From the article: "By the time Esperanto got out of the gate, another language was already emerging as an international medium: English." Yep. Esperanto is toast as a world interlanguage compared to English. The number of new speakers added to English each year just by natural increase of households in which English is spoken as a home language is, matched for levels of proficiency, comfortably greater than the total worldwide number of speakers of Esperanto. (The same is true, of course, of Modern Standard Chinese (Mandarin), Spanish, and Hindustani.) English is by far the language of choice in "interlanguage" contexts, as for example when a native speaker of Korean travels to Taiwan (I have seen this many times) or when a native speaker of Japanese travels to China (I have seen this too) or even when educated native speakers of various Sinitic languages meet up and some are not proficient in standard Mandarin (I have seen this plenty of times too). The use of English as an interlanguage in India alone (where mandating Hindi as the sole interregional language would be very politically contentious) ensures that English will continue to grow and thrive, even if the United States and Britain somehow disappeared from the world. (I have been watching a lot of films from India recently, as my town is blessed with more than one cinema that show current films from India, and even in a movie set in India with entirely Indian characters, you will hear little snatches of English embedded in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, or Malayalam dialog, and you will always see signs in English in street scenes even of very rural places.)
So, yes, what will the world speak only a century from now, as the article asks? Plenty of other languages, for sure, and I for one am glad I devoted years to learning Chinese and German and other languages, but there will be more and more people speaking English in more and more places as the years go by.
On the other hand, Esperanto is the only constructed language to have got anywhere at all, and is outlasting those smaller languages that are going extinct every few weeks and those natural languages on life support kept around by hobbyists with too much power, like Welsh.
It hasn't become a dominant inter language (yet), but it also hasn't failed, and nothing has come along to change that Esperanto is dramatically less effort to learn to usable levels than any evolved language.
Esperanto is dramatically less effort to learn to usable levels than any evolved language
That is a frequent claim in the Esperantist literature, one I encountered when I studied Esperanto, but it is dramatically untrue. There are very few people who have taken up Esperanto who can communicate well with it even after much effort. That's especially true for people of the majority of the world's native language backgrounds.[1]
By the way, how would you write your whole comment in Esperanto?
I think the article asks the wrong question. Surely by 2115 we will have a perfect universal translator fluent in hundreds of languages.
Why learn Chinese or Hindi if your smartphone or perhaps your glasses will seamlessly translate back and forth between your native language? The pressure to learn a second language will be lessened greatly.
Sometimes automatic translation seems to be the flying cars of computer engineering.
In 2115 we might be able to technically do a very good approximation of it, but it might not have much use except for very casual contexts.
I think it really comes down to controlling one's communication. For instance, right now businessmen learning Mandarin are not cheaping on translator services, they want a better understanding of someone's culture, the concepts they think in, and want to speak in their own words.
Communication is and always will be extremely important, and as soon as there will be enough stakes, the time we 'lose' in learning will always be worth the gain in control.
Of course a universal translator would help for tourism and casual matters. But I think for translating a menu, street signs or simple instructions we are already having pretty decent applications and won't need to wait for another century.
As an example of how overly optimistic people have been about translation, here's a page on Foresight Exchange (a long-running play-money prediction market) where people have been betting on the probability of high-quality machine translation by 2015, since 1995:
Even up through 2008, most people thought it was going to happen by 2015! Of course the people who were more actively following AI knew that it wouldn't. I probably doubled my fake money on FX, if only I could remember my login.
The thing is, that would require that your smartphone be sufficiently aware of the context of your words that it could correctly map one ambiguous statement in one language to another in another language with a different set of ambiguities.
For example, the German 'ich mag sie' could mean 'I like her' or 'I like them' or 'I like you' in formal settings, while the English 'at least' could be translated to German as 'zumindest', or 'mindestens', or 'wenigstens', with different emotional significance.
I'm not sure you could really do adhoc translation at the language level with any real fluidity: you would probably need your phone to monitor your brain before you spoke to get at the pre-language meaning of what you are saying, if that is even possible.
Not to detract from your point (which is very true; for machine translation to match human translations they need equal access to and understanding of context), but as a native German speaker, your example seems wrong to me :). "It is pleasing to her" = "es gefällt ihr","It is pleasing to them" = "es gefällt ihnen".
No doubt it's possible to construct examples that support your agument in just about any language, though. I'd recommend East Asian ones, since they're less heavy on the pronouns than Indo-European languages, and you can generally often omit subject or object if it's clear from context, or are even expected to for good style. Korean poetry even relies on intentional ambiguity a lot of the time, forcing the reader to consider the options, for their enjoyment or to challenge them.
