I haven't had a chance to watch the video yet, so take this with a grain of salt -- I don't think we'll ever hit a point of full linguistic convergence; instead I think our languages will continue to evolve as our communities do, but I think a global "common tongue" (currently English by cultural hegemony) will emerge. What this means is that everyone will speak "standard English," e.g. not British, not American, but a baseline English in addition to their community language(s). We already see this happening for existing languages and communities, but we'll continue to see this as new languages evolve and become separate from their parent languages. So I don't think we'll ever get fully past "untranslatable words" but we will get to a point of easy communication across borders and cultural barriers.
That's a good point indeed. I guess that's also why there are languages like Singlish, Manglish (Malay English) and such, that are mostly understandable by anybody but have their own quirks too.
Being a native hindi speaker, I am still learning English. I mean you read Joel's newsletter and you doubt your 13+ years of english speaking. I am fluent in English and Hindi. Sanskrit is okayish. I learnt French 3 years ago and I stopped back then due to lack of time. And when I read your Medium article of how people simply talk about it and don't do it, I found myself guilty.
French is in my list of next languages, I already know the basics, but to be fluent requires deliberate practice. Any podcast recommendations in French?
I haven't had a chance to watch the video yet, so take this with a grain of salt -- I don't think we'll ever hit a point of full linguistic convergence; instead I think our languages will continue to evolve as our communities do, but I think a global "common tongue" (currently English by cultural hegemony) will emerge. What this means is that everyone will speak "standard English," e.g. not British, not American, but a baseline English in addition to their community language(s). We already see this happening for existing languages and communities, but we'll continue to see this as new languages evolve and become separate from their parent languages. So I don't think we'll ever get fully past "untranslatable words" but we will get to a point of easy communication across borders and cultural barriers.
That's a good point indeed. I guess that's also why there are languages like Singlish, Manglish (Malay English) and such, that are mostly understandable by anybody but have their own quirks too.
Being a native hindi speaker, I am still learning English. I mean you read Joel's newsletter and you doubt your 13+ years of english speaking. I am fluent in English and Hindi. Sanskrit is okayish. I learnt French 3 years ago and I stopped back then due to lack of time. And when I read your Medium article of how people simply talk about it and don't do it, I found myself guilty.
French is in my list of next languages, I already know the basics, but to be fluent requires deliberate practice. Any podcast recommendations in French?