Re: Anyone conversant in English (was: Tagalog) here?

On Apr 17, 5:39 pm, "Jens S. Larsen" <jens_s_lar...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
phogl...@xxxxxx:

Padraic Brown wrote:
On 16 Apr 2007 03:26:48 -0700, phogl...@xxxxxx wrote:
English has long ago ceased to belong to native speakers alone. It's
us - the second-language speakers - who will set the standards from
now on, not them. We outnumber them.
Could be -- but the misuses of ESL users won't become Standard. They
will always be the subject of how _not_ to use the language.
You are being very unrealistic now, my friend. The language will
become increasingly tolerant of irrelevant solecisms which do not

That looks like an instance of "language" used in the sense of "speech
community".

Make it speech community then. The point is, that the speech community
which will matter will be the Internet community. "Bad" English has
been the most widely spoken language of the world, and now that there
is the Internet, that sort of bad English will also be the kind of
English that most people will encounter in written form.


If you're happy being continually misunderstood and degraded as an
ignorant and uneducated foreigner, then be our guest! If I were to
visit Finland, I would make an honest attempt to learn some Finnish,
and would graciously accept correction by native speakers. If Finnish
ever became the dominant language in the world, I would understand
that it is important to learn it properly.
You are missing the point. I - and the rest of global second-language
speakers of English - am not in the position of a guest in an
Anglophone country. I am making use of English as a global auxiliary
language on the Internet, and the majority here are people like me.
In a sense, I am not visiting your country - you are at least as much
visiting mine. I do not need to accept instruction or correction from
anybody here - the Internet is mine no less than yours, and I am no
less instrumental in setting the future standards of this variety of
English than you are.

As long as large numbers of people speak non-auxiliary English outside
the net, chances are that those will continue to set the standards
within the writing community of the Internet. Tolerance to those who
can't or won't comply with all details of the standard won't
necessarily change the standard. In the case of English, _ex_change of
standards is actually more likely to happen some time.

I wouldn't be that sure. The continuous exposure will inevitable
influence usage among those non-auxiliary speakers too.

This attitude of mine will eventually prevail among Internet users,
and you will be left in the minority. I don't really think I am doing
anything else than stating a fact. You might see our variety of
English as debased, inferiour, or pidginised; but eventually, it will
be the only show in town, if English survives as a globally dominant
language.

It's really the English-speakers, not the abstraction of English
language, that are globally dominant. We can be rather sure the
dominance won't last forever, but it's difficult, maybe impossible in
principle, to predict when and how the demise will happen.

I would say that it is quite thinkable that the dominance of English
will "last forever" in the sense that English might oust national
languages in several countries where it is strictly a foreign language
now and become the most widely spoken native language for generations
to come - i.e. that the dominance of English will only end when
English breaks apart into several distinct standard languages. And
with all these communication technologies connecting people in
English, it does not look very probable that that would ever happen.

I would not personally be terribly surprised if, for instance, Germany
would turn into an Anglophone country in the end. Nobody here will
live to see the day that the last native speaker of German passes
away, but my point is that English will probably last as THE dominant
language long enough to oust even a language such as German. Even in
Finland, the prevailing linguistic attitudes do suggest that a shift
from Finnish to English as community language is not entirely
unthinkable.

I don't say it is a very happy or promising possibility, because
nationalistic strife, resentment, and wars will certainly survive the
global shift to English, and nationalisms will if anything become even
more repulsive and barbaric, because there will be no native languages
and literatures to provide an outlet for national sentiment more
civilised than skin-colourism and ethnic cleansing. The survival of
violent "physical-force nationalism" in Ireland despite (or because
of) the demise of Irish as well as the recent wars between the Serbo-
Croatian-speaking peoples of ex-Yugoslavia are cases in point.

.

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