Accross cultures, English is the word

Very interesting article on the International Herald Tribune of yesterday :

Accross cultures, English is the word

No wonder why I've been publishing my messages in English... I didn't know in the beginning, so I started this blog in French, thinking that I would write in French, Spanish or English depending on my mood.

Apparently my mood is set on English, since I want to communicate with friends that don't speak French nor Spanish, and since all of my friends speak in English...

Now the question is : are we gonna speak and write like the Queen of England, or r we ttyl 4ever in text messaging mode ? Some of the answer you can read in this article (IHT too) :

Texting shorthand annoys purists, but it has its charm

I could not believe that Scottish and New Zealanders have accepted shorthand for exams !

This article reminded me of a very interesting lesson on how French has evolved over the ages that was delivered to me by a friend : the modern French is the result of the "langue d'Oil" (the language of Francks from the north of France) overlapping the "langue d'Oc" (the south language) in a mix of Latin. But as the language was used by people from different origins, it started to simplify, firts in its spoken version (French used to speak their language like the Quebecois from Canada do today, in a way), and then in orthograph. Okey, this maybe a very rough summary of all that my friend said, but the medula is there.

I love to speak, to communicate, so I have no trouble accepting English to be the most common language used in the world. But if there is one day this awesome machine used in Startreck and other Sci-Fi movies (Dune comes to mind) to translate everything I say in French or Spanish to any language of the world, maybe I'll dump English... although... I kinda like it now ! ;-)