Article from The American Prospect

[A. Vine]

"lynnem at cogs.susx.ac.uk-Unverified Address" wrote:
>
>
>    The Internet was basically an American development, and it naturally
>    spread most rapidly among the other countries of the English-speaking
>    world. Right now, for example, there are roughly as many Internet
>    users in Australia as in either France or Italy, and the
>    English-speaking world as a whole accounts for over 80 percent of
>    top-level Internet hosts and generates close to 80 percent of Internet
>    traffic.
>
>    It isn't surprising, then, that the Web is dominated by English.

The question is, are folks in English-speaking countries joining the Web because
it is predominantly English, or vice versa?  I would believe the former,
considering the history of the Web, and the relative affluence of
English-speaking countries.

>
>    Then too, it isn't just Anglophones who are using English on the Web.
>    A lot of the English-language Web sites are based in
>    non-English-speaking countries. Sometimes English is an obvious
>    practical choice, for example in nations like Egypt, Latvia, and
>    Turkey, where few speakers of the local language are online and the
>    Internet is still thought of chiefly as a tool for international
>    communication. But the tendency to use English doesn't disappear even
>    when a lot of speakers of the local language have Internet access.
>    Since the Web turns every document into a potentially "international"
>    publication, there's often an incentive for publishing Web sites in
>    English that wouldn't exist with print documents that don't ordinarily
>    circulate outside national borders. And this in turn has made the use
>    of English on the Web a status symbol in many nations, since it
>    implies that you have something to say that might merit international
>    attention.

There is another reason why folks resort to English.  They do not know how to,
or there is no provision for, input of their own language.  And even if they did
know how and there was provision, there is difficulty in receiving/viewing such
input.

As the technology moves towards an large international character set, combined
with easier and easier installation and input methods for various languages,
more and more native languages will appear.  It is happening even now.

While some may think of the WWW as an international platform, there are those
(me) who also consider it a local medium.  I look for local events, local phone
numbers, local maps, etc. on the Web.


>    But the Internet blurs this distinction, even as it blurs the
>    distinction between "public" and "private" communication. The language
>    of the innumerable discussion groups and bulletin boards of the Net
>    has much of the tone of private communication--it's informal,
>    elliptical, and allusive. But it is conversation filtered by a battery
>    of conventions adapted to its new function. I'm thinking of not just
>    the rich etiquette for responding, cc'ing participants, including
>    quotes from other messages you've received, and so forth, but the
>    subtler ways that the informalities of private conversation are
>    tailored for use in a semipublic forum. That's why these discussions
>    can be so difficult for foreigners to participate in, even when
>    they're entirely comfortable with formal written English. What's more
>    worrisome still, they can also marginalize native speakers who aren't
>    privy to the norms of middle-class speech, by which I mean not so much
>    the forms and spellings of the standard language as the way people
>    deploy it in the back-and-forth of ordinary conversation. It's one
>    thing to know when to say, "I'm afraid I have to take issue with Ms.
>    Price's conclusions" and another--much more difficult to get the hang
>    of--to know when it's appropriate to say, "You've gotta be kidding."

Oh no!  Them ferners'll never be able to larn that thar kinda language!

Andrea