Empires of the Word - Nicholas Ostler [311]
Major events and interactions, now unforeseen, will disrupt and reroute the future too; there seems little doubt of this. Most easily predictable—but not, I hope, certain—is some kind of military holocaust, something that is nowadays technically all too easy. This could profoundly alter the balance of populations in the world, as the Anglo-Saxon advance through North America led rapidly to the extinction or endangerment of all its indigenous languages. An epidemic too could have a massive balance-tipping effect—as everywhere in the Americas when Europeans came, but as perhaps also twice in Britain, during the twilight years of Celtic British and Norman French—especially in situations where there is pre-existing bilingualism. A truly horrific epidemic, even if localised, could well permanently alter the linguistic situation in Malaysia, or in Canada.
Not every unforeseen event need change the status quo to the detriment of English, of course. Remember the Persian emperor Darius, who decreed the use of Aramaic throughout his realm, although it was then a foreign language with nothing to recommend it but a very strong background as a vehicle of administration. It is quite possible, on that analogy, that some pragmatic government might hasten the spread of English to a part of the world hitherto without it—in the Baltic, perhaps, or central Asia. Indeed, something like this happened when Lee Kwan Yew decreed English for the largely Chinese-speaking colony of Singapore in the 1960s.
Whatever happens, any changes that do occur may have a surprisingly disturbing effect on the English speakers who remain. For three centuries now, the bounds of the language have continually expanded. Typical speakers may pride themselves on their pragmatism, and welcome the breaking down of language barriers, in the interests of wider understanding and easy communication. But when the language whose use is to be reduced is their own, expect discomfort to be registered. In 1984, some 8 per cent of the US population professed a first language other than English. This was enough for a programme of legislation to get under way in the early 1990s, to ‘recognize English in law as the language of the official business of the Government’.9 There is now a continuing hubbub of proposal and appeal on the topic in many states’ assemblies, which remains inconclusive. We have yet to see how other English-speaking countries will react when they too can no longer easily assume that the option of communication in English is always open.
But no law and no decree anywhere has ever yet stemmed the ebbing of a language tide.
Three threads: Freedom, prestige and learnability
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen.
What one cannot speak of, one must pass over in silence.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-philosophicus
Freedom
At various points in this narrative, there has been a temptation, almost a duty, to speak of freedom. Many language traditions make a particular claim to speak with it, or for it. Freedom of speech is one of the cardinal ideals, upheld in the great modern statements of human rights, and endlessly controversial in practice. For many civilisations, freedom is the virtue that gives speaking its main purpose. Yet in the end, we have said next to nothing about it. Why?
Freedom is a particular concern of some kinds of states, particularly republics. Some peoples that have particularly exhibited freedom as an ideal are the Greeks, the Romans, the Venetians, the French after their Revolution in 1789, the British (though discreetly) after their ‘Glorious Revolution’ in 1688 which asserted the supremacy of Parliament over monarch, and the United States of America. But although it is generally agreed that eleuthería, libertās, libertá, liberté and freedom are translation equivalents, there has never been