Re: the English language part 2

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2019-04-21, at 17:08, Emanuel Berg <moasenwood@zoho.eu> wrote:

> Ralph Seichter wrote:
>
>> Given the sheer number of native Mandarin
>> speakers and China's efforts in computer
>> science (just consider their supercomputing
>> centres), I consider it arrogant to use whe
>> word "never" in your prediction.
>
> The only way that is a possibility is if NATO
> and Russia nuke each other clean of the Earth.

JFF, let me mention that

Arabic
Latin
French

were at some point the lingua francas of the science world (and I could
miss something as well), and none of their respective countries were
nuked.

(And Poland used to be one of the two main powers in Europe one day,
btw., though we used Latin as the language of the elites back then.
Good for all that poor souls speaking Germanic languages - Polish (as
almost any other Slavic language) is basically one huge tongue-twister
for you. :-) )

The US has been in the state of moral and economic decline for a few
decades now.  (I cannot say which is more morally decadent now, the US
or China - apparently China is a terrible authoritarian state, and the
US is quite close, at least since Obama presidency, but probably since
much earlier.)  Economically China might as well win within the next 10
or 20 years.  Such processes are slow, but have very significant
momentum.  So NATO does not have to nuke the US out, the US is currently
doing it to itself (although in a slower and less spectacular way).

Happy Easter anyway,

--
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl