Intellectual profundity and journalistic bombast -- Is English King?

[R. A. Stegemann]

Yawn...

There are those who pose questions, because they are looking for
answers.
Then there are those who pose questions, as if to convince you that
they had 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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