Hello everybody! I’m Claudia and I come from Italy 
First of all, I wanted to say that this is my first time in a forum and it’s a few days I’m trying to find out something interesting to talk about, but I really don’t know if I’ll be able to…
Well, by now, I was thinking about how important English has become: nowadays it’s used everywhere, in the Net, in international communications, but without looking much further, also in the fast foods or clothes shops of your cities you’ll surely have heard words such as hot dog or blue jeans.
Anyway, my question is: will it ever be possible that the Spanish language will take English place? I mean, it’s clear that Spanish is getting more and more important and there are much more people that learn it, but I am wondering if it is just a fashion or do you think it would be really able to substitute English? In the world wide economy, is Spanish as spoken as English?
I really hope that my message hasn’t been useless and that you hadn’t already heard this topic!
Bye for now!
claudia
Dear Claudia, first of all, any of your thoughts is interesting and useful so whenever you have a question or an issue you’d like to talk about just go ahead and post it here. This is what our forum is all about: Exchanging our ideas and thoughts in English.
As a matter of fact, you have brought up a subject that could be the starting point of an ongoing discussion. I think one language will not substitute another. English and Spanish will be spoken by millions of people no matter how the world economy develops. You see, English is spoken by so many people not just as their mother tounge but as a second language. English gives us access to other cultures, mentalities and languages. Take our forum: There are people from all corners of the world having different creeds and different social backgrounds. We speak different languages. Your mother tongue, for example, is Italian. I must admit, I love the sound of this language. Even when you just order an ice cream it sounds like music. ‘Uno gelato prego!’ Italian is rich of vowels and that makes it easier to learn and memorize new words.
Anyway, your question was a bit different, I know. Well, let’s see what others have to say, especially our Spanish speakers…[YSaerTTEW443543]
TOEIC listening, photographs: Jogging[YSaerTTEW443543]
Hallo Claudia, Torsten,
I am from Germany and the first foreign language I learned was English,
the second Latin (I don’t remember any word) and that’s all. But there are
some other people in Germany who learn French and Spanish. As a
second foreign language at some schools you can choose French or
Spanish.
I think you’ll be right, Claudia, if you say, that Spanish become more and
more important as English. I don’t think, that as many people as speak
English speak Spanish in Germany, but there are some other countries
where it is nessecary to understand Spanish. I am thinking about the foreign
trade with Latin America for example.
For me it’s very difficult to say what I mean. Look I would prefer, if our
children would grow up with more foreign languages (English, French,
Spanish), because it’s easier to learn a foreign language, when you are
a child.
At school I was very bad at English and Latin. Today I see how important
different languages are. And the best, how exciting is it to speak with
people of other countries. I can’t speak or understand Italian and English
is the only way for me to understand and answer you, Claudia. That’s great.
Hope, you understand what I mean.
Kind regards
:twisted: teufelchen53
Claudia, I don’t think Spanish will eclipse English as the dominant world language anytime soon. There are various reasons for this.
The dominance of a language doesn’t come only from its number of speakers. Both the Spanish and the British spread their languages over a huge portion of the world, but the British also spead other things that the Spanish did not. Those are political and economic stability, property rights, and the rule of law. The Americans have added to these their focus on personal economic freedom. All of these things made the English-speaking countries prosperous and have allowed their cultures to flower. These things are by far the most important factors in making English the dominant world language, and at the moment the Latin countries are a long way from attaining the level of personal freedom, economic discipline, property rights and political stability, in my opinion.
dfwengineer, how soon Hispanics learn English in the US depends on where they live. Where I am, in Michigan, there aren’t very many Hispanics who don’t speak English. They learn it as quickly as any other immigrant group. In fact, I’ve read before that they learn English quickly in other parts of the country too, but that it looks like they don’t, just because new Hispanic immigrants are always arriving. Most Hispanic parents in the US definitely want their kids to be full members of English-speaking society.
Keep in mind that Hispanics in the US can have more difficulty learning English because the government, schools and social agencies make it as easy as possible for them not to learn. Many schools give Hispanic children bilingual education (which many Hispanic parents say makes them illiterate in two languages). The government and various social agencies print a lot of their signs and brochures in Spanish and give Spanish instructions in phone menus. In the supermarkets near my house, the self-serve scanners give a choice between English and Spanish instructions, and the cashiers are required to provide various forms in Spanish, even though they say no customer has ever filled out a Spanish form. At my bank’s ATMs, we have to choose our language (English or Spanish) before we’re allowed to make our transaction, even though there are few or no non-English-speaking Hispanics in my area.
