The second most spoken language in the world and the lingua franca in

many professions, English is a culturally rich, exciting field of study, with

some 380 million native speakers. Only Chinese and Hindi have more native
speakers while Spanish is similar in number. English is also the dominant
member of the Germanic languages. It has lingua franca status in many parts
of the world, due to the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural
influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and
that of the United States from the early 20th century to the present.

Through the global influence of native English speakers in cinema, music,

broadcasting, science, and the Internet in recent decades, English is now the
most widely learned second language in the world, although other colonial
languages such as French and Spanish retain much importance worldwide.

Globalization is creating a rapidly increasing demand for engineers who

have the ability to deal effectively with professionals from other cultures and
countries. The english language is de-facto standard in cross national
communication between engineers.

For non-native English users, English is very important because it is widely

spoken all around the world. Knowing English allows people to enjoy their
life and work no matter where they are. For engineering students whose
mother tongue is not English, mastering English is even more important, not
only for their academic life but also for their prospective career.

In order to master the engineering knowledge and skills better, engineering

students should own the English language competence. Most of the
scientific papers or journals in the world are written in English.  Most of the
engineering graphs are also marked in English. Moreover, most engineering
professors in various universities are also conducting their lectures in
English. Hence, engineering students should at least master the basic English
ability to deal with the countless English lectures, tutorials, labs, projects
and papers. Finally, they have to submit their important theses, still in
English.
When engineering students graduate from the college and become real
engineers, they will find that English appears even more crucial than it used
to be.  Engineers usually work in groups since their task can seldom be
solved by an individual. The property of their work determines that being an
engineer needs to cooperate and communicate with different people from
different part of the world. For non-native English speakers, unfortunately,
most of the engineers speak English as the first language or the working
language. In order to understand and coordinate with their colleagues and
accomplish their projects fluently, engineers have to speak good English.

All in all, non-native English engineering students should try hard to

improve their English ability, which could help to make both their school
life and career more successful and enjoyable.

A: If you are an engineer, you have to write reports that other people can
understand. 

Engineering students of English, as other ESP students, have special needs;

they have a general knowledge of the English Language, but require specific
training in English, mainly as regards specific vocabulary and functional
language for special professional situations they may encounter in their
future careers. However, it is sometimes very difficult for teachers of
English to recognize their specific needs, as generally speaking, these
teachers were not trained in technical English and find it hard to choose
material and to decide on which linguistic functions and grammatical points
they will have to focus on. As their teacher, we have some premises about
their needs and we try to carry out a schedule which may fulfil those
potential needs we guess they will have. However, there is a chance that we
are wrong, that their expectations do not match our guesses. The aim of this
paper is to present these students' needs and attitudes. Finding out the
students' attitudes towards the language and their ideas concerning the needs
they may have is a crucial starting point for the teacher to prepare the
material which the class will find interesting and relevant.
In order to study the students' attitudes towards English and the needs they
think they have, a survey was carried out amongst students who studied
English in their degree in the past two years as well as those who are
studying this subject during the present academic year. The survey was
analysed to study our main concerns in this paper: student needs and
attitudes.

What Computer Science could borrow from the English class

There is something that I have noticed about students studying for Computer
Science tests, especially at the high school level – it seems that many study
to pass the test, but not to understand the concepts involved. It’s a
ridiculous scene – watching students pace down the hallway before an exam,
reciting bubble sort (and if they make it to University, linked list patterns) as
poetry. And while I would also argue that computer programming has
certain poetic features to it, such static regurgitation of a memorized fact
serves little practical value.

Programming is poetry. Computer programming is a creative expression of

unambiguous logical thought. Such expression is bound by the limits of the
language’s syntax as much as English poetry is bound by the rhyming
vocabulary of the written language.Though when it comes to English, the
poems are not simply recited, but analyzed and discussed as well. The latter
points seem to lack in the computer science classrooms.

It seems that technical content takes preference over creativity and logic –
pillar fundamentals of computer science. When students concentrate on
memorizing oddities of specific syntax structure, the larger picture of a
concept behind the coded expression is being lost. The situation arises from
students’ lack of complete understanding of the complex and strict
languages, frustration of getting things to work “just right”, and is re-
enforced by cookie-cutter technical assignments and tests. Some simply give
up, memorize the pattern that they are told will be on the test, and… pass.
Decent grades paint a very misleading picture of classroom’s achievements.

So what could be done? Clayton weighted in with his articles on Keeping

students interested in Computer Science and part two. In the latter post,
he talked about challenging oneself with some programming contests, and
that is actually an excellent measure of understanding. I have seen a
promising student carry a solid 90% average in the computer science class,
yet showed an unexpectedly poor performance during the Canadian
Computing Competition when the non-trivial questions took him out of the
classroom’s comfort zone.

Computer Science classrooms absolutely should borrow from the English

class. Encourage creativity and logic outside of the technical frustrations.
English language is fairly forgiving, such that spelling and grammar
mistakes still allow for an insightful paper to be produced. Programming
assignments should be more like essays – much more free form, much more
creative, with analysis and discussion. Programming is only the practical
application of the material, we should concentrate on
the science and art parts of the subject.

University assignments that ask to write a “program” via filling out the
function stubs provided by TAs carry as much utility as spelling tests we
used to have in the elementary school. It’s time for computer science to
grow up.

discuse

I think that the main reason that people are able to perform in the free-
er environment of english assignments is not because of a fundamental
difference in the subject matter. I think that it is instead caused by the
student’s exposure to the subject matter up to that point.

By the time some people get to their first class CompSci class, they might
never have written code before. Compare this to english class where you
only get to write essays after you have been exposed to the material for
years. It takes you 10 years (or so I can’t be bothered actually figuring it out)
of speaking english before you just get to the point of being able to begin
writing complicated, well-reasoned essays.

Computer Science might seem like it is in it’s early childhood, but that’s
because by the time you’ve finished College you’ve learned the alphabet and
you can use three-syllable words without your brain melting (to juxtapose
the two fields). You are by no means William Shakespeare yet.

Wrote-learning (Rote?) is rampant in most fields. It really exposes someone

who is more concerned with getting the grades (so they can brag, get the
high $’s, justify themselves to their parents, etc.) than they are with learning
the material. You will have a hard time getting them excited about CS again.
It all comes back to the previous post about making CompSci fun and
exciting I guess.

