Why "English-language privilege" is really a much greater issue than "White privilege"

[Laly]

I don't know if you guys know the site ethnologue.com. It's very useful to learn about the vitality of the different languages of the world:

https://www.ethnologue.com/

[sean]

French are better linguists not just compared to the British and Irish but also the Portuguese, Spaniards, Italians, Hungarians and some Eastern Euros. Read the EU's report on "Languages in the European Union".

Not true.

That might be as much related to the aforementioned White privilege (which I myself have precisely said is grossly exaggerated and only really applies to specific places) as to English-language privilege.

https://www.theapricity.com/forum/sh...ican-countries

The notion that some languages are 'better' than others is subjective bullshit. I've actually thought for some time that the Anglo-Saxon and Arab-Islamic worlds share some parallels - both have a messianic view of themselves where they feel the need, whether for expediency or a strange sense of duty, to impose their language, culture and faith on the entire world.

English will be the earth's official language forever. Most speakers of English are non-native speakers. In other words, they weren’t born and raised in places where English is considered a native tongue. It’s also a common second language to learn. According to certain studies, 77 percent of Europeans learn English as a foreign language which is more than any other language taught in school.

Most Northern European countries pick up English with ease but just looking at Arabic gives me a headache.

And if/when China becomes the world power, don't you think that Mandarin will become more important?

Nope. Mandarin is a shitty ugly language. Their ideogram system is overly complicated, their sounds are ambiguous as fuck.

Everyone will learn English. Using 2000 characters is inefficient as hell.

Too many technical loanwords from Latin and Greek in technical, engineering, software dev, and medical fields that have very precise definitions canonically defined in English. Anyone that needs to continue the edges of research, technology, or medicine on any of those branches will do so knowing English and understanding the previous body of English work.

The Internet is also a place where English triumphs since 80 percent of the world’s information is stored in the English language. Journal research articles have been frequently increasing in the number of English versions being published.

Remember, your language is also the language of your thoughts, and language INFLUENCES how you think. A creative, open-ended language naturally lends itself to creative/innovative thinking, for better or worse.

Japan has a healthy manufacturing base, which many other countries really do not, thus they are not so affected by it.

Nope, before the corona outbreak their whole economy was leaning too much on tourism and the Chinese manufacturing industry. Companies were taking out loans to stay alive, expecting mass layoffs and a complete economic ruin was predicted.

In some ways, I am more of a true 'conservative' than quite a few self-styled 'conservatives' here, in the sense I have a genuine respect for cultural and linguistic diversity and believe that, inasmuch as it is possible, humans should be left alone.

It must be so painful being a fat latin mongrel and knowing the lingua franca is literally English and Latin America is literally Africa-tier lel.

Aren't you the one who usually rails against such cultural degeneration and debasement?

Americanisation and the prevalence of English has been a disaster for other languages, particularly Germanic ones. Young Dutch and German speakers mix in their languages so heavily with English, it's as if they no longer have a firm grasp of their own vocabulary.

People who race-mix in Europe are genetic trash/rejects that should have died at birth or young without modern medicine, it doesn't really matter if they mix as they shouldn't reproduce anyways.

Teutone in particular has said this over and over again, and I have opened threads here asking if people regard race or language as more important.

So your source is TA members, for the love of God, please fuck off already.

[Creoda]

Neither are an 'issue'.

We shouldn't have to learn any other language in the Anglosphere, and what foreigners choose to speak in their own countries is up to them. I'd rather if most of them stopped speaking English tbh, it would mean less immigration, less Indian telemarketers, and I'm not interested in most of the world's opinions on anything, or even most of the non-native speakers in our own countries.

There'll probably be some live Babelfish app on phones within the next decade anyway.

[Zeno]

If anyone can learn English, that's not a privilege.

Plus, for many, it's easier to learn English than their native language. For Greeks, that's the case. It's much easier to learn. That's why there's an almost Scandinavian level of English proficiency here. At least 70% of the population knows English. Again, that's easy to learn, as English itself has loads of Greek and Latin loans.

[Melki]

Languages like esperanto will never make it, according to me, because it’s artificial, it doesn’t refer to any tangible reality, it doesn’t have any soul. It's not appealing. And it seems it’s too simplistic. Using the reconstructed Indo-European language as a lingua franca, on the other hand, would be awesome.

That's what people who have never tried to learn Esperanto usually say.
-Esperanto is simple, yet not simplistic. Somehow, it has managed to develop a culture of its own, with authors and poets publishing original works in this language.
-Most Esperantists are realists. They don't expect this conlang to achieve world recognition, they don't even wish to, even though it was the intended specific purpose when L. Zamenhof created it. English as word language is here to stay. Nowadays, many Esperantists are attached to their unique underground subculture. They wouldn't like it to become mainstream.
-Esperanto's big advantage is its propedeutic value. A study conducted by the University of Paderborn in Germany has revealed that kids who learn Esperanto at an early age have less trouble learning a second foreign language.
Because its flexible syntax allows many different combinations, depending on which part of the sentence you want to emphasize, teaching kids how a sentence is constructed, how to think intuitively in a "foreign" way.
And it turns out that countless Esperanto-speakers are enthusiastic polyglots.
-I find Esperanto very appealing, but this is just my personal opinion. It combines a vocabulary mostly derived from Latin and Romance languages with a southern Slavic phonology, giving it a pronounced Adriatic vibe. At first sight, it could be an extinct Romance language formerly spoken in Fiume or in the Republic of Ragusa, a kind of Dalmatian, so to say.

