-Caveat Lector-
Ric Carter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
<< <snip>
# Goodbye mother tongue. (BBC) As many as 40% of the world's languages could
disappear by 2100. Only the elderly will remember the more traditional ways of
speaking as younger generations around the globe tune in to a more common way
of talking. From 7000 to 3000 in 100 years; globalization is extinction.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/specials/anaheim_99/newsid_262000/262145.stm
: Every language is a worldview; will yours be abducted, extincted? How much
cultural genocide can humanity survive? Are Urdu, Dutch, Tagalog necessary?
<snip> >>
There are two entirely contradictory things happening, it seems to me. First,
a new *lingua franca* is emerging on the Internet, which could be called Net
English or Web English. This bids fair to be used as the universal trade
language, much as *koine* Greek was at the time of Christ; in fact, English
had a head start thanks to the British Empire and American economic
imperialism. On the other hand, even as English is emerging as the world
language, it is fragmenting the same way Latin did, evolving first in dialects
and ultimately into distinct languages. English has already divided into
Northern and Southern variants, with such dialects as Yorkshire, Lancashire,
Scots, Canadian, and Northern American falling into the first group, and
"Standard" English (Oxbridge), Australian (Oz), New Zealander, South African,
Southron American ("Old South"), Southwest American, and Californian in the
second group. Already the two different groups are diverging at such a rate
that they are frequently unintelligible to each other--"one people divided by
a common language," as Churchill expressed it. At the same all of this is
happening, however, the *written* language is virtually unchanged, and is even
undergoing a renaissance thanks to the Internet. Net English may emerge as a
written medium of communication uniting the world, even as *spoken* English
continues to fragment and evolve. Many world languages will certainly
disappear...but this has been the pattern throughout history--how many Gothic
speakers do you know?
Bob
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Robert F. Tatman
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