No immigrant group other than Hispanics gets this kind of accommodation here. Arabs, Russians or other groups are seldom given the choice not to learn English the way Hispanics are here.
Hey Claudia,
Wow! This is such a simple question, but such a broad topic! haha
Well, I’m from Brazil and I would say that although there are lots of similarities between Portuguese and Spanish, people usually tend to learn English first, then Spanish.
Here in the United States though, if people know any other language, it is usually Spanish, Frech in second and all the others in third place. At least, that’s what it looks like to me.
I would say that the reason so many people speak Spanish nowadays, is because there are a lot of Spanish speaking countries in the world. You have the whole Latin America, going from Mexico all the way down to the very south of South America. Plus, Spain in Europe. The language is definitely well spread. I don’t know in Europe, but here in the States there are a lot of Spanish speaking immigrants, therefore knowing this language has become somewhat a necessity for Americans to learn.
I don’t see it overcoming English though for two reasons: For one, the English language is just as much well spread in the world and even more so than Spanish and secondly, economically, English speaking nations are on the list of the most developed places in the world. Being so, they have a certain type of monopoly (if I may put it that way) in the economy of the World. Unless this situation changes, I don’t see any other language taking over the place of the English language. But knowing other languages is really important too. And after English I would say Spanish is becoming a necessity to learn too. At least under my reality of being a Brazilian in North America and even in Brazil.
I don’t agree with you about it being necessary for Americans to learn Spanish. There are few or no places in the US where an English speaker needs Spanish to function.
I’ve brought this up in another posting, but I’ll say here again that universities and companies that provide professional language training to employees in my area (Michigan) tell me that these are the top languages that companies here want their American employees to learn:
- Spanish and German (tied for first place)
- Japanese
- Portuguese
However, only two of these are commonly taught in American schools, and many schools teach only one of them.
Jamie wrote:
If these companies “want” employes to learn these languages, does it not mean it is because there is some necessity?
I didn’t mean it was a demand for americans to learn Spanish or else they wouldn’t survive, I just meant that because there are so many immigrants that speak Spanish, and because they are eveywhere, working in all kinds of different job positions, there is “somewhat” a need to know the language at least a little bit.
I also said:
(referring to what languages people learn the most up here).
I never mentioned I was based on any statistics, but just in what I see, from people I know. Doing my type of work, I get to meet a lot of different people.
Another quote: I made such affirmations based on…
Meaning, if people need any interpreter at all here in the US it is usually for Spanish. Therefore, there is a need for me to learn this language.
I live in North Carolina, that’s my reality, most people who live here are latinos. Everywhere I go, I see signs that say “We speak Spanish here” even in social security offices. I also see my friends having to learn Spanish in their jobs. So they can communicate with costumers. I wish I were fluent with this language, so I could actually get more jobs here. I can understand it pretty well, if someone talks to me or I read it somewhere, just not good at speaking it (I can’t restrain my portuguese 
)
Anyway, I’m just trying to say. This is what I see, but I’m not based on any statistics.
The whole dynamic of this is a little complicated.
Where I live, very few consumer-oriented businesses require employees to speak Spanish, because there are not very many Spanish customers who don’t speak English. In some neighborhoods it is a limited asset to know some Spanish, but it won’t get you a job or lose you one. And in that regard, Arabic is just as useful as Spanish, if not more so.
When corporate employees here learn German, it’s usually to talk to the management and the people in the company’s home office. When they learn Spanish, it’s usually to talk to the workers in Mexico (the Mexican engineers and managers can usually speak English). They learn Japanese for the same reason they learn German, and they learn Portuguese to speak to the factory workers in Brazil (i.e., the same reason they learn Spanish).
There is a lot of work here for translators and interpreters in German, Japanese, Chinese, etc., and that’s for business. The work in Spanish is more weighted toward court and hospital interpreting, but here Arabic, Chaldean, Bosnian and Vietnamese are as important as Spanish.
Dear Jamie,
I think you are missing my point. This forum is dicussing about whether Spanish will eclipse English or not. It seems like we both agree it won’t. And I guess that’s all Claudia wanted to know. I said that it does seem like there is a growing need of learning the language just because there are many spanish speaking people in here. Like you pointed out yourself on your statistics. From all languages the company you work for wants its employees to learn, Spanish and German are in first place. I never said other languages were unimportant!
