Rodiniye wrote:elemtilas wrote:They may be poorly educated, but they are very smart and savvy. Apart from the language they learn at home, they will quickly gravitate towards the regional auxlang that allows them the best opportunities in their region, and then the auxlang that will get them the broadest contact with the outside.
people will tend to study the "auxlang" that gives them more opportunities. Agreed. Most people will try to learn English. However, many many people where I live study other languages, just because they like the language, its culture, its concept, whatever. Many speak/learn Italian, French, German... even Chinese, European... why? most of them will never live in those countries. But they love languages. I speak Italian myself, and apart from another line in my CV and a bit of help when I go to Italy, not other uses really. I studied it because I liked it. So.... yes some people will study the auxlang, some not, some will study other languages.
No doubt about it! You might even find one or two folks here who will study Atlas just for the fun of it! Just because it's a language they haven't studied before!
This is like the many people who study carpentry for the fun of it. Maybe they'd like to make a bookshelf or something. But it's not like six or seven billion people are going to flock to carpentry as their sole occupation!
Myself, I studied very many languages too and I think most of us in a forum like this have done the same.
The problem is as well that English is far too difficult to learn.
This of course is patently absurd. We have some terribly stupid people here in America, and they all learned to speak English pretty well.
You're just repeating the same tired argument that auxlang proponents have made for generations. (I think it must be like Argument No. 3 in the Auxlangers' Little Red Manifesto or something!)
In Spain, where I am from, people learn English for about 12 years at school, and I would say around 70% of the boys and girls finishing school at 18 cannot have a fluid conversation in English. In 12 years!
And then? They live in Effing
Spain!! You speak Spanish there! If kids in Scotland studied Spanish for twelve years, they too would probably not be able to hold much of a convo with a monoglot Spanish speaker.
And then there's you...I honestly can't tell if you are a native English speaker or not. I have not detected any "common foreigner errors" in your writing. So clearly, English ain't all that difficult! I can guarantee that my Spanish is nothing like as good as your English.
Many struggle with pronunciation, phonetics, grammar...
Many native English speakers do the same.
For what it's worth, many native Spanish speakers struggle with these same issues in Spanish!
Yes, I understand the lingua franca is not chosen (yet)
The auxlangers' perpetual hope!
, but would it not be easier to have one common language which was easy(ier) and would not take 12 years to learn?
Not really. First of all, as has already been demonstrated, Atlas is really not as easy as advertised. The problem with hampering your auxlang by intentionally making it too simple is that as soon as someone says "how do I say XYZ in Atlas!?" --- Well, you can't, because that was deemed too difficult an idea. --- People will abandon it for a real language that allows them to communicate properly.
Easy is not necessarily better.
Utility and commonality are what win the day.
Short of implementing Atlas by force, how do you expect to win through? What's your plan?
Mind you, I speak 5 languages fluently. It took me around 12 years in school + 3 years private lessons + 4 years at uni + 4 years in the UK + 6 months in New Zealand in order to be fluent in English.
Fantastic! I speak one, and I'm still learning it!
Still, obviously, I make mistakes and my English will not be perfect.
That's one of the funny things about language. No matter what our native language is or how intense our study and practice of an L2 or how long we've been at it, we still make mistakes.
We have a lingua franca which is far from ideal, and which will change one day.
That it is the lingua franca by definition makes it ideal. It does the job assigned to it.
Will it change some day? Of course! How that change will take place and when, those things no one can tell. I would hazard the guess that it will become increasingly difficult to topple the Big Five from the summit of the mountain. As the world community becomes more integrated and more connected, it will also become more difficult to topple the lingua franca from its position as well.
Barring an all-out destruction of civilisation and disintegration of world community & economy, I think we're going to be looking at status quo for forseeable future.
Having the lingua franca as your native language gives you a huge power, beginning by the fact that you can skip 12 years in school learning it, or private lessons, etc, while others will take 20 years.
Another canard. Yes, being a native speaker of the lingua franca does grant a certain advantage. But it really doesn't take 15 or 20 years of polishing one's skills in English to the point of native level proficiency, such as you have most admirably accomplished, in order to make use of English as a tool for communication. You (generic, mind) need to learn it just well enough to make yourself understood and to understand within the scope of need in your location.
If you want to move into diplomatic circles or international business, then yeah, you need to polish your English (and quite probably learn several other languages as well). If you want to set yourself up as a tour guide or a restaurant owner or a small tourism industry in your native country, your English doesn't need to be perfect. Or anything like native proficiency.
Nobody pretty much can reach the level of a native person,
That's alright. A restaurant owner catering to tourists visiting his small but picturesque village in Outer Lumbago really doesn't need to be intimately conversant with Shakespeare or Milton. He needs to be conversant with his guests (who will probably be rude Americans boobs, and therefore won't know what a Milton or a Shakespeare even are!), because for him English is an
interlanguage a bridge between himself and his foreign guests, it's a tool of the marketplace.
so that gives everybody else apart from English native speakers a bit of a disadvantage. I have seen it. I work in an international environment and people with an acceptable (not perfect, but acceptable) English level have more problems in getting some positions than native speakers. And that is after having put a lot of effort in their lives in order to achieve that level.
