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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>How about language strength following on the
heels of military strength? Aramaic gained world domination because of the
Assyrian Empire; Greek on the strength of Alexander the Great; Latin because of
the Roman might; English because of the American Army...</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Stan Anonby</FONT></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=moogoonghwa@mac.com href="mailto:moogoonghwa@mac.com">R. A.
Stegemann</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A
title=lgpolicy-list@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
href="mailto:lgpolicy-list@ccat.sas.upenn.edu">lgpolicy-list@ccat.sas.upenn.edu</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Tuesday, December 14, 2004 6:59
AM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Intellectual profundity and
journalistic bombast -- Is English King?</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>Yawn...<BR><BR>There are those who pose questions, because they
are looking for answers.<BR>Then there are those who pose questions, as if to
convince you that they had the answers.<BR><BR>Sincerely,<BR><BR><?fontfamily><?param Helvetica>R. A.
Stegemann<BR>EARTH's Manager and HKLNA-Project Director<BR>EARTH - East Asian
Research and Translation in Hong Kong<BR><A
href="http://homepage.mac.com/moogoonghwa/earth/">http://homepage.mac.com/moogoonghwa/earth/</A><BR>Tel/Fax:
852 2630 0349<?/fontfamily><BR><BR>On 13 Dec 2004, at 23:21, Harold F.
Schiffman wrote:<BR><BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE>http://www.science-spirit.org/<BR><BR>The Tongue Who Would Be
King<BR><BR>There are those who believe English could achieve what no other
language<BR>has: global domination. But our linguistic history shows
preeminence leads<BR>to resistance, then ruin--which means English should be
looking over its<BR>shoulder.<BR><BR>by Dennis Baron<BR><BR><BR>At every
stage of its history, English has been a borrowing tongue. It<BR>adapted the
Latin of Irish monks, the Norse of Viking raiders, and the<BR>French of
Normans bent on regime change. During the Renaissance, English<BR>went on a
word-coining rampage and swelled its hoard with terms from Greek<BR>and
Italian. Modern English has absorbed words from just about every<BR>language
its speakers have encountered: Arabic, Hebrew, Navajo, Yiddish,<BR>Polish,
Hindi, Bantu, and Japanese, to name but a few.<BR><BR>English also affects
the languages it touches, and the fact that English<BR>is now an exporter
causes fear and resentment in some quarters. In the<BR>1930s and 1940s,
Germany sought to purify its language along with its<BR>population and
banned English words. More recently, the French,<BR>historically one of
Englishs biggest suppliers, enacted a law to protect<BR>their language from
the inroads of English, particularly in the areas of<BR>commerce and
technology, where English is so dominant. During World War<BR>II, Japan also
tried to purify its tongue, but contemporary Japanese<BR>continues to absorb
massive amounts of English without much fuss,<BR>nativizing the words it
borrows, sometimes to the point where English<BR>speakers no longer
recognize them.<BR><BR>Japan has nego, for negotiation; kono, for
connection; and sekuhara, for<BR>sexual harassment. Most cars in the country
have English model names that<BR>are easily understood, like Toyotas classic
sedan, the Toyopet, or the<BR>Daihatsu Naked, a far-from-daring minivan. The
car names are written in<BR>English too, even though Japanese has three
writing systems--including one,<BR>katakana, designed especially for foreign
words. Sing at a karaoke bar in<BR>Tokyo, and native patrons will swoon over
English smoothly and properly<BR>pronounced. And its not just Japan; around
the world, more people are<BR>signing up for English lessons than ever
before. Travel almost anywhere<BR>and you'll find English on signs, on
T-shirts, on tips of tongues.<BR><BR>Historically, however, the reception of
English on the world stage has<BR>been mixed. If Shakespeare and the King
James Bible solidified the power<BR>of English at home, it took the age of
exploration and colonization to<BR>move English across the border. It was
then that the real line was drawn:<BR>If you were a colonizer, bringing
trade to the impoverished and<BR>civilization to the unwashed, English was
the language of capital and<BR>enlightenment; if you were being colonized,
English simply appeared as the<BR>language of oppression. While the first
protests against English took the<BR>form of Brits out, today the ugly
American still inspires strident<BR>graffiti of the Yanqui go home
variety.<BR><BR>In the eighteenth century, John Adams predicted it would be
America, not<BR>England, that would catapult English to world-class status,
