/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11684012]

Is English as a global language a bad thing?

[Anonymous No.11684112]

>>11684012
It's the best language to write in next to german and french.

[Anonymous No.11684201]

>>11684012
English has more words than any other language has ever had. And when it comes to deciding between logographic and ideographic systems, logographic puts less of a cognitive strain on readers and allows for much greater flexibility. Modern English is probably the best language that has ever exist, but that's not to say that Modern English speakers are actually putting the language to proper use. It's pretty obvious that there has been an incredibly severe decline in the general quality of speech and writing over the last century or so

[Anonymous No.11684221]

>>11684012
No. It's fairly simple to almost everyone except chinks. That works for me. As a native Spanish speaker I'd rather have English than Chinese or Russian as the lingua franca any day.

[Anonymous No.11684235]

It is white supremacist phenomenon and represents those dark times when England still ruled the East with iron fist and exploited them.

If we would be to create universal language: it would have the symbolist nature of the Chinese letters: japanese words such as old master would be called Genkaku-san and other easternl´´´´ literatures.

Only things like "slave" or "master" (which btw have no room in the new world) and aborgine word for fish like mungo

If we truly were democractic world the language of the nWO would be 80% chinese, 90% japanese, 5% hindu and just some slang words for crack would be used for english like haggis

[Anonymous No.11684263]

>>11684235
Ideographic languages are actually only compatible with the cognitive phenotypes prevalent in East Asians, who sacrifice lateral thinking capacity in favor of rigid compliance with form and context. Studies have shown that reading ideographic languages has a higher requirement of effort for understanding and engages a specific area of the midbrain that is reserved for sensation and motor function in non-ideographic language speakers. I tend to think of culture and genetics as constituting mutually reinforcing biofeedback loops, and hence it's not surprising that historically old cultures (China being the oldest linguistic body in the world at current) who have used ideographic language for thousands of years, would tend to favor the high-context mode of social interaction (shame morality) which values conformity and devalues personal autonomy and creativity. It's only natural that over time the users of these languages would develop a phenotype to match and this is plainly observable in the East Asians in their own countries and diaspora worldwide

[Anonymous No.11684309]

>>11684201
>English has more words than any other language has ever had.
That's flat out not true though.

[Anonymous No.11684322]

>>11684309
It's true. All global languages have blossomed massively over the last century and English being the lingua franca has made it grow to crazy proportions. Arguments you'll see sometimes that Arabic has hundreds of millions of words are flawed because that number includes variations of spelling/pronunciation of words that are denotatively identical but spoken differently as a posterior attribute of the nebulous pronunciation (no vowels) and convoluted grammer of Arabic

[Anonymous No.11684336]

>>11684235
I am surprised you know that word, mungo.

>>11684322
Correct. However, English is the only language that has had to survive not only colonial expansion over large oceanic distances, but also BROADCAST radio and television.

To take a language developed from an island that was regularly 'raped & pillaged' by mainland Europe as a pitstop for their journeys to their new-worlds and then force it to cope with THAT sort of diaspora is, indeed, impressive.

What English DOES have is 'listener analog syntax' and temporary word-variable store. This is why English to so many other languages seems like there are hundreds of opinions happening at once when in fact most of our language exchange is based on presuming a projected semantic pattern based on presented syntax.

[Anonymous No.11684339]

>>11684336
>English to so many other languages seems like there are hundreds of opinions happening at once when in fact most of our language exchange is based on presuming a projected semantic pattern based on presented syntax
elaborate on this? Not sure what you mean but sounds interesting
pic unrelated

[Anonymous No.11684347]

>>11684339
Well, when you are in verbal conversation with another human being (presumed intelligent/willing) you can 'layer' context and semantic before giving a 'trigger event' that signals to the other person that they can now process all presented since last 'time index' up until this moment.

More than any other language, English knows how to 'collect & share arguments'. It is just that 'argument' means someone's definite preposition, not that they presume proficiency or accreditation/responsibility (i.e. that person can come find me if some trust-validator event is required)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lvcnx6-0GhA

[Anonymous No.11684362]

>>11684347
Can you give an example?

