Should We Fear a Unilingual Global Future?

Draft #1 June 16, 2003 Mark Yun Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering
Yoda (Jedi Master) Star Wars: Episode I

I.
According to the Holy Bible, God angrily dispersed people, who attempted to reach him with in the Tower of Babel, by confusing their languages. Whether its true or not, our 21st century may witness the reunification of languages to English. It seems hard to deny or ignore a the great dominance of English around the world. Despite our long-time hope for the unilingual world, however, some people worry about this in many respects, saying that we should be aware of the danger of it. In my viewpoint, such anxieties look are unnecessary.

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II.
1. Why English?

In todays unilingual world, the language playing the role is certainly English. Why does has English become more powerful? Why is English so popular enough to be chosen as a second language to learn? Like an the 18th century French linguist Antonie Rivaroli, who claimed that French was inevitably universal because of its reasonable and clear grammatical features, there are some people who support the inherent features of English in order to prove that English is worth universaluniversally worthy; such as its enormous vocabularies vocabulary or its gender- and case-free transitions. Nevertheless, it is a much more widely accepted idea that the English dominance has been driven by the growth of the political, economical and cultural power of two English-speaking countries in the past, the United Kingdom and now, the America. While English was the legacy of the colonial era in the past, it is being voluntarily accepted now. This relies mainly on economical reasons this is very important because were going further later with this assumption. Anyway, belowBelow are the tablesa table showing how strong English-speaking countries are rated in the economy.

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

English Japanes e German Russian Spanish French Chinese Arabic

4,271 1,277 1,090 801 738 669 448 359

9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Italian Portuguese Dutch Hindi/Urdu Indonesian Danish Greek

302 234 203 102 65 60 49

Table 1 Estimated Economic Strength of Languages in $Billion (1995, The Future of English?)

2.

The Advent of a Global Language

No matter why English becomes has become a global language, is the advent of the global language desirable? I propose that we go back to the fundamental thought. What is the purpose of a language? Strictly speaking, its no more than a tool of communication. In On the contrary, there is also a widely accepted belief that a language is a reflection of a the mind because every word in a certain language system shows us how our mind works. I agree with this hypothesis. Every language is a descriptive picture that suggests each language groups way of thinking. But we, at the same time, must agree that there do exist the some

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scientific words, such as legal or business terms. These words, what that is to say, are cold-blooded. Their significance lies on how sharp sharply and exact exactly to they describe factors. Theres no room to tolerate imagination or metaphormetaphors, which make people consider a language as a reflection of a the mind. The possibility of admitting a global or official language comes from here.

3.

National Languages Will Never Die

Furthermore, can we force others to use the other language that is foreign to them? Before answering this, we have to focus on the historical fact that such an attempt has failed so far. Even when Latin was dominant, Frank the French and German kept speaking their own language. India never surrendered to the United Kingdom in terms of a language. Thats because were able to differentiate one from the other, which means that no involuntary policy has tried to abolish the national language the national language, which is spoken during peoples real life, has never been ignored at all. In short, we must distinguish the official language from the national language. The former can distort the latter but cannot eliminate it. An official language covers a few aspects of our language life. It may

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make us bilingual. But it has not yet been proven yet that the new generations can will become monolingual only with the official language in spite of the influences influence from their parents. Even if a country were forced to adopt the foreign language as their official language, no single government would be able to discourage them not to use their mother tongue at home. Their national consciousness would resist such a compulsory policy. What if about in the case of the voluntary adoption of English? In this case, people dont have any intention to get rid of their national language because they adopt English just asas just an auxiliary tool of economical prosperity. What cannot be done compulsorily cannot be done voluntarily.

4.

Democracy of Languages

Moreover, this thought can be supported by the expansion of the Internet. According to a recent research, it is true that English is currently the most prevailing prevalent language on the World Wide Web as in a the table shown below.
Language 1 2 3 English German Japanese Estimated servers 332,778 17,971 12,348 % 84.3 4.5 3.1

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4 5 6 7 8 9 10

French Spanish Swedish Italian Portuguese Dutch Norwegian

7,213 4,646 4,279 3,790 2,567 2,445 2,323

1.8 1.2 1.1 1.0 0.7 0.6 0.6

Table 2 Languages of Homepages on the Web (1997, The Future of English)

However, it is required for us to pay attention to the fact that the ranking of the languages preferred on the Web doesnt agree with the ranking of the languages spoken in a the real world. For example, Chinese, which is a the No. 1 language in terms of the number of its users, is out of range. The more the Internet expands, the more the world becomes decentralized. Some say that we need to learn it because the Internet is mainly written in English, but this explanation can be possible as well - we dont have to give up our language because the language trend on the Internet is not accompanied with that in a the real world. By large, the language power on the net will depend on the language users power, which is supported by the fact that the Scandinavian languages, which are not so prevailing prevalent in number but quite significant in telecom and Internet business, are doing well on the web.

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Adding to that, the easier the access to websites and computers becomes, the stronger the status of the language that we speak becomes. Not all people are willing to access a website written in a foreign language in order to get information. Thats why Microsoft, one of the most powerful companies in the world, is so eager to localize their products and websites. They fully understand how important it is to respect the linguistic Status Quostatus quo.

III.
We may become practical. This doesnt mean that we should choose English as our own language. It seems more plausible to say that we will not survive in the future without accepting English as the global language, which will encourage us to be bilingual, not monolingual. As a result, it would be certain that the national language our mother tongue and English no matter what it will be called, such as an official language or a global language will interact and influence each other in any some manner. For example, their own vocabulary will be mixed up so that no language can preserve its original shape. We may be afraid of our national language losing its purity. But its a so natural process in linguistics because every language keeps changing itself whether we recognize it or not. There is no difference even

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though the change can be made by the mixture caused by admitting to a global language. As well, this is completely true the same to English because being a global language means, undoubtedly, the languages changes, which are caused by the outside in some sensessense. It is not only those who adopt English as their additional language but also those whose mother tongue is English that must feel sorry about these linguistic changes.

For the last two centuries, the world has been too localized to be controlled by one and onlyonly one power. Such an powerful empire as the Roman Empire or the Yuan Dynasty, powerful enough to force their people to adopt a global language, as the Roman Empire or the Yuan Dynasty never will come again. Apart from a few primitive tribes, the nations consciousness has grown up so well enough not to lose or forget its own language. Most fear that our national language may succumb disappear, is just fear. Should we fear a unilingual global future? Except a few who care about the purity of their national language, my answer is No,, without a qualm.

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Bibliography

Beer, W. R. and Jacob, J. E. (Eds.) 1985. Language Policy and National Unity. New Jersey: Rowman & Allanheld. Calvet, L.-J. 1998. Language Wars and Linguistic Politics. Eng. translated by Michel Petheram. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Crystal, D. 1997. English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dovring, K. 1997. English as Lingua Franca: Double Talk in Global Persuasion. Connecticut: Praeger. Fishman, J. A., Conrad, A. W. and Rubal-Lopez, A. (Eds.) 1996. Post-Imperial English: Status Change in Former British and American Colonies, 1940-1990. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Graddol, D. 1997. The Future of English? London: The British Council. Isayev, M. I. 1977. National Languages in the USSR: Problems and Solutions. Eng. translated by Paul Medov. Moscow: Progress. Smith, L. E. (Ed.) 1981. English for Cross-Cultural Communication. Hong Kong: Macmillan Press.

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