I wonder if there would be even more demand for an e.g. refined English-to-casual English translator, and vice versa. If someone from one of the entrenched higher classes uses a phrase like "acquire the appropriate attire for dressage," one of their new staff might not be educated enough to understand even the own-language equivalent and its nuances. I would think there'd be plenty of demand for something that transcends languages to perform meaning-discovery tasks for the wearer/user.
I'm not sure about "more demand", but I wouldn't be surprised if multi-language ability were to seen as more distinguishing in a world in which language translation is readily available - i.e. "can do what most rely on a machine for". I don't think "why do they trouble themselves instead of just using machine translation" would happen any time soon, since being able to speak a language yourself still affords the most direct communication path (unless it falls out of fashion to talk face to face).
Especially since this is something where it's not possible for machines to truly just eclipse humans -- if you're fluent, you're fluent. Of course machine translation easily surpasses human speakers on vocab, but you're more or less bounded by what the recipient/listener can understand, anyway.
But demand for translation services will likely dwindle.
That said, one of the best reasons to learn languages is simply the mental exercise, and unless we change the way humans learn and maintain mental performance, that will remain true.
I don't know how people will communicate in 2115, but I can't imagine a 2115 where every human doesn't know every language without any effort at all. How can a discussion of life that far in the future not mention how computers will shape it?
I really don't like how tones are presented as a confounding item like irregular verbs. Tonal languages essentially just take advantage of extra bandwidth that was ignored by most european languages.
They are hard for western learners but only because we are unused to treating tonal information as important.
In fact because of tones and limited pronunciations available I have found that I feel Chinese is more tolerant of bad or variant pronunciations than english(Assuming you can get tones right but there are really only 5 tones to learn). Tones just make a few more bits available for error correction.
As background I have studied chinese for 8+ years and lived in asia for a couple of years as well.
I really don't like how tones are presented as a confounding item like irregular verbs. Tonal languages essentially just take advantage of extra bandwidth that was ignored by most european languages.
Most irregular verbs also serve to increase bandwidth though: You can say "I ate" faster than "I eated".
We use tones in English, too. Is it TACO Bell, or Taco BELL? Either one can get you laughed out of the room in refined company, depending on your peer group.
I'm not sure what you are trying to communicate with the capitalization there, but what it suggests to me is more stress/accent than tones; those aren't the same thing.
I've never thought of syllable accents as being equivalent to tones. Maybe you're right but to me the difference in emphasis has more to do with cadence and volume than tone.
English has intonation, which is different from the "tones" that tonal languages such as Chinese have. Intonation is the use of pitch to convey additional information regarding emotion or attitude. Tones, on the other hand, are used to differentiate completely different words altogether.
For tonal languages, the use of tone as a distinguishing characteristic is similar to any other phonemic characteristic you would typically have to distinguish words in any other non-tonal language. For instance, in English, voicing is a distinguishing characteristic that differentiates the words "pat" and "bat". Similarly in Mandarin Chinese, tone is a distinguishing characteristic that differentiates the words "mā" (mother) and "mǎ" (horse).
Tone is not phonemic in English. What you are describing is properly called intonation, which is the application of pitch (as well as stress, loudness, tempo and other markers) to distinguish more subtle conversational functions.
Stress in English is phonemic however, viz. this minimal pair:
"rekord (record, n.) vs r@"kord (record, v.)
This is a regular phonological process in many English dialects to derive verbs from certain nouns (or is it the other way around?). Future English could turn this into a tonal distinction - I think that has a precedent in Swedish.
I think that quite contrary - when language without literature is lost then everything about this language - traditions, knowledge, history, is lost forever (unless anthropologists manage to save some bits of it).
Not nessasarily, the people could continue to pass down the traditions/knowledge/history using another language. If a language with literature is lost, then you loose just as much of those things, as well as the literature (because no one can understand it). Of course, having literature increases the chances of having a rossetta stone.
I have a different opinion. I think people will stick to their languages, and some will die naturally.
However, one new language will emerge. It will be a set of 500 to 1000 words that anyone can learn and use to communicate world wide.
Similarly to a programming language, this one will be limited in words and easy to pick up. This language will act as a framework, giving the essential people would need to have basic communication. 500 to 1000 words.
Your hundred year prediction is already more than a hundred years out of date. Welcome to 1880's Bialystok in not-yet-Poland, and the birth of Esperanto.
Here we are in 2015 and the one hundredth annual Esperanto Congress is coming.
The reasons approximately nobody speaks Esperanto now, are the same reasons nobody will speak your universal language in 2115.
I see things differently. I see Esperanto as a remarkable success story. It has survived wars and revolutions and economic crises and continues to attract people to learn and speak it. Esperanto works. I’ve used it in about seventeen countries over recent years. I recommend it to anyone, as a way of making friendly local contacts in other countries.