but it wasn't<BR>until the twentieth century, after two world wars and the
rise of American<BR>political and economic influence, that English finally
took steps in that<BR>direction. Its success has led some to hope, and
others to fear, that<BR>English may one day be the only language the world
will need.<BR><BR>Humans are hardwired to learn language, but we don't all
learn the same<BR>language, and many of us learn more than one. Bilingualism
is a fact of<BR>life for threequarters of the world. One Renaissance
commentator, a Swede,<BR>even insisted that Eden was a polyglot paradise
where God spoke to Adam in<BR>Swedish, Adam replied in Danish, and the
serpent tempted Eve in French.<BR>And at least one contemporary theorist,
French sociolinguist Louis-Jean<BR>Calvet, supports the view that humans are
naturally bilingual animals and<BR>have been from the start.<BR><BR>Still,
at the turn of the twentieth century, many Americans
considered<BR>non-English speakers to be less than human. According to a
story recounted<BR>by the English language specialist Daniel Shanahan, a
railroad president<BR>told a 1904 congressional hearing on the mistreatment
of immigrant<BR>workers, These workers don't suffer--they don't even speak
English.<BR><BR>Such opposition to non-anglophones and bilinguals has never
quite gone<BR>away. In June 1995, for example, a district court judge in
Amarillo,<BR>Texas, accused a mother of child abuse for speaking Spanish to
her<BR>five-year-old daughter, who would enter kindergarten that year.
English,<BR>the judge ruled, was necessary to do well in school and without
English,<BR>he warned, the girl would be condemned to life as a
maid.<BR><BR>In response to a national outcry over the cruelty of his
decision, the<BR>judge sensed that some fence-mending was in order and
apologized--to maids.<BR>He held resolutely to his English-only order, one
that many well-meaning<BR>people might find appropriate. After all,
ninety-seven percent of U.S.<BR>residents speak English, and non-English
immigrants are picking up English<BR>faster than earlier generations did.
The Amarillo mother spoke Spanish to<BR>her daughter because she knew that
as soon as the child entered<BR>kindergarten, the girl would lose whatever
Spanish she had acquired, and<BR>switch entirely to English.<BR><BR>Around
the physical and virtual world, English is spreading rapidly, which<BR>leads
many to worry that other languages will decline. Clearly, English is<BR>the
most powerful and successful language on Earth--synonymous with
profit,<BR>multinational commerce, international relations, science, rock n
roll, and<BR>most recently, the Internet. It makes sense that knowing
English might<BR>facilitate fuller participation in society, might better
enable a person<BR>to enter into the governmental, economic, academic, and
scientific<BR>mainstreams.<BR><BR>But even though about three-quarters of
the world speaks more than one<BR>language, getting everybody to speak the
same language--even with the best<BR>of intentions--proves problematic.
Think back to any high school language<BR>class and remember how difficult
it is to get large groups of people to<BR>learn a new tongue. Most people
who willingly study English don't ever<BR>achieve fluency. Even in India,
where English has official status, only<BR>five percent of the people
actually speak the language. Then there are the<BR>psychological effects:
Enforcing English on the national or global level<BR>sends a negative
message, making non-English speakers feel both inferior<BR>and unwelcome.
And finally, establishing English as the only language<BR>would mean
deciding that the natural condition of the world is not<BR>bilingualism or
multilingualism, but rather one language, for one and all.<BR><BR>The
biblical story of the Tower of Babel laid the groundwork, at least in<BR>the
West, for the belief that a single language equals a united humanity,<BR>and
that a reunified humanity might once again reach the heavens. While<BR>the
search for a Proto- World language, the ancestor of all todays<BR>languages,
has occupied philologists and theologians for centuries, it<BR>remains
elusive. Perhaps there wasn't one single language that kicked<BR>things off
for the human species, and its not clear that we should end up<BR>with a
single world language either--English, or otherwise.<BR><BR>English started
as an obscure language on a small island off the coast of<BR>Europe. The
nineteenth-century essayist Thomas De Quincey once sniffed that<BR>in its
earliest form, English had a vocabulary of only 800 words, most of<BR>them
having to do with wara nasty and brutish assessment, but a believable<BR>one
to anybody who has slogged through Beowulf.<BR><BR>Currently, however,
English has the largest vocabulary of any<BR>language--close to half a
million words. The number of English speakers is<BR>strong and growing.
