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English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking it.

Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

joG said:
Funny. I would have thought parents would want their kids to be able to communicate with everyone in the society. And seeing Spanish is the most spoken language worldwide after English, it makes a lot of sense on a commercial level as well.
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Spanish is the most spoken language in the world after Chinese. English would be in third place. On the other hand, English is the most spoken second language. Therefore, English would make the most viable commercial language.

Sent from my GT-N8013 using Tapatalk
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

Carjosse said:
French is fairly widespread throughout the world whereas Spanish is not.
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There is Spain itself, Mexico, the whole of central America and the whole of South America bar Brazil and the Falklands, Cuba, the Dominican Republic. Plus large swathes of the US. And it infiltrates border areas - go to the French south-west there is lots of Spanish spoken, but not so much French on the Spanish side. Spanish is pretty widespread. As is French, but much as I love the French language, it is sadly on the decline on an international level. Hence the panic of official organisations to promote Francophonie a go-go. What was once the language of diplomats is sadly losing its importance.
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

Urethra Franklin said:
There is Spain itself, Mexico, the whole of central America and the whole of South America bar Brazil and the Falklands, Cuba, the Dominican Republic.
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Just a small correction here... Spanish is the national language in the most countries on the planet.

Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Spain, Uruguay and Venezuela.. oh and Cuba and Dominican Republic. Also Puerto Rico, but that aint a country but a colony. A total of 440 million people speak Spanish as the first language in 20+ countries and colonies.

French is acutely is actually spoken many places as well, more than Spanish.. 29 countries or colonies. But only 388 million people in those areas.

English is only spoken as official language in 4 countries.. with 420 million people, with the US being the biggest of course. However English is spoken as a defacto official language without being official or primary in a hell of a lot of countries of course... like India.

So in the battle of languages... the largest language is Chinese/Cantonese followed by Hindi and the Spanish, English and then French.

As for the guy you answered.. HAHAHA
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

PeteEU said:
Just a small correction here... Spanish is the national language in the most countries on the planet.

Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Spain, Uruguay and Venezuela.. oh and Cuba and Dominican Republic. Also Puerto Rico, but that aint a country but a colony. A total of 440 million people speak Spanish as the first language in 20+ countries and colonies.

French is acutely is actually spoken many places as well, more than Spanish.. 29 countries or colonies. But only 388 million people in those areas.

English is only spoken as official language in 4 countries.. with 420 million people, with the US being the biggest of course. However English is spoken as a defacto official language without being official or primary in a hell of a lot of countries of course... like India.

So in the battle of languages... the largest language is Chinese/Cantonese followed by Hindi and the Spanish, English and then French.

As for the guy you answered.. HAHAHA
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Bah correction to my correction.. did not mean most countries, I meant spoken by most people outside Cantonese and Hindi... I blame a brain fart.
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

PeteEU said:
Bah correction to my correction.. did not mean most countries, I meant spoken by most people outside Cantonese and Hindi... I blame a brain fart.
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You might want to correct the 4 country statement of English as an official language. In India it is one of the two official languages for good reason. That does not mean that many people speak it fluently, however.
Also I am not sure that it is Cantonese that is considered widely spoken but Mandarin. This is a mute observation, however, as the differences between the dialects within Cantonese are as large as the difference between English, Dutch and German, as I have been told.
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

joG said:
You might want to correct the 4 country statement of English as an official language. In India it is one of the two official languages for good reason. That does not mean that many people speak it fluently, however.
Also I am not sure that it is Cantonese that is considered widely spoken but Mandarin. This is a mute observation, however, as the differences between the dialects within Cantonese are as large as the difference between English, Dutch and German, as I have been told.
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Well India is debatable... some say it is an official co-language but others state it is an official minority language. It is certainly not the official primary language.
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

Urethra Franklin said:
There is Spain itself, Mexico, the whole of central America and the whole of South America bar Brazil and the Falklands, Cuba, the Dominican Republic. Plus large swathes of the US. And it infiltrates border areas - go to the French south-west there is lots of Spanish spoken, but not so much French on the Spanish side. Spanish is pretty widespread. As is French, but much as I love the French language, it is sadly on the decline on an international level. Hence the panic of official organisations to promote Francophonie a go-go. What was once the language of diplomats is sadly losing its importance.
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Well French has France, half of Belgium and Switzerland, Quebec, its former central African colonies, its former and current colonies in the Caribbean, colonies in Oceania, French Guiana, North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia), holdings in the Indian Ocean, a very popular second/third/fourth language throughout Europe but especially Eastern Europe for some reason, South East Asia around Vietnam, and probably some I am missing. French is on every single continent, it is a more universal language it might not be the primary language but it is spoken by a much larger potion of the world. These are places you actually might want to do trade with.
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

Urethra Franklin said:
Just sayin'
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Relax. Travel the world sometime. When you go to many different places as I have, you find that just about everyone speaks at least a little English. I had no problem communicating in Hong Kong, Singapore, Shenzen, Dubai, Mombasa, Nairobi, Manila, Busan, Seoul, Paris...or even London. The only place I had a problem finding someone to communicate with in English was Japan. On the other hand, trying finding anyone in any of those places (other than London, Paris, and Manila) who speaks Spanish. Good luck with that!

