[Eldritch]

Spanish, besides English.

As for how important Chinese really is, I don't know. I guess it's fairly important, and its importance will grow.

German is important only if you intend to do business in German-speaking Europe.

And the importance of Russian will decrease even further in the future.

[Lábaru]

I think the Spanish is the second because is increasing in number in the U.S.

[Wyn]

Can 'Chinese' really be listed when all the different forms of spoken Chinese aren't mutually intelligible? I suppose I'd reiterate Psychonaut's choice of Standard Mandarin and include English. I don't know to what degree Spanish is used in global commerce, so I can't comment on that.

[Eldritch]

Can 'Chinese' really be listed when all the different forms of spoken Chinese aren't mutually intelligible? I suppose I'd reiterate Psychonaut's choice of Standard Mandarin and include English.

Well whenever this topic comes up, and people mention "Chinese", that's the form of Chinese I always assume they're talking about.

[Psychonaut]

Well whenever this topic comes up, and people mention "Chinese", that's the form of Chinese I always assume they're talking about.

Yeah, even us Chinese linguists don't usually single out Mandarin unless we're talking about some situation that might potentially involve some of the other Chinese dialects. Even though Wúyǔ is the second most commonly spoken Chinese language, no one would think to place it alongside Pǔtōnghuà in terms of potential global influence (no one except some pompous Shanghai aristocrat).

[Don]

1.- English.

2.- Castellano.

3.- 汉语/漢語.

[Comte Arnau]

First of all, define 'important'. A language that's important for me is not important for you, and vice versa.

At a global scale, let us be frank, there is only ONE language that is relevant in most fields related to global relationships, and that's the one I'm writing now in.

Mandarin, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, Hindostani... they are languages with a significant number of speakers but strongly attached to specific areas of the world. Their relevance becomes weaker and weaker the more we leave those areas.

French is the only language that, like English, got to be really transcontinental, although its grandeur is gone decades ago and, out of their native territories, its relevance has mainly reduced to Africa. Only the insistence of French speakers in not recognizing this fact has maintained the language in diplomatic spheres.

[Magister Eckhart]

English, American Spanish, and Mandarin Chinese are the dominant tongues on the planet; this is indisputable.

Most important, though? Well, I have long agreed with Martin Heidegger that German and Greek are the two languages best given to the discussion of philosophical truth because of their ability to express abstract concepts and the reality that is difficult to reach sensually. These therefore rank very high for the higher castes of men.

However, with the West on the way out, the two most important languages to understand are probably Russian and Arabic, since these are the two chief possibilities for the inheritors to our High Culture.

Resistance to the Mohammedan incursion from the Coloured World would best be facilitated by our ability to infiltrate and destroy them, which is impossible so long as we collectively lack even so much as a primitive understanding of Arabic. "How to Recognise the Enemy and his Culture" courses for the public in which Arabic and Farsi are taught may be prudent to keep them from overwhelming the Occident before we can enter our age of Caesarism.

[Foxy]

I think Chinese is not an answer, becouse Mandarine (standard Chinese) is spoken only formarly in China.
I think English, Cantonese and Spanish.

[Liffrea]

Originally Posted by Austin
I know French is meaningless

http://www.fll.vt.edu/French/whyfrench.html

As for “important” depends what your doing, the smattering of German I had was useful for speaking to a number of Eastern Europeans where German counts far more than English and, I suspect, not many are knowledgeable of Mandarin or Arabic.

[antonio]

I think the Spanish is the second because is increasing in number in the U.S.

For me is globally important because SouthAmerica and Spain. Spanish at USA is (besides Cubans in Miami, Spaniards...) merely the language of the people under Negroes in social piramid: if it were really important, Jennifer Lopez and this kind of whores would still maintaining proeficiency on it, which is not the case. Another things is the interest of culturized Anglosaxons on Spanish language and culture, which is undeniable, but would probably never get over interest on French or Italian.

[The Ripper]

The White Race Stands Or Falls With Teh Finnish language.

[antonio]

I think Chinese is not an answer, becouse Mandarine (standard Chinese) is spoken only formarly in China.
I think English, Cantonese and Spanish.

Chinese or Japanese would never been globally important due to their inherent and objective difficultness. I could forecast myself learning Basque...even German:D but Japanese or Chinese? No way.

Finnish? You, Finnish, are really proud of it as a very logical and regular one.

