It seems of late that every so often a piece on English dominance of the globe crops up. This time the triumphalism was the work of Ali Wyne writing in Foreign Policy. While some of the points have merit, as usual any political discussion of language, i.e. linguistic pre-eminence equates to political pre-eminence is overstated.
National power and linguistic dominance do not always go ahand in hand. Latin was the main language of science and learning long after the Roman Empire demised. And when we actually consider the use of Latin in the Roman world, we should remember Greek was the lingua franca in the Eastern parts of the empire while Greece as a power had long since vanished.
Other languages continue to prosper long after the power of the nation of origin has waned. No one would say that Spain or Portugal are world powers, though they are the birth place of two of the worlds most widely spoken languages and one of the world's fastest growing. Equally, America's global dominance does not increase Britain' status. In fact, it reflects poorly on it. It's not British accents most people want to learn.
Similarly, China and Indian burgeoning English speaking populations do not guarantee America's continuing dominance. People from these Asian nations may choose to conduct their business in English. Heck, within a few generation maybe the two countries will speak English exclusively- monolingualism being the curse of the 'Anglo-Saxon' world. But this will just mean that these countries may be dominant AND they may happen to speak English. It does not necessarily mean they will look to American any more than the USA looks to the UK.
This analysis also ignores one of the key features of languages: their tendency to fragment. I'm already dubious that we can speak of English in the singular form. This is not just because of regional terminology like 'truck' vs. 'lorry' but the very real fact that mutual comprehensibility is not assured by English. Many Americans say they cannot understand people from the UK, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Sometimes communication amongst speakers of these nations is fraught with misunderstandings. There's no reason to assume this fragmentation won't continue as more people take up the language. If speakers of a language cannot understand each other, how much can we call this a single language?
Undoubtedly. The former power explains the spread of these languages. However, the article in FP makes the point that the spread continues to bolster the power of the language's nation of origin. This is not the case in either Spain or Portugal. China and India, along with the rest of the world, are adopting English to a) do business with the US b) do business with each other c) because of the status it, apparently, confers. As point b) becomes more important the US will not necessarily be the center of English. My point was that you can't reduce political cultural power from language superiority. People speak languages for many reasons and not always because they like the nation where that language emerged or in the case of US English taken root.
Coincidentally the captcha for this post contains the word 'English'.
cool, english has so many dialects...I can't understand gangsta
Interesting to think about how artificial languages like Esperanto and Globish fit in also... I don't agree that it's not British accents most people want to learn. From the small amount of ESL teaching I've done (in Australia), British English still ruled the day because those were mainly the textbooks that were used, and students didn't seem that interested (well, sometimes) in learning the Australian variation - even though some of the Britishisms they taught in the textbook are almost never used here. Come to think of it, whenever I had to teach Australian English it was a bit of a joke - a fun class. Mad as a cut snake!
Interesting. Though I would argue that Portugal and Spain were significant if not THE world powers between 1400 and 1600, largely due to their mastery of the sea and control of major trade routes, which to this day explains why their languages are so widespread.