老撾語翻譯
"The people who were once colonized by the language are now rapidly remaking it 翻譯公司 domesticating it, becoming more and more relaxed about the way they use it," wrote the Indian author Salman Rushdie in an essay in 1991.
"Estonian has an amazing Web presence 翻譯公司" McWhorter said. But when Estonians speak on the Internet with people outside their small country 翻譯公司 they will continue to use English.
As English continues to spread, the linguists say 翻譯公司 it is fragmenting, as Latin did, into a family of dialects - and perhaps eventually fully fledged languages - known as Englishes.
Across cultures 翻譯公司 English is the word
"English is dominant in a way that no language has ever been before," he said. "It is vastly unclear to me what actual mechanism could uproot English given conditions as they are."
A recent study found that the Queen’s English - the language as spoken by the queen of England - has evolved over the past 50 years 翻譯公司 becoming slightly less plummy and slightly more proletarian. But the future evolution of the language, scholars say, is more likely to belong to the broken-English speakers of far-off lands.
It is the common language in almost every endeavor, from science to air traffic control to the global jihad, where it is apparently the means of communication between speakers of Arabic and other languages.
The pidgin of Papua New Guinea already has its own literature and translations of Shakespeare. One enterprising scholar has translated "Don Quixote" into Spanglish 翻譯公司 the hybrid of English and Spanish that is spoken along the borders of Mexico and the United States.
"This is the first time we actually have a language spoken genuinely globally by every country in the world," he said. "There are no precedents to help us see what will happen."
"With progress, the problem of machine translation and automatic interpreting is going to be solved," Ostler said, "and the need for a common language is going to be technically replaced."
The teaching of English has become a multibillion-dollar industry 翻譯公司 and according to Graddol 翻譯公司 nearly one-third of the world’s population will soon be studying English.
But in the end, Ostler said, all of this could become moot. The advance of technology that helped push English into its commanding position could pull it down again.
As a simplified form of global English emerges, the diverging forms spoken in Britain and America could become no more than local dialects - two more Englishes alongside the Singlish spoken in Singapore or the Taglish spoken in the Philippines. A native speaker of English might need to become bilingual in his own language to converse with other speakers of global English.
In a phenomenon never seen before, Crystal said, English is spoken in some form by three times as many nonnative speakers as native speakers.
"We may well be approaching a critical moment in human linguistic history 翻譯公司" Crystal wrote. "It is possible that a global language will emerge only once."
As a new millennium begins, scholars say that about one-fourth of the world’s population can communicate to some degree in English.
"English has become the second language of everybody," said Mark Warschauer 翻譯公司 a professor of education and informatics at the University of California, Irvine. "It’s gotten to the point where almost in any part of the world to be educated means to know English."
But unlike Latin and other former common languages, most scholars say English seems to be too widespread and too deeply entrenched to die out. Instead, it is likely to survive in some simplified international form - sometimes called Globish or World Standard Spoken English - side by side with its offspring.
That skepticism seems to be a minority view. Experts on the English language like David Crystal, author of "English as a Global Language," say the world has changed so drastically that history is no longer a guide.
Thus the English language no longer "belongs" to its native speakers but to the world, just as organized soccer, say, is an international sport that is no longer associated with its origins in Britain.
Although Chinese and other languages are rapidly increasing their share of Internet traffic 翻譯公司 English is likely to remain the common language, experts say.
By Seth Mydans
Some insist that linguistic evolution will continue to take its course over the centuries and that English could eventually die as a common language as Latin did, or Phoenician or Sanskrit or Sogdian before it.
"You have too many words in English 翻譯公司" said Jean-Paul Nerrière, a retired vice president of IBM USA, who is French. He has proposed his own version of Globish that would have just 15 翻譯公司000 simple words for use by nonnative speakers.
Others see pitfalls 翻譯公司 but the factors they cite only underscore the grip English has on the world: cataclysms like nuclear war or climate change or the eventual perfection of a translation machine that would make a common language unnecessary.
English and globalization have spread hand in hand through the world, Warschauer said. "Having a global language has assisted globalization 翻譯公司 and globalization has consolidated the global language," he said. That process started with the dominance of two successive English-speaking empires, British and American, and continues today with the new virtual empire of the Internet.
Even if English were somehow to collapse as the language of its birthplace, England, Crystal said 翻譯公司 it would continue its worldwide dominance unperturbed.
New vernaculars have emerged in such places as Singapore, Nigeria and the Caribbean, although widespread literacy and mass communication may be slowing the natural process of diversification.
In some places, he said, English has invaded the workplace along with the global economy. Some Swedish companies, for example 翻譯公司 use English within the workplace 翻譯公司 even though they are in Sweden, because so much of their business is done, through the Internet and other communcations 翻譯公司 with the outside world.
Two years ago for the first time, a nonnative English speaker, Jun Liu of China 翻譯公司 was elected president of the global education association Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, known as Tesol.
John McWhorter 翻譯公司 a linguist at the Manhattan Institute, a research group in New York, and the author of a history of language called "The Power of Babel," was more unequivocal.
The largest English-speaking nation in the world, the United States 翻譯公司 has only about 20 percent of the world’s English speakers. In Asia alone, an estimated 350 million people speak English, about the same as the combined English-speaking populations of Britain, the United States and Canada.
Though it still sounds like science fiction, it seems likely that some time, many decades from now, a machine will be perfected that can produce Urdu when it hears someone speaking German.
At telephone call centers around the world, the emblem of a globalized workplace 翻譯公司 the language spoken is 翻譯公司 naturally 翻譯公司 English. On the radio, pop music carries the sounds of English to almost every corner of the earth.
Monday, April 9, 2007SINGAPORE: Riding the crest of globalization and technology, English dominates the world as no language ever has 翻譯公司 and some linguists are now saying it may never be dethroned as the king of languages.
"We are a majority 翻譯公司" Nerrière said, "so our way of speaking English should be the official way of speaking English."
By the most common estimates, 400 million people speak English as a first language, another 300 million to 500 million as a fluent second language, and perhaps 750 million as a foreign language.
Tomorrow: The world’s top universities are shifting into English 翻譯公司 but the move is not without its difficulties, for faculty and students.
"If you stay in the mind-set of 15th-century Europe 翻譯公司 the future of Latin is extremely bright 翻譯公司" said Nicholas Ostler, the author of a language history called "Empires of the Word" who is writing a history of Latin. "If you stay in the mind-set of the 20th-century world, the future of English is extremely bright."
After that, Crystal said 翻譯公司 it would be very hard to dislodge. "The last quarter of the 20th century will be seen as a critical time in the emergence of this global language," he said.
There may be more native speakers of Chinese, Spanish or Hindi, but it is English they speak when they talk across cultures, and English they teach their children to help them become citizens of an increasingly intertwined world.
It has consolidated its dominance as the language of the Internet 翻譯公司 where 80 percent of the world’s electronically stored information is in English, according to David Graddol, a linguist and researcher.
文章出自: http://mypaper.pchome.com.tw/globalist/post/1283940609有關翻譯的問題歡迎諮詢天成翻譯社
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