http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/educ ... 327358.stm"People have been alarmed about it [texting] because there have been anecdotes about pupils putting text abbreviations in their GCSE exams, for example," said researcher Beverly Plester.
"The conclusion has been that this technology is ruining their language, but nobody has any data.
Damage!
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Read the whole thread, Metal, I linked to that article further up 
http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html
What about the economic and cultural clout of the USA, which also has a population of 300 million? Why IE and not AE?‘When 300 hundred million Indians pronounce an English word in a certain way', he says, ‘it will be the only way to pronounce it.'
http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html
Watch the economic clout of India rise above that of the US. As for culture, do most pop and rock stars sing in standard AE? Will speaking AE help me understand the dialogue in the films of Scorsese?lolwhites wrote:
What about the economic and cultural clout of the USA, which also has a population of 300 million? Why IE and not AE?
http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html
The significance?lolwhites wrote: http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html
Just showing where I got the 300M figure for the US population. It's called "citing your sources". There's a bit more to American culture than rock, pop and Scorsese films and people around the world are generally more exposed to AE than IE, at least for the time being.The significance?
Sure, that may change in the future but right now we're just gazing into Crystal balls. I wouldn't put too much stock in it just yet.
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fluffyhamster
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OK, fluffy is hereby limited after this post to 160 characters (how would Chinese characters count?), but only if metal starts using software requiring hundreds if not thousands of his own words at a time. Stephen and lolwhites can post as much or as little as they like. As for JTT, Andy etc, what d'ya reckon?Stephen Jones wrote:Fluffy's posts would certainly benefit from a 160 character limit. Perhaps we could get the moderators to tweak the software.There are also a lot of standard English posters who turn out reams of trash posts.
Hawthorne, Kerouac, Poe, Gershwin, The Simpsons, film ... Maybe some of the American posters on this forum could add to the list.Indeed there is, but who else wants the rest? Is the rest exportable?
The same, I'm sure, could be said of 300m Indians. Going back to Crystal's quote, are 300m Indians ever likely to have the same pronunciation? I don't think so. So I've still yet to see an argument for IE that couldn't be made for AE, nor an argument agains AE that couldn't be made for IE.And how many of the 300m US population use Standard AE in their daily lives?
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JuanTwoThree
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Where AE scores is that it's aspirational.
Assuming, with fingers crossed, that so much anti-Americanism is a passing thing, I can't believe that speaking IE is going to symbolise belonging to something in the way that speaking AE does and has for years. It'd take such a leap in its status that we're talking about centuries, surely?
Assuming, with fingers crossed, that so much anti-Americanism is a passing thing, I can't believe that speaking IE is going to symbolise belonging to something in the way that speaking AE does and has for years. It'd take such a leap in its status that we're talking about centuries, surely?
You already did, when you asked And how many of the 300m US population use Standard AE in their daily lives?, to which I replied that the same could be said about 300m Indians, but now we're just going round in circles.I'd ask the same about 300m Americans.
My point was that the prediction that When 300 hundred million Indians pronounce an English word in a certain way, it will be the only way to pronounce it. is unlikely to be realised as you are just as unlikely to have 300m Indians speaking the same way as you are to have 300m Americans speaking the same way.
What you might have, of course, is a "standard" IE which very few people actually speak, alongside "standard" AE and "standard" BE (and "standard" Australian, South African, Jamaican...). However, the day when Koreans and Chinese ask to be taught Indian English, and European parents pack their teenage offspring off to India for a couple of weeks in the summer holidays is probably quite a long way off.
Go back a few years and see how your comment was then:However, the day when Koreans and Chinese ask to be taught Indian English, and European parents pack their teenage offspring off to India for a couple of weeks in the summer holidays is probably quite a long way off.
However, the day when Koreans and Chinese ask to be taught American English, and European parents pack their teenage offspring off to America for a couple of weeks in the summer holidays is probably quite a long way off.
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Stephen Jones
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So Crystal wasn't being careless, just delusional."...in the words of Professor David Crystal, author of the Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the English Language , who predicts that Indian English will soon become the most widely spoken variant of English as a result of India's economic rise and the sheer size of its population. ‘When 300 hundred million Indians pronounce an English word in a certain way', he says, ‘it will be the only way to pronounce it.'
The number of native English speakers in India at the last census was round about 180,000 or 0.015% of the population. There are obviously a far larger number of people who speak English as a second language, and many of them have full mastery, but it is doubtful if the number of competent speakers exceeds 5-6% of the population. Amongst those there will be a wide spread of ability, and incidentally of accent. The best educated and most fluent in English will speak with a Home Counties accent, albeit modified by the typical South Asian lilt, whilst at the other end of the spectrum there are those who speak Hinglish or Tamlish. The return of some of the diaspora will add to the confusion of accents, since the younger members will speak with a British, American, Australian or Canadian accent.
One thing is clear; there aren't going to be three hundred million competent speakers of English in India in our lifetimes.
Are you going to be paying the geriatric and criogenic costs of keeping us alive for the spectacle?Watch the economic clout of India rise above that of the US.
The current GDP per capita in India is $700 per annum; in the US it is over sixty times as much $41,600.
Even referring to GDP independent of population the GDP of India in 2005 was $719 billion; the GDP of the States was $12.49 trillion. The growth rate of India was much higher (8.4% to 3.2%) of the US but extrapolating those figures means that India would pass the US in total GDP, (though not GDP per capita) in 59 years time (2064). However as India gets nearer the US in GDP the growth rate is likely to slow down, as developed countries generally have smaller growth rates than developing ones.
Of course, the ecological effects of India and China approaching US growth levels make the above calculations theoretical.
I think you and Crystal would do best to lay off the ganja!