According to one estimate, 514 million people speak<BR>English as their
first language. Yes, there are more than a billion<BR>speakers of Mandarin
Chinese and another half billion who use either Hindi<BR>or Urdu, but none
of those languages has the international reach of<BR>English, which enjoys
widespread acceptance as a second or auxiliary<BR>language. English has
official status in former British colonies like<BR>India and Nigeria, and
all around the globe its the most common lingua<BR>franca, a third language
to be used when two people who don't share a<BR>common first language need
to communicate.<BR><BR>About 400 million people speak reasonably fluent
English as their second<BR>language, and as many as another billion have
learned some English as a<BR>foreign language. In contrast, French, which
not that long ago was the<BR>preferred language of diplomacy, war, and high
society, not to mention<BR>haute cuisine, has only 129 million speakers
today. There are fewer<BR>speakers of French in the world than of Arabic,
Portuguese, Russian, or<BR>even Bengali. But real evidence of the decline of
French is the fact that<BR>its orbit has shrunk: French remains a second
language in some former<BR>colonies, but it has lost its clat in the
councils of power, in the<BR>foreign language classroom, and even on the
menu.<BR><BR>Now English is the foreign language everyone must learn if they
want to<BR>communicate beyond their borders, beyond their neighborhoods, or
beyond<BR>their labs. Scientists around the world who don't read and publish
in<BR>English risk becoming marginalized: They will be unable to take
advantage<BR>of the latest findings in their fields, and their own work will
go unread<BR>and unrecognized by the international scientific community.
Writers in<BR>non-anglophone countries agonize over their own literary
dilemma: whether<BR>to publish in their national or local language to reach
their compatriots<BR>and keep their culture vital and productive, or to
write in English to<BR>secure an international audience and the stature that
may come along with<BR>it.<BR><BR>For some, the fact that English is the
international language of science<BR>is reason enough to promote it
globally; the further advance of the<BR>language would be a natural and
rational process. Agree or not, is it even<BR>possible for English to become
the only language people learn, eventually<BR>displacing the other 6,800
languages currently being used and turning the<BR>planet into a monolingual
Brave New World? By virtue of its global sway,<BR>could English push all
other languages to the brink, much in the way that<BR>Wal-Mart drives out
mom-and-pop stores?<BR><BR>Using history as a guide, we know that every
language that has so far<BR>qualified as universal has not been able to make
the leap to world<BR>domination; rather, all of these languages have receded
or disappeared.<BR>Latin, which came from a few dusty Italian farms and
cities, was the<BR>language of politics and government, of law and
education, of science and<BR>religion, from the time of the Roman Empire
through the Renaissance. As<BR>late as the eighteenth century, to be
literate meant to know Latin. If<BR>your universe was Western Europe, Latin
was the universal language so much<BR>so that we still honor it on our
money. We just don't speak it anymore.<BR><BR>French, which actually grew
out of Latin, had a brief turn as the world<BR>language, but in the end it
was English that took Latins place as master<BR>of the linguistic universe.
Of course, as nations continue to jockey for<BR>political and economic
power, and the linguistic influence that flows from<BR>it, theres always the
chance that English will share the fate of French<BR>and Latin. After all,
no language has been the master of the universe for<BR>very
long.<BR><BR>Some are prepared for such a case, having already designated a
replacement<BR>for English were it to disappear. Hawaiian has its supporters
as a<BR>candidate for the next world language, as does Finnish. The desire
to<BR>return to the pre-Babel days, when a single language was spoken and
no<BR>translation was necessary, prompted several hundred visionaries over
the<BR>years to invent languages that would be immediately understandable
by<BR>anyone who encounters them. The most famous of these artificial
languages<BR>is Esperanto, which claims about 2 million speakers worldwide.
