{"id":6563,"date":"2014-12-17T03:27:30","date_gmt":"2014-12-17T11:27:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=6563"},"modified":"2015-05-17T20:41:41","modified_gmt":"2015-05-18T04:41:41","slug":"%ce%ba%ce%b1%cf%84%ce%b1%ce%b3%ce%ad%ce%bb%cf%89%cf%82-%ce%bc%e1%bf%b6%cf%81%ce%bf%cf%82","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=6563","title":{"rendered":"<span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">\u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1\u03b3\u03ad\u03bb\u03c9\u03c2 \u03bc\u1ff6\u03c1\u03bf\u03c2<\/span>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There's a recurring joke that proceeds along these lines: <blockquote>What do you call someone who speaks two languages? <q>Bilingual<\/q>.  What do you call someone who speaks just one language? <q>American<\/q>.<\/blockquote> Sometimes, the reference is instead to the British.  But let's consider the reality that lies in back of this joke.<\/p> <p>The vast majority of people who are bilingual speak <em>English<\/em> as their second language.  Why English?  At base, <em>because of the economic significance of those who speak English<\/em>, especially of those for whom English is their native tongue.  This significance originates in the past scope of the British Empire, especially in North America.  The American economy was once the world's largest &mdash; at the present, the matter is muddled &mdash; and the combined size of the American economy with that of other primarily Anglophonic regions still exceeds that of the Sinophonic<span style=\"vertical-align: top ; font-size: smaller ;\">&#91;1&#93;<\/span> or Spanish-speaking regions.<\/p> <p><em>If no language had something like the economic significance of English, then most people who are now bilingual would instead be monolingual.<\/em>  As it is, they had good cause to know English, but it wasn't their first language, so they learned it as their second.<\/p> <p>Thus, <em>mocking<\/em> people for being strictly Anglophonic generally amounts to mocking them for having been raised amongst the peoples of the linguistic group that has the greatest economic significance.  It would be actively <em>stupid<\/em> to mock them deliberately on this score, and doing so <em>thoughtlessly<\/em> is not a very great improvement.<\/p> <p>(I'm certainly <em>not<\/em> saying that there are no good reasons for those who know English to learn other languages.)<\/p> <hr width=\"50%\" align=\"left\" \/> <p><span style=\"vertical-align: top ; font-size: smaller ;\">&#91;1&#93;<\/span> It may also be noted that the differences amongst what are called <q>dialects<\/q> of Chinese are often greater than the differences amongst what are regarded as separate languages.  These variants of Chinese are labelled as <q>dialects<\/q> as part of a more general effort to create an illusion of national unity.  <em>Mandarin<\/em> is a widely spoken language, but <em>Chinese<\/em> is really a <em>family<\/em> of languages.<\/p> ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There's a recurring joke that proceeds along these lines: What do you call someone who speaks two languages? Bilingual. What do you call someone who speaks just one language? American. Sometimes, the reference is instead to the British. But let's consider the reality that lies in back of this joke. The vast majority of people [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,117,36,4],"tags":[1241,287,914,1240],"class_list":["post-6563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-communication","category-economics","category-public","tag-anglophonia","tag-english","tag-language","tag-linguistics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6563\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}