Quote:
Originally Posted by lio45
It’s perfectly possible that many non-Western countries/cultures could be gradually moving away from Western influences in some ways and aspects, while at the same time moving closer to the West in other ways.
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I think what we'll see (and what Truenorth fails to understand) is more people in the Global South learning English for professional reasons, but AT THE SAME TIME the Global South being less and less influenced by the West and the Anglosphere in particular, as it develops and is confident in reasserting its own culture.
You can see it in China: there have never been as many Chinese people able to speak English as today, and yet the country is considerably less Western-influenced than 100 years ago. In the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, extremely few Chinese people spoke English, and yet it was the period when Chinese culture was at its bottom, with 0 confidence in its own strength, and the Chinese elites mimicking the West in every possible way.
This is Shanghai between both world wars (the Chinese characters read "Bailemeng", if you're curious, a simple phonetic transcription of "Paramount").
At the time, there were even some Chinese intellectuals who were calling for abandoning the Chinese language and adopting a Western language such as English for example, to save China, because they saw Chinese culture and even the Chinese language as the reason for the decadence and powerlessness of the country. This was also a time when Chinese elites loved to stuff their speech with English words.
Nowadays, despite the fact there has never been more people able to speak English in China, the country is far less Westernized in its culture. Few people listen to Western music or try to mimic the West other than in dressing (but it's not seen as Western dressing anymore, it's just the modern way to dress, and even there, China is evolving towards its own fashion which can seem a bit strange or kitsch as seen from the West). There are also extremely few English words in the Chinese language nowadays (most words are given a Chinese translation, even "internet" has a Chinese translation, which is "hulianwang" in Mandarin). Only the people in Hong Kong still adopt English words in their Cantonese (a taxi is "taksi" in Hong Kong Cantonese, but "chuzuche" in Mandarin, a purely Chinese word that has now completely replaced the Mandarin reading of Cantonese "taksi" in Mandarin).
It's no different in India. Indian elites today are less "Britishified" than 50 years ago. You just have to compare Modi and Nehru. Nehru was almost the caricature of a British-assimilated colonial.
Of course people in Asia or Africa will listen to Western music or watch Western movies from times to times, just as we watch Chinese movies or read Japanese mangas from times to times, but it will just be a genre, not a mainstream stuff.
I think it's hard for Indian emigrants (especially those living in Anglophone countries) to realize that, because as time passes and the disconnect grows larger, there's a tendency to fantasize the old homeland and imagine it remains very close to Anglophone countries. I see that with Maghreban immigrants in France too. French is declining in the Maghreb, and the influence of French culture there is less strong than it used to be, but Maghreban immigrants still want to keep the image of a very Francophone Maghreb, otherwise they would feel out of place somehow. They don't realize how the Maghreb is evolving, sticking to old images of the 1980s or 1970s.
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) IMHO, you go where your art takes you, and have whatever success you can attain - you're always Canadian no matter where you move to.
) which did expose them to some American culture, something that wouldn't have happened if they'd been unilingual francophones. 
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