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<p class=MsoNormal>FYI, this article may be of interest (seen on the Boston
Globe site)…<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2007/04/29/as_englishs_dominance_continues_linguists_see_few_threats_to_its_rule/<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>As English's dominance continues, linguists see few threats
to its rule<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>But new dialects and technology pose challenges<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>By Seth Mydans, International Herald Tribune | April 29,
2007<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>SINGAPORE -- Riding the crest of globalization and
technology, English dominates the world as no language ever has, and some
linguists now say it may never be dethroned as the king of languages.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Others see pitfalls, but the factors they cite only
underscore the grip English has on the world: such cataclysms as nuclear war or
climate change or the eventual perfection of a translation machine that would
make a common language unnecessary.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Some insist that linguistic evolution will continue to take
its course over the centuries and that English could eventually die as a common
language as Latin did, or Phoenician or Sanskrit or Sogdian before it.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>"If you stay in the mind-set of 15th-century Europe,
the future of Latin is extremely bright," said Nicholas Ostler, the author
of a language history called "Empires of the Word" who is writing a
history of Latin. "If you stay in the mind-set of the 20th-century world,
the future of English is extremely bright."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>That skepticism seems to be a minority view. Such
specialists on the English language as David Crystal, author of "English
as a Global Language," say the world has changed so drastically that history
is no longer a guide.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>"This is the first time we actually have a language
spoken genuinely globally by every country in the world," he said.
"There are no precedents to help us see what will happen."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>John McWhorter, a linguist at the Manhattan Institute, a
research group in New York, and the author of a history of language called
"The Power of Babel" was more unequivocal.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>"English is dominant in a way that no language has ever
been before," he said. "It is vastly unclear to me what actual
mechanism could uproot English given conditions as they are."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>As a new millennium begins, scholars say that about
one-fourth of the world's population can communicate to some degree in English.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>It is the common language in almost every endeavor, from
science to air traffic control to the global jihad, where it is apparently the
means of communication between speakers of Arabic and other languages.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>It has consolidated its dominance as the language of the
Internet, where 80 percent of the world's electronically stored information is
in English, according to David Graddol, a linguist and researcher.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>There may be more native speakers of Chinese, Spanish, or
Hindi, but it is English they speak when they talk across cultures, and English
they teach their children to help them become citizens of an increasingly
intertwined world.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>As English continues to spread, the linguists say, it is
fragmenting, as Latin did, into a family of dialects, and perhaps eventually
fully fledged languages, known as Englishes.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>New vernaculars have emerged in such places as Singapore,
Nigeria, and the Caribbean, although widespread literacy and mass communication
may be slowing the natural process of diversification.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>The pidgin of Papua New Guinea already has its own
literature and translations of Shakespeare. One enterprising scholar has
translated "Don Quixote" into Spanglish, the hybrid of English and
Spanish that is spoken along the borders of Mexico and the United States.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>But unlike Latin and other former common languages, most
scholars say English seems to be too widespread and too deeply entrenched to
die out. Instead, it will probably survive in some simplified international
form -- sometimes called Globish or World Standard Spoken English -- side by
side with its offspring.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>As a simplified form of global English emerges, the
diverging forms spoken in Britain and America could become no more than local
dialects -- two more Englishes alongside the Singlish spoken in Singapore or
the Taglish spoken in the Philippines. A native speaker of English might need
to become bilingual in his own language to converse with other speakers of
global English.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Although Chinese and other languages are rapidly increasing
their share of Internet traffic, English is likely to remain the common
language, specialists say.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>The teaching of English has become a multibillion-dollar
industry, and according to Graddol, nearly one-third of the world's population
will soon be studying English.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>By the most common estimates, 400 million people speak
English as a first language, 300 million to 500 million others as a fluent
second language, and perhaps 750 million as a foreign language.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>The largest English-speaking nation in the world, the United
States, has only about 20 percent of the world's English speakers.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>In Asia alone, an estimated 350 million people speak
English, about the same as the combined English-speaking populations of
Britain, the United States, and Canada.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>But in the end, Ostler said, the advance of technology that
helped push English into its commanding position could pull it down again.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Though it still sounds like science fiction, it seems likely
that some time, many decades from now, a machine will be perfected that can
produce Urdu when it hears someone speaking German.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>"With progress, the problem of machine translation and
automatic interpreting is going to be solved," Ostler said. "And the
need for a common language is going to be technically replaced."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
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