[Aemma]

English, Arabic, 'Chinese', and Spanish, but that which North and South Americans speak. I think these are the main four languages one could possibly learn and then be able to communicate with a great portion of the world's people.

[Psychonaut]

I think Chinese is not an answer, becouse Mandarine (standard Chinese) is spoken only formarly in China.

Huh? Mandarin is the sole official language of both the PRC and the ROC and is one of the four official languages in Singapore. It is, additionally, the second most widely spoken language in Malaysia and is soon to be the lingua sinica in Sub-Saharan Africa.


I think English, Cantonese and Spanish.

Why Cantonese over Mandarin? Hong Kong has long ceased to be the economic center of China.

[Comte Arnau]

English, American Spanish, and Mandarin Chinese


and Spanish, but that which North and South Americans speak.

Why is it such a widespread idea that Spanish in the Americas is one single homogeneous variety?


Chinese or Japanese would never been globally important due to their inherent and objective difficultness. I could forecast myself learning Basque...even German:D but Japanese or Chinese? No way.


I'd say that 'inherent' difficulty is proportional to the commercial and cultural influence of the superpower which speaks it. Nowadays you see thousands of people saying English is easy. Two centuries ago, everybody would have said there's no way a language with such bloody pronunciation and spelling could be easy at all. But they probably found chic French very 'easy' by then... Autres temps, autres moeurs.

[antonio]

Indeed the motivation to learn a language make us consider it as easier as it really is.

[Magister Eckhart]

Chinese or Japanese would never been globally important due to their inherent and objective difficultness. I could forecast myself learning Basque...even German:D but Japanese or Chinese? No way.

Finnish? You, Finnish, are really proud of it as a very logical and regular one.

Japanese is really not all that difficult, considering that, unlike most oriental languages, it is a syllabic rather than phonetic language (i.e. instead of pronunciation affecting meaning, it is arrangement of sounds that affect meaning, which is why everything in Japanese is arranged by monosyllabic segments (e.g. wa-ta-shi-wa).) This makes it strikingly similar to Indo-European languages.

[Atlas]

1 English (sub-saharan Africa, The Commonwealth, World Business tongue)
2 Spanish (South America and now strongly implanted in some part of the US.)
3 Chinese (China, Along the south Russian border, here and there in Africa)
4 French (France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Switzerland and many African nations)

[Vasconcelos]

Funny how no one mentioned a language spoken by over 240,000,000 people in 4 different continents but everyones mentions "arabic" which has many different dialects.

[Comte Arnau]

Funny how no one mentioned a language spoken by over 240,000,000 people in 4 different continents but everyones mentions "arabic" which has many different dialects.

Southern Galician? :D

[Vasconcelos]

Technically, yes :p

[Piparskeggr]

C, Java, Visual Basic

[Grumpy Cat]

C, Java, Visual Basic

That's what I thought until I started actually working in IT.

You'd be surprised how many systems still use AS400 :lol:

Companies have actually begged universities to teach it because all the people who know it are close to retirement and there are no young people coming up who know it.

The future of computing is smartphones, tablets, and their apps though, so C and Java will be big.

[Piparskeggr]

{snip} You'd be surprised how many systems still use AS400 :lol: {snip}

Actually, I wouldn't. The company I work for still has a lot of its IT infrastructure running on programs written in DR DOS.

Then again, I still have a working machine capable of operating on CPM. :D

[Svanhild]

English and German for the civilized Western world (Native German speakers are the majority in Europe in relation to all native speakers), Spanish and Portugese for the 2nd world like Central- and South America and Arabic or Chinese for the rest.

[Treffie]

That's what I thought until I started actually working in IT.

You'd be surprised how many systems still use AS400 :lol:



My head office accounts dept for instance - green and black ;)

[Don]

English, American Spanish, and Mandarin Chinese are the dominant tongues on the planet; this is indisputable.

:confused:

There is not an "american spanish" language.
Neither an African Arabic or an Asian English.

[Magister Eckhart]

:confused:

There is not an "american spanish" language.
Neither an African Arabic or an Asian English.

Compare the Spanish spoken by Hispanics and Spanish spoken in Spain.

Like "American English", there is a distinct difference in rules of spelling, grammar, and dialect that makes the colonial dialect distinct from the language of the mother country, and over time the two have become increasingly disparate.

