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this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2024
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America intentionally has no official language.
Before WW2 large parts of the country only spoke German, and there were pockets all over that only knew the language of where they immigrated from.
It wasn't until the World Wars and the advent of radio that everyone started moving to just English.
Hell, the town next to where I grew up still has German street signs and most businesses have their signs in German.
I think a decade or two ago they added English signs as well, but there wasn't any law that forced them too.
People being mad about this stuff, is just boomers who think history started when they were born and nothing should fundamentally change as long as their alive.
Doesn't matter if it's good or bad, they want everything to be exactly like how when they were kids. And by the time they were kids, was the big push for an English only America.
The same phenomenon is happening today with internet and social media affecting every nation and every culture in the world.
English is creeping in every culture and in some cases even replacing them.
It's a real shame.
pros and cons.
diversity good, communication good.
No. Diversity is decreasing if everyone is moving towards one giant monolithic Anglo-centric culture.
woosh.
yes.
diversity from many languages is a good thing.
better communication from one language is a good thing.
The worst part about it, is English is hands down in the hardest languages to learn, and almost completely nonsensical.
And just communicating in it, tends to make people think and behave in a more individualist manner.
Like I know I'll get shit for saying this, I always do:
But as a species we should have made a "common tounge" long ago like Lord of the Rings.
One that's easy to learn, and has a neutral effect in nias of thinking.
Everyone is free to use their native language, and learn any other language they want.
But have the "common tounge" be something everyone, evwrywhere, learns.
If we never do that, then we're going to see what we're seeing now. English becoming a default language and pushing out others from all facets of life.
Language extinction is a real thing. If England hadn't colonized so much shit and fired natives to only use English, then it would have been forgotten about. Even the English monarchy didn't use English for most of the languages existence.
It's such a weird series of things that lead to one of the worst languages on the planet to become the default everyone tries to learn as a second language at best, and destroying other languages at worst
It has it's own challenges, sure... but english isn't even remotely close to being the hardest language to learn
The spelling is messed up, it has (like virtually every language) a bunch of exceptions to rules, but the grammar has been hugely simplified over the past 1000 years.
Not to mention that the biggest advantage to learning languages is familiarity and the fact that English is, well, everywhere makes it easier.
Sure Esperanto is easier, but for most of the world something like Japanese would be muuuuuch harder
And it still sucks...
Just look at the rules on how to pluralize something, or verb tenses.
Other languages have a few exceptions from loaner words, English is mostly exceptions because it's mostly made up not only if loaner words, but loaner words from such different languages.
We threw shit randomly for thousands of years with no rhyme or reason because it was a language solely for commoners. The British monarchy didn't even speak it for centuries...
Nobody cared what English as a language was doing.
English has way simpler verb tenses than other languages, and minimal verb conjugation. The lack of rules can be annoying, but it also makes it easier to use with minimal grasp of the language since it relys on context and general vibes so much.
Nobility and upper classes used French to communicate until 200 years ago, and that language is an absolute bear to try and grasp. The spellings are zany, conjugations and tenses are all over the place, and there is an unspoken tonal aspect that makes Parisians turn their nose up at people who even jave a solid grasp of the language.
The only perfect language is one that never gets used.
Spanish is pretty easy, but I still get confused on the gendered versions of words sometimes.
They invented Esparanto as the universal language for the world, but nobody used it.
Considering most media was coming Hollywood/the US, and then with the rise of the internet defaulting to English among the developers, it makes sense. And by this point, it's so entrenched into the global order that it's probably here to stay.
English is the common tongue.
Your comment contradicts itself in so many ways I don't even know where to start.
By German Street signs you mean the street names are German, or the "stop" sign is "stoppen"? I want pics before I believe that.
Stop signs still had "stop". Although for some reason I think they originally were just a red stop sign shape that had a smaller sign with the word "stop" added under it. For some reason that was a thing in rural areas for a while.
But like the signs on the corner that had the name of the street/road. And instead of street/road it has the German work for that. Streisb? I can't make an estatest or however it was spelled, but the weird capital B with a tail that means "ss" .
But after WW2 they updated the legal street names to Angelicized names, I think as a result of a larger state/national law. It was something the locals didn't want tho, and no one official was checking tiny villages, so they left the original signs up, even though that's not the name of the street anymore?
Like the town Butcher had a giant old school sign with zero English or even the word Butcher. Now there's little signs in English under all of them that says what it is. I think because they were trying to be a tourist destination, because literally all the architecture and landscape looked like you were really in 1800s Deutschland. Like, in school my German class (yeah, even towns over had the option of learning German until very recently) we took field trips there.
On a side note, my German teacher's first memory was the Allies attacking the train that was carrying her to a concentration camp, then having to escape through the woods during the fighting. And I swear I'm not even that old now.
I could probably find some kind of article on it, because the whole thing is interesting... But unfortunately I already said it was next to my home town, and man, there are some people who really don't like me on here, and I don't want to put that info out.