[Anonymous No.11684365]

>>11684362
You mean an 'isolated' example of an English conversation where two unaware parties speak openly and plainly without presumption that the other conversation isn't incapable of following and expect same-level certification of the information exchanged by virtue of politeness?

I'm going to presume you wanted something far more concrete, so, here's a political example.

>Trump's English is currently the GLOBAL acceptance level of English.

Basically, Trump is lowering standards ever since he dubbed himself a Genius and nobody else in the world decided to challenge him on that.

[Anonymous No.11684378]

>>11684365
Is this why the general quality of writing from low-level all the way up to high literature seems to have been in freefall for the last hundred years? Because English speakers are prone to dumbing-down their speech for the sake of less eloquent or less intelligent speakers/readers? Or is this just a natural result of the democratization of textual media in that time frame?

[Anonymous No.11684386]

>>11684365
You think he's not a genius?
Just because he speaks publicly at a 4th grade reading level doesn't mean he's incapable of college level speech like Bernie used; Trump understands its about reaching the largest group.

[Anonymous No.11684399]

>>11684378
Not really in a freefall because that presumes Languages only know how to die, which isn't true.

Democratization of textual media and the digital 'emotional impact' that English has on its readers is the real culprit.

I think the 'quality of writing' thing you are referencing might be more your personal tastes for the Language not being satisfied consistently over a timeline rather than an actual 'global decline'. English speakers are just prone to mixing two things up conceptually: I & Ego.

I = Self, Unique and indivisible by nobody else but me
Ego = Admission to a prior waypoint that has been subscribed to, but issued by someone else. Like if I told you that I was better than you because of reason X, and inferred deterrent Y for reason Z, because Set A contained my B solution.

Ego in LATIN just meant 'the thing of myself that is public record'. Because certain words have strange births and continue uninspected by the public they crop up here and there when culture isn't using it.

>>11684386
The English form of Genus is Genius, he is not a genius of English. Abusing a language just to achieve an egotistical goal simply drags everyone to THINK that he is something, but that is just you the observer ascribing certain qualities to him because you believe that most humans in powerful or constantly reported on positions are presumed to be proficient.

I accepted long ago he developed an internal language to satisfy 'American numbers' but he doesn't satisfy any back and forth between an intelligent Entity that would consider interacting with him 'overall profitable'.

[Anonymous No.11684407]

We should replace English with Papiamento.

[Anonymous No.11684419]

>>11684012
It is for countries where English is already the main language

[Anonymous No.11684436]

>>11684012
Дa.

[Anonymous No.11684462]

>>11684112
>german

[Anonymous No.11684466]

>>11684419
My real question was: "is having a global language, no matter what language it is, a good thing?" and you are the only person who somewhat answered this question. Are you so sure that it is a good thing for English-speaking peoples and countries for the rest of the world to be influenced by your language and hence your culture? What do you think is bad about it for non-English speaking countries?

[Anonymous No.11684562]

>>11684419
People only learn English because people who know English typically don't learn other languages and it's easier to pick up as a foreign language than German, say. Having just the one gender rule for all nouns makes it such a simplistic language compared to most other languages I've tried to pick up.

[Anonymous No.11684609]

I think English is a beautiful language with a fascinating history. A Germanic language mixed with a predominantly French vocabulary, with Greek and Latin elements forced into it by the elite. There's no better choice for a pan-European language, and therefore, for Europeans, no better choice for a global language.

[Anonymous No.11684641]

>>11684336
>I am surprised you know that word, mungo.
Mungo sounds like a light insult. That's how I read the sentence at first, and I like it. I think I'm going to start using it that way.
"Whatever you say, mungo."

[Anonymous No.11685482]

>>11684399
https://www.hurleywrite.com/Blog/61478/Avoiding-Pompous-Language-in-Technical-Business-and-Scientific-Writing

I'm not ascribing anything to him, go watch him speak to a crowd of college educated people. It's quite different than when he's speaking to ALL people because not everyone is highly educated. It's quite difficult to not use words with more than three syllables and still convey large amounts of information, you obviously can't do it.

