Second, per trajectory, by growing at 700 percent a year, Mandarin will soon become the most-used language online. Will we see a sturm und drang over Chinese cultural imperialism? Doubtful. Third, what is growing faster than the diversity of languages used on line are the many ways to translate text to any language you like (albeit not quite perfectly yet). Downloads and services like Babelfish, Babylon and Free-Translator are examples. Why learn every language on earth when the massive computational power at our disposal can do it for us?
Okay, so even with the power of the web to provide your translations, you still want to become multilingual for your personal growth and amusement-don’t decry the Web-use it. Check out a fascinating new service called iTalki.com which allows the world’s poor to teach their local languages to others for a few small fee. More than any effort to dictate the wider adoption of languages on the Web, iTalki deomnstartes the best of Net culture: the service may promote wider use and even preservation of local languages and dialects; it will help the world’s abject poor make a little money; it may promote better awareness and understanding of the world’s-and the Net’s-many cultures.
Finally, if you’ve ever received a text or a Twitter tweet from one of your kids, you know that English per se is not really the language of the Net, but rather is just the basis for a new bastardized language that is being born as we speak. One real contender to be the new lingua franca of the Net era is Globish: it reduces the 260,000 words of the English language down to a 1,500 word lexicon. Globish is easier to learn for non-English speakers and fits perfectly into the fast-paced, micro-blog culture that is naturally forming around the Net.
No, the governors at ICANN need not despair over the diversity of languages being used on the Web. But, what should get their attention is how little control they have over any of it anyway.
Tom Hayes is the publisher of Edgelings and author of the business best-seller, Jump Point: How Network Culture is Revolutionizing Business (McGraw-Hill).
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14 Comments
1. Pajamas Media » English Dominates the Web? My Money is on Globish!:[...] Read more here … [...]
Dec 4, 2008 - 1:09 pm 2. Thinking Person:Funny how “problems” like this seem insignificant right now isn’t it? I must add though that worldwide, air traffic controllers use the English language rather than trying to land planes using whatever the pilot’s nationality happens to be. Seems to be working out well. If there are programs to translate the online content into ANY language as the article states, I think the point of the article is moot isn’t it?
Dec 4, 2008 - 1:48 pm 3. Jake Was Here:I doubt if English will cease to be the lingua franca of the Internet any time soon, but Globish strikes me as a good introduction to English for those who don’t speak the language.
Every language has a huge vocabulary, only a few thousand words of which are absolutely vital to comprehension and communication (I’m told that Chinese has about 11,000 individual characters, but only two thousand are really necessary for a working vocabulary). Globish and Basic English are not the English language itself, but they provide a starting point.
Dec 4, 2008 - 5:05 pm 4. Bill Chapman:I’d like to state the case for wider use of Esperanto on the net and elsewhere. Esperanto is already used by some bloggers and groups, but it has a lot to offer.
Esperanto is a relatively young language as languages go.
Dec 5, 2008 - 1:33 pm 5. myth buster:Doesn’t anyone find it slightly disturbing that one of those translators is called, “Babylon?”
Dec 5, 2008 - 7:08 pm 6. Nate`:Esperanto. Right. There are a couple problems with that.
Esperanto has fewer native speakers then Basque.
English can be typed on any non-cyryllic European keyboard without modification or key remapping. Esperanto uses circumflex diacritics which are not available on most keyboards.
Dec 5, 2008 - 10:59 pm 7. MacBeagle:That’s right baby Babble On…
Dec 6, 2008 - 9:21 am 8. Mark:Esperanto, you people just can’t let go, can you!
Dec 7, 2008 - 12:39 am 9. Jake Was Here:As Tolkien once said, Esperanto won’t last very long unless someone can come up with a mythology for it; unlike other languages, it has no history, and so there’s little for anyone to find compelling about it.
Dec 8, 2008 - 6:59 am 10. Assistant Village Idiot:Globish based on English is trending to become the informal net language. Translating devices and services will be used for more complex communication, and home languages will be used for comfort and nuance, with little need to share them with outsiders.
The really difficult part is going to be what languages will be used when cross-language information has to be absolutely precise and unambiguous, as in contracts. My bet is on redundancy.
Dec 8, 2008 - 12:43 pm 11. Miklos Hollender:Language has two purposes 1) to convey information 2) as an artistic tool: poetry, theatre and so on.
As a non-native speaker, I welcome the spread of English as the primary language to convey information: it really makes everything simpler. It makes much more sense not to waste huge efforts on translating Wikipedia: due to it’s extremely simple grammar and widespread use of international i.e. Latin words it’s easy enough to learn, and we should rather focus on adding content to Wikipedia.
As an artistic tool, I hope other languages are here to stay: it isn’t really possible to translate Goethe or Mihaly Babits (Hungarian poet) into English without losing much of the expressivity of the original.
Just as it isn’t really possible to translate Shakespeare into any other languages: no matter how well it’s done, it is always missing the majestic, awe-inspiring music of the original words: “Macbeth: Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas’d;
Dec 8, 2008 - 2:58 pm 12. Jay:Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow;
Raze out the written troubles of the brain;
And with some sweet oblivious antidote,
Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?
Doctor: Therein the patient
Must minister to himself.”
I see no issues with English been the Dominant Language on the Internet. Even if it were Esperento the Same individuals/Orgz would be Yupping and Complaining.
Where on the internet does is say
NON-ENGLISH speakers NOT welcome – If you want something in your language setup a website.
With the exception of anything Dramatic happening – English will Likely be the main language of the Internet – Its already the Dominant Global Language – India has embraced it so to is China/Asia it not been forced on anyone – Do not like it do not learn/use it. I see NOTHING wrong in a Common Global Language AKA (logically English) – A Common tongue can be a mighty UNITING force!
Kind Regards
JAY
Dec 29, 2008 - 4:08 am 13. eve isk:An Indian in London!
eve isk no issues with English been the Dominant Language on the Internet. Even if it were Esperento the Same individuals/Orgz would be Yupping and Complaining.
Mar 30, 2009 - 1:08 am 14. David:You can read a couple of chapters of the real thing — IN Globish — from the new book Globish The World Over now at globish.com or read reviews Eyrolles publishers.
Jul 19, 2009 - 3:46 pm