If you were to go onto any of the popular media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Google, or Instagram for example, you would witness some sort of multilingualism. Take Instagram for example, when you’re scrolling down your feed and see a post with a caption in a language different to yours, you have the opportunity to ‘see translation’.
It is very interesting to look at Wikipedia’s home page as well. Although few of us would ever see it, since when we search a question Wikipedia tends to come up as one of the results, the Wikipedia homepage has multiple language options.
It is worth noting how English appears to be the dominant language, with “The Free Encyclopedia” being in English and also there being a lot more articles written in English. However it is very impressive how many articles there are available in multiple languages.
Some people argue however, that the number of languages spoken in the worlds is in decline. Fishman (1998) describes English as a “killer language” and claims that more than 80% of the content posted online is in English. Although this figure won’t be the same now it is an interesting take on the English language. Are people becoming lazy with learning new languages? Why bother learning a new language when the internet can translate everything for us?
The internet has the power to support or destroy endangered languages, by offering all these different translations on multiple media platforms do you think it is supporting or endangering languages?
Please comment to continue the discussion! 🙂
Rach's English Language and New Media Blog 