[Don]

Compare the Spanish spoken by Hispanics and Spanish spoken in Spain.

Like "American English", there is a distinct difference in rules of spelling, grammar, and dialect that makes the colonial dialect distinct from the language of the mother country, and over time the two have become increasingly disparate.

Obviously you don't speak spanish.

I insist, your concept of "american spanish" is totally wrong.

I am castilian, from Castilla, the motherland of these that taught them our language, the Castellano o Español (Castilian or Spanish) 500 years ago, and I know what I am talking about.

Is senseless to compare the spanish spoken by hispanics with the, lets say, Salamanca Castilian, since the differences intragroup in the spanish of the first ones (cubanos, argentinos, peruanos, mejicanos, puerto riqueños...) are so huge that is impossible to be valued as a whole, as an "American Spanish".

Neither is possible to compare with the english of the USA, since the variety of subraces and cultures, nations, identities and time of existence of Spanish in the different regions of Hispanic America made an extremelly rich, variated and idiosyncratic identities with their spefic and diverse forms of Spanish.

To any bilingual (english and spanish basics), the differences between the English from England and the english from USA are comparable with the differences that exist between the Spanish from cuba and the spanish from mexico (to my taste, the most ugly of all in America).

Maybe you were talking about "mexican spanish" (since you are from USA).
So, I conclude and insist that your concept of American Spanish is senseless.

[ZeDoCaixao]

At a global scale, let us be frank, there is only ONE language that is relevant in most fields related to global relationships, and that's the one I'm writing now in.

Yea, but recall that White People Don't Like their evil past, and have had their instinctual racial identity extirpated, so writing in the world's preeminent white language alone, "in this global age", which White People do Like, is a cause for shame. White People Like, in fact LOVE, to imagine themselves useful cogs in one-world dealings of some sort, be it chatting over beers at a hostel in central Guatemala or consulting for NGOs in Afghanistan.

Nietzsche wrote somewhere that the prestige of knowing other languages is tantamount to a betrayal of one's own, which one probably has not even mastered.


Mandarin, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, Hindostani... they are languages with a significant number of speakers but strongly attached to specific areas of the world. Their relevance becomes weaker and weaker the more we leave those areas.

If I weren't matriculating just south of Russiya, man, you'd convince me to never again pick up a foreign grammar manual.

[ZeDoCaixao]

and the spanish from mexico (to my taste, the most ugly of all in America).

Permitame interponer ... ¿no buscas que el castellano de Cuba o Chile al menos es mucho mas feo que el de Mexico, aun incomprensible?

Estoy de acuerdo con lo que vos dices por lo demas: "American Spanish" es un simplificacion.

[Don]

Permitame interponer ... ¿no buscas que el castellano de Cuba o Chile al menos es mucho mas feo que el de Mexico, aun incomprensible?

All the spanish versions spoken in whole america are to me, as a castilian, degenerations, but some sound specially unpleasant: the mexican one and the argentinian (uruguay as well -sorry gamera-:)).
These two sound to me like two maddening, bad growned teenage retards; the mexican with gay tendencies, extremelly "amariconado" with no more than 5 mental years -with those recurrent diminutive words "ahorita" :mad:-; and the argentinian a sickly histrionicly and overconfident teenager whose father gave him 2 less slaps than the needed:wink.

The cuban spanish sounds to my castilian's ears like a rural and healthy countryman, relaxed, on weed and funny and humble, but mature.

But these are my opinions...

[Magister Eckhart]

Obviously you don't speak spanish.

I insist, your concept of "american spanish" is totally wrong.

I am castilian, from Castilla, the motherland of these that taught them our language, the Castellano o Español (Castilian or Spanish) 500 years ago, and I know what I am talking about.

Is senseless to compare the spanish spoken by hispanics with the, lets say, Salamanca Castilian, since the differences intragroup in the spanish of the first ones (cubanos, argentinos, peruanos, mejicanos, puerto riqueños...) are so huge that is impossible to be valued as a whole, as an "American Spanish".

Neither is possible to compare with the english of the USA, since the variety of subraces and cultures, nations, identities and time of existence of Spanish in the different regions of Hispanic America made an extremelly rich, variated and idiosyncratic identities with their spefic and diverse forms of Spanish.

To any bilingual (english and spanish basics), the differences between the English from England and the english from USA are comparable with the differences that exist between the Spanish from cuba and the spanish from mexico (to my taste, the most ugly of all in America).

