You forgot Hebrew.
Is that so? I find Shakespeare's language quite readily understandable. I sometimes need a dictionary but that has more to do his expensive vocabulary than with the age of his language. Is it maybe the syntax? As a German I may have the advantage that early modern English syntax is closer to German syntax (e.g.: What make you here instead of What are you doing here in the opening scene of As You Like It corresponds to German Was macht Ihr hier).
Correct. Only a few passages in the minor prophets and in the Qtovim, most of them in the book of Daniel, are in Aramaic.
What privilege, exactly?
What are they relevant to?
It’s a very important matter. If most native speakers are not aware of the cultural origins of the words they use, how are they privileged compared to non-native speakers?
What’s “real English”? And again, what are some concrete examples of how the lack of neutrality you perceive would consequentially privilege someone over someone else in an unjust or detrimental manner?
Yes, the 'German' type of inversion is extremely limited in modern English. Modern American students may lack the necessary parsing skills.
Yes, definitely. Whether it’s due to vocabulary or syntax or both (I would say both), Shakespeare is very hard to read for most native speakers of English, including many who are relatively educated. I would say only a small percentage can read Shakespeare with anything that could be called ease, and that percentage is even smaller if we’re just considering high school students.
Christianity shaped English!?
Sure. Like other European languages is full of words and expressions from Biblical and other Christian stories and teaching. Without Christianity, English would be a very different language, if it existed at all.
I disagree with you. I just read it at an ordinary speed and I didn't even get the drift. I'd have to read it very carefully and very closely to even have a chance at getting the drift. You're right: "blazon" is the only word I don't recognize, so it's not a matter of totally unknown words.
I didn't say cultural aspects were a source of privilege. The cultural aspects have to do with the neutrality of a language, because they shape the language and the way we express and think, regardless of whether the speaker is fully aware of it or not. We can perfectly discuss if that effect is relevant or not, or if consensus is more important than neutrality, and so on, but believing a language has become neutral just because some speakers grown up in a different context have adopted it is simply misguided. It may become so with the passing of time, but it certainly takes time, not a few decades.
That’s exactly what I want to discuss.
I never said that. I think we all agree that no natural language is neutral in terms of the cultural and historical factors that shaped it. The context of this discussion is the pros and cons of constructed languages. For something to count as an argument for constructed languages, there needs to be a real problem they would potentially be solving. What is the real problem posed by the lack of cultural neutrality in the history of a natural language?
Again, in what concrete way are they privileged?
I can see Team A being at an advantage if the match is held at their home stadium because, for example, it’s easier for the players and their fans to get there. That’s the kind of thing I’m asking about. Other than superior proficiency, which you said is not what you’re talking about, what kind of practical advantages are conferred upon the native speaker of a given natural language used for communication?
Whilst I am prepared to accept that it is not unreasonable to class many native English speakers (as well millions of others) as "cultural Christians", I cannot see how Christianity shaped English more than any other factor.
Imagine English without the Norman invasion. European medieval form of government and society would not have happened without Clovis' conversion to Christianity.
You may find this discussion interesting. Opinions differ, but the consensus leans towards the view that there is no major problem in understanding the language, especially if watching a play rather than reading it.
Are the other languages as studied as English? That's the point. English is the only global language for the time being. In addition, languages are never neutral, in my view.
Preferred for what? I want to make sure I know exactly what you're referring to before responding, but it sounds like you're talking about language proficiency. It goes without saying that native speakers have an advantage over others when it comes to language proficiency, but we've already addressed that. The same thing would happen with any constructed language. Even if you don't have "native speakers," you're going to have speakers who are more proficient than others, and they're going to be "preferred" for performing various linguistic activities (such as giving news broadcasts or doing voiceover for a movie), if that's what you mean.
You have a point there. This is the first culturally based argument I've seen that describes a real, concrete advantage that doesn't have to do with language proficiency.
Yes, exactly!!! I think it's easy to forget that the vast majority of language users in the world don't think about these things and use language as primarily or solely a tool for communication.
It doesn't have to be that way, i.e. that's not ah automatic consequence of English being a lingua franca. You could very easily create textbooks and other learning materials with articles, etc. about other cultures and locations. And in this day and age, I don't even think that would be too difficult to do.
A cultural privilege for who? Who benefits? "Privilege" is a benefit or advantage that some people have. Who gets a special advantage because the book has cultural aspects in it? Who benefits from a book they've never seen?
Yes. I don't think it's a really big deal, people are usually treated for their qualifications and skills rather than their accents. However many studies point at accent discrimination within a country, in which regional accents are penalized, and I wouldn't be surprised this happened on an international scale, penalizing thick foreign accents in English.
The whole point, however, is this advantage would be earned rather than just happening to be brought up in an English-speaking milieu.
There is some imbalance in conversations between native and non-native speakers. All I'm going to say is when speaking English with a Swede, a Greek or an Italian I have a sense of camaraderie I can't have with an Anglo. It's like playing a match away, if we stay with the football metaphor.
The cognitive effort one has to put speaking <any language> as a native speaker and as a non-native speaker are nothing alike. English is probably more difficult than many languages.
This happens in the US. People in many parts of the US feel negatively about "New York City" accents, which (to many people) sound harsh, abrupt, rude. Such accents have a bad reputation.
