English in Decline as a First Language, Study Says

[Welshy]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/02/0226_040226_language.html


According to one new study, the percentage of the global population that grew up speaking English as its first language is declining. In addition, an increasing number of people now speak more than one language.

In the future, English is likely to be one of those languages, but the Mandarin form of Chinese will probably be the next must-learn language, especially in Asia.

"The status of English as a global language may peak soon," said David Graddol, managing director of the English Company in Milton Keynes, England, and the author of a new study on the future of language.

However, a separate study suggests that English's dominance in the scientific arena will continue to expand. While this trend has encouraged international collaboration, researchers warn it could also divide the scientific world into haves and have-nots, determining who can, for example, publish in international journals.

Both studies are published—in English—in this week's issue of the journal Science.

[The Young Pioneer]

Awesome, I effing hate English.

[Deicide]

Awesome, I effing hate English.

How come?

English is my third language and I prefer it. Its the American accents that spoil it, imo ;)

[Comrade Samuel]

I don't mind English but mandarin the next big thing? I've heard that's difficult to learn especially for people who's first language is English.

[RedAnarchist]

English was never going to stay at its peak, so this is simply a natural occurrence. Maybe in five hundred years Mandarin will be declining.

[Ocean Seal]

I don't know, neither english or mandarin seem well suited to be a global language. Mandarin is difficult to learn and requires memorization of many many characters and of course the need for new words makes it less adaptable, and english doesn't have enough grammar rules/ rules that are followed.

[Welshy]

I don't know, neither english or mandarin seem well suited to be a global language. Mandarin is difficult to learn and requires memorization of many many characters and of course the need for new words makes it less adaptable,
Difficulty is subjective and relative to what your native language is and what other languages you already. The writing system isn't that bad since it is just a massive syllabary with some meaning based distinctions. Also when you learn words you have to memorize them anyways and you have to learn to recognize them when reading, so there isn't much more that you would have to do anyways. The only problem is that you can't sound stuff out.



and english doesn't have enough grammar rules/ rules that are followed.

This is very wrong. All languages have grammar rules and this issue of rules being followed are only relavent to written standards and very formal speaking. When it comes to actually speech by native speakers, there is an internal grammar that people follow with the only exceptions being speech errors. So things like slang or non-standard dialects are just as legitimate forms of the language as the prescribed standard and there is nothing about the standard that makes it more correct.

[MarxSchmarx]

I don't know, neither english or mandarin seem well suited to be a global language. Mandarin is difficult to learn and requires memorization of many many characters and of course the need for new words makes it less adaptable, and english doesn't have enough grammar rules/ rules that are followed.

It's important to note that a lot of this is simply demographics of wealthy countries. The largest countries where English is predominant (as opposed to merely the common language, as in Gambia or South Africa) have by global standards very high longevity and very low fertility rates. So no doubt the same could be said for German, Japanese and Dutch.

I agree Mandarin's main problem is it's orthography; but as a spoken language it is remarkably easy to learn because one need not memorize nearly as much grammatical tenses as a European language for instance. If they can come up with a clever way to adopt it to the roman script (maybe pinyin is sufficient) then I think it has a real chance at becoming a lingua franca of humanity.

However, native speakers of mandarin will peak very, very soon if they haven't already. Only second generations outside the PRC or Taiwan really speak it as a native language, and it not seen as a language of assimilation the way English is in places like Singapore or Malaysia where a Mandarin speaker would seem to have some advantages. As such, I don't really see as much of a future for Mandarin as replacing English. Instead, even in places like these countries where it would seem a working knowledge of Chinese (Mandarin or cantonese) is essential, English still remains the main language of social mobility. This may be a transient phenomenon, but I don't see Mandarin expanding much at all outside areas where there is no large Chinese diaspora - and certainly it will nto replace english in the near future in neighbors like India, Japan and Korea.

[Ozymandias]

English was never going to stay at its peak, so this is simply a natural occurrence. Maybe in five hundred years Mandarin will be declining.

It takes 10 years for a native born speaker to fluently speak Mandarin Chinese.