Maybe you were talking about "mexican spanish" (since you are from USA).
So, I conclude and insist that your concept of American Spanish is senseless.

Well that goes to show how much most Spanish departments are worth - I got the notion of "American Spanish" (meaning The Americas, rather than just the US, just so we're clear on that) from talking with a professor from a Spanish department.

I never bothered to learn the language itself, to be honest. Please pardon my candour on the topic, but I find it too much like Italian, in that each time I hear it, it sounds like swiftly-spoken gibberish.

The Austrians crucify the German language similarly, but the slow, deliberate, masculine nature of the Northern tongues (even the Slavic languages as well as the Finno-Ugrics) is far more aesthetically appealing than the softness of contemporary French (Quebecois is not all that displeasing to the ear, but true French is too soft on my palate.) and the chattiness of Italian, Spanish, or Portuguese.

[Don]

...
Well, obviously, after these words, its clear you have never listened a true castilian speaking, but Mexican amerindians or other southamericans or just other americans speaking those parodies of a noble language of caballeros.

Few languages in Europe could sound more masculine and rude as a Castilian man from the Plateau speaking this language forged in the Reconquista by the hardest among the hardest people of the Plateau and northern tribes of Iberia covering the latin, according to the serious and grave essence of the natives and their homeland. A language forged in an age of War, swords, chivalric orders and blood.

Anyway your Spanish teacher and his "spanish american"(sic.) is a paradigm of the fame of low level education in the USA among us, Europeans.

Luckily internet is open to your interactions with us, the dwellers of the Old Europe.

[Vasconcelos]

the slow, deliberate, masculine nature of the Northern tongues (even the Slavic languages as well as the Finno-Ugrics) is far more aesthetically appealing


Doesn't matter, it's your own personal taste, regardless of me agreeing with it or not.
We had a thread on this subject and romance languages were clearly on the lead, iirc.

[ZeDoCaixao]

All the spanish versions spoken in whole america are to me, as a castilian, degenerations, but some sound specially unpleasant: the mexican one and the argentinian (uruguay as well -sorry gamera-:)).

Uruguayan Spanish is Argentine Spanish sped up as in a tape recorder. I find the Rioplatense accent / dialect second only to true Castilian in pleasantness. But I am a bohemian with a love for lilting and shushing languages. On the other hand, Mexican Spanish has preserved, possibly furthered, the forcefulness of Castilian speech, and this enunciation obtains from Mexico to Peru; grades off in Venezuela, and in Chile becomes some heinous urban Mapuche garble. A Colombian once faulted me not for poor grammar but for weak, sissy enunciation: I wasn't giving syllables enough "oomph". I can only believe this comes from gallego speech. So, I think you're highbrowing it over the charms of at least one South American variety (Rioplatense). I know it is all technically degenerate, but hey, how would your language have sounded to a Roman?


the mexican with gay tendencies, extremelly "amariconado" with no more than 5 mental years -with those recurrent diminutive words "ahorita"

LOL. Eso me fastidia tambien y lo se busca hasta Colombia o talvez ya por todas partes salvo Rio de la Plata y Bolivia. Es como los niños.


:mad:-; and the argentinian a sickly histrionicly and overconfident teenager whose father gave him 2 less slaps than the needed:wink.

Ok, ok, you win. The Italian element in Argentine speech can certainly be obnoxious. But man, when it's an Argentine chick speaking it to you - with those black bangs, big green eyes and long Tuscan faces - I swear it's one of the most beautiful sounds on earth.



The cuban spanish sounds to my castilian's ears like a rural and healthy countryman, relaxed, on weed and funny and humble, but mature.

But these are my opinions...

Yes, but they are close to home, and therefor true. I would not have thought of Cuban speech that way, for example, and now that I am given to reflect, I must agree: the Cuban accent is probably closer to your sensibility because it was, after all, the first region in which Spanish split from the mainland. The rest, as you observe, are further divagations from the root.

