10
JAN
2017
JAN
2017
Gestern habe ich festgestellt, daß Traktor auf K2-isch gar nicht (oder nicht mehr) /'bagwa/ heißt, sondern /'bagBa/, also mit bilabialem R.
Kommentare deaktiviert für PronunziiertKategorie ‘Sprache’
23
DEZ
2011
DEZ
2011
For years I had been haunted by the fear that the Junior Ganymede club book, with all the dynamite it contained, would get into the wrong hands, and the hands it had got into couldn't have been more the sort of hands you would have wished it hadn't.
Wodehouse1, of course. Pure bliss!
- Much obliged, Jeeves [↩]
14
OKT
2011
OKT
2011
And I did this by my Lord's command, who, I thank him, did of himself think of doing it to do me a kindness, for he writ a letter himself to him, thanking him for his kindness to me.
Na, dann ist ja alles klar ...
Kommentare deaktiviert für Satz der Woche
01
NOV
2009
NOV
2009
[via Finja]
Linguist John McWhorter has written an article about the variety of human languages and its expected development. Nowadays, there are about 6000 languages spoken, but only about a tenth of these is expected to make it into the next century.
Personally, the author does not enjoy this prospect, but he does not see an objective disadvantage if a large number of languages should die out. This proposition may be debated, but the argument put forth in the article are pretty convincing. There is another statement that puzzles me, however:
Perhaps a future lies before us in which English will be a sort of global tongue while people continue to speak about 600 other languages among themselves. English already is a de facto universal language
A world using English as Lingua Franca appears time an again, sometimes as (positive) utopia, sometimes presented in a more negative way. But how realistic is this scenario? I will grant that English does take this role in my life (both personal and professional) whenever my native German cannot be used.
However, this is just a very small part of the world -- Europe and America are just a very small part, since more than half of humanity live in Asia. If there really is a universal language one day, who knows which one will win?
Moreover, some of the advantages of English McWhorter gives are a bit subjective -- verb conjugation is quite simple, indeed, an learners rarely complain about the absent genders, either. On the other hand, English spelling and pronunciation are incredibly complex -- offhand, I cannot think about any othere language (bare galic) that uses the latin alphabet verwendet and still employs a similarly strange spelling.
I shall conclude with a little anecdote concerning the idea of a lingua franca: a few days ago, I had to co-ordinate something with two colleagues. Unfortunately, there was no language all of us would have shared; this despite the fact that each of us could talk to every other member of our little team. Thus, we used three different languages (English,German, and Polish) and explained everything important twice so all of us understood.
3 Kommentare • deutsch
23
NOV
2008
NOV
2008
Following a week's stay at the North Sea, I feel this blog should become quadrilingual. But where to find the time?
7 Kommentare • deutsch • suomi • dansk