When we think of the impact that computers and the internet have had on
the use of the English language, it often brings to mind the nightmares borne
of the scummy posts between bulletin-boarders in the 1980's, when a 2800
baud modem was considered hotrod, and hacking could be done with a
homebuilt box of components, a couple of screwdrivers, and a payphone. It
brings to mind the controversy around the effect spellcheckers have had on
the thought processes that allow us to actually understand how to spell
words, and makes us really question how much these modern conveniences
of thought and communication have contributed to the apparent degradation
of grammar and spelling in type, a medium that was previously considered
the arena of professionals well versed in the intricate workings of the
English language but which has since become less exclusive.

But in those pioneering days of the silicon microchip, the internet was a
more tangible thing, a fiberoptic spiderweb flowing from telephone to
telephone that directly connected people to one another, no matter the
distance, instead of a network depending upon the service providers of today
to route information through some globally accessible string of computer
hardware shared by everyone. There was a sort of odd, stifling privacy in
those days, but also a cave-like darkness that had yet to be explored, with
individuals shuffling slowly toward one another, their words little more than
luminescent green text appearing across shaky, grey-black screens, and the
name of the shadowy, almost legendary monster hiding in their midst on the
lips of everyone, cyber-savvy or not: "Hacker." He was the man who had all
the codes, all those secret ten-digit phone numbers that would give him
access to everything from the credit card accounts of the recently dead to the
power bills of friends and relatives and everything in between.

Those were the days that first left us questioning the effect that computers
(and later the internet) have had and will have on the common man's use and
understanding of the English language, and the question hasn't really gone
away. But then, consider a typical 90's sentence roaring through cyberspace
with all the blunt elegance of "Sup d00dz!1! 1337 lol! I juz haxx0rd teh
p0wer c0! lolz0rz!" or the more contemporary (and grammatically speaking,
far more stable) equivalent: "Heyo lol i totaly just like downloded taht new
harbl movie lol." With language like that (and worse) showing up in print on
public domains, people start to wonder where society went wrong- is it
unreasonable to expect at least a fifth grade understanding of the English
language from the hordes of people with access to a computer and the
internet, some of whom actually hold college degrees?

But perhaps things aren't all that bad. Let's take a look at the other side of
things- consider the fact that computers are now a recognized and accepted
part of education in modern day, first-world countries. We tend to overlook
the fact that college requires the use of a computer for research and the
creation of essays and projects, or that some universities require the students
to bring laptop computers to class, but nothing is taken so much for granted
as the fact that, being almost wholly text-based, computers (and the larger
body of the internet) absolutely require reading skills to operate and
navigate!

Beyond that, consider all that the denizens of the internet have done to
promote literacy- Online writing workshops, guilds, and even reading
assistance pages litter nearly every corner of the world wide web, and many
famous works of literature are freely available online if you know where to
look, from Mary Shelley'sFrankenstien and Joseph Conrad'sHeart of
Darkness to the works of William Gibson or Albert Einstein and Niccolo
Machiavelli. Publishing companies, from the large, universally accepted and
ultimately exclusive kind to the smaller, homebrewed variety that cling to
life and desperately seek out new writers to boost their notoriety work hard
to saturate the web with the written word. Intelligent and intellectually deep
material shows up regularly in long diatribes and short, meandering strings
on hundreds of thousands of websites across the globe every day, and E-
zines and E-books are everywhere, ranging from the fine and professional to
the grammatically lacking and pointless sores of putrid and festering quasi-
english that infest the internet like a literary plague. Online references, like
the easily remembered "Dictionary.com" and its sister sites, or
encyclopedias like Wikipedia make information about almost anything both
easily accessible and usually presented in terms that are easy to understand
without having to sacrifice much, if any, critical detail or feeling.

So where's the problem then? Well, perhaps it's in the way we're conditioned
to think. Consider that perhaps one of the most frustrating things to the
reading adult in our modern society is abundances of obvious flow and
grammatical errors in the things we read. We're so used to everything
written professionally being typed, and everything typed being
professionally written, so our minds have become accustomed to this notion,
and errors throw the average reader for a loop. Logically speaking, it makes
sense, right? We pick up our favorite newspapers, magazines, novels and, if
we're looking, we'll see probably two or three errors in every hundred pages
or so (that's roughly 1 in 17000 words for market paperbacks.) But if we leaf
through the myriad posts of an online blog or a discussion forum, the more
reserved and "grammar-conscious" of us find ourselves balking at the
frequency of minor errors that could be eliminated by a quick once-over
glance at the material in question before it's sent or posted.

Perhaps this viewpoint also stems from the fact that typed text typically
requires a machine to be properly done, (whether it be a typewriter or a
computer,) because, in a way, machines are seen as being superior to the
fleshy elegance of humanity. After all, we don't expect perfection of spelling
or grammar in the mad scribbles of a physician, the love-notes we find
wedged in the strangest (and yet always most familiar) places by our own
special someone, or the handwritten letters we get from highschool students
or children studying abroad. Not convinced? Consider any science fiction
film or television show- the machine is always far more capable, advanced,
and less likely to make mistakes than the actors. As a society, we've grown
to accept this odd fact, we've almost been conditioned by various forms of
media to believe that machines have been programmed not exactly to be
perfect, but to be somewhat above the human mind in their analytical
capacity. To err is human, as the saying goes, but we expect better from the
clearly legible etches left on the amorphous walls of cyberspace by the
millions upon millions of individuals that go tracking through its depths
every day. After all, how hard is it to use a spellchecker, right?

So while the tainted waters of the internet continue to pump the usual mix of
pristine, clear knowledge and raw sewage into our computers, the debate
rages on amidst it all. Will computers and the internet be the grammar and
spelling's saving grace, or will they ultimately prove to be the shadowy
specters caught holding the axe when the written word falls before the
relentless drumbeat of human progress? It all comes down to how we use the
technology at our disposal, and the example we set for future generations.
With great responsibility comes great power; our choices today shape the
realities of tomorrow, and with a little work and perhaps a little luck, we'll
see the dawn of a new age of literacy and clarity of thought, and an
intellectual reawakening unlike anything the world has seen before.

wiki

n many languages, Greek and Latin roots constitute an important part of the
scientific vocabulary. This is especially true for the terms referring to fields
of science. For example, the equivalent words
formathematics, physics, chemistry, geology, and genealogy are roughly the
same in many languages. As for computer science, numerous words in many
languages are from American English, and the vocabulary can evolve very
quickly. An exception to this trend is the word referring to computer science
itself, which in many European languages is roughly the same as the
English informatics: German: Informatik; French: informatique; Spanish,
Italian, and Portuguese: informática; Polish:informatyka.[citation needed]

internet

In spite of the growth of internet in various language.English is the

mainstay` of the Internet user.This is the language in which most of the
information and Website are available.It is very difficult to translate each
and every relevent webpage into the language of various countries.With
Internet becoming very important in E Commerce and also in
education,English language is bound to grow.

