Why we need a global
language and which language can be considered for this taking various factors
into consideration?
As in species
survival, dominance, proliferation and extinction, in language too there are
many factors which contribute to similar situations.
If we get down to
serious research on each and every one of these areas of survival and
extinction of different languages and the dominance of certain languages in
certain geographical locations/regions, in certain specific domains of life
etc, probably we can simultaneously document many other areas of life on earth
which has either influenced or impacted these developments and vice versa that
is how certain languages have influenced and impacted many areas of life on
earth.
This is a very vast
area of research but in this article I plan to restrict to very limited area of
language i.e. the prevalence, preponderance, preference for English.
I am neither a
linguist nor a scientist nor a philosopher but I am going to view it as an
ordinary observer. So that I escape from the traps of linguistic confirmation
bias and prejudice; the necessity to float a hypothesis and work through
theories and experiments to prove that hypothesis; create a logical premise and
develop a philosophical vindication as a carapace of arguments to substantiate
that premise.
This approach suits a
person like me, who prefers to observe, perceive and share whatever I have
observed and perceived rather than plunge too deep into subjects, and who is
more like an inquisitive youth indulging in desultory hobbies till another
interesting hobby interrupts or invites the attention. After all everything is
a matter of attention.
Language basically is
a tool which pays attention to ensure that, as a species with conscious
awareness coupled with an ability to recall or recollect that conscious
awareness, we can share with others verbally, i.e. communicate whatever we have
observed and experienced and also bequeath to our future generations in verbal
format.
Before the advent of
structuring of sounds into proper language the communication and records were
there in the form of many other tools like grand architectures, sculptures etc
but imagine if the entire plays of Shakespeare were to be depicted in
sculptures conveying completely everything as it is done in language.
So, in a way, the
ability to develop proper language, propagate it and popularize it involved
various players and various factors. That’s why fortunately no one is called
the inventor or discoverer of any natural language.
In a way, it was part
and parcel of our evolution and a very vital component of our evolution which
enriched and enhanced our evolutionary advancement and preservation as we had
documented verbal guidance which saved us the time, energy and other resources
in not repeating the experiences of our predecessors either good or bad.
From this vague
introduction to language, we shall see what the basic things that any language
did:-
• Named objects – things, persons, all other species etc and
enabled us to connect mentally with the name to identify what they referred to.
As Confucius said that “the beginning of wisdom is calling things by their
right names.”
• Named actions – what one was doing or what something was doing.
• Named states or condition of things – how a person or thing was.
• Named how an object was and how an activity was done – and so on
and so forth.
I have intentionally
refrained from using any grammatical terminology like noun, verb, adjective etc
because we are talking about language in general in its initial stages and
besides all these grammatical classifications get their appropriate labels and
relevance mostly in terms of context.
For example I can say:
• I bought a cage
[noun].
• I caged [verb] a
bird.
• People work in small
cubicles 18 hours a day leading a life like caged [adjective] birds.
Then having made words
for these fundamental aspects of life, as evolution of human species
progressed, especially in terms of human beings’ neural developments, social
systems, multiple activities involving various types of studies and skills to
understand life as it was sauntering through evolutionary development or surging
as a commander directing the course of evolution, sometimes constructively and
sometimes destructively, language too popped out newer and greater number and
of words and expressions to convey varieties of activities, including
articulating many abstract concepts, imaginations, fantasies, dreams etc.
That’s why many
thousands of words that dominate the discourse nowadays belong to latest trends
and sciences that are pervading and propelling every domain of life to greater
understating and connectivity belong to the cyber terminology which was a
science unknown to human species a century ago.
Still all languages
have their own limitations and the most irritating part of life is when we
cannot find an exact word or expression to convey appropriately any particular
phenomenon or feeling, all the more irritating if that phenomenon
or feeling is irritating in a hitherto unknown way. It is like specialist doctors struggling to
tackle a new virus.
While there are many
scholarly linguistic studies about the influence of language in our thinking
and culture and vice versa, the irony as indicated earlier is that languages
have their inherent limitations too.
Added to this lot of
damage is wrecked through translations which fail to exactly convey meaning
from one language to another.
