Host: But if you’re not part of the global business scene, do you still need English?

Host: But if you’re not part of the global business scene, do you still need English?

87. Unit 13 LESSON 6: Ex.3b)

The global fund of languages has never before gone into such an extensive decline. This process seems to have originated in the 15th century, as the age of European expansion began. At least 15,000 languages were spoken at the beginning of that century. Since then, some 4,000 to 9,000 tongues have disappeared as a result of wars, genocide, legal bans, and assimilation.

Of course, as a first language, the world's most common tongue is not European but Asian: Mandarin Chinese is now spoken by more than 900 million people. But English is rapidly becoming the primary international medium of science, commerce, and popular culture. It is used in some form by about 2 billion people every day.

Much of the world's linguistic diversity is concentrated in just a few regions. Some of these linguistic "hot spots" appear to be on the verge of cultural collapse. About 80 percent of the world's languages are spoken only in their country of origin, which makes them extremely vulnerable.

Governments have eliminated many native languages by killing almost all their speakers, or have banned minority languages in favour of linguistic conformity. Many countries require children to be educated in the dominant language, which results in the loss of the children’s mother tongue. Promoting a single language is often seen as a way to foster national identity, especially in ethnically diverse countries. But a common language hardly guarantees political unity.

Linguistic decline is a matter of concern for the whole of humanity. By giving up our linguistic diversity, we are also losing our understanding of biological diversity. Native inhabitants of regions with high biodiversity have developed rich vocabularies to describe the natural world around them. Many of these treasure houses of local knowledge are being replaced by more simplified forms of speech.

Many experts believe that the best way to conserve linguistic wealth is to foster multilingualism. Certainly, different peoples need to understand each other, which is why some languages have always served as linguae francae. But among minority language speakers, multilinguilism has always been the norm – my grandparents in Bombay are a good example. Even today, it's estimated that two thirds of all children are still growing up in multilingual environments. Encouraging the use of minority languages might help revive the linguistic heritage of many countries. Millennia of human experience are accumulated in the planet's many languages, and this linguistic diversity may be as essential to our cultural health as biological diversity is to our physical health. Each language is its own world. By allowing so many of these worlds to disappear, we may be losing a lot more than just words.

88. Unit 13 LESSON 8. Listening

The lingua franca of the world is English, or, more exactly, a collection of "Englishes" – American English, Australian English and others. A great number of people know English as a foreign language. They typically use a more simplified variant, for example, without most of the idioms of English. Of course, they make mistakes, and sometimes the "English" used by these people is almost impossible to understand. In addition, people who use English as their native language do not know how to spell difficult words, since they basically know English as a spoken language. Thus, the universal language is simplified and misspelled "English".

When a language has the position of a universal language, this position tends to be strengthened by itself. Since everyone knows and uses English, people are almost forced to learn it and use it. Though English is widely used, it is extremely unsuitable as a universal language. There are several reasons for this. Any national language, which is originally the language of a particular tribe or nation, has obvious defects when used for international communication:

• 
  A national language carries with it the history of the nation. For instance, words and phrases have got, apart from their dictionary meanings, connotations, colours and associations. This is an important cultural phenomenon which helps in keeping the nation a nation, but in international communication it is a burden.
  
• 
  When written national languages originated, they were usually formed on the basis of the dialect of the capital or other important area, with the aim of creating a language which fosters national identity. Thus, the very origin of a national language is in a sense nationalistic, not ‘internationalistic’.
  
• 
  Due to their long history, national languages have historical features which make them illogical and irrational, such as irregular forms. Moreover, being originally spoken languages, they lack essential tools for expressing things in a concrete manner; and the need for such expression is huge and growing, especially in the areas of law and contracts, technology and science.
  

The spelling rules of English and different shades of meaning of the same word lead to difficulties in communication. Being a language of international communication, English creates problems for its native speakers, too. Usually, speaking their mother tongue, they use a lot of idioms and rare words; they tend to speak too fast or use their own dialect. If they continue to do so in international contexts (trying to express themselves and be understood) they will hardly succeed.

Moreover, English borrows words from other languages. It means that words for related concepts are typically not related to each other in any regular manner. This process makes a language more international in one sense, but, essentially, less suitable for international communication, since it gets much more difficult to learn the vocabulary.

What is the solution to the problem? Should another language replace English as a lingua franca – Mandarin Chinese or Esperanto? What do you think?