[Anonymous No.11685493]

>>11684012
any global language is a bad thing but if there is to be one it should be english

[Anonymous No.11685608]

english is a disgusting language unfit of any literary purpose

[Anonymous No.11685664]

Semitic and other Afro-Asiatic languages look more systematic with their 3 consonant roots.

[Anonymous No.11685670]

>>11684562
Not to mention that word gendering is completely superfluous, convoluted and retarded

[Anonymous No.11685682]

>>11685482
>whoever wrote this paragraph doesn't understand the semantic difference between "use" and "utilize"
>three-syllable words are pompous

[Anonymous No.11685692]

>>11684609
Meh a neo-Romance would be better. Likewise Slavs just merge all their languages together into a single neo-Slavonic language.
All the abjad and European alphabet using languages should use a single revised Phoenician script though.

[Anonymous No.11685693]

It's a good balance of accessibility to descriptiveness. Too bad every nation that speaks it is shit.

[Anonymous No.11685729]

Spelling should be standardized internationally already and the reform to resemble classical Latin spellings should be completed with Brits dropping the Frankfied medieval spellings of there former overlords in words like reflexion and labour and Americans should adopt ae and oe diagraphs.

[Anonymous No.11685742]

>>11685729
We should also sterilize all non-rhotic populations

[December !!TY0+NRMplWe No.11685753]

Basically, English is quite a chaotic language. Instead of specific words or symbolic terms being used to convey esoteric and specific or idiosyncratic experiences using gendered pronouns and gendered and context sensitive linguistic rules to govern the capability for articulation within the language, English instead allows the speaker to shirk off the burden of remembering such context specific words and phrases in favor of the general assumption that all frames of reference will be defacto male or non-gendered.

This causes great anguish and asshurt in the souls and minds of lesser thinkers who rely heavily on the rigidity and culturally dictated context sensitive terms of phrase and words to convey their thoughts.

English says, no, you must create your own articulated description.

[Anonymous No.11685757]

It's a grammatically simple language that is very expressive and has enough similarity to both Romance and Germanic languages to make it easier to learn for a speaker of a language from either family. It really is the best choice for a lingua franca.

t. native Afrikaans speaker

[Anonymous No.11685770]

>>11685757
Standard German has been a real lingua franca within "German" domains though.

[Anonymous No.11685800]

>>11685770
I'm speaking globally of course. You could say the same about communities within a lot of European countries like Italy or Spain. When Italians, Germans and Spaniards need to communicate with each-other, they will do so in English.

[Anonymous No.11685831]

>>11684012
There has always been a global l language. English is as good as any.

[Anonymous No.11686486]

>>11685753
>This causes great anguish and asshurt in the souls and minds of lesser thinkers who rely heavily on the rigidity and culturally dictated context sensitive terms of phrase and words to convey their thoughts.

[Anonymous No.11686577]

>>11685831

This. All the people rooting for English here are native English speakers doing it for patriotism or egocentrism rather than for any rational view.

That said, it dosent matter if it’s English or French or Greek or Latin: it’s a way for people around the world to communicate. But everything fades away, and English will have the same destiny as all other linguas francas.

It’s hard to tell what language is superior to other: what criteria is being used? And anyway, what matters is how you use the language you are working on. Tolstoy didn’t write in English, yet he is probably superior to all novelists who ever wrote in English.

[Anonymous No.11686614]

Could've been worse. There's at least SOME room for creativity and elegance. Thank god it's not Chinese or Hebrew or something.

>>11684112
The objectively best (popular) language for literature is Russian.
The only reason Romance/Germanics get up there is sheer quantity alone, which is the result of historical accident.

