English, Overwhelming

I was told to write something about English, maybe from a Malaysian point of view. I think for a while and I start to run my life on film, and try to play it slow whenever I sense “English” sneaking around. But then after doing that for like 5 minutes, I can’t help wondering why I have this ‘hatred’. I mean, I actually hate English and at the same time I love it. Well, the notorious “love-hate relationship”.

Then I sit down, a little bit perplexed. I mean, since when did this feeling festers in me and yet I discover none of its evil intention?

Then it hit me. The English language, the most popular language in the world, actually is the medium of “information overload” in my life.

The news, map, travel guide, Facebook, movies, music, user guide, nutrition facts, formal letters, subtitles, phones, emails, advertisement…name a few yourself. Yes, even the programming language is in English. You can say you use Chinese most of the time, but face it. When you go technical you go English. When you key in the URL you use English.

And this actually saddens me. Yes, if Russian is the most widely used language then maybe I will hate Russian now but what saddens me is actually the extreme information overload on us, this generation, this era. And you are right, there are a lot more information to come, increasing exponentially each day.

You might want to say, that isn’t so bad. But read this: “US Military Faced with Deadly Consequences of "Information Overload". I am not joking. We grow up with the awe of the proliferation of information but it is little known that actually information outgrows us by folds in the process. Or you know that, but you sort of went ignorant. And this, I think, might well be the cause of the phenomena which teenagers nowadays seem to be skilled at: Shut off. You go blah-blah-blah, and I don’t like it, so you are muted. My attention shifts to the next thing. You are not worth my time. I am sorry. Too much information.

The language which grows alongside the exploding rate of information is of course the most popular tongue, and that crown goes to English. I did observe some interesting stuff:-

a) An increasing amount of swearing on the net by ‘English’ users each day;

b) More and more comments are made in ‘Shut off’ mode;

c) English is transforming each day, going from its noble and artistic status back in the 80s to a conglomerate of modern, simple and “multi-cultural” expressions pieced together.

While we are being overwhelmed by information, I guess on the other hand, English is being overwhelmed too, by the constant dynamic atmosphere made feasible through technology. Editors of Webster’s Dictionary said that there is an average of 25,000 words added to the language itself every year but Global Language Monitor actually announced in June 2009 that amount of words in English surpassed the 1 million words threshold. This is crazy. If you haven’t quite noticed it, the language structure of English on the web is changing too. English users today tend to use longer sentence comparing to shorter sentence structure in the last century. Some journalists even love to saturate their articles with lots of unheard of vocabulary in daily life. Well I would say that, if there are more than 1 million choices, it wouldn’t be that hard to pull that off though.

Technology certainly alter the way human live but now it has come to the point of information overload which human brains could not take it anymore, I foresee there would be a lot of paradigm shifts in almost every aspect you can think of, that of education, organization of information etc. But then, a paradigm shift too for English? I never thought of that until now. What will happen when English vocabulary breaks the 2 million threshold? By that time, I really don’t know what to tell my kids to motivate them to learn English.

Face it, the amount of knowledge we are ‘supposed’ to learn is increasing each day. What is necessary and what is not? And why should I learn ‘valetudinarian’ instead of “hypochondriac”?

Man, what a lame reason to hate English. Sorry English, for I have sinned.

-