[Veovis]

It's a shame more effort wasn't put into promoting a constructed language with regular grammar and easy vocabulary as a universal tongue.

[citizen of industry]

It's a shame more effort wasn't put into promoting a constructed language with regular grammar and easy vocabulary as a universal tongue.

I almost agree, but there are so many cultural subleties that make it difficult. My kid came back from daycare yesterday with an assignment to say the English word of an item in a story they were reading. But the item was exclusive to the country of origin. If you check a dictionary, it gives you a word, but the word is strange because in English it has two or three other meanings that are common. English speakers can't even understand the English word in context, because there is no equivalent. If I say "mortar," I think this: http://www.wfyi.org/fireandice/images/arms/fi_f_ar_mortar.jpg

Or this:
http://0.tqn.com/d/geology/1/0/a/6/1/bricknmortar.jpg

But definitely not this (the bowl like object on the bottom):

http://factsanddetails.com/media/2/20090802-Ray%20Kinnane%20mochi72920292_ubzGev9y.jpg

If I look for a cultural equivalent, I think of a coffee mill or spice grinder, but since in the picture above there is no grinding, and a "mill" implies moving parts, I think it is impossible to translate.

A lot of language is tough to find a universal equivalent. But for easy stuff I think a simple international language would be good. Pronouns and verbs would be easy to reproduce clearly. We could do with about 12 verb tenses I think. But once we run up against nouns it becomes difficult (like the above example), and also adjectives. It wouldn't be very emotive, because so much language is idiomatic and based on historical things, plus we use a lot of onomatopoeia, which is exclusive to out native language. "Ribbit" isn't really a word, it's a sound. In other languages it can sound like "Gero." We could use this international language to book a hotel or buy a ticket, but not much else. We couldn't converse fluently.

Plus there is pronunciation to think about. Babies are able to produce every linguistic sound (goo-goo, gaa-gaa, sgherlimtemphlunl) but part of the language learning process is forgetting to form sounds that aren't part of the language. It's muscle memory. So when you try to learn another language in adulthood it is very hard to pronounce sounds that your tongue placement hasn't done since 3 months old or so.

Communism is international, we seek to destroy borders. IMO, a universal language could only develop in that condition, and it would take a thousand years or so, but would happen naturally, maybe...We'd have to have a shared culture and history as a premise.

[Welshy]

It takes 10 years for a native born speaker to fluently speak Mandarin Chinese.

I would like to see a source on this. Also I would like you to define what you mean by fluent. Are you referring to spoken language or literacy?



It's a shame more effort wasn't put into promoting a constructed language with regular grammar and easy vocabulary as a universal tongue.

This has been attempted many times, but it has always failed. Plus there is no way you could make a language that is culturally neutral enough or even structurally neutral enough (for example about 42% of languages are SVO languages and 45% are SOV) to be used as international language with out being bias towards one language group or another.



Plus there is pronunciation to think about. Babies are able to produce every linguistic sound (goo-goo, gaa-gaa, sgherlimtemphlunl) but part of the language learning process is forgetting to form sounds that aren't part of the language. It's muscle memory. So when you try to learn another language in adulthood it is very hard to pronounce sounds that your tongue placement hasn't done since 3 months old or so.


Small nitpick here, but babies aren't able to produce every sound. They have the potential to learn how to produce any sound but they go through pretty clear stages and when they are young they can only produce a limited set of sounds. What they are able to pronounce later on in life is dependent on what they are conditioned to hear while they are developing language. I should also add that they are able to notice differences in sounds that adults of certain languages cannot.


Communism is international, we seek to destroy borders. IMO, a universal language could only develop in that condition, and it would take a thousand years or so, but would happen naturally, maybe...We'd have to have a shared culture and history as a premise.

As I have expressed in the past, I disagree with the idea that we will ever have speak one language. Human language just doesn't like staying the same for too long of a period of time and the changes that happen in a language don't always happen everywhere in a language and because of that these changes build over time until you get two (or more) different languages. However an international language that we all speak as an L2 is certainly possible as there are mainly historical and current examples of lingua francas, but it's likely that this language will be a natural one and I don't think we will be able to predict what this language will be. And as fun as this maybe to speculate about it is very utopian to do so.