And this is why there are more people learning English today in China than there are Americans learning English here today - English is the new lingua franca, as it were. That's also why all pilots on international flights today are required - required! - to communicate in English, and the airports they serve must have English-speaking air traffic controllers.

So...yeah, the proportion of Americans speaking Spanish is growing...and the demographic trend pretty much makes any kind of reversal of the trend next to impossible. So if there's nothing you can personally do about it, the wisest thing to do is to learn Spanish. Here's a joke my wife once told me: a person who speaks three languages is trilingual, a person who speaks two languages is bilingual, and a person who speaks only one language is...American (which is simply pointing out in humorous fashion that most of the world's people speak at least one language). Ever since she said that, I've tried to learn her native language of Tagalog, and I can communicate to a very limited extent in Spanish, French, and German. And I learned two great lessons: one, there ARE words and concepts in other langauges that simply cannot be translated into English (I'm not kidding!), and two, with all our verb conjugations and exceptions-to-the-rules-spelling, English is a stupidly, horrendously complex language. With Tagalog, you can learn how to pronounce nearly every word in their language in five minutes flat. What's more, give yourself a couple days, and you'll know how to spell almost every word in their language when you hear it. It still takes years and years to learn the vocabulary, but the pronunciation and spelling are much, much easier than English. This doesn't mean the language can't have complex concepts as English does - Tagalog certainly does. It's just that it's so much simpler to learn the spelling and pronunciation.

One more thing - the overwhelming plurality of the one thing that is enabling communication between countries and cultures to an undreamt-of extent - the internet - is English. The overwhelming plurality of the programming is in English.

So relax. English is going to remain the world's lingua franca throughout our lifetimes. But do yourself a favor and learn some other languages. Hopefully, you'll find out - as I did - the truth behind the old saying that to learn a culture's language is to learn the soul of that culture.
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

Carjosse said:
Well French has France, half of Belgium and Switzerland, Quebec, its former central African colonies, its former and current colonies in the Caribbean, colonies in Oceania, French Guiana, North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia), holdings in the Indian Ocean, a very popular second/third/fourth language throughout Europe but especially Eastern Europe for some reason, South East Asia around Vietnam, and probably some I am missing. French is on every single continent, it is a more universal language it might not be the primary language but it is spoken by a much larger potion of the world. These are places you actually might want to do trade with.
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Yes, like the DRC and Haiti.
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

Urethra Franklin said:
Yes, like the DRC and Haiti.
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Well even just with the mother country, France is much more politically and economically powerful nation than Spain ever will be.
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

Carjosse said:
Well even just with the mother country, France is much more politically and economically powerful nation than Spain ever will be.
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I hear what you're saying, but come and live in France and see the absolute panic amongst officialdom at the demise of French as an international language and the dominance of English. That they had to pass a law to guarantee a minimum of 40% francophone songs on the radio?

At work yesterday - several examples:

Ce sera fun
On verra ce weekend
Oui, c'est top
Il a fait le forcing
C'est cool
Quelle joke
C'est pas son job
On y go

French people didn't speak like that when I arrived here 16 years ago.

I've never been to Québec but I understand you resist anglicisms in your French? There is an argument for that, and French officialdom is pushing to go down that road, but isn't that a sign of intellectual insecurity? Look at societies where they're so not insecure about the status of their national language, like the Scandinavian countries where you can do your higher studies in English? The French establishment is far too insecure and scared about the status of French to tolerate that. Jeez, the panic when your own Natasha St. Pierre represented us at Eurovision and the sang the last verse of "Je n'ai que mon âme" in English - and that's only a camp song contest! (beautiful song btw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYzW5OeSPFQ )
 
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Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

Urethra Franklin said:
I hear what you're saying, but come and live in France and see the absolute panic amongst officialdom at the demise of French as an international language and the dominance of English. That they had to pass a law to guarantee a minimum of 40% francophone songs on the radio?

At work yesterday - several examples:

Ce sera fun
On verra ce weekend
Oui, c'est top
Il a fait le forcing
C'est cool
Quelle joke
C'est pas son job
On y go

French people didn't speak like that when I arrived here 16 years ago.

