Mixed languages

[Ratnat]

That's pretty interesting shuny, because English is the hardest language to learn (Mandarin Chinese is first in some people's eyes, but I'll go with English). Maybe we all already speak English pretty much. However, Spanish is making a very strong push in America, even in Central NC where we both live. I think it'll be interesting to see what all comes out.

I do not think English is hard at all, although our slang is quite confusing sometimes. I taught ESL classes to Spanish children years ago and they pick it up pretty quick.

I was and still am shocked to find that most public schools in the US didn't require a second language for almost 30 years and is still not required in many states. The schools I attended(parochial) required us to know basic Latin, Greek, Hebrew and at least one other language by 8th grade...

My 3 kids are all taking different languages today...Spanish, German, Japanese. Chinese is not even offered...

Anyway, I think English will be the primary language in the US for a very long time. Spanish is our secondary language since we border a Spanish country and have Spanish speaking citizens from territories such as Puerto Rico, etc.

[Jezz]

Ok, it's adding up now with all these mixed languages

Maybe they are really very common? Maybe we will all one day speak the same language?

Mixed languages are common everywhere that cultures with two or more different languages interact. The technical term for it is "creole" or "pidgin". A number of modern languages used to be creoles.

In general, cultural interaction trends the two cultures towards a common language, and cultural isolation causes languages to diverge. We are probably at a point in history where world-wide cultural isolation is the lowest it has ever been, due to improved world-wide communications and travel, so we are gradually trending towards a common language (which at this stage looks like being mainly English-based). If we had a world-wide nuclear holocaust, then our languages would probably start to diverge again.

[Jezz]

That's pretty interesting shuny, because English is the hardest language to learn (Mandarin Chinese is first in some people's eyes, but I'll go with English).

The idea that some languages are "harder" than others is largely a myth. Studies have shown that, no matter where you go around the world, children learn to speak their native tongue at about the same age. This tends to indicate that no language is fundamentally more difficult to learn than another.

How difficult it is to learn a language as a second (or third) language depends on how similar it is to your first language (or to any other language that you know). For example, if you know Spanish then learning Portuguese or Italian is very easy (indeed, a proficient Spanish speaker can probably understand 90% of Portuguese if the person is speaking slowly, even without learning Portuguese). It is much easier to learn English if your first language is French or German than if your first language is Mandarin or Arabic. Conversely, if your first language is Cantonese then it is much easier to learn Mandarin than it is to learn English. Both would probably find Arabic hard, but a native Hebrew speaker would find it easier to learn Arabic than to learn English. And so on.

Also, the hardest thing to learn about Chinese is the written language more so than the spoken, because of the large number of symbols to learn. If Chinese ever became a language of international trade, I suspect that an alphabetised script (like Pin Yin) would eventually come to dominate, thereby eliminating this problem.

[Zeluvia]

l33t sp34k ftw !1!

[rogue06]

The reason that English (especially American English) is considered difficult to learn is, compared to languages like French at least, we have no real rules. At least when it comes to writing it rather than just speaking it.

[FreezBee]

Mixed languages are common everywhere that cultures with two or more different languages interact. The technical term for it is "creole" or "pidgin". A number of modern languages used to be creoles.

In general, cultural interaction trends the two cultures towards a common language, and cultural isolation causes languages to diverge. We are probably at a point in history where world-wide cultural isolation is the lowest it has ever been, due to improved world-wide communications and travel, so we are gradually trending towards a common language (which at this stage looks like being mainly English-based). If we had a world-wide nuclear holocaust, then our languages would probably start to diverge again.

Actually, English would then be 'creole' itself, it being a mixture of Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, and French with some Celtic words thrown in just for show.

- FreezBee

[Tladatsi]

In the South West US such a "lingua franca" exists (this is the technical term for "mixed languages"), commonly called Spanglish. When I speaking with someone who's first language is Spanish but speaks some English, I often bounce back and forth between Mexican Spanish, English, and some mixed terms. Mexican Spanish is already full of English load words (as well as Aztec load words). There is a very popular form of Mexican music called "Banda" which mixes traditional Mexican music with German polka rhythms (listen for the deep brass "oompah"). The name is just the English word Band made Spanish with an -a at the end.

