Learning English

[benjio]

There was a limited release movie made a few years ago starring Tim Robbins called Code 46. I won't bore everyone with the details of what it's about but it does take place in the "not so distant future."
 
In the movie the population of the world has become so interconnected and globalized there is only one primary language that includes elements of each of what were the 5 most spoken languages. It was a fictional but very probable concept. Brazilophile thinks the information age will perserve languages as they are today. I think this will hasten their change.
 
All opinions though...
 

[Brazilophile]

Brazilophile,
 
Walk me there slow...I don't get it. 

 Language has two 'forms'; spoken and written. The spoken form evolves more rapidly than the written form.   I should have been clearer on that point.  Consider one of the earlier languages to be systematically written, Latin.  The Latin that is taught in school/college today will be substantially the same as that in which Ovid wrote his poems 2,000 years ago.  Spoken Latin has evolved into the modern romance languages.  Spoken old Latin is lost; written old Latin is still with us due to its having been written down. 
 
 A more recent example, with which I am familiar, is French.  France colonized parts of the world several hundred years ago and spread its language to those areas of the world.  Today, written French is much less evolved from that era than spoken French.  In Haiti it has evolved into a new language called Creole (or Kreyol).  In Quebec, Canada, it is still formally called French but informally it is called Joual.  If you were taught French in Europe, good luck understanding the French spoken in Quebec the first few times you hear it.  In African countries like Senegal spoken French has also evolved into something very different.  However, anyone who learned to read and write French competently in any of those places will be able to read and understand the French that was written by someone from any of those places. 
 
 Advanced economies rely heavily on written language; for laws, for contracts, for taxation documentation, for the communication of complex ideas, etc.  The less that a country's formal education system produces graduates who can competently read and write a language, the less that country can support an advanced economy. 
 
 Regardless of how well Americans, who cannot competently read and write standard English, can communicate with each other in non-standard English, they will not be able to participate in the advanced portion of the US economy.  This leads to two economies within the US; one that is less advanced for those who are less literate and one that is highly advanced for the highly literate.    THIS HAS ALREADY HAPPENED!!!  Using a college degree as a proxy (albeit a mediocre one) for degree of literacy, those with a college degree have a FAR lower unemployment rate and higher wages in the current economy than those without a college degree.  If this continues for a few more generations, I believe it will lead to two different societies within the US; an elite literate in the standard written English and everybody else who are relatively illiterate, similar to that in developing countries.
 
 P.S.
 Many countries have government agencies that regulate the evolution of their written languages.  I know that France and Spain have agencies that decide what words have gone out of formal use and what new words are now acceptable to formally use.  I think England uses the "keepers of the unabridged Oxford dictionary of the English language" for that purpose.  They intentionally force a very slow evolution precisely because laws and contracts need to be "substantially backwards compatible" in their language.  A contract written in 2012 needs to be written in the "same" language as a 1906 law if that law applies to that contract.   
 
 I concede that technical innovation forces rapid evolution of written language.  Computer terms like 'byte' didn't exist in 1940, and the word 'neutrino' didn't exist in 1970.
 

[Woody]

I would add that in an era of mass communication as we have today, languages tend to stagnate. We add new slang terms, but the basis of the language is no longer evolving at a noticeable rate. If anything, dialects of English are slowly merging back together to create a more universally recognizable form of English. I highly doubt we will see something like the great vowel shift or any other serious change to the general rules of English. We are all just too interconnected in both spoken and written language in this day and age.


Sure, there is the coming divide between the educated upper class and the less educated lower class, but that is more a result of a cultural failure than a linguistic divergence.

[Chris F]

My wife had taken about four months of classes in Peru which  gave her the basics when she arrived in July of 2005.

She enrolled in adult ed classes that fall for one year. She transfered to a community college where she studied English for three years then begin to work on her general education classes for her Bachelors Degree in Health Administration.

She was accepted to Cal State Long Beach last semester. She just completed her first semester taking five classes with a 3.8 GPA.

She will finish next year with her Bachelor's Degree and I am very very proud of what she has accomplished.

My wife had been attending college in Peru which made a huge difference with what she has completed here.

I believe women who come here and struggle with learning the language has a lot to do with their own educational background. I always tell guys to test their girlfriends by having them write an essay about their family or their country in Spanish.  If  the essay has tons of errors in their native language what do you think the expectation is going to be for them to learn a second language?

I have also heard many guys over the years here who state that they are just not going to push their wives to learn English. Many realize that mistake a few year later after they have been here.

As I have also said before, if you want your wife involved with your child's education she better learn the language.

In addition,  the kids I teach hide a lot of information from their parents by talking in English because they know their parents do not understand.
 
 

[utopiacowboy]

A more recent example, with which I am familiar, is French.  France colonized parts of the world several hundred years ago and spread its language to those areas of the world.  Today, written French is much less evolved from that era than spoken French.  In Haiti it has evolved into a new language called Creole (or Kreyol).  In Quebec, Canada, it is still formally called French but informally it is called Joual.  If you were taught French in Europe, good luck understanding the French spoken in Quebec the first few times you hear it.  In African countries like Senegal spoken French has also evolved into something very different.  However, anyone who learned to read and write French competently in any of those places will be able to read and understand the French that was written by someone from any of those places. 

Give me a break. I grew up in Montreal speaking French and had occasion to speak quite often with Frenchmen from France. Sure they made fun of my Quebecois accent but they never had any problems understanding me nor I them. The French language in Quebec is still French! That's like saying Aussies don't speak English.

[SkyNorth]

I grew up in the south. Plus, I have a mild form of Dyslexia. English has always confussed me a little.
 