Here I would like to
quote certain interesting aspects of these features from an interesting book by
Guy Murchie titled The Seven Mysteries of Life:
Today there are only
an estimated 130 significant languages (“significant” meaning spoken by at
least a million people), which include many you may never have heard of like Wu
in China, Tadzhik in the Soviet Union, Bagn in India, Xhosa in South Africa,
Pashto in Afghanistan, Quechua in Peru.
The vast majority of
people in the world speak one or more of the top 20 languages, which, in the
order of the numbers (millions) using them as their native tongue, according to
Nationalencyklopedin (2010), are:
Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, who gave an ambiguous reply to the American
ultimatum.
An outstanding example
was the reply of Japan’s Premier Tojo to President Truman’s ultimatum of July
26, 1945. When Tojo said Japan would “mokusatsu” the ultimatum, he meant that
his government would “consider” it. But the translators at Domei quoted him in
English as saying the Japanese would “take no notice of” it. So atomic bombs
destroyed the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – perhaps for nothing! And the
same sort of oriental misunderstanding continued through the Korean and Vietnam
wars, where the much publicized “peace talks” bogged down for years over the
occidentals’ assumption that “to negotiate” was “to compromise,” while the
orientals interpreted it as “to get something by talking”.
Individual injustice
through language of course must be even commoner than the more conspicuous
bungles in international diplomacy, and I’ve read that before the Russian
Revolution an Assyriologist named Netomeff was exiled to Siberia for life on a
charge of blasphemy and treason because he wasn’t given a chance to explain
that his book about Nebuchadnezzar did not mean “Ne boch ad ne tzar” (Russian
for “no God and no tsar”). And such irrationality of language interpretation
continues to plague world understanding in the United Nations Assembly, where a
translator on one memorable occasion translated “out of sight, out of mind”
into an expression the Russians understood as “invisible insanity”.
Even if the story
about Count Leroy de Saint-Arnaud is
only a humorous anecdote, it shows that misunderstandings happen sometimes.
Even when no
translation is involved, most languages have ambiguities that can cause serious
misunderstanding. And this made the history books in 1851 during Napoleon III’s
coup d’etat when one of his officers, Count de Saint-Arnaud, on being informed
that a mob was approaching the Imperial Guard, coughed and exclaimed, with his
hand across his throat, “Ma sacree toux!” (“My damned cough!”) But his
lieutenant, understanding him to say “Massacrez tous!” (“Massacre them all!”),”
gave the order to fire, killing thousands – needlessly.
The English language,
now beginning to be considered a leading candidate for a universal tongue, is
still not only seriously unphonetic but full of illogical idioms. A London
house on fire may not only “burn up” and “burn down” at the same time but it
itself can “put out” the same flames and smoke that the firemen are
simultaneously “putting out” with their hoses. And, speaking of smoke, a
Chinese student of English rang a fire alarm at Fort Bragg, California,
emptying a big building to which fire engines dashed with sirens screaming, all
because he needed a light for his cigarette and had carefully followed the
directions printed on a red box: PULL FOR FIRE.
Up to now the
established languages have evolved naturally without conscious guidance or
design or with anybody seeming to mind that the English phrase “I assume”
translates into French “I deduce” and into Russian “I consider.” Yet there is
an unobvious mystique about language associated with the fact that it grows by
itself, both in individuals and throughout the world, like a sentient being.
For, as linguist Noam Chomsky of Massachusetts Institute of Technology has
pointed out, all normal children at birth possess an innate capacity and
compulsion to acquire speech within their next three or four years, not just by
imitating their elders but, more significantly, by comprehending and creating a
constant flow of new combinations of words and phrases never expressed in
exactly the same way before. Actually this is a very subtle two-way flow, with
the young mind both shaping the language and being shaped by it in return,
depending greatly on the characteristics of his particular language as well as
on how it is used – on whether cautious noun thinking eventually “achieves
success” or instead more aggressive verb thinking simply “succeeds.”
So, it is inevitable
to a certain extent that every language suffers from ambiguities syntactically
and phonetically. In addition to these if there are situations wherein
important negotiations are required to be made wherein the negotiators may get
bogged down in the quagmire of too many languages and language interpreters.
