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The article states, "Supercentral languages: very widely spoken languages that serve as connectors between speakers of central languages; according to de Swaan, there are twelve of these: Arabic,Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, Japanese, Malay, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Telugu and Swahili;" but this is a list of thirteen - not twelve - languages.
zazpot (
talk)
14:55, 10 July 2010 (UTC)reply
Kids of life
How seriously is this list taken by people other than De Swaan and his circle? I admit most of it makes sense but why Japanese (which is big and important but is not the prime connector for any languages other than Ainu - and arguably Ryukyuan, if it counts as a separate language) and not Tamil or Zulu, which interconnect several, for example? —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
41.185.117.226 (
talk)
17:18, 21 September 2010 (UTC)reply
Well, even so, Ainu and Ryukyuan are not central languages, so it doesn't support the supercentrality of Japanese. One could imagine a Brazilian communicating with a Chinese in Japanese, although that's unlikely to occur outside of Japan. It seems inaccurate to count people using the majority language of the country they live in, because then, the vast majority of national languages could be considered supercentral. I hope someone with access to the book could provide us with the criteria and statistics used to obtain the list.
For the same reason, Portuguese is questionable. One could imagine an Argentinian and a Japanese communicating in Portuguese in Brazil. But is that likely to occur outside of a Portuguese-speaking country?
German is also questionable. It's spoken mainly in Europe, and given an average European's knowledge of English, it's unlikely that a large number of non-German speakers would choose German to communicate. For instance an Italian-speaking Swiss and a French-speaking Swiss would likely converse in English even when both know German.
German is widely used in academia, and is a major instrument of international communication for scientific and other technical purposes.
Koro Neil (
talk)
09:39, 25 August 2012 (UTC)reply
I think the idea is that German connects several German dialects, which are being treated as languages in their own right.
Mandarin Chinese could be considered supercentral only if we assume that the Chinese languages are distinct languages and not dialects, and that Cantonese and Wu are central languages.
Firstly, they are, and such political distinctions are ignored by linguists. Secondly, there are many non-Sinitic language speakers who use Mandarin as a lingua franca. Certainly Chinese should be counted as supercentral.
Yes Tamil should be supercentral. Zulu possibly too - variants of it, or mixes of it with English, are used to connect Sotho, Venda, Tswana, Xhosa speakers, etc. However, with English predominating, Zulu not having many literary resources (only a couple of newspapers), and the bulk of urban black South African youth speaking a few mixes of Zulu, English and even Afrikaans to communicate, and English in other contexts, the situation is too complicated to include Zulu without caveats. I agree that Japanese and possibly Italian and German are strange choices.
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Linguistics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
linguistics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.LinguisticsWikipedia:WikiProject LinguisticsTemplate:WikiProject LinguisticsLinguistics articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Globalization, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
Globalization on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the
project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.GlobalizationWikipedia:WikiProject GlobalizationTemplate:WikiProject GlobalizationGlobalization articles
The article states, "Supercentral languages: very widely spoken languages that serve as connectors between speakers of central languages; according to de Swaan, there are twelve of these: Arabic,Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, Japanese, Malay, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Telugu and Swahili;" but this is a list of thirteen - not twelve - languages.
zazpot (
talk)
14:55, 10 July 2010 (UTC)reply
Kids of life
How seriously is this list taken by people other than De Swaan and his circle? I admit most of it makes sense but why Japanese (which is big and important but is not the prime connector for any languages other than Ainu - and arguably Ryukyuan, if it counts as a separate language) and not Tamil or Zulu, which interconnect several, for example? —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
41.185.117.226 (
talk)
17:18, 21 September 2010 (UTC)reply
Well, even so, Ainu and Ryukyuan are not central languages, so it doesn't support the supercentrality of Japanese. One could imagine a Brazilian communicating with a Chinese in Japanese, although that's unlikely to occur outside of Japan. It seems inaccurate to count people using the majority language of the country they live in, because then, the vast majority of national languages could be considered supercentral. I hope someone with access to the book could provide us with the criteria and statistics used to obtain the list.
For the same reason, Portuguese is questionable. One could imagine an Argentinian and a Japanese communicating in Portuguese in Brazil. But is that likely to occur outside of a Portuguese-speaking country?
German is also questionable. It's spoken mainly in Europe, and given an average European's knowledge of English, it's unlikely that a large number of non-German speakers would choose German to communicate. For instance an Italian-speaking Swiss and a French-speaking Swiss would likely converse in English even when both know German.
German is widely used in academia, and is a major instrument of international communication for scientific and other technical purposes.
Koro Neil (
talk)
09:39, 25 August 2012 (UTC)reply
I think the idea is that German connects several German dialects, which are being treated as languages in their own right.
Mandarin Chinese could be considered supercentral only if we assume that the Chinese languages are distinct languages and not dialects, and that Cantonese and Wu are central languages.
Firstly, they are, and such political distinctions are ignored by linguists. Secondly, there are many non-Sinitic language speakers who use Mandarin as a lingua franca. Certainly Chinese should be counted as supercentral.
Yes Tamil should be supercentral. Zulu possibly too - variants of it, or mixes of it with English, are used to connect Sotho, Venda, Tswana, Xhosa speakers, etc. However, with English predominating, Zulu not having many literary resources (only a couple of newspapers), and the bulk of urban black South African youth speaking a few mixes of Zulu, English and even Afrikaans to communicate, and English in other contexts, the situation is too complicated to include Zulu without caveats. I agree that Japanese and possibly Italian and German are strange choices.