Multilingualism on the Net :: Languages Technology Papers

Multilingualism on the Net What go forth be the effect of the Internet upon natural languages in the 21st century? It is widely accepted that, generally speaking, any new media change languages. For example, the prevalence of TV has dramatically homogenized spoken accents over the medieval few decades. Young people tend to speak in almost the same way as TV casters, and local dialects and accents remain only among the bringing of older people. This TV effect, however, is insignificant as compared with the enormous effect of print media on languages over the past few hundred years. The prevailing print texts, in particular newspapers etc., enabled millions of people who had never met each other to think about the same topics in the same language, thus creating a sort of community individuality. This community identity was transformed into issue identity, upon which in turn the nation-state was established, as discussed by political scientist Benedict Anderson 1. Print languages are widely acknowledged as standard national languages, for which dictionaries are edited, and lessons are given in schools. On the other hand, other languages gradually declined. Since the market economy requires any printing business to have a certain amount of readers, print languages tend to be limited to so-called major languages spoken by millions of people. In short, the number of written languages on the solid ground decreased after the arrival of print media. What, then, will the arrival of the Internet bring about? ---- Roughly speaking, we can predict two distinct directions. The world-class one is English monopoly. The Internet has originated in the United States, and it is obvious that at present most international correspondence takes place in English. This is partly for the historic reason that the Internet has developed as a communication tool for the researchers of science and technology whose common language is English. Now general people in addition to science a nd technology researchers often utilize the Internet, but English is still the dominant language if one wants to look at foreign clear sites or send E-mail across state borders. Therefore there is the possibility that, sooner or later in the 21st century, English will become the sole common language for international communication, thereby accompanying the inescapable decline of other languages. In this case the term globalization manner the hegemony of English-based, United States-centered single culture spreading all over the world. On the other hand, however, we may expect the second direction where various cultures in distinct countries thrive and interchange with each other, resulting in fruitful and plural global culture.