We have the same issue here. Recent immigrants speak English poorly. They do indeed have difficulty getting certain positions.
If they want to take advantage of the opportunities on offer here, they need to learn. They need to ensure that their children learn. If I moved to Spain, do you not think I'd take every opportunity to learn Spanish!? In my line of work, I'd have to perfect my Spanish every bit as much as you've done with English in your line of work!
That's life. No easy to learn auxlang is going to help with this. In fact, in the case of immigrants outlined above, it would only serve to hamper their progress. Because they're still not learning the regional or national language(s) of their new homeland.
That is one of the reasons behind auxlangs, and there is people out there interested in the idea. It is fair. Why would English be the lingua franca? Why not mine? Spanish? Why yours and not mine?
Yours (Spanish), is one of the Big Five, you know! It is certainly a regional auxlang here in America. I learned it for that reason, and though I've forgotten a lot, and quite lot more has been replaced by a new language, it certainly comes in handy for communicating with others who don't speak English, who have not yet learned the lingua franca.
As for why "mine" and not "yours". That's largely an accident of history and culture that neither of us have any control over. We just have a choice to make: play the hands dealt to each of us, or whine in misery and wonder why we get no opportunities of this world. I will note, however, that you played your hand very well.
Why not Swahili? Oh I know, because of political reasons. That is unfair.
It has little to do with politics per se. It has to do more with economics. England and America have proven to be the uberdominant economic drivers of the last two centuries, mostly on account of manufacturing and technology. Spain, not so much.
By the time England's own imperium looked to be coming to a conclusion, English was already well in place, even in countries with established and venerable native languages. And then, once the great European wars of the 20th century pretty much depleted England, there was its golden egg, the USA, to rise in its place and take on the leadership of the world's economic activity. With all due respect, Spanish never stood a chance at anything more than regional hegemony in its former colonies.
As for why not Swahili? Well, show me the world spanning Kenyan Empire... the dominant Rwandan economic powerhouse...
Oh. Right.
Again, and with respect, Swahili just doesn't stand a chance.
Also, life ain't fair. No one ever said it was going to be fair.
I work in aviation, where a good level of English is required. Why do I have to reach that level, while native English speakers don't? Just because English has been chosen as the lingua franca in that field? Is it fair that I have to go through training + learning English while others don't?
English is the preeminent language of aviation, mostly because America was the first home of powered flight, and England and America came to dominate aviation in the early years. As history has marched on, English has come to be the language of science & technology as well as economic activity.
Is that fair? Probably not. We just kind of have to deal with it! But you yourself have advantages over a monoglot English aviation (engineer, maybe?) --- and that is your Spanish fluency as a native speaker. You can bridge all of Latin America, plus European Spain, plus all of the native English speaking world. That's a pretty good chunk of geography!
Well obviously some people will say yes, because that's society, politics is life, evolution, it is the way it is.... but some of these people would change their minds if tomorrow they woke up and Chinese was the lingua franca. I am 100% sure. But it is difficult to see that when you have the privilege of speaking the lingua franca since you were born.
"Chinese" (Mandarin) is also one of the Big Five. If China ever gains sufficient power as far as science and technology go, as well as economic development, then it is possible that we'll see a pole shift in lingua franca from English to Chinese. As they say in old Peking:
C' est la vie, c' est la guerre, c' est la pomme de terre.
It's not difficult at all to see. A lingua franca becomes a lingua franca because there is an advantage to its use. Remember: it's a tool.
Look at it like this. For thousands of years, farmers went down to the local hardware shop and bought shiny bronze spades to work their potato fields. No one ever thought the situation would change. Do you really think that either the farmer or the bronzesmith would remain steadfast users and makers of bronze spades when once iron spades came on to the market?
There's an advantage to an iron spade --- it's stronger & lighter. Sure it rusts easily, but if well cared for, it can last a hundred years easily. But either way, both spades are tools. The farmer is going to pick the one that allows him to turn over more soil, dig more potatoes and therefore produce more food. Do you think the smith is going to refuse to make iron spades, just because he grew up with bronze and everyone for generations has used bronze tools?
No! He too will switch to iron. The market has offered a superior tool and people have spoken by choosing the superior tool.
Right now, English is the lingua franca because it offers a superior tool and people speak by choosing that superior tool.
With all due respect to your intellectual exercise in creating an auxiliary language, you're just not offering me a superior tool. What you're offering me is a promise without hope of fulfillment, a tool that is untried and of dubious utility, and to be honest, an argument from "fairness" that is really and truly irksome. It's the kind of irrational argument a nine year old makes.
So what you're réally asking me to do is give up English because you think it's unfair to you as a non-native speaker and in exchange you'll give me a tool I can't use and won't integrate with anyone else in the whole world. Ahh... I think no sale on that one!
And with that, I think I've exhausted my patience with this whole auxlang nonsense for a good long while! [sigh] The shadows of the ancient past have spread their dark wings over this place, too... Time to get away from that before the poison spreads!