[Igor]

I don't mind English but mandarin the next big thing? I've heard that's difficult to learn especially for people who's first language is English.

So what? English isn't precisely an easy language, either, and is pretty difficult to learn especially for, well, most people who don't speak a related language. It's still pretty much a 'big thing' all around the world, even in countries like China where people don't actually really talk it that much (or well).


It takes 10 years for a native born speaker to fluently speak Mandarin Chinese.

No, it doesnt, I have no idea why you think this. This is wild exaggeration of how difficult Chinese is. Chinese is not difficult at all to begin with, it has just elements that are pretty alien to western language learners (unknown phonemes, tones) but learning all that is no kind of a challenge to a child. It's utterly stupid to assume that the elements of English or whatever language is your native language are somehow the universal default to humans, don't do that. Every language we consider difficult is not objectively so, they're just wildly different from our native tongue.

[Ozymandias]

No, it doesnt, I have no idea why you think this. This is wild exaggeration of how difficult Chinese is. Chinese is not difficult at all to begin with, it has just elements that are pretty alien to western language learners (unknown phonemes, tones) but learning all that is no kind of a challenge to a child. It's utterly stupid to assume that the elements of English or whatever language is your native language are somehow the universal default to humans, don't do that. Every language we consider difficult is not objectively so, they're just wildly different from our native tongue.

My language professor told me this about a week ago. She has a doctorate in linguistics from Oxford, and she told me that it takes an individual born in China 10 years to develop a vocabulary to a sufficient extent to speak the language fluently. It's really just a matter of memorizing the words. If you force yourself to memorize a few hundred words a week, it might not take 10 years.

[Welshy]

My language professor told me this about a week ago. She has a doctorate in linguistics from Oxford, and she told me that it takes an individual born in China 10 years to develop a vocabulary to a sufficient extent to speak the language fluently. It's really just a matter of memorizing the words. If you force yourself to memorize a few hundred words a week, it might not take 10 years.

Once again cite a study or else I'm going to call bullshit. I'm currently studying linguistics at one of the top universities for it and none of my professors have ever made this claim.

[citizen of industry]

Regarding Chinese, I'd say the problem is kanji. In Japanese, there are about 2,000 daily use kanji. As far as writing is concerned, they are composed of a few hundred radicals, but you have to memorize the combinations. Rote memorization. There is a syllabary of about 48 characters - memorize those and you can at least write words you know without knowing all the kanji. The grammar is written using the syllabary so you can at least understand sentence structure as well. An interesting phenomenon here in the internet age is that Japanese are forgetting how to write a lot of kanji - they can read it and type it, but forget how to do it by hand. Why? When you type you use the syllabary and it gives you a choice of kanji, you click on the appropriate one.

In China, there is about 5,000 daily use kanji and no syllabary (to my knowledge - I'm no linguistics student). So if you think learning to read and write Japanese is difficult, Chinese requires a lot more memorization. Speaking the language I'd guess is not as tough, but I've heard it's quite difficult to pronouce - a lot more than 50 sounds. But English as well is difficult to pronounce, there are a lot of sounds.

Western languages have in common a simple alphabet, similar to a syllabary, so if you know the alphabet you can at least read words, even if you don't understand the meaning. You can easily check them in a dictionary. With the kanji, you have to check the radicals and the strokes to look it up, it's a pain in the ass. You really have to memorize them all to read quickly. In school, children spend a lot of time just writing kanji over and over again until they memorize. In Japan, kids books only use the syllabary, then they add basic kanji slowly. Adult books use mostly kanji for verbs, nouns, and adjectives, and the syllabary for the grammer.

If there ever was an international language, it would have to use an alphabet or syllabary. No way we can expect everyone to memorize thousands of characters as a second language. That's my opinion. But I'm also lazy as hell. Other people get into it and have no trouble.

[Ozymandias]

Once again cite a study or else I'm going to call bullshit. I'm currently studying linguistics at one of the top universities for it and none of my professors have ever made this claim.

