Pandemic Internationalism. Disappointed organizers of a conference cancelled by the Covid-19 pandemic pose with cutout of Zamenhof and protective masks.
Cover of Esperanto Magazine, December 2020
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However beneficial multilingualism may be for individuals —bringing a flexible world view, a sense of accomplishment, and often the ability of engage in profitable cultural and economic interchanges with people of other language communities— the constant use of multiple languages is, in general, an obvious inefficiency.
For a wide range of historical reasons, most modern nation states include some sub-populations speaking minority languages (like Yiddish in Zamenhof’s Warsaw, Navajo in northern Arizona, or Nahuatl in modern Mexico). Many are languages spoken primarily in other countries (like German in Zamenhof’s Warsaw, Ukrainian in western Canada, or Spanish in California).
In earlier centuries many minority populations embedded in larger states were largely monolingual. In 1900, for example, most Navajo spoke only Navajo, and most of the Maya peoples of southern Mexico spoke only Maya languages. So many monolingual Polish people migrated to Chicago that even their Chicago-born children spoke English with a Polish accent.
But the advance of modern educational systems aiming at universal education, combined with modern communication technologies, have made it rare to be monolingual in a language with very few speakers, and it is unusual for even large immigrant groups to raise children competent only in the language of “the old country.”
Instead, we have seen the rise of widespread, standardized, official languages, with educational authorities devoted to their more or less efficient transmission to all within their districts.
In the San Diego area there are very few people today with significant fluency in any of the several dialects of Kumeyaay once spoken in this region. Some people work valiantly to “preserve” Kumeyaay, but these efforts, like all attempts to retain or restore “small” languages inevitably founder on the fact that they are no longer “good for very much” as means of communication. For a Kumeyaay kid in San Diego, English is the future; Kumeyaay is not. For a central Mexican kid, speaking Spanish represents the real world; speaking his grandfather’s Zapotec is sometimes fun (unless he is beaten into it), but it is no substitute for Spanish.
Very small languages like Manx or Ainu or Lushootseed, as they cease to have monolingual speakers, are clearly fading from the scene (or turning into internet communities of language hobbyists). Slightly larger ones, such as Welsh or Lunyoro, spoken only occasionally and whose speakers are all competent in “larger” languages, seem destined to the same fate.
In contrast, modern states containing a diversity of large language communities are sometimes officially multilingual or diglossic by way of practical or political compromise, and considerable resources may be expended on translation, education, and general boosterism in support of the individual languages or the idea of bi- or multilingualism. India, Switzerland, and Canada or ready examples.
But whatever the details of the policy, including enthusiastic support for multilingualism, the long-term tendency is for one language to come to dominate for practical administrative purposes (German in Switzerland, English in India and Canada.)
Exactly the same thing occurs in many international organizations. In the European Union the official language of each constituent state is an official language for the whole EU, but in fact the Brussels headquarters functions almost entirely in French and English. The United Nations has six “official” languages (English, French, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, and Arabic), but most work gets done in the two “working” languages, again French and English. The Organization of American States officially uses Spanish, Portuguese, French, and English “co-equally,” but since Spanish is the national language of most member states, Spanish often dominates.
From the perspective of diglossia, in this new world, state supported languages seem (to me) to be emerging as the new H forms, with unsupported or officially subordinate but still widely spoken languages as L. For example:
On a global scale, we see the ascendancy of global English, which nationalists in some countries see as a threat even to their own national languages. For example, one Latvian professor I spoke to claimed there was no way any more (if there ever had been) to run a university in Latvian. There simply are not the materials or the qualified teaching staff.
For much of the XXth century, Latvia was a “republic” —like a province— of the Soviet Union. Each republic had its own official language in addition to the national language, namely Russian (which was also the republic language of the Russian republic). In Soviet times students in Latvia could be expected to be functional in Russian, and Russian was well and widely taught. Although often resented, this gave Latvians access to a world beyond Latvia, with its population of under two million people.
Today, with Latvian as the only official language, global English may or may not be able to play that “Russian” role in Latvia.
Similar issues are arising also with other European national languages, some with much larger numbers of speakers: Hungarian, Norwegian, Danish, &c. Speakers of all these languages feel the “threat” of anglophone hegemony. Even French speakers, whose language is widespread in the world and prominent in international organizations, worry about being swamped by English.
Fifty years ago Interlinguists spoke of “languages of wider communication” and included among them English, Russian, Spanish, Hindi, Indonesian, &c. that were used both natively by large populations and as second languages among speakers of many other languages. With the march of global English, the phrase “languages of wider communication” has nearly disappeared in sociolinguistic circles.
Historically, languages have tended to expand the number of their second-language speakers in direct relationship to the political and economic importance of their native-speaking communities. Latin did not spread through Europe because anybody thought it was beautiful —even the Romans were doubtful about that. It spread because knowledge of Latin facilitated political and economic relations with the Romans and regions controlled by them, and to a lesser degree because of Roman settlement throughout its empire. When the political empire collapsed, Latin remained the best bridge language across the areas it formerly dominated.
The same may be said of English, a language of convenience both because of the widespread settlement of English-speaking people throughout the world and because of its official use in the one-time British empire, but especially because of the tremendous economic strength of the United States. Some second-language learners of English may love it, just as second-language learners of Sanskrit love Sanskrit. For most, as far as we can tell, it is merely a “skill set.”
But things do change. Russian was once studied and used throughout Eastern Europe. When I was in high school we were urged to study it as “the most important foreign language of the future.” With the collapse of the Soviet Union, enthusiasm for Russian immediately vanished, especially in the former Soviet “satelite states” of eastern Europe —Hungary, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Romania, &c.— where it had been a hated compulsory school subject for as long as anybody could remember. As the United States cedes economic supremacy to China (if that is what is happening —Americans tend to fear that it is), Mandarin Chinese, in its officialized Putonghua form, can be expected to become the world’s first or second most frequently studied second language. A carefully researched examination of the forces at work is The Future of English, (Graddol 1997).
Unfortunately, it is rare to learn a second language well, and a waste of time to dabble in it without learning it well (unless one happens to like dabbling). A second-language speaker is always on the edge of saying something inadvertently idiotic, a point well made by Esperanto speaker and professional translator Claude Piron (link). And a second-language listener is always in greater danger than a native listener of misunderstanding something a speaker thought was clear. (Just ask my foreign students what they think I said.)
Our most likely future is a globalized world in which some people —mostly rich people— speak their own language because they can and other people —mostly poor people— speak that language with difficulty because they must.
Interestingly, one of the arguments made most often today by speakers of Esperanto pretty much corresponds with Zamenhof’s aspiration that his language be demonstrably non-national. Some argue that the more widespread Esperanto might become, the less would be the need for all business to be conducted in English, sheltering other languages from competition with global English.
Knowing they are probably being completely unrealistic, Esperanto speakers, their numbers apparently very slowly increasing over time, tend to believe they are at least being fair.
Review Quiz Over Chapter VII
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