Lingformant
The science of linguistics in the news

Comment by kevin cooper 11 Sep 2007 at 8:30 pm

dude so i am doing this project for school. and i don’t c why it matters. i am trying to c witch language is best for conversation. witch is easierst to get a point across. we should find that one. then cut all others out.

Comment by Vili Maunula 18 Sep 2007 at 6:44 am

The problem there would be that all languages are, to the best of our current understanding of human languages, equally suitable for conversation. No language is more expressive or less expressive than the other, neither is one language easier or more difficult than any other.

In some ways it would therefore be like trying to find the ice-cream flavour that tastes the best. While you probably could find a flavour that tastes the best for you, it would be impossible to find one that everyone could agree on. Additionally, once you ate more of your non-favourite ice-creams, you might discover that the ice-creams that you thought were yucky are in the end actually really good once you get used to their taste.

As for why the disappearance of languages matters, they are obviously important for us linguists who study human languages. The more attested variants we have available for study, the better we can understand the possibilities and restrictions our brain offers for language production. And the better we know what the brain can and cannot do there, the better idea we can build about how our brain actually produces and understands language.

Comment by abc 26 Sep 2007 at 2:11 am

Dude so im doin a project at skool and we gotta say which language should be the language spoken globally. IDK i dont think there shuld b 1

Comment by Lee Seng Giap 27 May 2008 at 2:52 pm

In Singapore where a multilingual education policy has been in place since its independence in 1965, in the language combination of English + mother tongue (namely Malay, Chinese or Tamil), there is a group of English-speaking Chinese who complain that Chinese is (more)difficult. How would you explain to or convince them that this is not so in the light of your comment above?

Comment by Vili Maunula 08 Jun 2008 at 8:51 am

No language is inherently more difficult than any other, or that at least is the standard assumption.

Having said that, Chinese may well be (and probably is) very difficult for the English speaking students to learn, and certainly more difficult than languages that are more closely related to English.

The point is that when it comes to learning a language (as opposed to simply acquiring one), the process is usually done through your mother tongue, which complicates things. It is furthermore worth to note that second language teaching is also usually started quite late in the so-called “critical period“.

I would therefore personally say that instead of trying to convince the students that Chinese is not difficult, the best approach would be to develop teaching methods that make it easier (and more enjoyable) for the students to actually learn the target language.

Comment by Lee Seng Giap 08 Jun 2008 at 9:53 am

Mr/Prof Maunula,BIG THANKS!
Whether by coincidence or the saying “Heroes think alike”, I happen to be working on a sequel along the line in your last paragraph. My idea is, with so many pedagogical options available for teaching Chinese, I am thinking of asking the authority to select the best features therefrom to design an intersting teaching package for the language. Is this possible or likely?
Despite the agreed point that learning an unrelated language is harder than a related one, Singapore Population Census 2000 shows a 10.5% increase in English-Chinese (E-C)bilingualism. How would you explain tis?
By the way, I am not a teacher of Chinese but a practising (E-C) conference interpreter (AIIC)and book translator.
Lee Seng Giap

Comment by Vili Maunula 08 Jun 2008 at 10:10 am

I am not an expert in language teaching, but I would say that while it is certainly possible to put together and promote overall guidelines and approaches that further language teaching, the success of any individual learner is ultimately something that depends on the teacher-student interaction.

Teaching is highly personal, and every student has their own individual needs and ways to learn. In the end, it is up to the teacher to figure out which buttons to press, so to speak, and how to integrate and balance one student’s individual requirements to properly function within the teaching environment (be it one-to-one or group teaching).

But, as I said, I am not really the right person to give advice in this subject, as applied linguistics is not quite on the (rather short) list of my fields of expertise. Good luck with your endeavour, though!

There are most probably also several reasons for the increase in English-Chinese bilingualism in Singapore that you mention. As I know next to nothing about the situation there, I wouldn’t want to venture to guess what the actual cause is. Perhaps there is a growing need for bilingualism, perhaps it has opened up new financial opportunities, maybe it is more accepted or more trendy to be bilingual, perhaps the educational system has improved… I really don’t know.

Comment by chris 06 Sep 2008 at 2:35 pm

I love lnaguages, and it dose seem sad that they cant be presevered, but seeing there are more important things than one partitular language i guess it dosnt matter…
i find that one language is not harder that the other, just to sertan kinds of people, to chinees people spanish is hard because of the articles and the verb conjugations, but to english speaking people chinees is hard because of the tones. i beleive that to really understand languages, one must know 2 or more…
Sinseros saludos desde Chile, sud america.

Comment by Peter O. Ogunniyi 17 Oct 2008 at 9:44 pm

No controversy, English is the fastest growing language on earth. It is fast becoming world’s only lingua franca and if other languages are NOT very careful it {English} will eventually become world’s only surviving language. It’s just a question of time.

Comment by Julien 14 Apr 2009 at 1:50 pm

Peter, when you say “lingua franca”, do you know where it comes from ?
Yes, every period in history and every geographical area has one major language.
English and the USA are strong now. It has been for less than a century. Tomorrow, it will be another power and another language.
But indeed, efforts should be made to preserve targeted languages from disappearing. And these efforts should not only be linguistic, but also cultural, economic, political, etc.

Comment by Julien 14 Apr 2009 at 1:51 pm

Nobody has done so yet, but I am still impressed by the number of languages spoken on Earth.
Even taking into account the above article, you will still have more than 1000 languages left…