English over the world

Title

Creator

Aiken, Fanet Rankin

Language

English

Year

1966

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Abstract

Condensed from September 1930 Bookman.

Here are arguments in favor of English for use as a world language.

Fulltext

■ Here are arguments in favor of English for use as a world language. ENGLISH OVER THE WORLD Very often you may see in the papers signs of the pro gress of English toward world-wide use. These fore casts are accompanied by emotional outbursts ranging from hisses to hurrahs, for there is nothing which arouses the stronger intellec tual passions as much as the question of how we shall speak. Frequently these bits of news take the form of reports, written in the quaint jour nalese of our day, that Mexi co or Persia or Chile has banned or will ban our Eng lish talkies for fear its native children will come to think our tongue more agreeable than their own. Now and then the items merely inform the public that English has been adopted as the official language of another interna tional gathering. One and all they point to the world domination of English, like it or not as you may. The four-word peace plan, "Make Everybody Speak Eng lish,” which Henry Ford for mulated some years since, is Qot logically a reason for the universal use of our tongue. Any language, if spoken everywhere, would make for world peace. It is not num bers, nor politics, nor trade, nor the talkies — the four reasons most frequently given — which make English a good language for the world use. These are merely the accidents of a beneficent fate. They do not penetrate the true inwardness of the mat ter. First, numbers. We are told that 220,000,000 people either use or understand English, as compared to on ly about 120,000,000 for French and 110,000,000 for German, and these numbers are advanced as if they real ly meant anything. But un less English is in itself a good and worthy language for the world to use, all the numbers in the world won’t make so. Second, politics. The World War unquestionably 32 PANORAMA enhanced in tremendous mea sure the prestige of the two great English-speaking com monwealths. Our local boys have been financially advis ing most of die governments there are, and they have made good, too. Hand in hand with American advisers have gone British diplomats, and together they have done much toward bringing about world peace according to the Ford recipe. But — is Eng lish a good language for everybody to speak? Third, trade. The Am erican dollar has swept the money markets of the world, and the pound sterling is not far behind it. Did you fol low the stock reports in the late crash — of, didn’t you! — and did you notice how securities all over the glove were affected? It was a touching tribute to our finan cial leadership. But if “dol lar” is not a better word than “franc" or “lira,” what do these facts matter? Finally, talkies. Talkies made in Hollywood are rid ing triumphant over all the foreign bans, propagandizing the English language, Ameri can edition, wherever the sun shines. They may well prove the most effective ins trument yet invented for spreading English. But ought English to be spread? It is intrinsically a better language than French or German or even Chinese? This is the moral question which lurks behind the facts, and this is the question which we must now consider. Back in 300 B.C., to take a paral lel instance, Hellenic Greek became a world language. It supplanted to a large ex tent many local tongues, among them the Hebrew and Aramaic of Palestine. Yet either was incomparably a better language, than Greek, simpler, more effective, easier to learn and to use. Fate is playing on the nations to day no such shabby trick as when she compelled the Jews of Palestine to learn Greek. It is a curious fact that language as we now know it develops not from the sim ple to the complicated, but the other way round — from the complicated to the sim ple. Whenever we can trace more than one stage in a language’s history we find that the earlier speech is more difficult, more unwieldly. Latin is complication March 1966 33 personified compared to three of its modern children, French, Spanish and Italian. So far as modern Greek has changed from Classic Greek, it has simplified. Coptic Greek has lost many of the complications present in the tongue of the hieroglyphs. To be sure, we have never met a language a-borning, and so we can only guess that somewhere a stage of simplicity must have preced ed those complications upon which our earliest gaze rests. But that is a matter of spe culation. What we do know as a present linguistic law is this: time simplifies a tongue. Gradually the lan guage begins to forsake its numerous declensions and conjugations, its optative, cohortative, predicative moqds, and all the other flummeries of primitive speech. Gradually there be gins to emerge a lean, effi cient dialect. This simplification has not always been considered a linguistic virtue. The pro per adjective to use in des cribing antigue languages was rich, and for more re cent developments, degene rate or decadent. What was the Greek verb if not rich, with the hundred varying dresses it might wear? And does not the modern English verb display a decadence verging upon shamelessness with only two? It was in 1892 that a Da nish scholar, Otto Jespersen, punctured this legend with a book called Progress in Language; and since then “decadence" has had things all its own way. And after all, why not? Can you pic ture yourself selecting among the 12 possible forms of bonus when you might be using the single word good? So the first reason why English is the best world language is that it has car ried this simplication of forms farther than has any other modern language. In German good still has six dresses to wear, and in French four. The German verb still counts its forms by the trunkful, and the French verb is not much better. Danish alone of modem languages has approached English in its formlessness. A second qualification, scarcely less important, is impurity. English is proba bly more impure than any 34 Panorama other tongue, ancient or mor dem. English picks up words from any language at all, and by the process it has suc ceeded in making itself in ternational. Scarcely any foreigner learns English with out finding many old friends in the new vocabulary. Im purity is a good characteris tic for a world language. English deserves universal use because it is formless, impure and wordy. Wordi ness is not usually consider ed a virtue any more than impurity is; but words are the wealth of the English, and the riches of its word hoard are only paralleled by the riches of the Anglo-Am erican nations. No user of our tongue need be repeti tious; he can vary his words with synonyms or near-synonyms in almost endless va riety. The New Oxford Dic tionary contains almost half a million words. Has English no defects, to set against this formidable array of virtues? Yes, indeed. We have a bad alphabet, a tough pair of articles, a and the, and a difficult idiom in prepositions. But on the other hand, we have a na tural gender, an easy sen tence order, and a splendid tolerance of almost any ac cent or grammar so long as the idea it expresses be good. Balancing defects against virtues, we may rea sonably conclude that the applauders of World English have a sound linguistic jus tification for their choice, unrecognized as this fact may be in their eyes. — By Fanet Rankin Aiken,, condensed from Sept. 1930 Bookman. THE FEVER Demetrius would at times tarry from business to attend to pleasure. On such occasions, he usual ly feigned indisposition. His father, coming to visit him, saw a beautiful young lady retire from his cham ber. On his entering, Demetrius said, "Sir, the fever” has left me.” “I met it at the door,” replied the father. March 1966 35

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