A reconstructed Indo-European language as lingua franca would be absurd.
-It would be as fake and artificial as Esperanto, to begin with. That project of reconstructed language exists but is only hypothesis-led. No linguist can know with certainty how that extinct language really looked and sounded like.
-This resurrected language would have to adapt itself to the modern world. Tons of new vocabulary would have to be created in order for that language to be functional. It would be a huge waste of time. Especially if you consider that Esperanto, as a fully functional auxiliary language, is in step with the 21st Century and our digital era.
-Last but not least, a reconstructed IE language would be hard as Hell. It would never catch on, way too repelling, nobody would want to learn it. Whereas Esperanto is purposely simple.

[Laly]

That's what people who have never tried to learn Esperanto usually say.
-Esperanto is simple, yet not simplistic. Somehow, it has managed to develop a culture of its own, with authors and poets publishing original works in this language.
-Most Esperantists are realists. They don't expect this conlang to achieve world recognition, they don't even wish to, even though it was the intended specific purpose when L. Zamenhof created it. English as word language is here to stay. Nowadays, many Esperantists are attached to their unique underground subculture. They wouldn't like it to become mainstream.
-Esperanto's big advantage is its propedeutic value. A study conducted by the University of Paderborn in Germany has revealed that kids who learn Esperanto at an early age have less trouble learning a second foreign language.
Because its flexible syntax allows many different combinations, depending on which part of the sentence you want to emphasize, teaching kids how a sentence is constructed, how to think intuitively in a "foreign" way.
And it turns out that countless Esperanto-speakers are enthusiastic polyglots.
-I find Esperanto very appealing, but this is just my personal opinion. It combines a vocabulary mostly derived from Latin and Romance languages with a southern Slavic phonology, giving it a pronounced Adriatic vibe. At first sight, it could be an extinct Romance language formerly spoken in Fiume or in the Republic of Ragusa, a kind of Dalmatian, so to say.

A reconstructed Indo-European language as lingua franca would be absurd.
-It would be as fake and artificial as Esperanto, to begin with. That project of reconstructed language exists but is only hypothesis-led. No linguist can know with certainty how that extinct language really looked and sounded like.
-This resurrected language would have to adapt itself to the modern world. Tons of new vocabulary would have to be created in order for that language to be functional. It would be a huge waste of time. Especially if you consider that Esperanto, as a fully functional auxiliary language, is in step with the 21st Century and our digital era.
-Last but not least, a reconstructed IE language would be hard as Hell. It would never catch on, way too repelling, nobody would want to learn it. Whereas Esperanto is purposely simple.

I am not interested in a language “developping a culture of its own”, destined for an “underground subculture”, as you say, and created by a random Jew. I want a language that has guts, an identitarian language gathering all Europeans, and not an artificial language based mainly on Romance languages.

Languages evolve and there are often academies standardising them. A reconstruction of the Indo-European language could be assimilated to a standardisation of the language. And there are already centuries of Indo-European languages comparatism behind us, so it’s a serious matter.

And yes, as you say, such resurrected language would have to adapt itself to the modern world, just as other resurrected languages like Catalan, Czech or Hebrew. It’s a matter of political will.

[Tooting Carmen]

I am not interested in a language “developping a culture of its own”, destined for an “underground subculture”, as you say, and created by a random Jew. I want a language that has guts, an identitarian language gathering all Europeans, and not an artificial language based mainly on Romance languages.

Languages evolve and there are often academies standardising them. A reconstruction of the Indo-European language could be assimilated to a standardisation of the language. And there are already centuries of Indo-European languages comparatism behind us, so it’s a serious matter.

And yes, as you say, such resurrected language would have to adapt itself to the modern world, just as other resurrected languages like Catalan, Czech or Hebrew. It’s a matter of political will.

Why only bringing together Europeans and not all humans?

[Laly]

Why only bringing together Europeans and not all humans?

Because the universalism coming from the Enlightenment is obsolete.

[Tooting Carmen]

Because the universalism coming from the Enlightenment is obsolete.

And pan-Europeanism is a particularly perverse subset of said universalism: hence much of the trolling and shitposting in this forum, when one dares to point out that not all Europeans either look or behave like Scandinavians, then woe betide you.

[Tooting Carmen]

I don't know if you guys know the site ethnologue.com. It's very useful to learn about the vitality of the different languages of the world:

https://www.ethnologue.com/

Yes I am very familiar with it, thanks.