[lg policy] book review: The Last Lingua Franca: English Until the Return of Babel

[Harold Schiffman]

Language’s role in linking the world
ZoomBookmarkSharePrintListenTranslateEnglish replaced Latin as the
chief means of communication between nations. What will come next?

The Last Lingua Franca

English Until the Return of Babel By Nicholas Ostler Walker & Co.

Nicholas Ostler first came to the attention of a general readership in
2005, with the publication of the highly ambitious and thoroughly
brilliant Empires of the Word — a book that aspired to be, in the
words of its subtitle, nothing less than a language history of the
world. In 2007, he followed this initial success with the more tightly
focused but equally fascinating AdInfinitum, a “biography” of Latin.

With The Last Lingua Franca, Ostler turns to the English language. His
book does not really fall into any of the more common categories of
books about English. It is not a specialized academic work. It is not
a general history of English, or even a biography of English, as Ad
Infinitum was of Latin. Nor is it a humorous stroll through the
curiosities of the language. Still less is it any kind of guide to how
English should be spoken or used.

One could even argue that The Last Lingua Franca, despite its
subtitle, is not primarily a book about English at all, even though it
begins and ends with sections that address English. Perhaps it is best
thought of as an inquiry into “the life histories of lingua-francas”
(to use Ostler’s phrase), of which English is just the reigning
example. he distinction between a lingua franca (that is, a language
deliberately acquired for reasons of convenience to ease communication
between speakers of different mother tongues) and a mother tongue is
crucial to the entire book. A language’s life history as one is
different from whatever life history it may have as the other.

For example, Spanish, though flourishing as a mother tongue today, is
not widely used as an international lingua franca. In contrast, Latin,
though dead as a mother tongue since the Middle Ages, was used as a
lingua franca throughout Europe until just a couple of centuries ago
(and remains the language of scientific taxonomy).

The Last Lingua Franca is divided into four main parts. Part I
(“Lingua-Franca Present”) reviews the current status of English,
noting that it is not only a widely spoken mother tongue, but is also
the world’s preeminent lingua franca.

But will English continue to be the world’s lingua franca? Not
surprisingly, we who live in “an English-speaking bubble” tend to
assume it will, for decades if not indefinitely. The Last Lingua
Franca “challenges this dominant, indeed commonsense, view of English,
accusing it both of memory failure and of signal lack of imagination.”
In fact, English is subject to many of the same forces that have led
to the rise and fall of previous lingua francas.

Part II (“ Lingua-Francas Past”) explores how languages as different
as Persian, Sogdian, Greek, Pali, Sanskrit, Aramaic, and Latin rose to
become lingua francas (mainly through military conquest, commerce, or
religious missions). Here, Ostler’s erudition, historical awareness,
and sheer enthusiasm come into full play: He has a gift for explaining
how the lives of languages intersect with the lives of nations and
empires.

Much of the great pleasure of reading Part II (the longest individual
section of the book) comes from the plethora of unexpected linguistic
or historical details. For example, I had not known that the Uighurs
of southern Siberia, “uniquely in the history of the world,” adopted
Manichaeism as their state religion for nearly 80 years, but I am
unaccountably pleased to have learned it.

Part III (“A Range of Outcomes”) examines the ways in which languages
either continue to be or stop being lingua francas. A lingua franca
may gain new life either by becoming a mother tongue for a new
population or by finding itself a new raison d’être (regeneration). If
it cannot regenerate itself, it may fall from use as a consequence of
one of the “three R’s of lingua-franca death”: ruin, relegation, and
resignation.

Part IV (“Who’s in Charge Here?”) returns the focus to the modern
world, and thus to English. Ostler surveys the “ big beasts” of the
linguistic jungle and finds that although growing political and
economic forces may favor one or another of these competing languages,
none yet seems likely to supplant English as the preeminent lingua
franca. Nevertheless, he is convinced that English will eventually
cease to perform this role and that there will be no replacement:
English will be not only a past but also the last lingua franca.

Perhaps surprisingly, this conviction is primarily based not on
predicted military, commercial, or religious-missionary developments,
but on technological ones. Ostler believes that machine translation
will soon progress to the point where there is no need for any lingua
franca at all. At that point, “everyone will speak and write in
whatever language they choose, and the world will understand.”


Not all readers will find this conclusion persuasive, and certainly we
cannot know yet whether it is correct. Regardless, The Last Lingua
Franca is well worth reading for any language lover — for its breadth
of knowledge, its command of detail, its range of outlook, and, not
incidentally, its wit. Maybe the world will understand us all one day.

http://philly.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx#

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 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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