Its creator<BR>had two goals: to produce an auxiliary language that would
let people<BR>communicate easily across cultures and to promote world
peace.<BR><BR>The creators of languages like Volapuk, Ido, Novial, and
Solresol (the<BR>last based on the musical scale) were similarly optimistic
about<BR>furthering international accord through mutual understanding. So
far as<BR>international cooperation goes, however, the two Irelands, the two
Koreas,<BR>and India and Pakistan (India's Hindi and Pakistan's Urdu use
different<BR>writing systems but the spoken languages are mutually
intelligible), show<BR>us that having a common language doesn't necessarily
lead to either mutual<BR>understanding or peaceful coexistence. In any case,
the small number of<BR>speakers adopting these artificial languages isn't
enough to move the world<BR>toward peace.<BR><BR>If sweet reason hasn't
converted the world, let alone a single nation, to<BR>one language, neither
has the use of force. For many years in America,<BR>young speakers of
Spanish, Navajo, Chinese, and other minority languages<BR>were beaten,
humiliated, or given detention if they used their first<BR>language in the
classroom or on the schoolyard. Around the same time an<BR>Amarillo judge
accused a Spanish-speaking mother of child abuse, a small<BR>Texas insurance
agency fired two women bilingual in English and Spanish,<BR>hired for their
ability to speak to Hispanic customers, because these<BR>women spoke Spanish
rather than English to each other. Knowing English is<BR>one thing; forcing
people to use it is quite another. As any student<BR>failing a language
requirement knows, you cant make a person speak a<BR>foreign
language.<BR><BR>If English cant be enforced at home, it certainly couldn't
be required<BR>abroad. For a good part of the twentieth century, Russia
tried to force<BR>its language on a huge expanse of Europe and Asia, and we
know how that<BR>turned out. Latin may not have fallen in a day, but with
the rapid<BR>collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian lost most of its clout
almost<BR>overnight.<BR><BR>The truth is that when one language begins to
dominate, and its presence<BR>is felt internationally, resistance movements
stimulate a resurgence of<BR>local language vitality. The Internet provides
a perfect example of what<BR>happens: In its first decade, Web life was
almost entirely in English, and<BR>when computer users in other countries
began to log on, they found an<BR>English monopoly. But this was only
temporary; while its estimated that<BR>over half of all Internet Web sites
are still in English, the percentage<BR>of other languages on the Web is
growing as more and more countries<BR>acquire computer technology. On the
world scene, language loyalty trumps<BR>the incursion of English every
time.<BR><BR>So while English plays an important role in the increasingly
multilingual,<BR>globalizing world, global language is not following rapidly
on the heels<BR>of multinational corporations. Rather than imposing a
standard language on<BR>an unwilling world, English itself is going native,
forming local<BR>varieties with distinctly local forms and flavors wherever
it lands.<BR>Because of this, sociolinguists have begun speaking not of
English, but of<BR>Englishes, the plural emphasizing the increasing
diversity that English<BR>experiences as it shows up in new places and
contexts.<BR><BR>We call Latin a dead language because there haven't been
native speakers of<BR>Latin for centuries, but the language didn't actually
die. Instead, the<BR>Latin spoken in different parts of Europe gradually
differentiated to form<BR>what we now call the Romance languages: French,
Spanish, Portuguese,<BR>Italian, and Romanian being the most familiar. The
process took several<BR>centuries. With English differentiating as it
spreads across the planet,<BR>it could meet Latins fate and morph into new
tongues. This kind of<BR>language birth isn't likely to happen though--in
fact it hasn't happened on<BR>any large scale since Latin made like a noun
and declined. The centripetal<BR>force of global communications and
international travel works against that<BR>outcome. But if--or when, as some
would say--the English-speaking world loses<BR>its political and economic
hegemony to Europe or the Pacific Rim, the<BR>power of the English language
will be relaxed and the worlds Englishes<BR>will be left free to diverge
from one another.<BR><BR>The future of English is tricky to predict. Will it
unite the world and<BR>take us back to Eden, or divide the world even
further and lead us to a<BR>new Babel? Or will it simply lose its vitality
and shuffle off this mortal<BR>coil, leaving the stage to a yet-to- be-named
player? For now, though,<BR>Finnish and Hawaiian must wait in the wings, for
barring nuclear disaster,<BR>it looks as if English will remain the
800-pound gorilla of the worlds<BR>languages for a little while
yet.<BR><BR>Related stories:<BR>Oh What a Tangled Web We Weave<BR>Lost In
Translation<BR>Something New Under the Sun<BR><BR><BR><BR><BR>2002 Science
& Spirit Magazine. All rights
reserved.<BR><BR></BLOCKQUOTE></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>