Ummm...You're asking for a study to prove something that is entirely subjective, and, in addition to this, which is demonstrated at every instant. Subjective in the sense that obviously how long it takes an individual to learn any language depends foremost on the individuals devotion. And demonstrated at every instant, in the sense that many millions of people are attempting to learn the language right now. You don't need to conduct a study for this, but rather just preserve a record of your observations. I've heard the 10 year figure often.

quora dot com/Chinese-language/How-long-does-it-take-a-native-English-speaker-to-become-fluent-in-Chinese

chinese-forums dot com/index.php?/topic/13184-can-westerners-become-fluent-in-chinese/



By "truly fluent" I mean someone that can speak on any topic they want, at length, with perfect grammar and pronunciation.I'm not sure I'd agree with this definition of truly fluent, especially as it precludes some native speakers from being truly fluent.
These are people who have spent a large amount of time not just studying Chinese, but also living and working in China. Personally, I don't believe that reaching that level of fluency is something you can achieve in a year or two, and will more likely take 5-10 years, with a large part of that time spent in China. The same is true of other languages though, and not just Chinese, because to be really fluent you need to not just understand the words you also need to understand references to popular culture and the like that are impossible to pick up without spending significant time in the target country.

[artanis17]

Chinese is very hard... I heard to be able to understand average chinese you need to memorize some thousand different symbols :D

[Welshy]

Ummm...You're asking for a study to prove something that is entirely subjective, and, in addition to this, which is demonstrated at every instant. Subjective in the sense that obviously how long it takes an individual to learn any language depends foremost on the individuals devotion. And demonstrated at every instant, in the sense that many millions of people are attempting to learn the language right now. You don't need to conduct a study for this, but rather just preserve a record of your observations. I've heard the 10 year figure often.

Making a statement on how long it takes children to learn a language isn't subjective. There is an entire branch of linguistics dedicated to language learning (language acquisition). If it does indeed take children 10 years to learn, there is more than likely a study that has been done on this topic. So my request still stands and also you final statement is just bizarre and unscientific.

[Welshy]

In China, there is about 5,000 daily use kanji and no syllabary (to my knowledge - I'm no linguistics student). So if you think learning to read and write Japanese is difficult, Chinese requires a lot more memorization. Speaking the language I'd guess is not as tough, but I've heard it's quite difficult to pronouce - a lot more than 50 sounds. But English as well is difficult to pronounce, there are a lot of sounds.

The chinese character behave in a way like a really complex syllabary since each character represents one syllable. Also sometimes similar character with similar pronunciation have similar shapes and, as you know since you speak/read japanese certain radicals help reveal some part of the characters meaning.



Western languages have in common a simple alphabet, similar to a syllabary, so if you know the alphabet you can at least read words, even if you don't understand the meaning. You can easily check them in a dictionary. With the kanji, you have to check the radicals and the strokes to look it up, it's a pain in the ass. You really have to memorize them all to read quickly. In school, children spend a lot of time just writing kanji over and over again until they memorize. In Japan, kids books only use the syllabary, then they add basic kanji slowly. Adult books use mostly kanji for verbs, nouns, and adjectives, and the syllabary for the grammer.

Alphabets are good for ease of learning how to read and write, but with chinese because of the homophones that language has the different characters can help you distinguish them in writing (kind like with english's different ways of spelling /θɛɹ/ to help you distinguish between their, there, and they're). And if we were to switch to using only pinyin for writing chinese then we lose this information. Though I do have to admit looking up the hanzi was a pain in the ass in that chinese class I took last year.





If there ever was an international language, it would have to use an alphabet or syllabary. No way we can expect everyone to memorize thousands of characters as a second language. That's my opinion. But I'm also lazy as hell. Other people get into it and have no trouble.

That seems pretty likely, especially since the majority of the written languages in the world use syllabaries, alphabets, abjads (like arabic and hebrew) and abigudas (like devanagari). However which type it takes would probably depend on the dominant culture/language at the time, though I think the latin alphabet (and its variations), barring some bizarre change in what script newly written languages start using, is probably going to be the writing system chosen.

