Thursday, 28 December 2023
Only in the Grauniad
Health Warning - it's the Ugnadiar
English still rules the world, but that’s not necessarily OK. Is it time to curb its power?
Anyone spending their Christmas holidays on the European mainland will likely have observed that it is quite common to meet staff in shops and hotels who can hold a conversation in English, and to read signs and menus in the language. This fact should come as no surprise, and it is no accident: the spread of English skills in Europe is largely the result of educational policies that have intensively promoted its teaching in public schools over the past decades...
The most important challenge is that of fairness or “linguistic justice”. A common language is a bit like a telephone network: the more people know a language, the more useful it becomes to communicate. The question of fairness arises because individuals face very different costs to access the network and are on an unequal footing when using it. Those who learn English as a second language incur learning costs, while native speakers can communicate with all network members without incurring such costs. It’s like getting the latest smartphone model and sim card with unlimited data for free.
어쩌면 가디언이 기계 번역을 잊었을 수도 있습니다
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8 comments:
It’s so rewarding not incurring costs as I speak.
Frankly, when it comes to anything printed in said media outlet, I'm inclined to adopt the mindset of "Of course it's b@ll#cks, it's in the Guardian."
A chum and I were standing in an examination hall in Cambridge, just after the candidates had finished and scooted off.
Picking up a question paper, from the rubric my friend read "Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic". "Ha", he said, "do you speak Gaelic?" "Good God, no; nobody speaks Gaelic."
He thrust the first question at me. Táin Bó Cúailnge: "what's that mean?"
"The Cattle Raid of Cooley: everyone knows that."
"What's it like?" "Usual Irish dross."
The most important challenge is that of fairness or “linguistic justice”.
It may be the most important thing in Grauniad land... but there is a persuasive argument that English is a 'trade language' - a language used primarily for communication in commercial trade and conducting business between people who do not share a common native language. English has a simplified grammar and lots of borrowed words from other languages.
Plus it is fairly robust, even spoken poorly it can usually be understood. What's that about fairness again?
The argument seems to be that the English language should be somehow curbed because some find it easier to speak it. We should of course, promote a minority language so that a majority then struggle.
Socialism in a nutshell. Things aren't fair, so make more people suffer.
James - it is, or that comment might have cost 20p.
Bill - so predictably bad it's almost entertaining.
dearieme - one of my regrets is that I'm no linguist. Didn't even do Latin at school which I think, in a parallel universe, I could have taken to.
DJ - it is quite possible that English being a 'trade language' is what riles the writer of the piece and perhaps Guardian folk more generally. It certainly comes across as antiquated snobbery. "English? Even the servants speak English."
Sam - yes it is socialism in a nutshell. Find some inequality supposedly enjoyed by the plebs and tradespeople then use it to make their lives worse.
‘We should of course, promote a minority language so that a majority then struggle.’
Hence, perhaps, the seemingly arbitrary reference to the Shona language in the guardian article quoted here on the 23rd.
Of course, since it’s the guardian, there is always the usual subtext attached to the term ‘trade’; it would be interesting to see the reaction of the countries now lobbying for ‘reparations’ to the proposal mentioned in the article of ‘a global tax on countries where the majority of the population speaks English as a native language’.
Macheath - the Guardian seems to reflect a problem that there are far more opportunities to pontificate irrationally than rationally. Bung in some virtue-signalling and the job's done. Amazingly crude, but it must cater for a genuine audience, however weird.
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