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Chinese and Spanish get high rankings out of sheer numbers, but otherwise, English is arguably the most influential language used in the modern world.
You've undoubtedly heard of English-speakers going overseas and finding that a remarkable number of those that they encounter abroad can already speak a respectable amount of English.
I grew up in the States, or in other words, a country where a dominant world language like English is the primary/dominant language. Lately, I've been thinking about what it's like to grow up in a country where there is a very big influence in your own country's language from a a language like English. For example, Germans here use "PC" (Personal Computer) and "SMS" (Short Message Service, or in other words, an SMS is a text message) in their everyday language.
But wait, scratch this entire post. I guess English has plenty of external influences that are now used completely subconsciously. I mean, virtually anything in English ending with "-ble" probably has more or less an exact counterpart in at least Spanish, or French, or both, just as an example. Don't even start me on "Schadenfreude" and "kaputt". Every pasta you eat that doesn't specifically come from Asia has some form of Italian ending on it. And kudzu is a transliterated derivative from the corresponding Japanese word.
Okay, so my argument turns out to be moot. Or maybe I'm really wondering more about growing up in a country where you actually start learning a second language early on (*ahem*, America, the late onset of your language learning system is bizarre), and you also grow up actually using it to some degree. (Note how many students in America have supposedly studied a language for ump-teen number of years, yet can barely speak it in conversation. This is not necessarily their fault, but the point here is about growing up with a much more functioning second language that you've learned in school that isn't just a letter on a report card).
Anyway, this is probably because English is a bastard language, who mugs other languages in dark alleyways and steals their vocabulary.
4 comments:
(From Michael): "ALSO. i find it really funny how english is very much split into a german half and a french/latin/greek half. i'd really like to count someday all the words in a scientific article that come from latin/greek and those that have germanic origins and compare them to, say, a conversation among friends. i bet it'd be totally opposite :P"
Oh, how fun would that be?? :D I'm kind of interested in that idea, actually. I will laugh when we finish a sample amount, sit back, and say, "Wow.... we really having nothing original."
(From Michael): "hehe, i feel like you are really really lucking in learning a language like chinese/shanghainese when you are young and also learning something like german as an adult. what did you take in high school actually?! it's just that they are entirely different ways of learning and i think they both have merits. and german is much easier to learn than chinese, so it's better like that too :P
yeah, i'll agree, english is a bastard language. but i feel it's very different from the way german/french/spanish have picked up words. i also wonder a lot about spanish and french that have gone native in places like latin america and quebec. and you forget that spanish has a lot of arabic influence! it's kind of funny how languages grow. :D i'd totally be a linguist if i had the patience and a better basis for understanding languages :D"
Funny that you ask. In high school, I took a year of Spanish and two years of Latin. I had actually wanted to take German, but had to start teaching myself after the quadramillion-lingual German teacher kept getting slotted for only Spanish and French, the popular bastards ;) ...
Spanish has Arabic influences... a little bizarre to think about in some ways... Maybe not historically, but more in a modern context, hehe.
tangentially related: oldest words in english. Big surprise--"I", "who", and "three" are among the oldest.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/02/27/words-english-computer.html
Hehe. Are you an Esperanto promoter? I assume you speak or are learning the language. Just by the by, I've looked into Esperanto before and considered learning it a bit. Mostly it was a concern of time and a slight fear that it would be too hard to maintain for the time being because I've yet to find fellow Esperanto speakers with which to practice the language that kept me from continuing on. The concept is interesting enough, though I frequently wonder... we have so many languages now. What's to say that despite efforts to develop this universal language, sub-languages will emerge out of it anyway and change into yet their own languages, just as all other languages have done?
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