[Don]

Uruguayan Spanish is Argentine Spanish sped up as in a tape recorder. I find the Rioplatense accent / dialect second only to true Castilian in pleasantness. But I am a bohemian with a love for lilting and shushing languages. On the other hand, Mexican Spanish has preserved, possibly furthered, the forcefulness of Castilian speech, and this enunciation obtains from Mexico to Peru; grades off in Venezuela, and in Chile becomes some heinous urban Mapuche garble. A Colombian once faulted me not for poor grammar but for weak, sissy enunciation: I wasn't giving syllables enough "oomph". I can only believe this comes from gallego speech. So, I think you're highbrowing it over the charms of at least one South American variety (Rioplatense). I know it is all technically degenerate, but hey, how would your language have sounded to a Roman?

LOL. Eso me fastidia tambien y lo se busca hasta Colombia o talvez ya por todas partes salvo Rio de la Plata y Bolivia. Es como los niños.

Ok, ok, you win. The Italian element in Argentine speech can certainly be obnoxious. But man, when it's an Argentine chick speaking it to you - with those black bangs, big green eyes and long Tuscan faces - I swear it's one of the most beautiful sounds on earth.

Yes, but they are close to home, and therefor true. I would not have thought of Cuban speech that way, for example, and now that I am given to reflect, I must agree: the Cuban accent is probably closer to your sensibility because it was, after all, the first region in which Spanish split from the mainland. The rest, as you observe, are further divagations from the root.

:rolleyes:
Well well... USA education system is not that bad after all. Not bad at all.

Felicitaciones caballero, vuestros saberes han sorprendido gratamente a este servidor en demasía habituado a mantener un bajo listón en lo que respecta a las expectativas sobre los conocimientos acerca de lo hispánico entre las gentes de los Estados Unidos de Ámerica.

[ZeDoCaixao]

Well that goes to show how much most Spanish departments are worth

Ugh. Typically Marxist Mexican women. And, since whenever, Spanish minors come bundled with courses in "Latin American" sob-storytelling.


but I find it too much like Italian, in that each time I hear it, it sounds like swiftly-spoken gibberish.

But don't they all when you don't know the sprach. I admit though that Uruguayan Spanish is orders above normal speed. Old Mario Pei studied language speed a long time ago; it reduces to the more cumbersome structure of European languages, which English left behind in its evolution as the most analytical sprach on Earth.

I don't know how Italian got its reputation as song-like or whatever. To me it sounds like a tongue tripping over crags of zz's, tr's and cc's. German is far "softer" and lilting in comparison.


but the slow, deliberate, masculine nature of the Northern tongues (even the Slavic languages as well as the Finno-Ugrics)

We're taking features of these languages all at once though. For example, I noted above that Colombian speech is very forcefully enunciated. A sentence will go "No quIERo cruZAR la CAlle" (I don't want to cross the street) with those syllables emanating almost from the diaphragm. I contend this is not an American innovation, but characteristic of Castilian speech itself, which is similarly robust. There is no way one can call this "feminine", or less than "masculine" anyway, if one ignores the presumed "feminine" cues of soft consonants and vowel endings. Compared to the unrelieved monotony of Danish or Norwegian speech, Spanish is uber-macho, and that word comes thence with good reason. Real Spanish is asserted, not spoken.

Now, you include Slavic languages as "masculine". If you mean, for example, Russian sentence structure - no articles or byzantine prepositions, the tendency to be forthright and vulgar - I agree. Otherwise it sounds to me like a Lithuanian speaking bad Persian with peanut butter in his mouth. I mean that with great affection, for I love Russian, but it's just too damn sloppy and archaic to be simply one or the other, in this crude offhand classification. Polish is even worse; consonants are softened or muted. Bulgarian is an improvement: the "sloppy" lilt and soft-sign are gone, leaving blunt expressions like "DOBUR DEN" in place of "Dzzobriy dyen" or Polish "Jzen dobry". Obviously this is the result of Slavic overlay on some tough-talking peasants.


(Quebecois is not all that displeasing to the ear, but true French is too soft on my palate.)

Minor quibble here. I do not have extensive experience with either folk, nor with Germans thank heaven, but certain everyday features of French are much harder on the ear than those presumed "harsh" in German. For example, the German glottal r is a delicately trilled little creature, often nigh inaudible so shy is it, but it's French cousin rapes you with its guttural quality. A German will say "Herr" and leave you uncertain whether he pronounced the rr's at all; a French will ask you, I don't know, "Veux-tu plus d'pinARD?" and leave you reeling from the ferocious throat-clearing ("AACCHH") emitted on that last syllable. For that matter, dainty old "tu" is thrust forward as a lisp ("tsü") in almost every instance. Point is, I find Germans a world more dainty and whispering than French, who are frankly coarse. Which I love.