You need to be able to communicate effectively with your

colleagues. Try writing 100+ pages of documentation full of
spelling and grammar errors and you'll get lots of emails and
phone calls by people trying to make sense of what you
wrote

Presentation skills: This is not a computer science skill,

but this is one of the most important skills that computer
science students are missing. You must treat presentation as
equally important, or more important than your program,
design, and algorithms. And you must spend as much time
learning presentation (from books, in classes, and in
practice) as you spent on programming languages, and
computer science subjects. I’m sure you haven’t done that,
hence this item in my list. You should know how to write
well. Not just papers and documents, but much more
importantly, emails, and blog posts, and facebook wall
postings, and tweets. You must think about what the
user/reader/client wants to know (instead of what you know
and want to tell). And of course, you must know how to
speak well. How to tell a story instead of listing some arcane
facts about your work. How to leave out stuff that you find
extremely interesting, but the listener doesn’t.

English - the universal language on the Internet?

Abstract
Generally speaking, English is the universal language on the Internet, but it
has no official status, and it will never have. The reasons for the position of
English are the imperialism and economical and political importance of
English-speaking countries. Linguistically, English is extremely unsuitable
for international communication, and the actual wide use of English tends to
polarize the world into Internet users and Internet illiterates.

The position of English can only be altered by major world-scale political

and economical changes, such as increasing importance of the European
Union or a coalition between Japan and China. Such powers might wish and
be able to promote a language other than English, possibly a constructed
language, for international communication.

Alternatively, or in addition to this, the technology of machine translation

may allow people to use their own language in international communication.

Table of Contents
 Preface
 The current situation
 Why is it so?
 Effects of the importance of the Internet and English
 An official language for the Internet?
 But can things change?
 Is English a suitable universal language?
 A constructed international language?
 An alternative: machine translation
 Final remarks
Preface
The impulse to writing this article was a discussion in the
newsgroup sci.lang. The original question was "whether or not English
should be made the universal language of the internet".

As several people remarked, English essentially is the universal language of

the Internet. Nevertheless, the question, appropriately interpreted and
elaborated, is worth a more delicate treatment.

I had previously discussed related themes in my article Internet muuttaa

maailman 2 (The Internet changes the world 2, in Finnish). Here I present
some of those ideas in English and develop them a bit further.
The current situation
In general, the universal language on the Internet is English, or more exactly
a vague collection of languages called "English" because their common
origin is the national language spoken in England by the English. That
national language has spread over the world, and several variants such as
American (US) English, Australian English, etc exist. A great number of
people whose native language is none of the variants know English as a
foreign language. They typically use a more or less simplified variant, e.g.
excluding most of the idioms of British, American, Australian etc English.
Of course, they make mistakes, and sometimes the "English" used by people
as a foreign language on the Internet is almost incomprehensible to anyone
else. In addition, people who use English as their native language do not
know how to spell difficult words, since they basically know English as a
spoken language.

Thus, roughly speaking, the universal language of the Internet is clumsy,

coarse and misspelled "English".

There are exceptions, most importantly national newsgroups in such

countries where English is not the native language of the majority. Even in
such groups English is used, for instance when people from other countries
wish to participate. And a few international groups have a theme like
discussing a particular language or culture so that it is natural to assume that
the participants have a common language other than English. Moreover, a
group which is partly international in the sense of not being purely national
might use a language other than English, for instance if the group is intended
for people in German-speaking countries.

Why is it so?
Generally speaking, when a languages has got the position of a universal
language, the position tends to be affirmed and extended by itself. Since
"everyone" knows and uses English, people are almost forced to learn
English and use it, and learn it better.

Even if you expect the majority of your readers to understand your native
language, you may be tempted to use English when writing e.g. about
research work. Usually researchers all over the world know English and use
it a lot, and often the relevant terminology is more stable and well-known in
English than in your own language. Thus, to maximize the number of
interested people that can understand your text, you often select English
even if the great majority of your readers have the same native language as
you. Alternatively, you might write your texts both in your native language
and in English, but this doubles the work needed for writing your document
and possibly maintaining it. The maintenance problem is especially
important for documents on the World Wide Web - the information system
where one crucial feature is the ability to keep things really up to date.
Consequently, the use of English in essentially national contexts tends to
grow.

In the news system, the position of English in most international groups is

regarded as so obvious that people who post non-English articles to such
groups - by accident or by ignorance - typically get flamed quickly. This is
the sort of control that newsgroup communities exercise in other matters
than language, too. It is often regarded as an example of the "democratic"
nature of the news system. However, things are changing fast. The flame
control - i.e. control by flaming - has worked to a great extent because
people have had relatively compatible status, background, and values of life.
The time has come - childhood's end for the Internet - when we will see
more and more people and organizations who pay little attention to flames
and netiquette. The increasing amount of spamming is just one indication of
this. But these general remarks hardly apply to the status of English.

By the way, when people post articles to international groups in their own
languages, the reason is typically novice users' ignorance of basic facts about
the news system. People start posting articles before they have read what is
generally written to the group. One thing that causes this happen relatively
often that there is no easily accessible and useable list of groups together
with their content descriptions, and typically content descriptions do not
explicitely state what language(s) should be used in the group.

The universal language position, once gained, tends to be strong. But how is
such a position gained?

During the history of mankind, there have been several more or less
universal languages or lingua francas, such as Latin (and Greek) in the
Roman empire, mediaeval Latin in Western Europe, later French and
English. Universality is of course relative; it means universality in the
"known world" or "civilized world", or just in a large empire. No language
has been really universal (global), but the current position of English comes
closest. The position of a universal language has always been gained as a by-
product of some sort of imperialism: a nation has conquered a large area and
more or less assimilated it into its own culture, including language, thus
forming an empire. Usually the language of the conquerer has become the
language of the state and the upper class first, then possibly spread over the
society, sometimes almost wiping out the original languages of the
conquered areas. Sometimes - especially in the Middle Ages - the
imperialism has had a definite cultural and religious nature which may have
been more important than brute military and economic force.