Since the beginning of time, I think people have had this younger generation is going to "the dawg's" conversation. (yea - I spelled it that way) On May19, 1965 Peter Townshend wrote a song about his generation and that was 33 years ago. Things are just peachy today!

[benjio]

I grew up in the south. Plus, I have a mild form of Dyslexia. English has always confussed me a little.
 
Since the beginning of time, I think people have had this younger generation is going to "the dawg's" conversation. (yea - I spelled it that way) On May19, 1965 Peter Townshend wrote a song about his generation and that was 33 years ago. Things are just peachy today!

This is turning out to be a very entertaining thread for me with a lot of intelligent opinions and viewpoints!
 
Sky, I agree...and I don't think that's ever going to end. I think one of the reasons older generations will always look upon the younger with a level of disrepute is because for the most part life gets easier as modern civilization progresses. When the "young folk" (as my grandmother calls them) take advantage of this progression the older generations perceive it as laziness. I agree with that idea on some level but that's not always necessarily true. Just because I had to write my book report in middle school with a type writer and use Liquid Paper to correct mistakes and my nephew has Word, Spellcheck, etc. I don't think of him as being any lazier. He's just taking advantage of what's available to him. It's almost like a form of jealousy when I hear older people talk about it. It's much bigger than language though. It happens on every level.
 
The language argument here has very little to do with age or generations in my opinion though. I volunteer as an English Tutor at a Organization called Literacy Advance. Most of our students are people from other countries that just became U.S. Citizens but can't speak English very well. During Hurricane Katrina a little over a quarter million people evacuated from New Orleans to come to Houston. This literally changed the face of the city and many decided to stay even after everything was over. At Literacy Advance we also help illiterate adults learn to read and write if they are over the age of 19 (the age you can no longer attend public school in Houston). We received over 10,000 applications from ADULTS from New Orleans that could not read or write!!!! Some were in their 50's. The waiting list is still pages long.
 
I agree 100% with Brazilophile comments that the lack of proper English skills is contributing to widening the gap between the rich and poor, but again, I think it only proves my point more. While the very few elite will maintain the traditional grammatical structure of the English Language, slang and regional dialects will begin to influence the multitude of uneducated Americans more and more.
 
When Dave Chapelle had his sketch comedy show he often made fun of the fact that many Black Americans speak two versions of English. One we use around each other and one we use at work. This is very true. What a lot of people don't realize is in the inner city there are people that don't understand proper English. When I speak to young men in my neighborhood, there are moments when I absolutely have to use slang to be understood. When a child stops going to school in 7th grade what would you expect? I live in an area full of these kids.
 

[dtibbet]

my fiance studies English everyday with me as well as i study Spanish with her. she had a decent understanding of the language before i moved here a year ago. but after 1 year of living together we both our progressing at a good rate. as everyone knows learning a second language is tuff. takes dedication and time. Rome wasn't built in a day.

[Jeff S]

When Dave Chapelle had his sketch comedy show he often made fun of the fact that many Black Americans speak two versions of English. One we use around each other and one we use at work. This is very true. What a lot of people don't realize is in the inner city there are people that don't understand proper English. When I speak to young men in my neighborhood, there are moments when I absolutely have to use slang to be understood. When a child stops going to school in 7th grade what would you expect? I live in an area full of these kids.

Benjio - I have a question for you - and I don't mean it in any sarcastic way, just curious. These ghetto people of whom you speak, do they really not understand proper English, or do they think that by using it they're a sellout to their friends and peers. Do they, down deep understand TV, movies, sales clerks and so on, or do they completely not get what's going on?


I have worked with several very accomplished black businessmen and engineers of baby boomer age, and they told me that when in school, they had to hide their interest in academic matters because they would be considered to be acting "white" among their peers, so they hid it fit in. These guys could turn off and on the ebonics at will. I guess what you are saying is that there are people who simply can't.

[benjio]

Benjio - I have a question for you - and I don't mean it in any sarcastic way, just curious. These ghetto people of whom you speak, do they really not understand proper English, or do they think that by using it they're a sellout to their friends and peers. Do they, down deep understand TV, movies, sales clerks and so on, or do they completely not get what's going on?
 

Excellent question Jeff. One never knows what lies behind another's true intentions until they decide to reveal them. I for one never had a problem revealing the fact that I was intelligent no matter what the circumstances were, but I've also never been one to fall in line and follow the crowd. When I said they didn't understand "proper English" I was speaking more in terms of word choices. I pride myself in having an exceptional vocabulary, but words that I might perceive as normal, everyday vocabulary seem like a foreign language to some of these guys, so I have to "dumb it down." Some are definitely worse than others.
 
As hard as it may be to fathom, there are people in my neighborhood that have lived their all their lives and have never left...not even to go to the other side of Houston. So even though they may watch TV and listen to the radio, the local slang and dialect are what they are accustomed to, so they don't know any better.
 
You can't tell me you've never seen a black athlete or recording artist on television during an interview speaking as if they were  complete idiots. Some black professional athletes even went to prestigious universities where they should have obviously gotten a better grasp on proper English, yet they still can eloquently express themselves. I can tell you for a fact that not all of these men are uneducated or dumb. It's just what they are use to.

[htown]

Haha, benjio I know exactly what you're talking about.  I've literally had to translate a conversation between a young black dude who I doubt has rarely ever left his 3rd ward neighborhood and a white dude from Katy.


I think if any language ever emerges as a global language it will be english.  English is practically required among most high schools and almost all universities pretty much everywhere in the world.  I hang out in Mexico alot and there are some jobs where english is required moreso than spanish.  There's a huge demand for english instruction in Mexico.

[justmike]

htown while it's true English is a world wide staple the empresarios of South America have taken up learning Chinese.