No argument that Latins are generally gregarious and shallow. That's been so for centuries upon centuries, of course.

[ZeDoCaixao]

Few languages in Europe could sound more masculine and rude as a Castilian man from the Plateau speaking this language forged in the Reconquista by the hardest among the hardest people of the Plateau and northern tribes of Iberia covering the latin, according to the serious and grave essence of the natives and their homeland. A language forged in an age of War, swords, chivalric orders and blood.

Ole! Now that gets the blood moving.

http://www.youtube.com/user/micrologus2#p/f/6/6x6gCLh2YaI

Ya que estamos aposentados en la gran fe, no dejemos nuestras heredades a perros negros ultramarinos.

¡Viva Sant' Iago Matamoros!

[ZeDoCaixao]

:rolleyes:
Well well... USA education system is not that bad after all. Not bad at all.

Felicitaciones caballero, vuestros saberes han sorprendido gratamente a este servidor en demasía habituado a mantener un bajo listón en lo que respecta a las expectativas sobre los conocimientos acerca de lo hispánico entre las gentes de los Estados Unidos de Ámerica.


Es posible tener las expectativas mas bajas de nosotros americanos y todavia ser desilusionado con su falta de cultura o sabiduria. Pero el plazer de ser la excepcion es mio, y muchas gracias por el reconocimiento cortes.

[Magister Eckhart]

Ugh. Typically Marxist Mexican women. And, since whenever, Spanish minors come bundled with courses in "Latin American" sob-storytelling.


I'm surprised you could tell it was a woman, when Don could not. Also, to correct Don, I've never wasted time in a Spanish class before, I merely knew this particular woman.

All of your linguistic observations are interesting; I would like very much to hear these masculine Spaniards. You are correct, I do like Russian for much the same reason I like Hungarian.

[Comte Arnau]

Compare the Spanish spoken by Hispanics and Spanish spoken in Spain.

Like "American English", there is a distinct difference in rules of spelling, grammar, and dialect that makes the colonial dialect distinct from the language of the mother country, and over time the two have become increasingly disparate.

Americans tend to commit the mistake of comparing the situation of British vs American with that of "European Spanish" vs "American Spanish", probably because the language has been marketed that way in the US. But it is not an analogous situation at all. It might have been if Spanish in the Americas was only spoken in Mexico-Central America but the truth is different: there are several "American Spanishes".


Yea, but recall that White People Don't Like their evil past, and have had their instinctual racial identity extirpated, so writing in the world's preeminent white language alone, "in this global age", which White People do Like, is a cause for shame. White People Like, in fact LOVE, to imagine themselves useful cogs in one-world dealings of some sort, be it chatting over beers at a hostel in central Guatemala or consulting for NGOs in Afghanistan.

Well, you are obviously speaking from a mainly American perception. I don't share that opinion, although I agree in one thing: English, no matter how global it has become, remains the language of a specificic ethnic group. As such, it would be fairer if the global language was one which did not favour any specific nation upon others. But we all know the world has never been fair.


Nietzsche wrote somewhere that the prestige of knowing other languages is tantamount to a betrayal of one's own, which one probably has not even mastered.

Then I don't agree with him. The more I've learned about other languages, specially about those belonging to the same family, the more I've learned about my own language, and the closer I've got to master it.


If I weren't matriculating just south of Russiya, man, you'd convince me to never again pick up a foreign grammar manual.

Why? Admitting that English has become the only global language doesn't mean that learning others isn't just as pragmatically important as it has always been. Try to spend some time in any country where English is not the native/official language and, even in those where most will understand you, you'll find yourself constantly as a fish out of water if you don't speak the local language. Unless you only live in a specific English-speaking ghetto within that country...

Besides, in the regional spheres mentioned before, English loses its importance. A South American summit doesn't need English at all. Neither do North African + Middle Eastern agreements, nor the ones among ex-Soviet countries. But if you have an east Asian summit, you need a common language, and there is where you see the current power of English as a global one.

Apart from that, it's also obvious that not all people learn other languages for practical purposes.



All of your linguistic observations are interesting; I would like very much to hear these masculine Spaniards. You are correct, I do like Russian for much the same reason I like Hungarian.

