[Foundation-l] Klassical Chinese

[Mark Williamson]

On 10/09/2008, mboverload <mboverloadlister at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 2:08 PM, Nikola Smolenski <smolensk at eunet.yu> wrote:
>> The point is, it is easier and cheaper to educate people in their language
>> than to force a foreign language on them.
>
> Maybe I'm just a self-centered American with a superiority complex.

Bingo. Yes, it would be more cost-effective if the world all spoke one
language, but learning a language isn't an easy task. Many Americans
often assume that "most people" around the world speak or at least
understand English. I've heard so many people say this, it's really
sad.

The idea that things around the world are the same as at home seems to
be a frequent one. The average American idea of the linguistic
abilities of the world seems to go something like this, based on my
experience:

Almost everybody on the planet speaks English, and those who don't,
speak Spanish.

Of course, there are billions of people who don't speak English. Many
millions, if not billions, of adults studied English every year of
their schooling all the way through the end of university, and are
still not fluent.

A handful of countries around the world can be considered mostly
fluent in English as a second language, and most are in Europe.

Yes, language extinction is an every-day reality. However, it's not
really a serious threat to the larger languages, let's say those with
over 10 million speakers, which number at least 60, and a very minor
threat to most of those with over 1 million, which number 200.

By saying that everybody speaks English, you're kind of jumping the
gun. We are seeing a shift in the world today, linguistically
speaking, I think.

Cultures and peoples are abandoning local languages in favor of
languages of wider communication, or LWC. However, there are sort of
"tiers" of LWC.

In some parts of the world, every village has a different language.
Let's say, for sake of example, that we are in a part of the world
that is politically subdivided like this: Country, Region, County,
District, Village.

Within the village, there is only one language, but in the rural
district, there are perhaps 30 different villages, each with its own
language and about 50-100 residents each. One of the villages in the
district is the district capital. It is bigger than the other
villages, with about 500 people, and its residents are slightly
wealthier and more prestigious. At the first phase of loss of world
language diversity, people from the other villages in the district are
abandoning their language in favor of the language of the district
capital.

After this language shift is complete, or perhaps even while it is
still taking place, people from the district begin to shift to the
more prestigious language of the county seat, a small town of about
5,000 people.

As you can imagine, the next stage is for the entire county to shift
to the highest prestige language of the region, probably the one
spoken in the regional capital or the main city. The main city in the
region is a modest city by world standards, of about 50,000 people,
but to a man from the village who has never ventured far from home, it
is a big place.

Then, of course, comes a shift by the region to the language of the
national capital, where maybe 100,000 or 1 million people live.

The time each stage takes is variable. Sometimes, it is very slow;
other times, entire stages can be skipped over with a shift directly
from the village language to the national language.

However, none of this happens overnight. Any language shift, where a
culture that was formerly speakers of one language shifts to become
native speakers of another, takes at least two generations, often
more.

Urbanization, of course, speeds this process greatly.

Many people overestimate the effect of colonization on language shift.
Kinshasa, officially considered a Francophone city, actually only has
40% of its population fluent in French. Most use Lingala, an African
language, as a lingua franca. Of course, Lingala is a Language of
Wider Communication itself.

This is not to say that a colonial history cannot bring an
"international" language to become the native language through
urbanization. Abidjan, Cotê d'Ivoire, is estimated to be between 75%
and 99% Francophone.

Lagos, the largest city in Africa, communicates in a mixture of
Nigerian Pidgin and standard English.

Increased internal mobility in developing countries also promotes
adoption of a common language, such as English or Hindi in India, or
Swahili or English in some East African nations.

At the current rate, it is safe to say that there will be far less
languages spoken on this planet in 100 years. However, I am almost
certain the number will still be well above 100. Maybe someday the
world will speak one language or even a handful of them, but
globalization is not going quite as quickly as some might say. The
linguistic situation in Africa, for example, is still developing, and
it will be interesting to watch. We are in a very exciting period of
history in many aspects, and while I personally think language loss is
unfortunate, it does also have a few benefits.

Mark