Ages ago I was working in gas station and this guy pulls in to the "Full Serve" island is his pick-up truck and says Por favor, cheque la aceite de mi troque". There is not Spanish verb chequer, i.e. to check or inspect and the Spanish noun for truck is not troque, it is camión. However, will a bit of Spanish and English, I figured it out.

Spanglish.

In the Phillipines they have Taglish.

I live in Kastrup, a southern suburb of Copenhagen and home of Copenhagen Airport, Kastrup. From Kastrup there is a bridge across Øresund, the strait between Sealand and Scania, to Malmö in Scania, and Scania and Sealand are connected through a railway that crosses this bridge.

This summer I worked for a couple of month in northern Sealand and used the railway. Of course, there were both Swedish and Danish passengers aboard, often talking to each other in their respective languages. Later I have spent some time in the airport and in Field's Supermarked just north of the city border between Kastrup and Copenhagen. Both the airport and Field's are near train stops (actually the train stops in the airport), so expectedly a lot of shop assistants are Swedish.

The funny thing is that it can be difficult to determine, who are Danish and who are Swedish, because the same shop assistant may switch languages, even within the same conversation.

Just as an increasing number of Scanians work this side of Øresund, an increasing number of Danes live in Scania, where rents are lower, and it's easier to find an apartment or buy a house.

So maybe a mixed Danish-Swedish language will emerge in the region, and I think it might be interesting to study.

Does anyone know about studies elsewhere over evolution of language in similar situations.


Thanks in advance for any responses


FreezBee

[shunyadragon]

That's pretty interesting shuny, because English is the hardest language to learn (Mandarin Chinese is first in some people's eyes, but I'll go with English). Maybe we all already speak English pretty much. However, Spanish is making a very strong push in America, even in Central NC where we both live. I think it'll be interesting to see what all comes out.

In rating the difficulty of languages, Swedish is probably the most difficult to learn, because of complexity and a lack of common relationship with other languages.

The difficulty in learning languages is more related to how our minds are developed from childhood learning the language(s). Children are very capable of learning two or three languages regardless of apparent difficulty we see as adults. The common relationship of languages helps to make languages easy to learn. Chinese has little in common with any western language. but English has adapted many Chinese words into its vocabulary as it evolves establishing more of a bond that other European languages that are resistent to change.

What makes Chinese difficult to those outside the Oriental culture is that it is in reality two languages, a writen and a spoken dialect, and the there are not only different dialects of Chinese spoken across China, but in reality many minorities have a variation of spoken Chinese that eould be as different as say French and English. The subtle tonal nature of the spoken Chinese makes it difficult for foreigners to learn the spoken language.

European languages are generally easier to learn, because of the phonetic relationship of the written and spoken languages. The difficulty Chinese have learning English is more the cultural character of language usage and not the mechanical learning of the language.

The problem of the use of pinyin as a writen language instead of charactors is that to be understandable you have to use the accents also to indicate the meaning and these change subtly when the spoken language combines the sounds. On of Mao's goals was to develop pinyin to replace charactors, but this failed miserably. Chinese also does not work well as a technology, science and medical language, because it is too cumbersome. In China almost all higher medical, technology, and scientific academics rely heavily on English.

Spanish or French would also be potential international languages, but the development of an international language follows the natural pattern of the history of language. Trade and Commerce, and later science and technology, are the motivation for the use of language beyond the immediate social community. The language which is also the most flexible to change, adaptation and evolution will also have a distinct advantage, and English wins this one hands down. English has openly imbraced new words and terminology from virtually all the languages of the world establishing many common bonds with other languages. French on the other hand is self defeating in this aspect chosing to remain cloistered as an archiac language, Spanish is the second to English, as the most widely used language in the world, but because it never was at the forefront of technology and science, it will eventually lose to English.

At present English is the most widely used language as a second and first language in academia in the world. The EU has also adapted English as the official second language, at the great disapointment of the French.

[damienl]

In rating the difficulty of languages, Swedish is probably the most difficult to learn, because of complexity and a lack of common relationship with other languages.

You probably mean Finnish rather than Swedish, which is an IE language. It shouldn't be *too* hard for someone's whose L1 is another Germanic language to learn Swedish. Finnish, on the other hand, is a Finno-Permic language and would indeed be rather hard to learn.

