Is English king?

[R. A. Stegemann]

Yawn...

There are those who would pose questions, as if they knew the answers.

Sincerely,

R. A. Stegemann
EARTH's Manager and HKLNA-Project Director
EARTH - East Asian Research and Translation in Hong Kong
http://homepage.mac.com/moogoonghwa/earth/
Tel/Fax: 852 2630 0349

On 13 Dec 2004, at 23:21, Harold F. Schiffman wrote:

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