As regards to the English language, it would have remained as a national

language of the English, had it not happened so that the English first
conquered the rest of the British Isles, then many other parts of the world.
Later, some English colonies in a relatively small part of America rebelled,
formed the United States of America, and expanded a lot. They formed a
federal state where a variant of the English language was one of the few
really uniting factors. And that federal state became, as we all know, wealthy
and important. It also exercised traditional imperialism, but more
importantly it gained a very important role in world economy and politics.
Whether you call the US influence imperialism or neo-imperialism is a
matter of opinion, but it certainly has similar effects on maintaining and
expanding the use of English as classical imperialism.

This probably sounds like political criticism, but it is intended to be

descriptive only. Personally, I do not regard imperialism as an incarnation of
the Evil; it has had both positive and negative effects, and in many cases
imperialism has been a necessary step from chaos to civilization.

Effects of the importance of the Internet and English

The importance of the Internet grows rapidly in all fields of human life,
including not only research and education but also marketing and trade as
well as entertainment and hobbies. This implies that it becomes more and
more important to know how to use Internet services and, as a part of this, to
read and write English.

Of course, the majority of mankind cannot use the Internet nowadays or in

the near future, since they live in countries which lack the necessary
economical and technological infrastructure. But the Internet causes
polarization in developed countries, too: people are divided into Internet
users and Internet illiterates, and as the use of the Internet grows and often
replaces traditional methods of communication, the illiterates may find
themselves in an awkward position.

In general, it is easy to learn to use Internet services. The worst problems of

Internet illiteracy are, in addition to lack of economical resources of course,
wrong attitudes. Older people are usually not accustomed to live in a world
of continuous and rapid change, and they may not realize the importance of
the Internet or the easiness of learning to use it.

But although Internet services themselves are, generally speaking, easy to

learn and use, you will find yourself isolated on the Internet if you are not
familiar with English. This means that knowledge or lack of knowledge of
English is one of the most severe factors that cause polarization. Learning to
use a new Internet service or user interface may take a few hours, a few
days, or even weeks, but it takes years to learn a language so that you can
use it in a fluent and self-confident manner. Of course, when you know some
English, you can learn more just by using it on the Internet, but at least
currently the general tendency among Internet users is to discourage people
in their problems with the English language. Incorrect English causes a few
flames much more probably than encouragement and friendly advice.

In different countries and cultures, English has different positions. There are
countries where English is the native language of the majority, there are
countries where English is a widely known second language, and there are
countries where English has no special position. These differences add to the
above-mentioned polarization. Specifically, it is difficult for people in
previous colonies of other countries than Great Britain (e.g. France, Spain,
the Netherlands) to adapt to the necessity of learning English. Locally, it
may be necessary to learn the language of the previous colonial power since
it is often an official language and the common language of educated people;
globally, English is necessary for living on the Internet. And the more
languages you have to learn well, the less time and energy you will have for
learning other things.

An official language for the Internet?

There is no conceivable way in which any authority could define an official
language for the Internet. The Internet as a whole is not controlled by
anyone or anything, and this could only change if, by miracle, all countries
made an agreement on it or if the entire world were taken to the control of
one government.
Thus, if the question "whether or not English should be made the universal
language of the internet" is interpreted as concerning the official status of
English, the answer is simply that English, or any other language, cannot be
made the official universal language. It is fruitless to ask whether an
impossible thing should be made.

But can things change?

Things can change, and they actually do, often with unpredictable speed.
The rapid fall of the Soviet empire - including the loss of the role of Russian
as a "universal" language within in - is a recent indication of this.

English can lose its position as a widely used (although not official)
universal language in two ways. Either a new empire emerges and its
language becomes universal, or a constructed language becomes very
popular. I believe most people regard both of these alternatives as extremely
improbable, if not impossible. Perhaps they are right, perhaps not.

I can see two possible empires to emerge: the European Union and a yet
nonexistent Japanese-Chinese empire.

The European Union (EU) is an existing formation which is, at least

according to its own doctrine, moving towards federalism. In many respects,
the European Union already is a federal state, with less independence and
autonomy for its constituents than the states have in the United States.
Although people may present the EU as the successor of previous empires
such as the Roman empire and the empire of Charlemagne, it is quite
possible that the EU never becomes a real empire, since it seems to be
inherently bureaucratic. Every empire needs a bureaucracy, of course, to
promote the aims of its ruler(s), but the EU lacks true rulers. But if the EU
ever becomes a true empire with prominent role in the world, the language
of the empire will hardly be any of the national languages in the EU, except
possibly English. It is more probable that the builders of the empire will
realize the need for a relatively neutral universal language, and adopt
Esperanto or some other constructed language for official purposes. In fact,
such a choice would be extremely rational at the present stage of the EU,
since now a considerable portion of EU expenses are used for translation and
interpretation between the official languages of the EU. A single official
language of the EU might or might not be adopted by people worldwide as a
universal language for everyday communication, including communication
on the Internet.
Japan is probably too small, both as a country and as a nation, to create an
empire with its own forces, despite its flourishing technology and economy
and efficient social organization. But its potential combined with the vast
human and other resources of China would certainly constitute a basis for an
empire that succesfully competes with the United States and the European
Union, even if latter powers were (economically) strongly allied. Both Japan
and China would have a lot to gain from intensive mutual cooperation, or
alliance, confederation, or federation.

A Japanese-Chinese empire would have a difficult choice of language. It

might decide to accept the role of English as a universal language, both for
continuity and for the reason that selecting either Japanese or Chinese
(Mandarin) would set the Japanese-Chinese union at stake. Alternatively, it
might seriously consider using a constructed language - most probably not
Esperanto but a language which is culturally more neutral, i.e. not
dominantly Indo-European, for instance something like Loglan or Lojban.

Is English a suitable universal language?

Apart from being widely used and known, English is extremely unsuitable as
a universal language. There are several reasons to this.

