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Portuguese, the most successfull language in the world!
You can also state that America is the wealthiest country on Earth but americans individualy are not the wealthiest people on Earth... makes you think.
And in the case of Portuguese, it has about 230 million native and secundary speakers. That's not a small number, even if Spanish, English and Chinese have more.
Imagine a language that started as the language of tribe composed of 1.000 people and that by some fantastic opportunity multiplied its numbers by 1/1000.
That language would have today just a million speakers. It would have been a tremendous success to achieve an expansion of 1/1000 but 1 million speakers of any given language is almost irrelevant, specialy if they don't have their own State to protect it.
What I mean by all this is that the rate of expansion is important plus the total number of speakers. 230 million speakers, across 4 continents is a privilege and a feat for such a small country to start with.
Hence my insistence in the (relative to its size) great success of the Portuguese language. We started very small (1 million) and ended in the top 5-6.
I say this definitely classifies as a GREATER success than that of other large languages.
I totally understand what you are trying to convey, and in that sense, you are right. But there is more than one way of looking at it.
You seem to view languages as if they are competing with one another, the way opposing armies do on the field of battle. To me the thought of a language as being "more successful" is a silly concept. You're saying that Portugal, a tiny nation of 10 million people, has produced an international language of 230 million speakers, and this somehow won Portugal the game of the international championship for languages.
It's similar to economic growth. For instance, small, developing economies most often grow faster than their well developed counterparts. Relative to their size, nations like China have an annual GDP growth rate of 9% or more, while relative to its size, America's economy grows at an annual rate of 3-4%. But in absolute terms, America's economy is still far bigger, and it has still grown by nearly ten times as much as the former's has.
You're right in the sense that you are speaking of. But there is more than one way to measure success.
And what really matters in the end, is that most people of the next several generations will be learning Chinese instead of Portuguese, because there are many times more Chinese speakers than there are Portuguese.
Gringo Tue Jul 18, 2006 8:27 pm GMT
««''I'm luso-brazilian''
And I'm Anglo-american »»
I DID NOT post this message!
LAA Wed Jul 19, 2006 3:29 am GMT
««I totally understand what you are trying to convey, and in that sense, you are right. But there is more than one way of looking at it.»»
There is always more than one way of looking at it , it depends of what you are analysing.
Viri Amaoro explained exactly what was being analised and made a very good observation.
««And what really matters in the end, is that most people of the next several generations will be learning Chinese instead of Portuguese, because there are many times more Chinese speakers than there are Portuguese.»»
What really matters is that the factor analysed by Viri is correct.
Everybody knows Chinese is the most spoken language in the world; but it was not that that was being analysed was it?
««You seem to view languages as if they are competing with one another, the way opposing armies do on the field of battle. To me the thought of a language as being "more successful" is a silly concept.»»
And you don't? To me the idea of a language being MORE LATIN than others is a silly one too!!!You also seem to view languages as if they are competing with one another, the way opposing armies do on the field of battle;[using your comment]
The whole concept of one language being the most successful because it is in "relative terms" just sounds silly to me.
As I mentioned previously, what really matters, is that more foriegn language students over the course of the next century will be taking Chinese, and not Portuguese. That's all that matters in the long run.
The whole idea of Portuguese being the most successful language based on relative terms might not even be correct. Prior to centralization, and the standardization of the languages of China, people from all different regions spoke dozens of different languages. Remember, China was a vast empire, not built in a day, and comprised of a wide variety of national groups, the same way the Roman Empire was. So, standard Mandarin Chinese could have started out with a minute number of speakers, and eventually have grown to become the language of over a billion Chinese!
"Spain has 44 million people and Spanish is spoken by about 400 million (first and secondary speakers). The UK has 60 million people and English is spoken by 500-520 million (first and secondary).
That computes into the Portuguese having multiplied their numbers by 22 (230-10 = 220/10 = 22), the Spanish by about 8 and the English having multiplied their numbers by about 8 too."
This does not take into considertaion the size of the populations of Britain at the time of the English language's growth. The poster is acting as if Portugal started off with 10 million people and its language spread from that baseline figure. At the time of colonial expansion, and when Britain founded its major English speaking colonies (Canada, U.S., Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and to some extent India), England's population was not much bigger than Portugal's, if it even was bigger. Prior to the industrial revolution of the 19th century, Britain's population was only a fraction of that of France, or Spain, or Portugal, etc. It is one of the great marvels of history that Britain was able to come out on top, despite its great numerical disadvantage. It was successful because of its superior financial system, and the ability to utilze the national debt during time of war, and because of its fortunate geographical position as an island, which afforded it the opportunity to divert less resources to a standing army, and more to a powerful navy, which was able to control the seas, and thus trade routes for commerce and access to overseas colonies.
Britain multiplied their linguistic numbers by many times that of Portugal.
