English is no longer the language of the web

Ethan Zuckerman:

Conventional wisdom suggests that English is becoming "the world's second language," a lingua franca that many forward--looking organizations are adopting it as a working language. Optimists about the spread of English as a global second language suggest it will enable collaboration and ease problem solving without threatening the survival of mother tongues. Pointing to hundreds of thousands of Chinese children who learn English by shouting phrases back at teachers, the American entrepreneur Jay Walker offers the idea that English will be a language of economic opportunity for most speakers: they'll work and think in their mother tongue, but English will allow them to communicate, share, and transact.

Cultural-preservation organizations like UNESCO aren't as confident of this vision. They warn that English may crowd out less widely spoken languages as it spreads around the world through television, music, and film. But something more subtle and complicated appears to be going on. While English may be emerging as a bridge language, a wave of media is being produced in other languages, in newspapers, on television, and on the Internet. As technologies make it easier for people to communicate to broad and narrow audiences in their native languages, we're discovering that linguistic difference is surprisingly persistent.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at June 27, 2013 12:35 AM
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