Any national language, i.e. a language which is or was originally the

language of a particular tribe or nation, has obvious defects when used for
international communication:

 Native speakers of the language are in a quite different position than

others. Some people regard this as bad in itself, as contrary to the
equality principle, but I think it is practical consequences that make it
bad. Native speakers tend to use idioms and rare words and to speak
too fast, unless they exercise conscious control over their language - and
such control is difficult and unnatural when applied to one's mother
tongue. This implies that in oral communication in particular native
speakers of English often have worse problems in getting themselves
correctly understood than nonnative speakers!
 National languages exist in various dialects and forms - sometimes
they are even mutually unintelligible, but the differences always make
communication harder. There is usually no standard for a national
language, and even if something that can be called standard exists, it is
just one form of the language - typically a form that is only used by a
 minority, and even by it only in a minority of occasions. For a native
speaker of a language, it is natural to use one's own dialect, and it is
difficult to avoid this entirely; this emphasizes the importance of the
above-mentioned problem of native speakers expressing themselves in
international contexts.
 When you learn your native language in your childhood, you learn it
by listening to and talking with people who have it as their native
language. First they know it much better than you, later equally well.
Thus it is very natural human behaviour to use your native language
with the unconscious but strong assumption that the listener or reader
knows the language to the same or even higher extent than you. In
international contexts, this built-in assumption is almost always false,
and this has severe consequences. For instance, we tend to regard
people as stupid or ignorant if they do not understand normal language;
this deep-rooted tendency is present even if our conscious mind
understands the situation correctly.
 A national language carries with it the history of the nation. For
instance, words and phrases have got, in addition to their dictionary
meanings, connotations, colours and associations. This is an important
cultural phenomenon which helps in keeping the nation a nation, but in
international communication it is a burden.
 National languages have originally evolved as spoken languages.
When written national languages originated, they were usually formed
on the basis of the dialect of the capital or other important area, with
the aim of creating a language which supports the creation of a unified
nation. Thus, the very origin of a national language is in a sense
nationalistic, not internationalistic.
 Due to their long history, national languages have historical relics and
features which make them illogical and irrational, such as grammatical
gender or irregular forms. Moreover, being originally spoken languages,
they lack sufficient tools for expressing things in an exact, unambiguous
manner; and the need for such expression is immense and growing,
especially in the areas of law and contracts, technology and technical
descriptions, and science.
These remarks apply to English, too, and especially to English. One of the
worst relics of English is the orthography. English has a very rich repertoire
of idioms, and it typically has several words which have the same basic
meaning but different connotations and stylistic value. Especially in
international contexts you can never know what words mean to people with
different backgrounds. Thus, you may occasionally get your basic message
understood in some way, but you cannot tell in which way. This is of course
an inherent problem in all human communication, but the nature of English
makes it a really big problem.

English is an eclectic language which tends to borrow words from other

languages instead of constructing words for new concepts from older words
with derivation or word composition. People often say that English has a
rich vocabulary as if it were something to be proud of. The richness of the
vocabulary results basically from word borrowing and implies that words for
related concepts are typically not related to each other in any obvious,
regular manner. Word borrowing makes a language more international in
one sense, but in the essential sense it makes it less suitable for international
communication, since learning the vocabulary is more difficult.

A constructed international language?

The discussion above shows that it would be highly desirable to have
a constructed language for international communication. It is well known
that a large number of attempts to that effect have been made, with little
results. Advocates of the basic idea have hardly agreed on anything but the
basic idea, and most constructed languages have had no use as a language.
People who strongly support the idea have typically designed their own
proposal, a perfect language, and they do not want accept anything that is
not perfect - "best" is the worst enemy of "good".

The very idea is not inherently unrealistic, but it can only be realized if
strong economical and political interests are involved, such as the intended
creation of a European or Japanese-Chinese empire. The best that the
advocates of a constructed international language can wish is that such
empires emerge and that the United States remain as an important power, so
that the world will have a few strong empires which cannot beat each other
but must live in parallel and in cooperation. In such a situation, it might turn
out that it is unrealistic not to agree on a common language which is not any
of the national languages.

The role of the Internet in this hypothetical development would be to create

the informational infrastructure for the discussion of the construction of the
language, the very construction work, spreading out information about the
language, the use of the language, and continuous development of the
language. Most probably the language would first be used in parallel with
English, and the initial use would be for such purposes like international
agreements where national languages are clearly insufficient. For instance, if
you need to formulate an agreement between two countries, you definitely
need a neutral common language instead of having the text in two languages,
each text allowing its own interpretations.

An alternative: machine translation

An alternative view of the future is that after a few years or decades, no
universal language is needed: machine translation will allow you to use your
own language. If the machine translation tools had sufficient quality and
speed, you could sit on your terminal writing your news article or an IRC
message in, say, Finnish, and another person in New Zealand would read
your text in English, due to automatic translation "on the fly".

During the last few decades, quite a lot of predictions and even promises
have been presented regarding machine translation, but useful software and
systems for it have not been available until recently. This has caused
disappointments and pessimism to the extent that many people consider
machine translation as definitely unrealistic.

Actually, machine translation is operational for a wide range of texts,

although corrective actions by human translators may be necessary.
Corrections are needed to resolve ambiguities which exist due to the
limitations of the software and to fix errors caused by the fact that translation
of human languages requires extralinguistic information.

Assumably fully automatic correct translation will never be possible.

However, this does not exclude the possibility of using it extensively. It only
means that we must be prepared to accept a risk - decreasing by advances in
technology, but never reaching zero - of translation errors. Such risks exist
when human translators are used, too, and in many respects automatic
translation can be more reliable. Both human beings and computer programs
err, in different ways.

In addition to the advancement of translation techniques, there are several

ways in which the risk of errors in automatic translation can be decreased:
 avoiding ambiguities in the source language: people can try to write
their texts so that they are more easily tractable by translation programs
 checking the translations: a person who has written a text in his
native language may run it through a translation program, check and
correct the result, and provide the "authorized" translation together
with the source text; although it is usually not feasible to do this for
several target languages, the authorized translation (typically, to
English) can be used by translation programs for checking purposes: if
translations from the original source and the authorized translation yield
different results, this fact should be signalled to the user
 warnings: in general, problematic fragments of texts like those
obviously allowing different syntactic analyses, can be signalled to the
user - i.e. to the author, to the reader, or both.
Currently the operational machine translation software is essentially based
on syntactic analysis, so that semantic information is implicit in the
dictionaries used by the software. An alternative approach, based on some
kind of semantic analysis in addition to syntax, does not appear to be
practically applicable yet.