LAA,
>It is one of the great marvels of history that Britain was able to come out on top, despite its great numerical disadvantage. It was successful because of its superior financial system, and the ability to utilze the national debt during time of war, and because of its fortunate geographical position as an island, which afforded it the opportunity to divert less resources to a standing army, and more to a powerful navy, which was able to control the seas, and thus trade routes for commerce and access to overseas colonies.
In my opinion, it was rather due to the pragmatism that the English language exhibits for comunication (I mean at a Basic level, not to a literary, sophisticated level!!!) among Indoeuropean languages speaking people, who happened to be the TECHNOLOGICALY most advanced at the time English spread out to a worldwide used language. In other words, in average, it is easier for all to learn English than other IE language for reaching a decent comunication level in a shorter time.
I am not discarding your point of view, because the strong economy of the United States played a big role too. But only in the XXth century became English the lingua franca, not before, even with the Brittish colonies.
Sergio,
"But only in the XXth century became English the lingua franca, not before, even with the Brittish colonies."
I understand what you're saying, but English had already become the lingua Franca because of the Pax Britannica beginning in the 19th century, well before America's rise to interational informal empire in the post WWII 20th century.
French was used in international diplomacy since Louis XIV's reign, (hence the term, "lingua franca"), but it had since been superceded by English during the time Britain controlled 1/4 of the globe.
LAA,
>I understand what you're saying, but English had already become the lingua Franca because of the Pax Britannica beginning in the 19th century, well before America's rise to interational informal empire in the post WWII 20th century.
Not in Europe my friend. Perhaps between England and its colonies, which does not make it a Lingua Franca. In Europe, French and German remained the most important and used languages till the beginning of the XXth century.
If you include the British colonies, you can't leave the French and Portuguese colonies out, which were neither few nor small, and the whole bunch of Spanish ex-colonies; all these lands NEVER used English as a Lingua Franca before the middle XXth century.
Add India to English countries and we'll see that English is the greatest.
Indian people from different regions cannot communicate in language other than English, it's their lingua franca.
We are talking about lingua franca as a worldwide one, not within a country. Besides we were discussing at which point in history English began to be the lingua franca and why.
Yes, India seems to have a very complex system of languages. I can imagine how useful English can be in such a situation.
I suppose that Portuguese must be the most succesful language in the world. Portuguese got Angola and Mozambique. That beats the US hands down.
English, it's their lingua franca.
¿Quién dice que el Inglés es la lingua franca? Es la lengua mas usada en negocios por razones prácticas si, pero jamás es usada en la vida cotididana de las personas, no pensamos en Inglés, no rezamos en Inglés, no amamos u odiamos en Inglés no nos comunicamos en Inglés entre nosotros y sobretodo los biens y servicios no son ofrecidos en Inglés. A todo aquel que lo dude, invito a un Anglo parlante a ir venir a Latinoamérica y tratar de convivir en el ambite local fuera de las zonas de negocios o turisticas y verán como el Inglés no les es de utilidad para comunicarse con la gente común.
««The poster is acting as if Portugal started off with 10 million people and its language spread from that baseline figure. »»
No, it is very clear and I think you are making a confusion.
What Viri compared was the languages today, not when they started.
You will get a different reading according to what you are analysing, I said that before, is it so hard to understand?
If you want to compare the number of the population of each country, in the XV or the XIV century, and the number of speakers today you will get a different reading.
If you want to compare the spead of the languages in the world in the the XV or the XIV century , and the number of speakers today you will get another different reading.
If you want to really compare the spead of the language you have to start at the time each country got independent or when the national language was formed.
Every time you will get a different reading.
Steve
««I suppose that Portuguese must be the most succesful language in the world. Portuguese got Angola and Mozambique. That beats the US hands down. »»
USA did not have an empire.
While they were Portuguese colonies they were very rich. It is a shame powerfull countries decided to use them as a battle field, after their independence, and then abandoned them to their fate.
Hola Sigma,
Estoy completamente de acuerdo contigo. Sin embargo, con Lingua Franca hablamos de un concepto distinto. Significa que es la lengua puente para el comercio, la política, y el intercambio de gran cantidad de información técnica y cultural. No significa que la usemos en nuestra vida cotidiana, ni que vaya a suplantar nuestro idioma natal.
Este papel lo han desempeñado diferentes lenguas en diferentes épocas de la humanidad. El náhuatl fue la lingua franca en Mesoamérica durante un par de siglos, sin llegar nunca a desplazar a los idiomas regionales.
El latín, después el francés y el alemán, hicieron lo suyo en Europa.
El farsi, o persa fue la lingua franca de los comerciantes de medio oriente.
Gringo - I meant that the English spread to the US and Portuguese spread to Angola and Mozambique. You cannot compare the influence of Angola and Mozambique to that of the US.
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