They can neither
concentrate on the content nor can they be utterly confident about what they
have negotiated.
There is a necessity
to evolve a global language for various reasons.
One can come up with
thousands of reasons but the predominant factors which necessitate the
emergence of such a language is to facilitate further and enhance more number
of people to know, understand and share with many more leading to greater
interaction, improvement and to a certain extent facilitate the process of
unity.
Hence there arises a
necessity to bring down further, the number of languages; and if necessary
evolve a global language, and this has to emerge from among the existing
languages, as we know the experiments with artificially created languages such
as Esperanto, IDO etc have failed for want of literature. A global language
needs a pride of ancestry, must be in popular use at present, and possess
worthy credentials to survive in the future.
A language, which
qualifies to become a global language, must be primarily a significant one as
per the criteria mentioned earlier. But mere number of users cannot be a
sufficient or justifiable parameter to classify a language as significant,
because if that were the case we may have in that list such unheard of
languages as Wu in China, Xhosa in South Africa, Pashto in Afghanistan, Quechua
in Peru.
A more justifiable
classification would be, in addition to the number of users of a language, its
geographical spread, the wide range and variegated vocabulary to communicate
and express as many ideas or events as possible in as many fields of human
activity, it must have the syntactic plasticity, flamboyant flexibility suited
to both simple and complex modes of expression, and an enormously evolved
derivational morphology along with preferably people involved in various
domains of activities using that language.
If there is a language
that fits into all these criteria adequately, that is English. It stands as the
unrivalled champion as a global language. It does not mean that it is superior
to all other languages or it is without any weakness. Definitely it does not
sound as sweet as French. In fact it does not have a word for ‘Punya’, the
exact opposite of ‘sin’. It has not a single word expression to counter many
social and psychological aspects of life, which many other languages even very
insignificant ones have as has been wonderfully brought out be Howard Rheingold
in the book titled They Have a Word for It. Here are a few of them:
• Tjotjog (Japanese) –
harmonious congruence in human affairs
• Mokita (Kirinina-New
Guinea) – truth everybody knows but nobody speaks
• Yufen (Japanese)- an
awareness of the universe that triggers feelings too deep and mysterious for
words
• Fucha (Polish) –
using company time and money and other resources for your own ends
English does not have
the grammatical subtleties of such insignificant languages as Chichewa, a
language spoken by the unlettered tribes of East Africa which as per the studies
of Benjamin Lee Whorf, has an extraordinary perspective on time through its two
past tenses, one for the real or objective past and another for the subjective
or mental past. The primitive tongues of Algonquin languages have four persons
in their pronouns; the metaphysically marvelous language of Hopi Indians of
Arizona reflects their excellent view of creation; instead of a noun for ‘wave’
they have only the participle ‘walalata’ (waving).
While every nation and
its leaders talk more and more about global trade, global thinking, global
concern etc. But when it comes to agreeing on a global language in addition to
many reasonable impediments, there are also factors linguistic chauvinism,
ethnocentric pride, unwillingness or inability to learn a foreign language,
national and/or religious affinity to a particular language etc prevent people
from opting to / bothering to horn their skills in a foreign tongue / global
language which rules the global arena as a medium of discourse.
It is an aspect of
evolution, no one wished or worked for the extinction of dinosaurs nor the near
extinction of many species/creatures in the animal kingdom as well as in flora
and fauna nor does anyone wish new virus to emerge and hurt everyone. Some
things happen by our design others beyond our decisions and designs but delves
deeper in terms of their influence in our life like many useful technologies
towards which initially many may have had some reservation out of fear that
they may upset the status quo.
It is not suggesting
that definitely a United Nationhood can be brought about by either unity of
religion or race or language. The Arab world and Latin America are classical
examples were despite all those unity, there are so many nations, some with
great animosity against the other.
It is out of sheer
wish and optimism that we need to remember one thing, while all of us feel the
need for unity, what unity needs is feeling for all by all. Let us remember
what the great seer Bahaullah has said:
If language can help
create a sense of nationalism, it can equally well help create a sense of
internationalism.
So, various aspects of
language several languages continue to evolve and the language debates continue
to occupy human thought process because human beings ability to use language
has been a very great advancement over other species.
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