Chinese also does not work well as a technology, science and medical language, because it is too cumbersome. In China almost all higher medical, technology, and scientific academics rely heavily on English.

I would say it has much more to do with English being the lingua franca of Academia. Though it might be true that, since many discoveries were made in Western (and more specifically English-speaking) countries, there might be a dearth of technical terms in Chinese and it is more convenient to just use English terms rather than create thousands of technical words.

French on the other hand is self defeating in this aspect chosing to remain cloistered as an archiac language

Amen to that! The best-known grammar in French is called Le bon usage. Contrast that with the neutral-sounding, descriptive Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (if you don't own a copy of this wonderful book, buy one! It'll set you back $175, but it's worth every penny!).

[Tladatsi]

Actually, English would then be 'creole' itself, it being a mixture of Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, and French with some Celtic words thrown in just for show.

- FreezBee

Yes, that is right. A Language is a creole with an army.

[Paintbucket]

When I was younger and Spanish was taught in grade school, I did well. But it was taken out when I was in 2nd grade, and I had a hard time learning it again in high school. Spanish will be here for good it seems, but English will rule for a long time still, in America and the rest of the world apparently.

I'm not referring to the mother language, only seconds and beyond. English has borrowed heavily from others, but we have very few real rules unlike most languages.

Swedish is a Germanic language. While Swedish is one of the first languages to break away from German in that strand of IE languages, it is still a German descendant.

Speaking of schools, there is a big problem a lot of grade school teachers in the southwest US face, and that is children who are semilingual- they speak 2 or more languages, often combined and are proficient in neither one. While this could be a Spanglish, perhaps there is something else going on here. Anyone got any ideas?

[shunyadragon]

You probably mean Finnish rather than Swedish, which is an IE language. It shouldn't be *too* hard for someone's whose L1 is another Germanic language to learn Swedish. Finnish, on the other hand, is a Finno-Permic language and would indeed be rather hard to learn.

Correct

I would say it has much more to do with English being the lingua franca of Academia. Though it might be true that, since many discoveries were made in Western (and more specifically English-speaking) countries, there might be a dearth of technical terms in Chinese and it is more convenient to just use English terms rather than create thousands of technical words.

The advantage of English snd European languages in science and technology is that there is a long history of latin, greek and created roots and parts of words in hundreds of years of academia and industry that easilly build a huge vocabulary. Chinese before 1950 was virtually devoid of such a foundation. Because Math, Chemistry and Biology evolved a western language foundation, Oriental languages are at a distinct disagvantage in communicating internationally.

I was a soil scientist/geologist and learned the modern soil classification which in itself has a vocabulary of 10,000 to 20,000 words based on combinations of latin greek and related chemical roots and word parts. It is just too cumbersome for an Oriental language to create a whole new system that is unintelligible with the rest of the world. Because scientists have a background in latin, greek and chemical words the words make sense and can relatively easily be understood even though they are not soil scientists.

China is developing a science and technical language, but it is unintelligible to the west, thus the most usable other language is English, because of its universal use in academia overlaps French, German and other European languages.

[Jezz]

Actually, English would then be 'creole' itself, it being a mixture of Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, and French with some Celtic words thrown in just for show.

Yes, English started out life as a creole. As a creole matures, though, it becomes a language of its own. As I pointed out, "A number of modern languages used to be creoles." English is one of them. French also used to be a creole - a language that developed when Latin fell under the influence of the Germanic languages.

There is a cool site called "Ethnologue" where you can find information like this online: http://www.ethnologue.com/

[Spheniscine]

Malaysia, where I live, is infamous for mixing languages. Case in point:
"Manglish" (Malaysian colloquial English, with influence from Malay, Cantonese, and Hokkien.)
"Bahasa Rojak", basically the same thing happening to Malay.

[FreezBee]

Yes, English started out life as a creole. As a creole matures, though, it becomes a language of its own. As I pointed out, "A number of modern languages used to be creoles." English is one of them. French also used to be a creole - a language that developed when Latin fell under the influence of the Germanic languages.

There is a cool site called "Ethnologue" where you can find information like this online: http://www.ethnologue.com/

Thanks for the link, Jezz