As a result of my YouTube subscriptions, I just found a new video pertinent to our discussions about languages online. This video from LangFocus details the top 10 most common languages in the world for both L1 and L1+L2 usage.
In the EME6414 Blackboard discussion, there was talk about what the global lingua franca is. It is English, even though there are more native speakers of Mandarin and Spanish in the world. Once L2 is considered, English becomes the #1 used language with 1.4 to 1.5 billion speakers. Mandarin does have a significant L2 group 190 million people, but these are mostly other Chinese language speakers who learn it to be able to communicate with other Chinese people.
One could argue that English is the international language and the global lingua franca, but there many other regional lingua francas.
It is not a stretch to see how this translates to social media usage. It has been true from the small biased sample that are my friends on Facebook. From living in Korea, I have a number of Korean friends. Many post in English when their intended audience are for foreigners, but in Korean if their intended audience are other Koreans. Some even regularly use both English and Korean in the same post.
I have experienced this mixing of languages as well in my stay in China, some are borrowed words (bye bye is for some reason the only one I can think of, but there were several others) and different phrases that they would say in English, but the truly "conversational" parts of their online post or verbal dialogue would be in Chinese. Is this the same for you as well, or do they seemingly switch back and forth without a pattern like this?
ReplyDeleteAssuming two Koreans are communicating with one another, then they would use Korean unless it was in a bigger conversation with foreigners.
DeleteThere are quite a few loan words from English in the Korean language. They are typically written in Hangul (Korean letters), but there are exceptions. Often initials are still written in English. "SNS" is used to mean social media (Social Networking Service).