[Anonymous No.11686621]

>>11686577
>he is probably superior to all novelists who ever wrote in English

[Anonymous No.11686661]

>>11684012
English isn't the global language, American is the global language. The two are seperate. English people speak "In-ger-lish", a more archaic language that stresses vowels and diphthongs, and drops consonants. This gives it a uncanny rhythmic flow that when spoken by true natives, is unintelligible to outsiders, who are used to hearing the oppressive dialect of the globalising menace, America, who have stolen the beautiful, diverse Saxon language and have the audacity to not only call it their own, but name it English.
Americans speak a bastardised form of that once great language, a shadow of its ancestor, a wretched nasally hybrid of Aristocratic Norman-English, Yiddish, Irish, German and African lingo, all masquerading under the umbrella of the Mighty English Name, may God put an end to this tyrannous unpunished crime once and for all.

[Anonymous No.11687140]

>>11685482
So because one human can learn how to speak to different groups of humans you think that's genius level?

I fail to see the difference in having a language that can engage people who only subscribe to paper as having the answers.

[Anonymous No.11687256]

>>11685753
Intellectual Mathematical Set Descriptor

[Anonymous No.11687578]

as long as the writer avoids words as conjunctions

[Anonymous No.11687590]

>>11687578
then the flow will be as it was once before

[Anonymous No.11687596]

>>11684309
it's true by 500.000 words in excess

[Anonymous No.11687633]

>>11687590
beautiful

[Anonymous No.11687642]

>>11687633
True, False, Yes, No, Not I.

Conjunctive conjugal = Synonym

[Anonymous No.11687648]

>>11684221
As a native Spanish speaker as well, I couldn't agree more.

English is such an easy language to learn and understand.

[Anonymous No.11687669]

>>11687648
It's far more forgiving to 'new speakers' than any other language because English doesn't require a sentence former to cluster their conjunctives, but EVERY other language I know FORCES this paradigm for some cultural reason or another.

English however presumes that the language/sentence former is the conjunctive prepositional formality and the listener/reader simply has to extract sufficient semantic from presented syntax on order to conjugate their own isolated normal forms.

[Anonymous No.11687753]

>>11687642
a conjuctive word is not the same as a word conjunction

[Anonymous No.11687768]

>>11687753
It can be of equivalence, given sufficient gentleman-status.

[Anonymous No.11687815]

>>11687768
the simplest distinction can be: it's a conjunction if the word can be replaced with a colon, em-dash, or comma, or even a semi-colon; or rephrased if neither is necessary. Specifically "that".
>that that

[Anonymous No.11687831]

>>11687815
By that definition it's simply a mistake the writer's editor should have caught.

[Anonymous No.11688884]

>>11684235
>entering Skull Face levels of language control

This isn't based or redpilled.

[Anonymous No.11688931]

>>11684012
I do not know, what I do know is I rather learn hebrew than faggy french.

[Anonymous No.11688943]

>>11684263
Linguistic determinism is false.

[Anonymous No.11688965]

>>11688943
>Linguistic determinism
Swing and a miss!

[Anonymous No.11689086]

Is there any other language that has a dichotomy similar to English's Anglo-Saxon vs. French-Latinate roots? It's really fun to ham up the disparity between these two mother tongues. i.e. "He's a real pusillanimous tight-wad." "I want to passionately fuck you in your little rectum." etc.

[Anonymous No.11689111]

>>11689086
Romanian, as I understand it, blends Slavic and Romance elements together

[Anonymous No.11689127]

If you don't like it, you should've won the 7 Years War bucko

[Anonymous No.11689131]

>>11686661
USA
S
A

[Anonymous No.11689137]

>>11684012
English is a mind virus that acts as a conduit for Anglo-American thinking. Talk like an American become an American. That is why countries are more hostile to fags the more distant their language is to English i.e

[Anonymous No.11689329]

>>11685608
i know that you are wrong

[Anonymous No.11689339]

>>11684012
all indo-european languages are similar enough that translation between them doesn't really make a difference, or at least that the difference is often over-exaggerated.

[Anonymous No.11689342]

>>11686577
>it dosent matter if it’s English or French or Greek or Latin
contradicts
>what language is superior to other: what criteria is being used? And anyway, what matters is how you use the language you are working on.

[Anonymous No.11689349]

>>11689137
I would guess that any language might affect how you think

[Anonymous No.11689397]

>>11689342
he's an idiot, just leave him alone

[Anonymous No.11690438]

>>11689342

It dosent. What I was trying to say is that why matters is how great is the literature you are creating with your language: it’s individual; it depends on yourself and it can be done with any language.