Final remarks
Machine translation and constructed international languages are alternative
but not mutually exclusive solutions to the problem of communication
between people with different native languages. They can be combined in
several ways.

A constructed language might form the basis of a semantics-oriented

machine translation system. It could be used as an intermediate language,
thus reducing the problem of making m*n translators from mlanguages
to n languages into the problem of making m+n translators.

A constructed language, specifically designed to allow exact and

unambiguous expression, might also be more suitable than English to the
role of the language of "authorized" translations.

The Effect of Computer Technology on the Design of Artificial

Languages
Preface
The design of artificial languages such as Esperanto is commonly regarded
as fruitless effort, since they do not tend to gain much popularity. However,
the objective need for them is very great and increasing. Computers and
information technology have made it possible to process languages
automatically. Automatic translation is one aspect of this, and it would
benefit from the use of a clearly defined and structured intermediate
language. Even more important aspects are the automatic conversion of
texts from spoken form to a written one and vice versa and the need for a
suitable language that could be used in man-machine interaction. It would
be ideal to use a well-designed language (with the expressive power of
natural languages) or subsets of it as control languages of computer
programs.

Computers can be programmed to process complicated and irregular

languages, but the computational efficiency is a very important issue, since
we wish to process large amounts of text (or speech) and since the
processing inherently requires resources which are large even compared with
the capabilities of modern computers. For instance, World Wide Web search
engines operate on very large and rapidly growing amount of textual
information.

This paper will mainly discuss the effect of computer technology on the
design of artificial languages. There are, of course, many other aspects,
which will be discussed only briefly.

Definability
A language suitable for automatic processing should be defined formally as
far as possible. A formal description of the syntax as well as would make it
easier to write software for both analyzing and generating the language. An
official dictionary should use a rigorously defined formalism to indicate
properties of words such as classes of words and transitiveness of verbs.
Ideally, a subset of the language itself should act as the metalanguage.
Some features of semantics could be defined formally. This applies in
particular to the meanings of derivative suffixes: they should be expressed
using a notation which specifies the meaning using an analytic expression.

Modularity
In compiler technology it is customary to make a clear distinction
between lexical, syntactic, and semantic analysis. This approach should be
applied to the construction of an artificial language:

 the mapping between letters and phonemes should be independent

of other features of the language, such as the grammar and the
meanings of the words
 it should be possible to analyze a sentence grammatically without
any lexical knowledge; this is important both for computer
processing and for human beings (who can benefit from knowing the
grammatical role of a word without knowing its meaning).

Alphabet
Texts are produced, transmitted, and recorded using computers to a rapidly
increasing amount. The most common character set is still ASCII, which
contains the English letters (A - Z, a - z) and some punctuation and special
characters. Although wider character sets have been defined and
standardized, general support for them cannot yet be assumed to exist.

Thus, the alphabet for an artificial language should be the English alphabet
or a subset of it, without any diacritic marks.

Phonetics
Automatic generation and recognition of speech are technically possible
now, and future development will make them economically feasible in a
large number of applications soon. The effort needed to generate and
especially to recognize speech strongly depends on the regularity of the
phonetic structure of the language.

The following features are desirable:

 one-to-one correspondence between phonemes and letters

  regular stressing, preferably such that the first syllable is stressed,
since this makes it easier to separate words in speech recognition.

The normal principle in modern Indo-European languages is that the vowel

of an open stressed syllable is somewhat longer than other vowels, and
there is no technical objection to this. It provides additional support for
distinguishing the stressed syllable of a word and is easy to generate.
However, since the stressed syllable is the first one, this would lead to
unfamiliar pronunciation of familiar words in many cases.

Grammatical categories
Let us first consider the need for grammatical categories such as number,
gender, and tenses, without yet considering how they are to be expressed.

Grammatical gender is definitely an atavistic feature. It is even undesirable

to have to express the natural sex of a being unless it is relevant in the
context. For example, there should be a neutral (or more exactly "utral")
pronoun that covers both "he" and "she".

Number is astonishingly often an unnecessary or even harmful category.

Consider how often one has to say something like "one or more" if one
wants to be exact. And consider how often number is specified by other than
grammatical methods; in a phrase like "two horses" the plural ending "-s" is
of course redundant. Also notice the illogical use of plural in questions like
"How many horses have you got?"; the answer might well be "one" or
"none", not a plural numeral. We can easily dispense with number as a
category. Whenever desired one can use an auxiliary word denoting "one" or
"more than one".

Analogous reasoning might lead us to omit tenses as well. For instance, in

the sentence "yesterday I worked ten hours" the grammatical element "-ed"
is as redundant as "-s" because of the adverbial "yesterday". Thus one could
well have the rule that the one and only finite form of a verb does not as
such specify the time in any way, so that e.g. past tense is expressed by
having an adverbial that refers to the past; one should of course have a one-
word adverbial that means "in the past" and could be used when a more
specific one cannot be used. However, it is useful to have the category of
tense for participles, and it would be irregular not to have it for finite forms.
More importantly, it would be difficult to express complex temporal
relations (e.g. "I will have written") without tenses; using the three natural
tenses (past, present, and future) Esperanto allows to express them nicely.

Modes of verbs are hardly needed, in general, since the desired meanings
can be expressed using adverbs, different conjunctions for various types of
sentences, etc. Modes like subjunctive are difficult to learn and to use in
languages like French, and they seldom have any useful meaning. The only
exception to "modeless" system of conjugation could be the imperative. The
imperative could be used to denote an impersonal instruction or suggestion,
as opposite to personal commands, wishes etc. which require delicate
distinctions of degrees of politeness and imperativeness, best expressed
using adverbs.

Definiteness (as expressed by indefinite and definite articles in many

languages) may appear as a necessary category. However, articles are often
entirely redundant, and the exact rules for using articles are one of the most
difficult features of the English grammar. The following solution is
suggested: an indefinite and a definite article exist, but they are to be used
only when it is desired to explicitly designate a being as "previously
unknown" (or indefinite) or as "known" (or definite). In phrases like "the
sun" or "the best of all possible worlds" the article is redundant, and in
phrases corresponding to "I saw a fox" or "I saw the fox" an article should
be used only if one wants to be explicit about the matter. Analytic or
synthetic Obviously the language should have a systematic grammatical
structure which is easy to recognize and generate automatically. It is not
obvious, however, whether this is better achieved by analytic or by synthetic
methods.