Not all business are equally connected to people worldwide like yours where there is a bigger demand for interpreters from all places. I’m talking about daily life. Places you have access to on a daily basis. Hospitals, supermarkets, restaurants, malls… I don’t know, pick a place. There are tons of Latinos, I am one myself (only I speak Portuguese). Of course, the situation changes from state to state. I’m in North Carolina, apparently biggest concentration of Mexicans, I have been to Washington D.C. where I saw many Muslims (but it might not be the predominant immigrant nation there, perhaps you would like to check on some statistics for that too). Anyway, as I said, it is just what I see on a daily life basis. That the minimum requirement when you work somewhere is for you to learn Spanish. Thanks though for providing such useful information on that.
Hi Caroline, maybe my question does not directly relate to the topic of this dicussion but I’d like to know how you have managed to learn English so well? If Portuguese is your native language, how and where did you learn English? I understand that you are not living in North Carolina? Are there any Portuguese speakers in your neighbourhood?
Talk to you soon,
Andreana
Hello Andreana,
Well, there are language schools everywhere in Brazil. If you want to get a nice job over there it is important that you learn at least one foreign language. So, I went to a language school over there for 5 years from which I graduated and 3 months after that two american families moved in to my neighborhood. The first family to move in lived just down the street from me and the second family just down the street from them. I befriended them and became almost like part of their family. So, I had a lot of practice with them for the almost one year they lived over there. By then, I had had connections with other families that came to my city too. (They were all part of a humanitarian organization based in my state, Amazon). I did a lot of translation and interpretation for them. And now, I’ve been living for 2 years here in the United States. There aren’t any brazilians living close to me. I’ve met some, but we don’t have much contact, just when we happen to see one another. Anyway, I don’t know how good my english really is, but I do know it has gotten better because i had people to practice it with. I remember the first few times I tried to talk to Americans, I had a real good vocabulary, but it was really stretching for me to carry on a conversation. I would think in portuguese so the structure of my sentences wouldn’t come out right. I could make a point though. I remember being exhausted at the end of the day, after talking to them for so long. But then it just got easier and easier. So yeah, I’m in North Carolina now working as a volunteer for another organization, serving the community and stuff. Thanks for your compliment on my English! Yours is pretty good too! Where did you learn English? Are you in Argentina right now?
Hi again Caroline. Thank you for sharing your experiences with me. Could you please tell me more about your work in North Carolina? What organization are you with? What type of community services do you provide? Regarding my English, I was in a similar situation like you. I learned English at school and then went to university. There I have always tried to get in contact with Americans (English speakers in general but most of them would be from the US anyway). Some of our professors are from the States too and I enjoy their seminars very much but they tend to have a more dynamic approach - a mixture of being laid-back while at the same time pushing us to our limits in a very subtle way. (for example, they would tell us a joke and in it there is a provocative statement). I think a lot of Americans - especially those with a Jewish background are good psychologists and they have a good interpersonal skills. This makes learning their language interesting and fun.
Anyway, I’m looking forward to your North Carolina update.
Andreana
It’s interesting that you say this. When I taught in a high school overseas, the kids gave me the nickname “American Death”. They said the reason was that I seemed very loose and informal in class, but that at the same time I had very high, strict expectations. Some kids would think that because I was informal, I must not be demanding. So they wouldn’t study hard, and when they got their first exams back, they felt like they’d been hit with a hammer. They said I was like a friendly, smiling guy hiding a baseball bat behind his back. (A few years later, some students wrote to thank me, because they’d been in job interviews where they were almost the only people who could quickly react in English.)
Hmm. It sounds like I’m not the only American like this. I used to warn my linguistics students that my philosophy of education amounts to this: Ask a guy how fast he can run, and if he says 5 miles per hour, then chain him to the back of your car and drive 6 miles and hour but not 7. He will run 6 miles an hour. In the end, he’ll either love you for showing him he could run faster than he thought, or else he’ll hate you because you made him exert himself.
Caroline, your English is really quite good. Your only big mistake – and it’s a very basic one – is that you don’t capitalize the names of languages or the adjectives of nationality. So you write “brazilian” instead of “Brazilian”, “portuguese” instead of “Portuguese”, “english” instead of “English”, and “american” instead of “American”.
