Musing on Brené, Adam, Fibs, Flames and Babble

The Curiosity Shop

I recently discovered The Curiosity Shop on YouTube. Here Brené Brown and Adam Grant hash out the details of emotions and of leadership. I like it.

Passing on traditions

Holding onto a language spoken at home might be essential or at least very helpful in passing on family tradition. This is important in the teaching and learning skills when the elder teaches the younger a craft. This is often in the kitchen. These processes help build up skills for fruitful dialog.

However, in passing on traditions, I find that that the old language is not that important. It is good to have the home language in this, but it is not needed. That needed is the joy and warmth of passing on traditions.

And grandparents fib! Or have repeated something so many times that they believe the stories. No, making Nutella is not a long-held Japanese tradition. Not every tool in grandpa's toolbox was invented by your ancestors.

And that is OK.

Hot Languages

What are the hottest languages?

I don't mean the most romantic, though that would be interesting to study.

Perhaps this includes the most spoken languages: English, mainland official Mandarin, Spanish, Hindi. Or maybe those in the UN. Languages used in international standards such as English and French should get some credit.

OK, OK. I'll give some points to those.

However, the fastest growing languages are those I consider hot:
English Portuguese Spanish French
Common Arabic Urdu Hindi
Swahili Nigerian Pidgin
Indonesian Mandarin Korean

Of course, the big languages, mainland/official Mandarin, English, Spanish and Hindi have the largest absolute growth, even if just by population growth. These are important for trade.

But, by percentages, Urdu (Pakistan, India) and then Indonesian are growing quickly. Maybe Swahili and Nigerian Pidgin are in there some place.

Entertainment is pushing Korean into a growth mode, one greater than Japanese.

Africa populations are growing and African trade is becoming important. The fastest growing languages there are Portuguese, French, Swahili and Nigerian Pidgin. And English, too; see below.

Common Arabic is like Hebrew in that it is a modern formed language based on an ancient language important in religion and tradition. This is a binding language and as Islam grows, so will this. People of the various Arabic languages tend to learn this.

Hindi pulls together many cultures and languages in fast growing India. It is growing faster than Mandarin.

Let's focus. Urdu, Indonesian, Hindi and French are the fastest growing native or official languages. Of second languages, Mandarin, Korean, Japanese, Portuguese and Arabic take the lead in students. But, of those languages that people really, really want to learn, English takes the lead.

More than half of all posts on social media are in English. Scientific and technical papers are foremost in English. People want to learn English worldwide. Parents want English as part of their children's education.

There is a downside. People coming from an Asian language find it hard to learn. Irregularities can be annoying stumbling blocks. Also, the popularity of English amplifies the baggage that comes with it in cultural wars.

Mika Stumble

Those who notice Mika posts on social media or have heard of the old name Tapa, have seen the thrashing caused by Dar Scott's dropping three phonemes requiring the change in name. Dar is scrambling to address the issues.