It is often said that languages develop towards analyticity. But this is

probably partially due to the irregularities in synthetic methods. More
regularly synthetic languages like the Fenno-Ugrian ones have tended to
preserve and even extend synthetic features in the grammars.

From the viewpoint of automatic processability there is no strong objection

to synthetic methods. On the contrary, congruence may ease the task of
recognizing the grammatical relations between words of a sentence.
Moreover, word derivation is essentially synthetic, and the distinction
between derivation and inflexion is to a great extent a mere convention.
However, purely synthetic language would be slightly better for automatic
processing. This does not apply primarily to computer programs but their
human users. It is easier to write a command for searching for a word if one
knows that it always occurs in exactly the same spelling.

If synthetic methods are introduced, they must be regular: an affix shall not
depend on the base word and shall not affect its form.

A very important aspect is that it should be possible to "parse" a word into

morphemes "mechanically", without any semantic or lexical information,
solely on the basis of knowledge about the possible affixes. Concretely, base
words should not have a beginning or an ending which is the same as a
derivation prefix or suffix, respectively. lexical knowledge. Thus, if we have
the prefix "re-" (as in Latin and in many international words), then no base
word and no other prefix should begin with "re-". This is not easy to
achieve. Actually, conflicting prefixes or suffixes like "re-" and "retro-" are
not so problematic - we can simply recognize the longest possible affix. We
might allow some conflicts to be resolved by (small) vocabularies of
exceptional words (e.g. base words beginning with "re-").

There is, however, a very simple approach which solves the essential
problems: use only one way of attaching affixes - and suffixing is the
obvious approach, since it is more productive in current languages. Thus a
word would be morphematically parsed "backwards": simply check if the
word ends with a suffix of the language, remove the suffix and apply the
same test to the rest of the word etc., until no suffix can be found. Then one
can lexically check that the remaining word exists in the basic vocabulary; if
not, the word is assumed to be a "foreign" word (a proper noun). Notice that
the "suffixing only" principle also removes a semantic problem: assuming
that we have a word of the form prefix+base+suffix, is it to be understood as
(prefix+base)+suffix or as prefix+(base+suffix)? (Such issues are often real
problems. For instance, many people misunderstand the word "atheism" as if
it consisted of the negation prefix "a-" and the word "theism"!)

Some very simple and easily definable and recognizable prefixes could be
accepted (e.g. the prefix "non-", denoting simple negation of the rest of the
word).

Suffixal inflexion and derivation according to the above-mentioned

principles requires that each word (excluding such particles which are not
used as base words) end in a manner which allows agglutinative suffixing,
i.e. suffixing which involves no change in the base word or in the suffix. An
obvious way of achieving this is that each word (or, for verbs, the stem of
the word) ends with a vowel and a suffix normally consists of one or more
consonants followed by a vowel.

It should be as easy as possible to recognize the constituents of a sentence,

such as subject, predicate, and adverbials. This is often difficult in natural
languages, and sentences might be really ambiguous, so that the
decomposition into constituents is ultimately based on semantic reasoning.
This causes serious problems to nonnative users of the language and even
more serious problems to computer programs.

A simple principle which makes the recognition of constituents easier is that

whenever there are adjacent nominal clauses (with no prepositions between
them) they are "codeterminative", i.e. they form a composite expression
which denotes the entity determined by them together. This means that we
need not have a distinction between nouns and adjectives. Semantically a
word can have a wide range of meanings; when the context is clear, a word
can be used as such to denote a specific (context-defined) entity; and when
desired, additional codeterminative words can be added to select a particular
meaning. Thus, a word might mean "good" both as a noun (a good person or
a good thing) and as an adjective.

Notice that the principle of codeterminativeness requires a grammatical sign

for the object. In a synthetic language, the sign would be a preposition
corresponding to the accusative case. (One might even consider marking the
subject, to make the structure more regular.)

We can define the language so that an adverbial which begins with a

preposition consists of all nouns following the preposition, up to (and
excluding) the end of the sentence, or a preposition, or a finite form of a
verb, whichever occurs first.

Word order
Rules for word order can be set up relatively freely. For automatic
generation of sentences, a strict word order would be easier. Languages
with "free" word order use variations in the order to indicate nuances. For
automatic processing, it would be better to express nuances by using
adverbs and by having partial synonyms for important words. Adverbs are
definitely to be preferred, since synonyms cause serious problems in search
operations: it is difficult to search for texts discussing a phenomenon if
there is large set of alternative words for the phenomenon.

From the computational point of view, the most natural word order would be
VSO (verb, subject, object), since that corresponds to the normal syntax of
subprogram calls. Both the subject and the objects (direct and indirect) are
comparable to arguments of a subprogram call, whereas the predicate verb
corresponds to the subprogram name. Adverbials can be regarded as optional
arguments, so they should logically appear after other arguments. Notice that
normal imperative sentences, which are so common in languages for
controlling computers, have the form VSO with the subject omitted.

Word derivation
Word derivation should be extensive to make vocabularies smaller and
generally based on suffixes. Each suffix is defined by its actual phonetic (and
literal) appearance, its role as deverbal or denominal, its class (noun or
verb), and its semantic meaning either as a function of the meaning of the
base word or as "to be defined". The latter option means that there is no
generic predefined meaning; in that case, the meaning of each word
formed using the suffix should be defined separately and listed in a
dictionary. (In natural languages, deminutive suffixes are typically
morphemes which are thought as indicating smallness only, but in fact they
usually belong to the latter category. A cigarette is not a small cigar in
reality, just metaphorically.)

Composite phrases consisting of two or more words should be preferred to

word composition for the following reasons:

 it is difficult to decompose a compound word automatically (and

often also by a human reader or listener); this can be alleviated by
requiring that a hyphen must be used in compound words, but it is
still difficult to recognize such a word from speech
 word composition leads to long words which are difficult for human
beings.
Thus, word composition should be restricted to cases where a one-word
term is obviously needed. It should not be regarded as a fully productive
tool, and accepted compound words should be listed in vocabularies.
Consequently, the semantics of word composition need not be so well-
defined as that of suffixes.