Readit News
So, yes, what will the world speak only a century from now, as the article asks? Plenty of other languages, for sure, and I for one am glad I devoted years to learning Chinese and German and other languages, but there will be more and more people speaking English in more and more places as the years go by.
It hasn't become a dominant inter language (yet), but it also hasn't failed, and nothing has come along to change that Esperanto is dramatically less effort to learn to usable levels than any evolved language.
That is a frequent claim in the Esperantist literature, one I encountered when I studied Esperanto, but it is dramatically untrue. There are very few people who have taken up Esperanto who can communicate well with it even after much effort. That's especially true for people of the majority of the world's native language backgrounds.[1]
By the way, how would you write your whole comment in Esperanto?
[1] http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/
Deleted Comment
Why learn Chinese or Hindi if your smartphone or perhaps your glasses will seamlessly translate back and forth between your native language? The pressure to learn a second language will be lessened greatly.
In 2115 we might be able to technically do a very good approximation of it, but it might not have much use except for very casual contexts.
I think it really comes down to controlling one's communication. For instance, right now businessmen learning Mandarin are not cheaping on translator services, they want a better understanding of someone's culture, the concepts they think in, and want to speak in their own words.
Communication is and always will be extremely important, and as soon as there will be enough stakes, the time we 'lose' in learning will always be worth the gain in control.
Of course a universal translator would help for tourism and casual matters. But I think for translating a menu, street signs or simple instructions we are already having pretty decent applications and won't need to wait for another century.
http://www.foresightexchange.com/fx-bin/Claim?claim=Tran
Even up through 2008, most people thought it was going to happen by 2015! Of course the people who were more actively following AI knew that it wouldn't. I probably doubled my fake money on FX, if only I could remember my login.
For example, the German 'ich mag sie' could mean 'I like her' or 'I like them' or 'I like you' in formal settings, while the English 'at least' could be translated to German as 'zumindest', or 'mindestens', or 'wenigstens', with different emotional significance.
I'm not sure you could really do adhoc translation at the language level with any real fluidity: you would probably need your phone to monitor your brain before you spoke to get at the pre-language meaning of what you are saying, if that is even possible.
No doubt it's possible to construct examples that support your agument in just about any language, though. I'd recommend East Asian ones, since they're less heavy on the pronouns than Indo-European languages, and you can generally often omit subject or object if it's clear from context, or are even expected to for good style. Korean poetry even relies on intentional ambiguity a lot of the time, forcing the reader to consider the options, for their enjoyment or to challenge them.
Especially since this is something where it's not possible for machines to truly just eclipse humans -- if you're fluent, you're fluent. Of course machine translation easily surpasses human speakers on vocab, but you're more or less bounded by what the recipient/listener can understand, anyway.
But demand for translation services will likely dwindle.
That said, one of the best reasons to learn languages is simply the mental exercise, and unless we change the way humans learn and maintain mental performance, that will remain true.
Drops to my knees, camera zooms up and out. Roll credits.
They are hard for western learners but only because we are unused to treating tonal information as important.
In fact because of tones and limited pronunciations available I have found that I feel Chinese is more tolerant of bad or variant pronunciations than english(Assuming you can get tones right but there are really only 5 tones to learn). Tones just make a few more bits available for error correction.
As background I have studied chinese for 8+ years and lived in asia for a couple of years as well.
Most irregular verbs also serve to increase bandwidth though: You can say "I ate" faster than "I eated".
"Going to the store" (rising = question)
"Going to the store" (flat or descending = statement)
For tonal languages, the use of tone as a distinguishing characteristic is similar to any other phonemic characteristic you would typically have to distinguish words in any other non-tonal language. For instance, in English, voicing is a distinguishing characteristic that differentiates the words "pat" and "bat". Similarly in Mandarin Chinese, tone is a distinguishing characteristic that differentiates the words "mā" (mother) and "mǎ" (horse).
Stress in English is phonemic however, viz. this minimal pair:
"rekord (record, n.) vs r@"kord (record, v.)
This is a regular phonological process in many English dialects to derive verbs from certain nouns (or is it the other way around?). Future English could turn this into a tonal distinction - I think that has a precedent in Swedish.
Also Navajo, though grammatically odd to speakers of Indo-European languages, contrary to the article does not seem to only have irregular verbs.
Deleted Comment
However, one new language will emerge. It will be a set of 500 to 1000 words that anyone can learn and use to communicate world wide.
Similarly to a programming language, this one will be limited in words and easy to pick up. This language will act as a framework, giving the essential people would need to have basic communication. 500 to 1000 words.
Basic English is 850 words
Here we are in 2015 and the one hundredth annual Esperanto Congress is coming.
The reasons approximately nobody speaks Esperanto now, are the same reasons nobody will speak your universal language in 2115.