Well, I won't use words like masculine and feminine, but Castilian certainly sounds 'drier' and more thundering than any English variety. That is actually why many other speakers of Spanish consider that original variety as a too rough one. The sonority of Castilian is close to the Basque one, a language that can't certainly be considered 'mild', but rather like Atlantic waves breaking on a bare rock.

[Magister Eckhart]

Then I don't agree with him. The more I've learned about other languages, specially about those belonging to the same family, the more I've learned about my own language, and the closer I've got to master it.

Why? Admitting that English has become the only global language doesn't mean that learning others isn't just as pragmatically important as it has always been. Try to spend some time in any country where English is not the native/official language and, even in those where most will understand you, you'll find yourself constantly as a fish out of water if you don't speak the local language. Unless you only live in a specific English-speaking ghetto within that country...

Besides, in the regional spheres mentioned before, English loses its importance. A South American summit doesn't need English at all. Neither do North African + Middle Eastern agreements, nor the ones among ex-Soviet countries. But if you have an east Asian summit, you need a common language, and there is where you see the current power of English as a global one.

Apart from that, it's also obvious that not all people learn other languages for practical purposes.

Well, I won't use words like masculine and feminine, but Castilian certainly sounds 'drier' and more thundering than any English variety. That is actually why many other speakers of Spanish consider that original variety as a too rough one. The sonority of Castilian is close to the Basque one, a language that can't certainly be considered 'mild', but rather like Atlantic waves breaking on a bare rock.

I have to double-check on the Nietzsche source, but I believe he is being misrepresented here.

---

And, like all colonial forces, the English language becomes a dominant force but it remains impossible to function without at least superficial familiarity with local mores, and, like anything colonial, these local mores are easy to pick up if one merely ventures out amongst the natives for a short while and observes them

---

I use the term "masculine" in comparison to a lot of things, but typically what I mean when I say it is similar to the old Germanic meaning of the concept, which is something deliberate, firm, and fierce but nevertheless very controlled. I consider German, Dutch, Hebrew, Arabic and the Norse tongues to be the prime examples of "masculine" languages, Gaelic, Russian, Hungarian, Finnish, and Hindi to be secondary forms, English, Japanese, Mandarin, and Quebecois are intermediate or "formless", and Spanish (as I've heard it), French, Italian, Romanian, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Korean, etc. to be by and large alternatively "soft", "gibberish", "chatty", or otherwise completely displeasing to hear.

Mandarin Chinese and Japanese are unique in that there is a massive gap in those languages between the way a woman speaks and the way a man speaks, and they really do emphasise the masculinity of their language in a way I rather wish Indo-European languages did.

But as someone observed above this is rather an aesthetic that I haven't had the time to flesh out into an actual analysis of the linguistic ramifications of "masculine-sounding" languages on their host population. I had thought about getting out Saussere and Levi-Strauss and writing a brief treatise on the topic but I feel as though it would be a work better received in 1810 than in 2010.

[Comte Arnau]

I use the term "masculine" in comparison to a lot of things, but typically what I mean when I say it is similar to the old Germanic meaning of the concept, which is something deliberate, firm, and fierce but nevertheless very controlled. I consider German, Dutch, Hebrew, Arabic and the Norse tongues to be the prime examples of "masculine" languages, Gaelic, Russian, Hungarian, Finnish, and Hindi to be secondary forms, English, Japanese, Mandarin, and Quebecois are intermediate or "formless", and Spanish (as I've heard it), French, Italian, Romanian, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Korean, etc. to be by and large alternatively "soft", "gibberish", "chatty", or otherwise completely displeasing to hear.

Mandarin Chinese and Japanese are unique in that there is a massive gap in those languages between the way a woman speaks and the way a man speaks, and they really do emphasise the masculinity of their language in a way I rather wish Indo-European languages did.

But as someone observed above this is rather an aesthetic that I haven't had the time to flesh out into an actual analysis of the linguistic ramifications of "masculine-sounding" languages on their host population. I had thought about getting out Saussere and Levi-Strauss and writing a brief treatise on the topic but I feel as though it would be a work better received in 1810 than in 2010.

Certainly. Specially if, by means of that opinion, you are organizing languages into a subjective hierarchy of values instead of simply classifying them into different groups.

