@ChrisMayLA6 coming late to this discussion, but yes, English is a major factor in our economic survival, and no it’s not because of Britain . It’s because of America.
If the US had ended up speaking Spanish or German, that would be a the lingua franca by now.
And yes, English is an easy language to speak very badly and still be understood. Other languages have a higher bar to comprehension. There is actually a convincing theory that what is now spoken is actually pidgin Welsh with few rules.
Pidgin Welsh? My understanding is that there are surprisingly few words of Celtic origin in modern English. And I suspect more of those are Gaelic than Welsh.
@regordane@ChrisMayLA6 it’s not so much the words as the grammar. The words come from a whole range of different sources with a whole range of spelling methods as well!!
But the way we construct sentences using the present continuous instead of indicative doesn’t come from any of our neighbours.
It comes from Welsh, or Brythonic as the archaeologists call it.
And oh dear is just oh God in Welsh.
Oh dear me; oh my God!
Linguistic remnants remain in Lancashire, Black Country, and Somerset.
@peterbrown@regordane@ChrisMayLA6 sorry for shitposting, but whenever I see this kind of thing I’m reminded about how England has always been and always will be part of Europe. Brexit schmexit.
@spmatich@regordane@ChrisMayLA6 brexit is not really anything to do with language, but if it serves as any kind of consolation, Brythonic was the language of France as well. They called it Gaulish.
(When Julius Caesar got to the channel, he remarked the people on both sides of the channel spoke the same language.)
And of course you’re right that national boundaries are relatively recent development, and that before then there are pretty much seamless spread of population. 
@peterbrown@spmatich@regordane@ChrisMayLA6 It still is in parts of Britanny despite valiant efforts by the French to kill off Breton. Breton is very close to Cornish but with different borrowed words.
The French signed the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in 1999 - and still hasn't ratified it or given Breton any status. It's even illegal to put up a Breton only commercial sign.
@ChrisMayLA6 I once supported a project to give training to women market stall holders in a town in Zambia. The idea was that training in business skills would help them prosper more. At first the women agreed to this, but after some thought they came back and said they wanted to learn English "because nobody listens to you if you don't speak English". (A bit later roughly a quarter of the funds were spent getting them out of jail after they went on strike to protest at increased stall rents.)
@ChrisMayLA6 I don't think it would make a huge difference at this point. If the global language was one that your kids needed to learn as an L2, you would have that well organized in your school system. Look at the German-speaking countries: almost 100% of school leavers can speak English to a useful level.
The vast majority of people who use English in the world are L2 speakers who have learned it from other L2 speakers. >
@ChrisMayLA6 Being an L1 English speaker isn't a huge advantage any more; you need to learn to tone down your idiomatic, locally flavoured English for international use and that means a similar level to L2 speakers. It may be relevant for very high-level writing jobs, but again, for those it's not just being a "native speaker" that counts, it's conscious skills in working with the language which take extra study and practice. <>
" ... does the UK's 'natural' speaking of English mask or reduce (some) economic deficiencies that would otherwise be problems?." - My observations make me believe that as a country being English speaking does help but is not essential. (And is for sure not something that can even begin to mitigate the stupidity of #Brexit). In the end, English proficiency is just a skill that can be learned & not an economic deal-breaker for a country.
@ChrisMayLA6 another question is that since we use a lingua franca, we don't tend to learn other languages, unlike most other countries. Is the monolingualism a hindrance? I would assume yes but I've no evidence right now.
Yes, there's some pretty good evidence that the UK's effective monolingualism does impede some trade relations - some of the research I was looking at this morning was making that point explicitly - this often is related to the boiling of relations & establishment of trust - requiring others to use our language can undermine the notion of equity in economic relations (and at the margins at least halt further development of such relations)
@ChrisMayLA6@econads@NoBeerToday I’m sure I vaguely remember hearing once a theory that Britain’s effective monolinguism has an effect on the way we native Britons think — something about the effects that early learning of other languages has on the way one thinks.
I used to have this little bit of schtick (with students) (only partly with my tongue in my cheek) that the English were good at improvisation & invention because english grammar is so flexible that you can start a sentence without knowing where it would end up & remain grammatical;
whereas Germans were outstanding engineers because German grammar was essentially modular & you needed to have idea about the whole before starting;
@ChrisMayLA6 You might look at it the other way round. If Britain had not been a very efficient and ruthless colonising power, would English be the world’s second language? And all the implications that flow from that.
@christineburns@ChrisMayLA6@Wen Indeed. Had French or Spanish become the dominant language in the US and all of North America, English might not have achieved the prominence it has today. I do wonder why English became dominant in the US and Canada - even if Canada does have French speakers and Spanish is a kind of unofficial second US language.
@ChrisMayLA6@alexproe@Wen This thread has caused me to reflect this morning that English might not have retained its status were it not for the fact that it’s the official language of the United States. It’s not that a sizeable part of the world speaks English but that we and they speak a dialect of North American.
