How'd you react if English replaced your country's native language as the official language?

[Autrigón]

I find your complain pretty gross considering how little of Americans can speak any foreign language.

+100000000000000000

[Aldaris]

The Spanish are obsessed with being the lingua franca, but that might only happen should they adopt Italian, dump Spanish, and learn proper enunciation, because its speakers are equally annoyingly sloppy with it or English, and don't even know it! Who knows, maybe 700 years of Muzzies mouthing it completely effed their speaking habits.

Pinocchio, the entire continent speaks Spanish/Portuguese. That isn't quite the case for the bachiches. I don't have to elaborate any further.

[Tooting Carmen]

bump

[Tooting Carmen]

I wouldn't mind. I have always been more prone to using English.

And I score almost 100% on English comprehension tests without trying.

Are you referring to Sweden, Bosnia or both? And either way, why take such a cavalier and philistine attitude?

[Atlantic Reptilian]

Are you referring to Sweden, Bosnia or both? And either way, why take such a cavalier and philistine attitude?

Probably both.
What are you wondering about my attitude? I'm just more comfortable with English. I see no reason as to why I should keep something that I'm indifferent towards? Some things I like about different languages, but not so much that I will be against other languages.
A language has to mean something, not just be propagated. Some parts of i. e. historical literary works have just been propagated throughout time, and when you ask people what the meaning of it is, they can't really say, which sort of ruins the point of literature.

Same thing with culture: I don't blindly follow any culture, but rather follow the habits I find healthy, and substitute the negative parts with either another culture's alternative, or my own. For instance, I have thought myself to avoid the feeling of being scared because I find it to be unproductive. Emotions shouldn't be involved in serious situations, and so I try my best to not get frustrated, lose my temper etc.
That's very rare in any culture, and the feeling of lacking something etc. is sanctioned in many cultures, which I think will eventually show that culture's weakness. Materialism, for instance, is you believing that you need something that you actually don't. But you, and your family, and society, has to believe in it, and they want to do that because that is how they have learned to survive.

Now I'm getting a bit off-topic, but alas.

[Incal]

I wouldn't mind bilingualism.

[capocannoniere]

It won't happen. Spanish or Mandarin will be lingua franca before a third of us are able to speak fluent English .

Culture has to mean something, not just be propagated. Some parts of i. e. historical literary works have just been propagated throughout time, and when you ask people what the meaning of it is, they can't really say, which sort of ruins the point of literature.

And if it was ever the case, I take AR's words as mine. If it ever makes sense for us to speak English, there is no reason to try and maintain a fossil of a language. People made our Venetian dialect an organized language, built learning material to it, but it is pure nonsense for people to learn it other than if you live on a village like mine. I would react simply still speaking Portuguese because that's what makes sense to me. Even if my possible children were conditioned to it, I'd still be speaking to them in Portuguese, speaking it with friends and family.

Are you referring to Sweden, Bosnia or both? And either way, why take such a cavalier and philistine attitude?

Tooting, you generally open good threads with interesting questions that go beyond whatever "who's whiter" competition people start here everyday, but these English language related ones are very weird.

In a contradictory fashion, you try to campaign about how bad the current dominance of English language is, while disagreeing with anyone who doesn't think not speaking English will destroy your life. Whenever non anglophones don't react on a jingoist way to the exaggerated or plain impossible propositions you make about the power of the invincible satanic spirit of Shakespeare who wants to turn all our kids into yankees, you act as if we were crazy, just like you did with Atlantic Reptilian here.

[Incal]

Tooting, you generally open good threads with interesting questions that go beyond whatever "who's whiter" competition people start here everyday, but these English language related ones are very weird.

He definitely have his obsessions. This particular one is called "english privilege"

[Tooting Carmen]

Tooting, you generally open good threads with interesting questions that go beyond whatever "who's whiter" competition people start here everyday, but these English language related ones are very weird.

In a contradictory fashion, you try to campaign about how bad the current dominance of English language is, while disagreeing with anyone who doesn't think not speaking English will destroy your life.

It isn't contradictory. In a growing number of fields and professions, even in countries where English has no official status at all, the ability to speak English increasingly overrides any and all other considerations, which in the process (depending on the country, since average English-language fluency levels vary enormously between them) leaves a lot of otherwise highly capable and suitable people out.

Whenever non anglophones don't react on a jingoist way to the exaggerated or plain impossible propositions you make about the power of the invincible satanic spirit of Shakespeare who wants to turn all our kids into yankees, you act as if we were crazy, just like you did with Atlantic Reptilian here.

I just find the dissonance in values and priorities that many forum users have risible (not saying you specifically). They complain if their neighbourhood or city changes from 99% White to 93% White, but seem (at least by comparison) quite relaxed at seeing their native language disappear or being subsumed.

[capocannoniere]

It isn't contradictory. In a growing number of fields and professions, even in countries where English has no official status at all, the ability to speak English increasingly overrides any and all other considerations, which in the process (depending on the country, since average English-language fluency levels vary enormously between them) leaves a lot of otherwise highly capable and suitable people out.

Overrides any and all other considerations? Boy you should have told me this before and I'd be looking for a CEO job in some Brazilian company or as an international correspondent for local TV, if I didn't need to study neither Business nor Journalism.
Which are these fields? I can think only of STEM and some involving International Relations, which the average Joe doesn't even have the mental and financial condition to study.

Also, it's obscenely easier for someone to learn a language than to learn calculus, physics, engineering and similar subjects. Six months of intensive learning will be enough for anyone that has serious motivation to do so and attain a 7/10 level.

Nearly everyone living on non-anglophone countries disagrees with you, yet you still maintain this weird obsession.

I just find the dissonance in values and priorities that many forum users have risible (not saying you specifically). They complain if their neighbourhood or city changes from 99% White to 93% White, but seem (at least by comparison) quite relaxed at seeing their native language disappear or being subsumed.

There's a big difference between having foreign peoples, often non-adapted to European ways of living, neighboring you, dealing with the problems of this coexistence, and speaking a lingua franca that makes a lot of sense in a globalized European Union. As a South American I could not care less about it because people will speak more English than Spanish or Portuguese only the day pigs fly.