I've never been to Québec but I understand you resist anglicisms in your French? There is an argument for that, and French officialdom is pushing to go down that road, but isn't that a sign of intellectual insecurity? Look at societies where they're so not insecure about the status of their national language, like the Scandinavian countries where you can do your higher studies in English? The French establishment is far too insecure and scared about the status of French to tolerate that. Jeez, the panic when your own Natasha St. Pierre represented us at Eurovision and the sang the last verse of "Je n'ai que mon âme" in English - and that's only a camp song contest! (beautiful song btw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYzW5OeSPFQ )
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That is not the decline of language that is a language evolving like languages have always done. There is a lot of French in English and a lot of English in French, that does not mean the language is declining. Do you think Spanish is invulnerable to that?
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

Carjosse said:
That is not the decline of language that is a language evolving like languages have always done. There is a lot of French in English and a lot of English in French, that does not mean the language is declining. Do you think Spanish is invulnerable to that?
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Come on, turn back the clock. French the language of diplomats. ANY international event from political meetings to academic meetings to cultural events, you had everything in English and French. French was taught as the first foreign language in all schools in the UK and many other anglophone countries (NOBODY did Spanish or Chinese in the UK when I was at school, now it's commonplace). French was taught as the first foreign language over English in many non-anglophone countries - hardly the case now. I started my schooling in the ex-YU - many kids did French amongst other languages but your can bet your butt they're all learning English now.

French does not enjoy the international importance it once did and that applies at all levels, from international negotiating down to everyday street French. 30 years ago if a French kid said "Cool" his parents would have told him to speak properly. Now they'll probably respond "Yes!" That is not mere language evolution but the English language penetrating everywhere. Once upon a time we adopted French words like café and chic. Which French words have been adopted into English in the last 20 years? I can't think of one, and that's a symptom of a much broader paradigm shift.

I love the French language and would love to agree with you, but open your eyes, you're wrong!
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

Urethra Franklin said:
Come on, turn back the clock. French the language of diplomats. ANY international event from political meetings to academic meetings to cultural events, you had everything in English and French. French was taught as the first foreign language in all schools in the UK and many other anglophone countries (NOBODY did Spanish or Chinese in the UK when I was at school, now it's commonplace). French was taught as the first foreign language over English in many non-anglophone countries - hardly the case now. I started my schooling in the ex-YU - many kids did French amongst other languages but your can bet your butt they're all learning English now.

French does not enjoy the international importance it once did and that applies at all levels, from international negotiating down to everyday street French. 30 years ago if a French kid said "Cool" his parents would have told him to speak properly. Now they'll probably respond "Yes!" That is not mere language evolution but the English language penetrating everywhere. Once upon a time we adopted French words like café and chic. Which French words have been adopted into English in the last 20 years? I can't think of one, and that's a symptom of a much broader paradigm shift.

I love the French language and would love to agree with you, but open your eyes, you're wrong!
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Open your eyes, you are wrong. French is still used in diplomacy a lot because like I said it is still a very common lingua franca, some English words are not going to change that, every language has English words in it, Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Chinese. French is still one of the world's more used and most useful languages.
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

joG said:
Funny. I would have thought parents would want their kids to be able to communicate with everyone in the society. And seeing Spanish is the most spoken language worldwide after English, it makes a lot of sense on a commercial level as well.
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Mandarin has the most native speakers world wide. Spanish is second. English third.
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

Gaius46 said:
Mandarin has the most native speakers world wide. Spanish is second. English third.
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As a first language, or in general?

Keep in mind, English is basically the "lingua franca" of business these days.
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

PIPEWRENCH said:
I think we need to speak a single language in this country. While it may have its roots in English I think the addition of words from many other languages is important. The English we speak here is already a mix of many languages and should he become more diverse. With the mix of different cultures over the years it is a shame we have not incorporated more words from each language into our language.

I believe a universal language that all the people understand is a strength for any country. I think a country such as the US with so many immigrants form all over the world that our language should contain more words from each language and culture.
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The English we speak here is not noticeably different from the English spoken by every other English-speaking country in the world. Every one of those countries have added words from non-English speaking countries. We are hardly unique in that regard.
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

Gathomas88 said:
As a first language, or in general?

Keep in mind, English is basically the "lingua franca" of business these days.
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As a first language.

I know that English is the language of commerce, aviation and what not, but having dealt with non-native English speakers in business settings (primarily native French, Chinese and Japanese speakers) many can't really speak the language.
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

Gaius46 said:
Mandarin has the most native speakers world wide. Spanish is second. English third.
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But English is by far the most widely-spoken language. Go to any nation - except for hermit nations like North Korea - and you're going to find some native-born who can speak English well, and many who can speak it haltingly, or at least know a few words. However...try going to, say, Honduras and finding a native-born Honduran who can speak Mandarin.
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

PIPEWRENCH said:
I think we need to speak a single language in this country. While it may have its roots in English I think the addition of words from many other languages is important. The English we speak here is already a mix of many languages and should he become more diverse. With the mix of different cultures over the years it is a shame we have not incorporated more words from each language into our language.

I believe a universal language that all the people understand is a strength for any country. I think a country such as the US with so many immigrants form all over the world that our language should contain more words from each language and culture.
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I strongly disagree. First off, when I began learning Tagalog, I found that yes, there really are words and concepts in other languages that cannot be accurately translated into English, even though English has the largest vocabulary and is the most widely-spoken language in the world.

Second, it's been shown that those who speak more than one language are less likely to develop dementia in their later years.

There are many concrete benefits to speaking multiple languages...and by limiting ourselves to only one, we're shooting ourselves in the foot.
 
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