[dodger]

Because of myriad origins English pronunciation is always a headache for learners. Unlike Latin based languages. No hard and fast rules. Sherlock Holmes is not a block of flats. The character Mrs Malaprop was most definitely English, Richard Sheridan's play The Rivals (1775). The word now firmly in the language. Snobbery and class were poked fun at, depending on yer point of view, a rib tickler or a damming indictment of 'polite' society. My Ma left school at 14yrs joining a dance troupe, her Pompey(Portsmouth), accent ironed out, she took on the English language like everything she did in life, full steam ahead. She was determined too that all 6 of her children should be little ladies and gentlemen."Not Batturzee!"..."Batter sea". At 8yrs my attempts at deflating her "Call the coachman to the front MA-MAAGH! I have an appointment in Toooting!" "Ask the footman to pack my crowbar and jemmy".Produced"That sounded much nicer! but what do you need a jemmy for??"

That confounded woman, my mother, woman was undisenflationable!

Luckily I have not inherited any of Ma's vices and am coherent though not as posh. I think it might have been the extra year in school that saved me. That and the communist teacher 2 doors away,in the flats, who gave me @The [email protected] as a prize. Can't think why Ma did not wish us to speak to her?..Mr Malaprop, not me.

[Igor]

My language professor told me this about a week ago. She has a doctorate in linguistics from Oxford, and she told me that it takes an individual born in China 10 years to develop a vocabulary to a sufficient extent to speak the language fluently. It's really just a matter of memorizing the words. If you force yourself to memorize a few hundred words a week, it might not take 10 years.

You might be confusing that to written Chinese, because written Chinese is damn hard to learn. Not-so-surprisingly, it takes a lot longer to memorize 10,000 complex characters than 20-something fairly simple symbols. (of course, memorizing characters gets easier the more you know them because the system isn't arbitrary but fairly easy as you start understanding it) But I'm calling bullshit on your claims on spoken Chinese and "my language professor said so and she went to ~~OXFORD~~" isn't really enough, I'm waiting for your sources on this too. There should be nothing inherently more difficult in spoken Chinese than there's in western languages.

[Ozymandias]

You might be confusing that to written Chinese, because written Chinese is damn hard to learn. Not-so-surprisingly, it takes a lot longer to memorize 10,000 complex characters than 20-something fairly simple symbols. (of course, memorizing characters gets easier the more you know them because the system isn't arbitrary but fairly easy as you start understanding it) But I'm calling bullshit on your claims on spoken Chinese and "my language professor said so and she went to ~~OXFORD~~" isn't really enough, I'm waiting for your sources on this too. There should be nothing inherently more difficult in spoken Chinese than there's in western languages.

I don't know and I don't have any sources. The purpose of my initial statement was to grant some foundation to the seemingly common understanding that the Chinese language is difficult to master, as provided by a generalization directed to me by a figure that I had interpreted as an authority on the matter. It was never my intention to convince anyone that it requires 10 years for every child born in China to learn the language--This is absolutely absurd.

If that figure holds any weight whatsoever it would be due to the testimonies of the individuals who have attempted to learn the language, and nearly every testimony that I have encountered online so far has effectively fortified the claim.


Making a statement on how long it takes children to learn a language isn't subjective. There is an entire branch of linguistics dedicated to language learning (language acquisition). If it does indeed take children 10 years to learn, there is more than likely a study that has been done on this topic.

The statement isn't subjective, but the act of learning the language is subject to the characteristics of the individual in question.


So my request still stands and also you final statement is just bizarre and unscientific.To demonstrate the probability that an individual will receive a particular grade in a particular class, would you have thirty people take the course and calculate the average from those figures; or would simply use the data from the previous class? Unless you need to isolate some variables, or the possibility exists that that data may contain some bias, it would make absolutely no sense to conduct a study when we have an abundance of data.

I'm not trying to convince you that it takes ten years. I don't have sufficient evidence to convince myself. The point I'm trying to make is that with millions of individuals trying to learn the language, you don't need to isolate a handful of people to study them when you can observe a sample of the total population of the individuals trying to learn the language and reach the same conclusion.