Internet killed the paperback star

[Dario de Judicibus]

An article published on my blog about how Internet is changing the way people look at the real world, and which is the risk: «Internet killed the paperback star»

Dario de Judicibus

PS: Article is in English language, blog in Italian one. Feel free to write your comments in English, Italian, French, or Spanish.

[Shelagh Watkins]

Interesting article Dario! The fact that you are writing in English seems to confirm that non-English speaking visitors to the Internet are being forced to adopt English if they want to communicate on the web.

[Dario de Judicibus]

Good point, Shelagh. Of course we communicate in our language too, but the Italian, French, or German blogspheres are a magnitude smaller that English one. Some are so small to be totally ignored by the rest of the web (Estonian, Czech, Slovenian, ...). This has a cascade effect. Since they are smaller, they are less interesting for companies. Since they are less interesting for companies, all Internet service providers focus on English language. For example, in Shelfari you cannot list your books if they were not published in an English speaking country, because they rely on Amazon databases to verify if book exists. Furthermore, a lot of countries are not used to digitize all available info, and the fact that a certain info is not searchable by Google is taking people to ignore it, to assume it does not exist or it is not true. People is using Google as a rating mechanism. Which is the most famous writer? That one who get more hits. So a great writer in Indonesia or Africa could be less important than a mostly unknown writer from Minnesota or Liverpool, if he/she does not write in English.

Of course a lot of people can write in English too, as a second language, buta non-English write will never be able to compete with a native English writer in his/her own language. So our culture, our lifestyle, our writing style, is getting to vanish. Internet ids English oriented, but it is not a matter of understanding the language: it is a social problem.

[Rainbow]

You could always ask then to start an Italian Amazon, hey that's quite a catchy name isn't it, come see the Italian Amazon, Rocky Balboa eat your heart out :-)

[Dario de Judicibus]

Well, apart that a company as Amazon does not decide to open a site in a country just because somebody asked for it [:-)], the problem is not Amazon, of course, but the fact that certain tools in the web, as Amazon or Google, acquired such a trusting to create a serious misunderstanding — not their fault, of course — that is, that any thing or person in real life should have a counterpart in the virtual one. This is getting more and more true for English speaking people, of course, especially because in USA people is digitizing mostly everything, but not necessarily true in other countries. It is a cultural problem. In some country there is no interest to digitize everything and in some case no wish. But the real world exist independently from the web, and we should be careful to avoid to consider the web the new box: if you see in the box, it must be true.

[Malcolm R. Campbell]

Very interesting and enjoyable post. So true. Thanks for sharing the link here.

Malcolm

[Pam Robertson]

Dario I really found your article fascinating. It is weird to me that English has become the language of the internet, although I suppose it has a lot to do with numbers and where the development has been focussed. As someone who reads a lot of English and has done a lot of non fiction editing (my grandmother was born in Italy, so I count myself as partly Italian), there are many English as a second language speakers who write better in English than native speakers do.
Thanks for sharing it here.

[Dario de Judicibus]

English itself is not the problem. Every year dozens of languages disappear. It is life. Probably in future few billions of people will speak a mix of English and Spanish with some Italian, French, or German world inside, whereas the rest of the world will speak Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and few other languages. The point is not the language but the cultural values. As in Nature biodiversity is a richness, a value, so it is cultural difference in society. We are all different, and this is very important. Globalisation should mean to share cultural values, not to flatten the world on a single culture. Languages are the vehicles to share cultural values, and when a language dies, some value dies too. An example is Wikipedia: the Italian, French, German, etc... wikipedias contains a lot of articles about minor English personalities, whereas the English wikipedia accepts only big foreign personalities in its pages.

[Pam Robertson]

I wasn't thinking that English was a problem per se. Just that it interesting that it is dominating so much of the internet, when there are many more people in the world who speak other languages. As a student of linguistics, I certainly agree that the world languages are headed in something like the direction that you describe. I think my fear too is the flattening that you describe; we live in a world that is made of such a rich tapestry, it would be sad to see it change into something that is no longer rich or so beautifully textured.

[Dario de Judicibus]

Well, English is dominating because most of the technology and economical resources on which Internet is based are originated in USA. I would say that American language is dominating. There is probably less British language in the web than French one... ;-)

[Pam Robertson]

You're right Dario-it is American English that is dominating, not British English. Personally I would prefer British English, which is the same as Canadian English because then I would not have to Americanize the writing that I do. Colour would not have to be flipped to color, neighbour would not be neighbor and so on.
But it keeps life interesting! :o)

[Shelagh Watkins]

In comparison to other languages, English, estimated to currently have 995,000 words, has grown more extensively, with Spanish having 275,000 and French with 100,000.

Unlike Latin, a dead language that is the basis of most of the European languages, modern day languages that are still in use today continue to grow and evolve. English is the living language that is growing more rapildly than any other European language in use on the net -- now almost a million words.

Over the centuries, England has been ruled by the Romans, the Vikings, the Germans and Danes (Anglo-Saxons) and the French. The English language is so rich because of these invasions. In return, Britain has given the world the English language, which continues to grow and change daily.

To say that American spelling makes English into a different language is to disregard its origins. The spelling of the English language has changed many times over the years but the language is a still, quintessentially, English.

If American spelling is adopted, it doesn't Americanise the English language any more than did the adoption of French and German words into the language. English is, and will remain, a mongrel language.

[Pam Robertson]

I see where you are coming from Shelagh, however, I also think that one essential factor that cannot be ignored is the power of language evolution through dialect preference, which influences spelling. Although remarkably similar and having the same roots is unquestionable, some features of American English-- pronunciation and spelling in particular have evolved distinctly apart from British English and so there are distinct differences. This is no different to how Canadian French has evolved to be quite different from the French spoken in France, despite the fact that they started out in the same place. I don't think that is a bad thing to note the way that languages evolve,but it is fascinating, and when we adapt manuscripts for publication, we do refer to tailoring according to "American English" or the "Queen's English". It's still English, but different. I cannot use words like chesterfield, cheque, toque or pop if I am writing for an American market. I have to substitute sofa, check, knitted cap and soda. But it's fun, non? :o)