English is one in a long line of global lingua francas. If it’s the last, we’ll lose an important bit of culture, and reinforce elements of inequality.
That’s what Rosemary Salomone argues in her 2021 book The Rise of English: Global Politics and the Power of Language.
In 2010, British Nicholas Ostler author argued that English will be the last lingua franca, due to the values-lock of technology today. Salomone’s book is an exhaustive review of how English came to its vaulted position today – beating French, replacing Latin and joining others like Arabic, Italian and Greek that played versions of the global language of commerce of the past.
I enjoyed the book, though dense, and recommend it for language and history nerds. Below find my notes for future reference.
My notes:
- In 1794, Condorcet argued in “Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind” that Latin had a monopoly on knowledge.
- Dante traded high-minded Latin for approachable Italian for his Divine Comedy
- Will English face a similar fate to Latin? (Greek, Arabic and Phoenician also were past lingua francs)
- One difference from previous eras: 18th century rise of nation state and the idea of a single national language
- Nicholas Ostler: “English will be the last lingua franca”
- The United Kingdom spread English and the United States brought prestige as three factors took hold: globalization, internationalization (policies) and knowledge economies (over goods) — all ties by neoliberalism of individualism
- For better or for worse, English is not an ethnic or national identification, “it is an economic skill” 8
- Of the 1.5b fluent English speakers (or nearly 20% of the world’s 7.7 b population), less than a third (400 million) are native speakers
- English promoted what Joseph Nye called America’s soft power
- English accounts for 60% of internet content
- Language for Employability: ”cultural capital” from Pierre
- Linguistic hegemony
- Nationalism and the idea of one language and one people remains strong around the country
- EU employs 4,300 translators and 800 interpreters and freelancers on staff for managing 24 official languages
- Between 1999 and 2016, 48% to 82.5% of EU documents written in English; French went down from 35% down to 3.7%
- Only European Court of Justice uses French primarily; for others English is de facto lingua franca
- But EU wants multilingualism: there’s a tension between diversity and efficiency
- French Toubon Law: mandates use of France
- Peter Kraus: the language market
- Is English ”a barrier or a bridge to economic and social mobility?” 32
- Learn English to get into global scientific research; or be forced to because of imperialism
- Antonio Gramsci hegemony; Robert Phillips in “linguistic imperialism”
- Linguistic justice: should the expectation be for all to be multilingual, rather than just non native English speakers?
- Phillipe Van Parijs: linguistic tax on anglophone countries to fund English learning in other countries
- World Englishes: there are variations in the language
- 1995 European Commission paper argued multilingualism was part of the European identity, to learn at least two other languages
- English medium language (EMI) learning in European colleges has become a debate
- Number of English bachelors and masters programs in Europe went from 725 in 2001 to 2,389 in 2007 to 8,089 in 2014; two thirds of Nordic countries have these
- Research in English spreads more widely, which helps rankings, which boosts enrollment
- La Fioraso Law: another example of French language battles with English. The French language defense started as far back as the 1539 Ordinance of Villers-Cotterets which called for use of French, which was the king’s attempt to keep Catholic Church and its Latin at bay (75)
- In 1880s Onesime Reclus in his book France, Algerie et Les Colonies coined the term Francophonie to refer to shared language outside a nationalit; A new approach
- “Mother tongue plus two” for EU
- Nye soft power: ideals, culture policies
- China competing in Africa where France sees the future battleground of language playing out
- The “Scramble for Africa” kicked off at the Berlin conference of 1884 in which no Africans were present to shape borders with respect to languages.
- Einar Hauger: “The English were tolerant of native tongues but unwilling to accept their speakers as equals. The French were willing to receive natives of all colors into the French community provided they give up their identity and learn French.”
- Rwanda left French for English
- South Africa’s Language in Education law in 1997, built on successful constitution
- But still English divide: wealthy and elite use English and few others do
- Neville Alexander in 1999: English remains “unassailable but unattainable” for many — he predicted “language divisions” would grow
- In South Africa and some French-speaking African countries, English is seen as “neutral,” not Anglo but a Globish sort of language, in contrast to colonial Afrikaner
- Open Stellrnbosch called for English instructions
- Main character in Hindi Medium Bollywood film says: “English isn’t just a language in this country. It’s a class.”
- Salman Rushdie: The empire writes back with a vengeance
- India has 156 languages, thousands multilingualisms
- 2020 English Proficiency Index: India was ranked 50 of 100. A third speak English but perhaps only 4% truly proficient, an elite caste
- Indian poet Keki N. Daruwalla: “Colonial history shows that language can be as domineering as any occupational army.”
- In India, Modi’s Pro Hindi policy is a big change from inclusive Ghandi and prime minister Jawurikaa
- Is Hindi or English the national unifying language? English has a tinge of colonialism; Hindi has anti-Muslim rhetoric
- India’s three Language solution: English, Hindi and regional mother tongue was nonetheless rejected
- America has long had a monolingualism bent even in our most international places like NYC where we always assume English is spoken
- The Revolutionary war government issues francs and German documents for immigrants. In the United States, English isn’t national language like France or Italian in those countries
- Noah Webster started American English
- 30 U.S. states have English only laws
- Netflix said 85% of viewers chose “dubs over subs” (dubbing over subtitles) for the Spanish-language thriller Money Heist though aficionados prefer subtitles 271
- 1979 commission on foreign language report commissioned by Jimmy Carter
- In 2014, 10% of American k-12 students were studying foreign language, nearly 100% in Europe. Ranges a lot by states but only 50% in NJ – the country’s top
- Should we trade foreign language for computer code?
- Foreign language often seen as elite by Americans: in 1971 James Conant argued in Slums and Suburbs that teaching foreign languages to urban school students was “educationally futile”
- We also still study a lot of French and German not Portuguese or Arabic though Chinese growing
- All the while immigration makes United States more multilingual
- “Language graveyard “2015 Pew research showed 97% of immigrants spoke Spanish to their kids. 71% second generation and 49% in third generation
- Sapir Whorf and Arrival movie logic isn’t true but interesting
- In 1922, Otto Jespersen argued bilingualism would hold kids back, an outdated prevailing logic 289
- Bilingual advantage
- If trends continue only 5% of the world will be native English speakers in 2050
- Seal of Biliteracy
- Guiding Principles for Dual Language Education is influential
- Utah has strong language learning due to Church of Latter Day Saints
- Emmanuel Macon’s “Startup Nation” drove French Founders and other efforts to connect NYC with language learning (both French and African)
- In 1965, Jacob Marschak’s The Economics of Language began relationship between language as economic tool
- Accent Reduction Institute
- Companies like Volkswagen and Ralkuten make English their company language “small populations with global ambitions”
- Technology hasn’t solved it yet despite a 2016 Wall Street Journal story arguing “the language barrier is about to fall”
- “l’appell du vide” is an idiom to mean “to want to do something crazy” but it’s hard for Google translate to pick up these things
- Lakoff’s “Metaphors We Live By” book
- Language is not just economic but self-realizing and cultural. We need it for peace, prosperity and stability. Cultural exchange
- Prestige world languages for economic and social reasons but there’s beauty in learning other regional languages too
- English not as a force of combination but as a core component of multilingualism