I have studied quite a few languages and have always been quite interested in their phonological aspect. I must say I like all languages, although for different reasons, as phonologically some of them displease me, we all have our own aesthetic tastes. But I'd say that, in your case, your taste seems to be particularly linked to extralinguistic perceptions too, since you classified some different-sounding languages into groups of similar-looking people. I have always classified them -even if unconsciously first- by these parameters: dry/wet + clear/dark + high/low. English, for instance, would be a wet-dark-high language. Apparently others have done so in the past, I've read comments of authors mentioning their subjective image about a specific language. Maybe a modern-looking treatise could be written about it, after all. In fact, after I got to know a bit more about phonology, some of my previous 'unscientific' perceptions found a more scientific explanation...

[Foxy]

TOP 30 MOST SPOKEN LANGUAGES IN THE WORLD:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Pos Language Family Script(s) Used Speakers
(Millions) Where Spoken (Major)
1 Mandarin Sino-Tibetan Chinese Characters 1151 China, Malaysia, Taiwan
2 English Indo-European Latin 1000 USA, UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand
3 Spanish Indo-European Latin 500 Mexico, Central and South America, Spain
4 Hindi Indo-European Devanagari 490 North and Central India
5 Russian Indo-European Cyrillic 277 Russia, Central Asia
6 Arabic Afro-Asiatic Arabic 255 Middle East, Arabia, North Africa
7 Portuguese Indo-European Latin 240 Brazil, Portugal, Southern Africa
8 Bengali Indo-European Bengali 215 Bangladesh, Eastern India
9 French Indo-European Latin 200 France, Canada, West Africa, Central Africa
10 Malay, Indonesian Malayo-Polynesian Latin 175 Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore
11 German Indo-European Latin 166 Germany, Austria, Central Europe
12 Japanese Altaic Chinese Characters and 2 Japanese Alphabets 132 Japan
13 Farsi (Persian) Indo-European Nastaliq 110 Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia
14 Urdu Indo-European Nastaliq 104 Pakistan, India
15 Punjabi Indo-European Gurumukhi 103 Pakistan, India
16 Wu Sino-Tibetan Chinese Characters 90 China
17 Vietnamese Austroasiatic Based on Latin 86 Vietnam, China
18 Javanese Malayo-Polynesian Javanese 85 Indonesia
19 Tamil Dravidian Tamil 78 Southern India, Sri Lanka, Malyasia
20 Korean Altaic Hangul 78 Korean Peninsula
21 Turkish Altaic Latin 75 Turkey, Central Asia
22 Telugu Dravidian Telugu 74 Southern India
23 Marathi Indo-European Devanagari 72 Western India
24 Italian Indo-European Latin 62 Italy, Central Europe
25 Thai Sino-Tibetan Thai 60 Thailand, Laos
26 Burmese Sino-Tibetan Burmese 56 Myanmar
27 Cantonese Sino-Tibetan Chinese Characters 55 Southern China
28 Kannada Dravidian Kannada 47 Southern India
29 Gujarati Indo-European Gujarati 46 Western India, Kenya
30 Polish Indo-European Latin 46 Poland, Central Europe

[Don]

Wtf, Ibex what a are you doing to that moor?
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=6373&d=1290079610
That is not the best pro-integration method to gain the simpathy of moors or negros toward Catalonia... better to ban this!

By the way, as casuality, my familiar shield of weapons (of my rare ancient paternal lineage) is very similar to the one that show the ones of the left. A black sabre eagle over waves of plate and azur... if these are not my ancestors, they are elsewhere in the images about Reconquista in other scenes doing bad things for the integration of the moors and islamics in the old style, as the blonde one near Ibex, that is showing closely his sword to the muslim.
...

Great video Zedo, great one. :thumbs up

6x6gCLh2YaI
The Cradle of the Spanish language and our lineages.

[Comte Arnau]

Wtf, Ibex what a are you doing to that moor?
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=6373&d=1290079610
That is not the best pro-integration method to gain the simpathy of moors or negros toward Catalonia...


Don, you've got the wrong thread. This is about languages. In order to continue offending me, please go to the forums in Spanish, where you can insult me in that ostentatious baroque Spanish you like so much. Thank you.

[Don]

In order to continue offending me, please go to the forums in Spanish, where you can insult me in that ostentatious baroque Spanish you like so much. Thank you.

I didn't want to insult you.

Never could be valued as an insult a figure of a man wearing your colors and fighting the invaders with the sword.

... at least for me.