Concluding remarks
This article has outlined an optimal international language starting from the
idea of automatic processability. For further design, it would be necessary
to fix such things as the structure of morphemes and the basis of word
creation. There have been several basic strategies of word creation in
artificial languages. (Somewhat surprisingly, the one that would most
naturally suggest itself in the modern world, using English vocabulary as the
basis, is one of the rarest.)

The Loglan language had several design criteria similar to those presented
here, probably mainly because they were considered useful for purely human
communication as well. It has often been said that Loglan is too logical for
human beings to gain popularity, since normal fluent speech does not apply
logical forms. On the other hand, Loglan has a feature which is definitely
unnatural: its vocabulary is very artificial. It might be a useful experiment to
construct a language with structure similar to that of Loglan but with Latin
or English based vocabulary.

Vocabulary Development
One way to use computers for English Language Learners is to teach
vocabulary. Kang and Dennis (1995) write, "Any attempt to treat
vocabulary learning as learning of isolated facts certainly will not
promote real vocabulary knowledge". Students need to learn
vocabulary in context and with visual clues to help them understand. 
Computers can provide this rich, contextual environment.  The
computer also allows students to become active learners in a one-on-
one environment. Computers can incorporate various learning
strategies as well as accommodate a variety of learning styles.
Writing
As demonstrated, computers and software can help English language
learners develop vocabulary skills and knowledge. Computers can
also help ELL(English Language Learners) students develop their
writing skills. 

English for Engineers and Technicians

In this forum we shall think about:
the importance of English in the Engineering and Technical field;
effective communication in meetings and negotiations;
presentation skills, making proposals and ways of presenting
technical information;
improving conversations with clients;
leaving and responding to voice messages;
opening and closing meetings, giving clear instructions, cross-cultural
communication;
and lots more.
Information exchange

One of the biggest advantages of learning English as a second

language is that you will be able to discover a world of information.
English is the language of the internet world. If you are learning
English as a foreign language you will be able to send e-mails to
people in English from all over the world.
Importance of Teaching Mathematics and Science in
English

The English language is generally considered as an

international language in the lingua franca of the the global
community. Due to the situation and several other rational
reasons, the Ministry Education of Malaysia implanted the
teaching of Mathematics and Science in the English language
in 2003. Since then the English language played an integral
role in the pedagogical aspect of the teaching of these
subjects and has conjured up one germane inquiry. What
Importance of teaching Mathematics and Science related
subjects, which were previously taught in Malay, in English?
I synchronization with the previous statement concerning
the global status of the English language, by implementing
this program, students are able to prepare themselves to an
international degree. This is such because by being capable
of presenting mathematical and scientific concepts, whether
through verbal communication or in written form. Students
also able to discuss matter with other students originating
from scientifically advanced countries like USA and United
Kingdom. Furthermore, involvement of those students in
scientific discussions is feasible once those students have
acquired science related occupation. 

Knowledge does not belong to any one nation. It is a

treasure which is shared by everybody on earth. However,
only through language can obtain this treasure. This can
provides further concrete evidence of importance of
importance teaching Mathematics and Science in English. A
survey conducted indicate 95% of scientific material and
journals are presented in English even approximately 50%
of the are written by authors who are non-native English
speaking. In addition, most websites which integrate
explanatory style of conveying information regrading
scientific and mathematical matters are crated with English
as the main medium of communication. logically, in
considering the evidence given students have a wider access
to scientific references science English is used as the
medium of instruction in teaching these subjects thus
inevitably broadening their knowledge bank.

It is not of my intention to mitigate the roles of the other

world language in the academic area. I am just insinuating
the English is essential in presenting scientific and
mathematical concepts of an international level. Before
ending this article, it is imperative to stress upon here that
irrespective of the global rank of the English language we as
Malaysian should not mind and consider "Bahasa Melayu" or
Malay as an inferior language. It is our national language
and as such it is the language which binds our pluralistic
together in harmony. Scince and Mathematics are vital
academic discipline to such extent that mastery of them is
prerequisite for the formation of a technologically advanced
nation. So let us together utilize the knowledge we procure
for the benefit of mankind and glory God's name. 

English for Science and Technology—4 weeks

To apply, complete an application for enrollment

now.

English for Science and Technology (EST) is designed

to help international undergraduates and graduate
students and professionals become more comfortable
using English as a common language in the fields of
science and technology. In a highly interactive
learning environment—mixing group and individual
project work with in-class and out-of-class activities
and visits—students improve their overall English
language skills (i.e., listening, speaking, reading and
writing) as well as the critical thinking, oral
presenation, interviewing and research skills needed
as international scientists, engineers and technical
experts.

English for science and technology is a variety of language

usage. Here the language is manifested in a certain way in
the expression of concepts and procedures that
characterizes the study of science and technology.
Language, per se according to this view is not of vital
importance in so far as the its basic concern is with the
purely symbolic operations of the language. Hence words
are primarily associated with, what MAK Halliday calls, “the
heuristic and representational functions” as contrasted with
“personal and interactional function.” Therefore words used
in English for science and technology have to be immune to
any cultural associations or implications.

The most important purpose of English for science and

technology is, so to say, not to show how beautifully one can
write, how wide is one’s vocabulary, how varied is one’s
sentence structure ,but to focus on its referential, roles and
functions . Keeping this in view, English for science and
technology should be properly taught and learnt.

Why learn English

Learning to speak English well may be the best thing you

can do to improve your life.

That's right. Do you think it would be fun tohave access to

information that other people can't get? Talk and write
letters to interesting people that others can't communicate
with? Impress people around you whenever you opened
your mouth? Make big jumps in yourcareer,
leaving others miles behind?

You can get all this if you speak English well.

Get access to knowledge

What are you interested in? Is it science? Music? Computers

engi? Health? Business? Sports? Today's media — such as
the Internet, television, and the press — give you almost
unlimited access to knowledge about your favorite subjects.
After all, we live in the information age, don't we?
There's only one problem. Most of this knowledge is in
English.

Here are some examples of knowledge you can use if you

know English:

Gain technical knowledge. English is the language of

technology, especially high technology like computer
science, genetics, and medicine. If you're going to read
about technology, you'll probably have to do it in English.

Use your computer more effectively. Most computer

applications are in English, so you will understand them
better — and become a better employee.

Computers
 Most software programs are written in the English language. For
those who are seeking to expand their computer knowledge, having
the ability to read and understand the English language can be
invaluable.