To foreigners this can seem like a small mistake, but to us it can be very irritating. There are generally two reasons why people make this mistake. One is that those words are not capitalized in their own languages, and they have forgotten the rule they learned in their early English classes. The other reason is that they’ve spent a lot of time in chatrooms, which is where many Americans completely ignore the capitalization rules.
But, as I said, your English is otherwise rather good.
This sounds very familiar to me. When I first attended a seminar run by an American professor I thought this guy was rather relaxed - he made some jokes and asked us questions and most of us thought it’ll be easy for us to get good grades from him. Then he gave us assignments - those had very clear instructions and there also was a description of how the work would be evaluated. The system was different from what we were used to and a lot of us ignored the rules. For example, according to the instructions we had to work in small teams of at least two. Most of us however would try to do the assignment individually. When we had to present the results (there were three parts, a written summary, a presentation and an essay) our professor had us create a jury and that was another novelty. A lot of flunked and some even started to complain but in the end we learned a very important lesson: there is a fine line between being relaxed and informal and sticking to the rules at the same time. It’s a bit like not capitalizing the nationality words - it’s a basic rule and if you ignore it you send a certain message to your audience. I think the US professors at our university have made a very positive impact because they have a very different approach to teaching. Their strength is to make you think. They usually would not try to persuade or teach you. They ask questions and often you don’t even realize what they are getting it. You wonder how that question might relate to the subject you are discussing. But a few steps down the road you start to understand that there is an agenda they are pursuing. Maybe, it’s a bit like playing chess: if you are able to think several moves ahead you can win.
Andreana
Hey Andreana,
How are you doing? Sorry it took so long to get back to you! My Internet was not working yesterday! Wow! It’s kind of hard to explain what exactly I do here, because I do so many different things. The name of the organization I’m with is FIRE (Fellowship for International Revival and Evangelism) who is connected to FI (FIRE International). FI is an organization whose goal is to send out missionaries worldwide. So I am a volunteer to both FIRE which is the church and FI. FIRE has lots of Ministries that go from visiting elderly people in Nursing homes to visiting people in prison facilities. So, my function is to go to the University of NC and teach the Word and disciple people from there. Sometimes I do Nursery Work (which consists of watching kid’s during a church service). I do paper work at both FIRE and FI offices; like folding missionaries’s support letters and putting them in envelopes so they can be mailed and I help with FIRE’s newsletter, sending out their DVD, etc. I also help other church members needs like babysitting, house painting, etc. Basically when they need volunteers, I am one of them. So, well, in a sort of way I am a missionary here. 
Oh and Jamie, thanks for your compliments. I’ll work on capitalizing those words, thanks for pointing that out. I had been wondering about it.
Hello Caroline, thank you for answering my questions. In a way it’s funny, you are also from South America and now we are communicating in English via the web. How often do you go online? I have permanent access to the net from university and from home but I try to limit my online time to study purposes. Sometimes I get lost in the flood of information available in cyber space.
So you are working for FIRE. Do you also travel with them sometimes? Would you like to become a ‘real’ missionary? What is your neighborhood like, I mean what kind of people live in your area? Tell me more about your life in the US - I have never been there and would really like to know more. Thank you and have a good time.
Andreana
Caroline, they sound like one of those organizations that go to Christian countries and try to convert people who are already Christian to Christianity. The logic of that has always been mysterious to me. Can you explain it?
Jamie, I see your point and I would make the same kind of comment myself. But you can surely guess (in fact, I know you know it 
) that it’s about being actively Christian. So many Christians are so by name only, that it can do no harm for them (for us?) to be ‘redirected on the right path’ and be recalled to their best selves.
Now I’m curious to hear what Caroline has to say on this subject.
Right. That’s one good point.
However, some of these groups are trying to convert people who are already actively Christian to their own form of Christianity. Some of them are very hostile to the forms of Christianity that already exist in those countries (largely because they have been told things about other Christians that are not true). I have talked to Evangelicals who believe that Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Christians and other non-Evangelicals are going directly to hell, so there can be another issue here. I admire Caroline’s volunteering to meet the needs of the sick and disadvantaged. What I am trying to figure out is whether her group thinks that Catholic and Orthodox Christians (and others) are “not Christian” and need to be “saved”.