English/World Language

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08 Sep 2005, 3:30 pm

I was wondering if you guys think there will ever be a day that the whole world (or at least the greater developed nations) will know how to speak English?

PS I am not trying to be egocentric/nationalistic but at this point in time can you see any other language becoming the world language.

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eamonn
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08 Sep 2005, 3:44 pm

Yes probably, unless China takes over the world when they become the next superpower, then we will all be speaking Chinese mandarin.

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08 Sep 2005, 3:50 pm

well, that sounds reasonable to me, endersdragon.

as long as it's english, and not american

Endersdragon
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08 Sep 2005, 3:54 pm

Most likely English throughout Europe and American throughout Asia as that appears to be what there learning now (only visited Asia but all the lil kids seemed to speak American not English there and Ive heard from my old French teacher that they teach real English in those schools and they thought her accent was funny but thats another story.) How weird will that be???

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eamonn
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08 Sep 2005, 3:56 pm

There is no such language as American.

Endersdragon
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08 Sep 2005, 3:59 pm

I meant the American dialect of English which is quite differnt from the English dialect of English.

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eamonn
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08 Sep 2005, 4:06 pm

What, they are getting taught to speak in American accents? I know some words have different meanings but not many as far as im aware. Ive never had any problem understanding what Americans are saying.

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08 Sep 2005, 4:11 pm

Isn't it already?

Seriously, how many foreign poster do we have here?

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Endersdragon
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08 Sep 2005, 4:32 pm

Beebee I meant to the point that everyone in the country will know how to speak enough of he language to get by.

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Namiko
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08 Sep 2005, 6:11 pm

Endersdragon wrote:

I meant the American dialect of English which is quite differnt from the English dialect of English.

Precisely. I am American, so I speak in the American (west coast American...) dialect of English, which differs from the English people speak in the UK or in Australia. But it's still all English and the same language so I can understand people from the UK or Australia if they speak in English, even if I have to ask them to clarify about certain words and phrases used.

Chinese is a little bit different because all dialects are the same when written, but spoken differently. The two main dialects (Mandarin and Cantonese) have the same symbols for all the words, i.e. a person who is a native Mandarin speaker can perfectly understand what a Cantonese person has written or vice versa. But when spoken, the two dialects cannot understand one another.

I'm sure we'll all be able to accomodate ourselves to the culture and learn enough of the language to get by. It is amazing what the human mind can adapt to when forced into a situation.

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08 Sep 2005, 7:04 pm

Of the non-English speaking countries I've been to, everyone I talked to spoke English. Some spoke broken English, but I was able to understand them perfectly fine. English is the most widely spoken language in the world.

Interesting bit of trivia:

When a flight from Russia is landing in China, in what language are the Russian pilot and Chinese people at air traffic control speaking to each other?

They are speaking English.

When a flight from Rome, Italy is landing in Venice, Italy, in what language are the Italian pilot and Italian people at air traffic control speaking to each other?

They are speaking English, too.

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09 Sep 2005, 1:00 am

English is the language used in business situations, so lots of people need to learn it.

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26 Sep 2005, 7:18 pm

eamonn wrote:

Yes probably, unless China takes over the world when they become the next superpower, then we will all be speaking Chinese mandarin.

And I wonder how they're supposed to be able to memorize all those weird symbols...

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27 Sep 2005, 12:07 pm

English has become the international language like Greek was 2000 years ago.

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