@christineburns@ChrisMayLA6@Wen By North American I assume you mean English. If anything, US English is a dialect of the language which originated in England, not the other way round!
@ChrisMayLA6@Wen@alexproe Yes dear, I know the history. What I’m alluding to is the change in the centre of gravity of English speaking alongside the change in who drives cultural power to the anglophone world and necessitates that, for instance, European youngsters grow up fluent in ‘English’ alongside their mother tongue. The shift is profound over the last fifty years and I think we’re hanging on to a conceit if we think it’s because of Britain’s influence
@christineburns@ChrisMayLA6@Wen Well, it is down to Britain's influence though neither intentionally nor directly. And the fact that the US ended up with English as is main language did give English with its British origin a boost. But IMHO it's really just down to Britain's colonial ambitions which just happened to be rather successful.
@alexproe@christineburns@ChrisMayLA6@Wen would that have persisted after the empire if not for the US? After all few formerly colonised lands speak English as a first language, probably if it didn't have a use it would stop being taught in school and just fade out in a generation.
@econads@christineburns@ChrisMayLA6@Wen That's a good point. English has become a lingua franca for many nations - colonial connections including membership of the commonwealth and possibly interaction with other commonwealth nations and, of course, the US have helped English continue to dominate but it has managed to persist and has been widely promoted as THE language to learn too. But I think English may be a relatively easy language to learn, hence it's "popularity".
I am a pretty competent linguist (as are the kids) and imho English is relatively easy because of its flexibility although its irregularity makes it more difficult to be natively fluent. But of course the mass access to spoken and visual media make it more accessible as well. I have found the ability to just maintain my hearing easier through access to radio and tv in languages other than English. A relatively recent phenomeon.
@Wen@econads@christineburns@ChrisMayLA6 One comment on English is that it's relatively easy, compared to other languages, to learn to a basic level. In some respects, English is an evolved language - it's based on lots of other languages and has, arguably, excluded their worst bits to form a more flexible, easier to learn, language. Colonialism is part of it but it's not the whole story.
@alexproe@Wen@christineburns@ChrisMayLA6
It has amazed me, how many words from languages you wouldn't expect are just part of the language now. e.g. "shufti" comes from arabic (...?) I was told by someone who heard me use it and was surprised I just had a random word of theirs.
I always joked that you have a word in your language, we say it with an English accent, and now it's an English word.
@TonyJWells@christineburns@econads@ChrisMayLA6@Wen Indeed, it'd leave us speechless! Maybe we could pay a licence fee? Or pay a monthly sub for the right to use tainted English?! We need a Real English, er, drive! Want to use "campaign" but we nicked that one from the French!
Well thank you all for this conversation. Began with the considered and has happily (after some interesting and informative discourse) raised to the height of the funny. 🤣
@econads@ChrisMayLA6@Wen@TonyJWells@alexproe That would be very unfortunate, especially if there were charges for unreasonable wear and tear. If we asked nicely maybe the Welsh could give us some of their ‘l’s, given that they’ve got so many.
@econads@afewbugs@alexproe@Wen@christineburns@ChrisMayLA6 I suspect that most of the appropriated words that appeared in England in the past two centuries or so arrived with returning British colonials (cushy jobs, say, along with kedgeree and elephant-foot umbrella stands). The British were in arabic-speaking countries until quite recently.
I think that might be a cheat. It's long and uncommonly used enough to have many native English speakers reaching for the dictionary or just ignoring it.
@HereToChewGum
I think our "*cester" s are nasty for a lot of foreigners. I have "fun" asking people who've never seen it before how it's spelt, most nationalities I've met have problems with that.
@econads@HereToChewGum@christineburns@ChrisMayLA6@Wen English pronunciation can be nasty for us locals! I used to live near a place called Finchale Abbey. Until I was told, I didn't know the pronunciation of Finchale was fingkle! I suspect this is because one word in English may mix sounds from various languages.
@Wen@Loukas@christineburns@ChrisMayLA6 That English became the lingua franca for the US undoubtedly helped the UK but the US could have gone for French or Spanish...which is also supposedly quite easy to learn...and is still a very widely spoken language today.
@alexproe@Wen@christineburns@ChrisMayLA6 The ruling class of the USA were all Episcopalian anglophones until recently, so the 13 colonies going for any other language was unlikely. The Revolution was also grounded in them claiming their rights as Englishmen under the Bill of Rights of 1688 so Englishness was built into the USA's ruling structure in a significant way.
@Loukas@Wen@christineburns@ChrisMayLA6 That being the case, the chances of French, or Spanish, being adopted were greatly reduced. What is curious is how the Anglophones ended up with all the power even though what is now the US could have ended up being like India!
@Loukas@Wen@christineburns@ChrisMayLA6 And that's probably down to, in part, Britons being the first settlers. Kind of makes sense. (Correction: Britons were amongst the first settlers)
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