>>11689397

You say that only because you were born in an English speaking country and - as most people in the world who thibknonly with their bellybuttons - fancies that everything related to you is superior.

[Anonymous No.11690452]

>>11686577
>All the people rooting for English here are native English speakers doing it for patriotism or egocentrism rather than for any rational view.
As I said earlier in the thread, I'm a native Afrikaans speaker. I only learnt English beyond a few phrases I picked up from watching cricket and rugby as a teenager.
English has characteristics that make it beneficial as a world language. You're completely ignoring the practicalities.

[Anonymous No.11690538]

>>11684322
there is no way to compare the vocabulary of English 1:1 to other languages. Only a fanboi of this crippled language would think that 500'000 words in a dictionary make up a rich vocabulary. German can make that many words with the blink of an eye, even more, and not have them all in a dictionary for every brainlet to look them up. Not to speak of Turkish which can do somewhat the same.

[Anonymous No.11690589]

>>11690538
And English can’t do the same? Think of all the prefixes and suffixes English has that can completely alter a word. For example, instead of mean you could say unkind or instead of sordid you could say unclean.

[Anonymous No.11690599]

>>11690538
>not have them all in a dictionary for every brainlet to look them up
fucking christ, the elitism of /lit/ is just breathtaking

[Anonymous No.11690623]

>>11690538
>>11690438
>>11689137
>>11686614
>>11686577
>>11685608
>>11684309
>if only you could see just how much better my mother tongue is!

[Anonymous No.11690661]

>>11690623

There’s no better or worse, that’s the whole point.

[Anonymous No.11690668]

>>11690661
Except there is. There are objective standards you can measure them against.

[Anonymous No.11690670]

>>11690661
So Swahili and Spanish are both equal languages?

[Anonymous No.11690705]

>>11684322
>stealing words from other languages because all the other people bring theirs with them to the table beeing de facto beeing forced to learn yours
>look guys, our languag is the best!
You know, english was made the universal language only because it's easier than german? The universal language also destroys the native languages through anglizisation. The eternal anglo at it again.

[Anonymous No.11690718]

>>11690705
>english was made the universal language only because it's easier than german
Hmm I wonder if you can give me a citation for this?

[Anonymous No.11690730]

>>11690718
https://www.mpi.nl/q-a/questions-and-answers/why-is-english-the-universal-language

>It is possible to try giving a strictly linguistic explanation; it could be that English is a simple language which is relatively easy to pick up. English has no noun genders, no complicated morphology, no tone system, it is written in the Roman alphabet which is pretty good at accurately mapping sounds to symbols, and the prevalence of English-language films, TV, and music makes it readily accessible and easy to practise.

And of course because of your kikery:
>The UK was the first industrialised nation, and discovered that one of the advantages to this was that they could colonise the rest of the developing world far faster than other European countries could.

But let's not forget that till that time german and frence were the language you had to speak if you were active in any scientific envoirement.

[Anonymous No.11690767]

>>11690730
I ask for a citation that explains why English's global status is because of its simplicity, and you gave me an obscure internet Q&A answer which comes to the conclusion that:
>Arguments about which languages are easy or difficult to learn are ultimately circular, as the perception of what is easy and what is difficult to learn depends on the person doing the learning.

>german and frence were the language you had to speak if you were active in any scientific envoirement
Um okay? This is a literature board honey, not /sci/.

Also this:
>prevalence of English-language films, TV, and music
is obviously a cultural explanation, not a linguistic one.

Good Lord, try a bit harder you Eurotard.

[Anonymous No.11690861]

>>11690767
>max planck institut e for psycholinguistics
>some obscure Internet Q&A

>I ask for a citation
Um okay? This is a literature board honey, not /sci/.

[Anonymous No.11690913]

>>11690861
>english was made the universal language only because it's easier than german
Shall I keep waiting for an actual argument in favour of this or do you just wanna admit that it was complete bullshit?