On Monday 12 May 2008 11:16:04 pm Srini Ramakrishnan wrote: > On Sat, May 3, 2008 at 6:31 AM, ss <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> the world as a population are at least as many as the Chinese > (Mandarin) speakers. If so, why should the English speakers fear > erosion of the language? < snip > > Again, assuming things here, but I believe that there is more human > knowledge locked away in texts written in the English language than in > any other, so would we want all of that to go to waste? < begin clever rhetoric > May I point out that you have contradicted yourself? If 50% of people in the world speak Chinese, how does one reach the conclusion that more than 50% of all knowledge exists in English? < end rhetoric > More seriously.. I see some problems with your statements and I will list the problems as I see them 1) You are making this assumption as an English speaker who does not really know how much knowledge is locked up in French, German, Russian, Mandarin, Sanskrit, Tamil or Arabic for that matter. 2) The reason why a lot of knowledge exists in a particular language such as English is precisely because English speakers have taken the trouble to learn non English languages and have translated non English works into English. If the speakers of a particular language develop a whole lot of new knowledge, then the work of translation and understanding itself will require knowledge of the other language if there is to be real understanding of what is going on on the other side. Let me paraphrase Bernard Lewis here: In a given year several thousand Arabic articles are translated into the Finnish language while hardly a dozen Finnish articles get translated into Arabic. I believe this says something about how much Arabic knowledge is getting through to Finland versus the amount of Finnish knowledge getting into Arab lands. The assumption that English has all it takes to survive forever is comforting, but might not be true. shiv
