That is the main thing that limits Japanese influence in the world. And also the fact that the Japanese gvt policies in terms of Japanese simplification/Japanese education abroad and inland/Foreign students education inland are lame.
>> Besides, Japanese language is the first translated language in the
>> comics market in France now. Chances it must be the same in a lot of
>> "western" countries.
>
> Manga and anime are certainly popular these days, yes, but I'm talking
> about non-illustrated, "serious" literature. The fact is,
> unfortunately, that Americans are reading less and less serious
> literature by *American* authors, much less foreign-derived stuff.
Well, then, that's a different issue we are talking about now.
> I think you'll find that not only global capitalism, but the
> world-wide anti-capitalist movement, tends to use English as a
> fall-back medium of communication, at least when it has to. If you
> were a group putting up a web site today and you wanted to get the
> maximum number of visitors world-wide to understand your message, what
> language would you use?
And what is the use of English homepages if your "anti-capitalist" action is local ? like most are ? i would definitely use the language of the people who are the most concerned with the issue i am dealing with.
>> As I wrote about Japan it probably is not a factor of "world economic
>> importance". Chinese has already a sphere of economic and cultural
>> influence,
>
> And has had for centuries, but only around its periphery. Now that it
> is entering the world stage for fair, we shall see what happens.
only a small elite who needs to do business with english speaking businessmen will have to talk english. The chinese periphery, just like the german periphery, the russian periphery, the hindu periphery, the spanish periphery, the arab periphery will go on speaking the main language of the periphery. And in those peripheries multilingualism will be prevalent and monolingual english speaking businessmen will be impaired by multiple layers of translation. And this has been like this for centuries. I don't see how the "new" media or "new" globalization models will affect that in any way.
> I'm not "Indo-European-centered" at all. I said that I realized it was
> quite unfair for English to have gotten the dominant position it has
> now, piggy-backing on the British, and now the U.S., empires. It
> wouldn't bother me at all to see Chinese, for example, become the
> dominant world language, but I'm not sure that it will.
I was not judging you by saying "indo-european centered" point of view. Their is no "unfairness" in the actual status of English since after all the British Empire has managed to be culturally _and_ economically present all around the world for a few centuries now. But it is around the world only superficially, it only surrounds the peripheries mentioned above.
> When I refer to English as a global language, I'm not talking about
> "Basic English," which was a project launched after WW II (as I
> recall), to help non-English speakers learn at least some rudimentary
> English by using a very limited vocabulary and limited grammar rules.
> Like Esperanto, it never really took off, probably because it wasn't
> necessary. As anyone who has taught English to non-English-speakers
> knows, it's not by any means an easy language to master, but a very
> large number of people throughout the world have managed to pick up
> enough of it to "transfer complex information" pretty well, even if
> they are not fluent.
And guess what, most of the Japanese who have been through 6 years of almost compulsory English plus 4 more years for 40% of them are totally unable to utter a word, let alone transfer or handle complex information. Besides, most of the people in the world who learn any other language during compulsory education and above will have absolutely no use for it in adult life.
We are talking here about a very small minority of people who not only have studied a language enough to use it _but also_ who have some use for it in real life, and as far as I know, this kind of necessary multilingualism exists only at the (symbolic) borders of the peripheries.
"English = World basic language" is a myth. "English = World periphery basic language" is probably closer to the truth. English strongest point is GB's position in Europe and US cultural expansionism. But then we talk about a very limited and symbolic periphery since the US periphery is Spanish in essence, Australian/New Zealand periphery is very multilingual and tends to be Chinese and as for the British periphery, since GB keeps refusing to fully enter the EU (Shengen/Euro etc) it keeps shifting toward German (especially with Eastern countries now members).
English will not resist Chinese/India/Brazil cultural and economic growth and is bound to loose ground. Of course, it took about 2000 years to totally kill Latin usage (the last Phd thesis written in Latin, in France, date from the early 70' I heard.)
JC Helary