© Philippe Franchini, Paris
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There are, it may be, so many
kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification.
Therefore if I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be unto him that speaketh
a barbarian, and he that speaketh shall be a barbarian unto me.
New
Testament, I Corinthians, XIV, 10 and 11
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Major languages other
than English are spoken by over half the people on the planet. What can be done to
give them more clout in international bodies?
 Back in 1919, U.S. President Woodrow
Wilson managed to have the Treaty of Versailles, which ended the First World War
between Germany and the Allies, written in English as well as French. Since then,
English has taken root in diplomacy and gradually in economic relations and the media.
The language now seems set to have a monopoly as the worldwide medium of communication.
As the 21st century begins, faster economic globalization is going hand in hand with
the growing use of English. More and more people are being encouraged to use or send
messages in English rather than in their own language. Many do not mind. They see
this as part of the unavoidable trend towards worldwide uniformity and a means whereby
a growing number of people can communicate directly with each other.
From this point of view, the spread of English may be seen as a positive development
which saves resources and makes cultural exchange easier. After all, it might be
said, the advance of English is not aimed at killing off local languages but is simply
a means of reaching a wider audience.
Perhaps. But accepting that as the last word ignores the deep-rooted ties between
individual freedom and political power, between the linguistic, social and economic
mechanisms which in every society underpin relations between people and groups and
between culture and communities. A person makes a mark through his or her ability
to use the most useful language or languages. And over several generations, the most
useful language eliminates the others.
Cultural imperialism is much more subtle than economic imperialism, which is itself
less tangible and visible than political and military imperialism, whose excesses
are obvious and easy to denounce. It would be wrong to say that the world domination
of English is something deliberately organized and supported by the Anglo-Saxon powers,
hand in glove with political initiatives or the penetration of the world economy
by their transnational firms. The “language war” has very seldom been regarded as
a war and has never, anywhere, been declared.
The military, diplomatic, political and economic strategies of the major powers can
be studied and criticized, but linguistic strategies seem to be inconspicuous and
tacit, even innocent or non-existent. The history of the past century has obliged
many powers to take a more modest attitude to language, but has it taught them to
stand up to domination by a single language?
Many years after the founding in 1945 of the Arab League, whose current 22 member
states have 250 million people, the countries which share a French linguistic heritage
broke new ground by creating a joint policy. In order to promote linguistic, economic
and political co-operation, they set up the International Organization of French-Speaking
Countries, which (like the Commonwealth) embraces more than 50 countries with over
500 million inhabitants.
Since 1991, there have been conferences of Dutch-speakers from eight or more communities
representing some 40 million people, as well as Ibero-American summits, which every
two years bring together more than 20 countries (350 million inhabitants). Turkish-speaking
summits have been held biennially since 1992, with delegates from six independent
countries (120 million people) of Europe, Central Asia and small ethnic communities
elsewhere. Since 1996, the Association of Portuguese-speaking countries has brought
together people from seven countries (200 million people).
Pockets
of resistance
Will unco-ordinated
resistance by the world’s most widely-used languages be enough to cope with the threat
of cultural uniformity? Perhaps not, since each language has its own geographical
sphere in which it is used with varying degrees of competence. If you add up the
number of speakers of the world’s dozen most-used languages, you come up with a figure
of more than three billion—half of humanity—which easily surpasses the two billion
for whom English is more or less the official language (the Commonwealth and the
United States). Backed by a concerted strategy, these major languages would surely
make headway in international institutions.
It is not just the future of the world’s major languages that is at stake. Further
down the scale are 100 or so tongues officially recognized by governments or sub-national
regions, such as the constitutional languages of India and the languages of the Russian
nationalities. These languages have their place and a right to defend it. At the
bottom of the scale are thousands of sometimes struggling languages variously called
native, minority, communal or ethnic tongues. Most are in danger of disappearing.
They are spoken by some 300 million people.
Will minor languages die out, as some predict? Yes, because the best way to kill
off a language is to teach another one. The monopoly that about 100 national languages
have on education makes it inevitable that languages not taught in schools will be
confined to the home and to folklore and eventually be pushed out of nurturing cultural
environments.
Language murder or “linguicide”, whether it is carried out intentionally or not,
is one of the basic tools of ethnocide, of the deculturation of peoples which has
always been perpetrated by colonization and is still the semi-official aim of governments
which do not recognize the rights of their native ethnic minorities. As local languages
are increasingly excluded from education systems, “linguicide” is speeding up.
The language issue in the 21st century raises two questions. How can widely-used
or national languages resist the encroachment of English? And how can minority languages
in danger of extinction be saved and gain access to development?
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