Ive traveled around the U.S. a little bit and I would say that most people are generally understandable, whether an Asian, Middle Eastern, or otherwise. There is the occasional word that can throw one off but usually pretty easy to figure out. I had a cashier of Middle Eastern descent tell me to check out the "Allah-Din" (My ears heard) restaurant, and I paused a second. Alladin, like the Disney cartoon about the magic Lamp. Which then clicked in my head must be tied to Allah, and I had never considered that. Either way, I figured it out quickly with out his aid.
That's odd. I wonder why that is.
That could be part of the reason.
Typo?
Shakespeare's vocabulary was extensive and expansive, but not expensive.I am pretty sure I wrote expansive. Doing so again, I noticed the auto correct if my phone silently changing it into expensive. Only after typing expansive four times in a row would it adapt and leave expansive. The mysteries of technology.Typo?
To me it is a variety and not a dialect because standard language is different as well and not only popular language. But in general, the differences between dialects within England (I purposefully said England and not Britain to avoid opening yet another can of worms) and the US to be significantly stronger than between standard BrE and standard AmE.
I should maybe stress that it is less easy for to follow the language on stage than reading it. It is not easy for me to parse it in real time but we are explicitly talked about reading. If the discussion had been about hearing, my reply might have been a bit different.
Could I choose advantage? For whom? For Native speakers of English (as a group) and particularly the British ones, according to my previous example.
This comment was about pictures in a book, not about any other source of privilege.
How do pictures in a book give an advantage to people who never see that book? I don't understand.
Problems are 'real' or not depending on each individual. As we've already mentioned, a natural language has imposed itself upon others in the past. The fact that we Europeans use English 'freely' as a lingua franca too in most cases doesn't change that fact, because we do it from the moment English became a world-wide lingua franca through colonial imposition. We didn't do it out of thinking in the marvelous features of the language or because we though that Shakespeare was a hell of a guy. We did it, in a nutshell, because the US won World War Two. Of course young people will use it 'freely' because of accepting a statu quo and ignore or disregard history, but that doesn't change the fact it cannot be considered neutral. So we go back to the same point: Is the fact that it's not neutral important? And there we should statistically survey what people think.
I think Dymn already addressed it quite well.
Sometimes English speakers think that all Europeans speak English fluently but with an accent, as if everybody was a Dutch or a Swede. In truth, many speak what has been called Euro-English, a more understandable English that leaves native English speakers from the UK or Ireland aside, because their way of speaking is 'fast and complicated' and often 'weird' (by weird I'm referring to native speakers who either speak quite off the norm -say, a Mancunian- or love to use slang). And many others simply have an English level as good as the level of many Americans who say they took Spanish for seven years and they only can say Dónde está la biblioteca.
I already mentioned the time that is spent for culture-related items in the teaching of the language. It is no surprise that many people end up knowing more about aspects from English culture than from any other, sometimes even including theirs. Empires, language and culture always go hand in hand. Take a look at these days. Find me someone who doesn't know what Christmas is.
No. If you don't teach anything from the culture(s) directly related to the language, you're missing a high number of words and expressions linked to that. And if you're applying it just as a cold tool upon cultural items of your surrounding, you're just treating it as some sort of Esperanto, and students notice that's not the real deal. That is a very forced way of trying to make something that is not neutral to look neutral.
Historically, that is true. Many languages have been "the language of the empire" over the last couple of thousand years. English, French, Spanish, Turkish, Greek, Italian (Roman), Persian, Mandarin...I've missed a few since I'm not a history buff.
That might be true in Europe, but not in most of the world. In recent decades English is popular for one main reason: business. Some guy in Thailand might not know a thing about World War Two, but knows that his company needs someone who speaks English in order to do business in the world-wide market.
That is a holiday all over Europe. It is connected to a religion, not to a language or one country's culture.
That was Latin, not Italian. Anyhow, Italy had its own tiny empire till the Second World War.
Maybe formally. But you can read a whole wikipedia article about American imperialism (sic).
Sure. My comment was related to previous ones about English being used in Europe and not in a postcolonial territory. Of course everything is connected. English is the first global language because, unlike all other language impositions of previous empires, it has come at a time in which real globalization has taken place in terms of business, communication, etc.
Yes. But it was far from being celebrated in the Americanized way we see these days. You can add Halloween to the pot too, etc.
Knowing is one thing, celebrating it is a different story. Do Americans who are not Chinese-Americans celebrate the Chinese New Year at all?
That is precisely the point I am getting at. We can start off by thinking of any natural language as a collection of elements with expressive potential existing in something approaching a Platonic realm. The speakers of any language, whether native or not, select the elements they need to express what they want to say without any thought of the history of the language. If thought of like that then language is as neutral as mathematics. The real world is not though an ideal realm and it is all in practice rather messy. What is considered oppressive varies from place to place and within each place from person to person. We can though generalise by saying that in many places in the world a significant number of people feel that English serves a very useful function and in doing so look to the future rather than the past. We no longer live in a world where most people only need to talk to people in the same village. Doing what your forbears did is fine so long as it does no harm and so long as no one insists you must do what your forebears did. There is no necessary connection between any of nationality, race, religion, culture or language however you define them.
You can indeed add meanings or change structures by using English for cultural elements you relate to. I myself could end up saying that 'Vilafranca castlemakers loaded an awesome pillar of nine with lining, handcuffs and props'. I doubt anyone would make much sense of it, but I guess I can say it. Yet by doing that, the language doesn't become more 'neutral', but more diverse. Once you'll get fully developed Naija, Singlish, Euroglish, etc, people won't have a 'neutral' language for communication, they'll simply have become languages different from English.
