The Future ofEnglish as a World

LanguageOavid Crystal debates the future of the

English language

Imaginewe are at the beginning of anew millennium - the last one, that is- YIK. We are in the year 999,

attending the triennial meeting of theAnglo-Saxon Speaking Union, held inWinchester. Its theme might well havebeen: building bridges to the new mil­lennium. So let us speculate: what wouldhave been our Anglo-Saxon forebears'evaluation of the global linguistic scene111 Britain, Europe, and theMediterranean countries?

It is safe to say that most of the dis­cussion would have been in Latin, andabout Latin - or rather, Latins, for inEurope at that time there vvere manyvarieties of the language. There was theprestige variety - the classical literaryLatin written throughout the RomanEmpire (chiefly in the West). Then therewere the everyday spoken varieties of thelanguage, referred to now as VulgarLatin. Cicero, writing in the first centuryBC, commented on the provincial pro­nunciation heard in the Latin spoken inCisalpine Gaul. By the eighth century,there is evidence of considerable shift, somuch so that the way of referring to thelanguage was changing: the "lingua lati­na" was being described as "linguaromana" or "rustica romana lingua".Certainly, by c.900, when we find thefirst texts representing the spoken lan­guage of Gaul, we can no longer talk ofLatin, but of Old French; and the otherRomance languages begin to emerge ataround the same time.

The debate of the ASU, in 999, wouldhave surely had these changes as themain talking point. There would certain­ly have been a paper on The FUhlre ofLatin as a World Language. They wouldhave been able to see the problem. Onthe one hand, there was written ClassicalLatin, apparently alive and well and

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being taught in a standard way through­out the civilised world. On the otherhand, there was now clear evidence ofunintelligibility among communities,with those who had once spoken VulgarLatin in Porhlgal, Spain, France, Italy,Romania, and elsewhere increasinglydiverging from each other. Conferencemembers would certainly have speculatedabout the £inure of Latin, given thesealready existing trends. Would the lan­guage fragment totally? Would Latinremain as a world lingua franca? Wouldthere be anyone still learning the stan­dard form in a thousand years?

A thousand years on, and we see whathappened. The standard forms of theselanguages are now indeed mutuallyunintelligible. Standard Latin is stillused, but only by small numbers of cler­ics and scholars, chiefly within theRoman Catholic Church. A body of stal­wart classicists, in universities andschools, try to maintain a tradition ofLatin teaching, but do not find it easy.Latin, for most intents and purposes, is adead language now. But its daughter­languages are very much alive.

Latin and English

Could this scenario happen to English?For certainly, there are some striking par­allels. English spread around the modernworld in a time-tiame not too dissimilarfrom that which must have affectedLatin. Rome became a Republic in 509BC, and the First Punic War (264-241BC) resulted in the acquisition of herfirst overseas province, Sicily. Some novo

centuries later, Augustus established theEmpire (31 BC), which lasted in theWest until 476 AD. So basically, we aretalking about a period of almost 1000years, with something lilce 750 years as

the period of real expansion.Now consider English from the time

of Aelfric. Another period of almost1000 years. And signs of languagechange very early on. During theeleventh century, a new variety ofEnglish began to develop in Scotland,much influenced by the refugees whohad fled north in the years following theNorman Conquest; this Middle Scotswas the basis of the very distinctive ScotsEnglish we know today. But the firstoverseas development was not until theend of the twelfth cenhlry, when Englishrule was imposed on Ireland by Henry IIin 1171; the influence ofIrish Gaelic onEnglish must have been heard not longafter. And from then until tlle twentiethcentury, covering the major period ofEnglish expansion around the world, wehave - just like Latin - 750 years.

We can push our parallel a little fur­ther. What we consider to be the "clas­sics" of Latin literature - the "GoldenAge" of Augustus, with Ovid, Virgil,Horace, Livy, et al - emerged during thefirst century BC, some 400 years afterthe beginning of the Republic and some200 years after the First Funic War. Thefirst "classic" of English literature,Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, was writtensome 400 years after our YIK starting­point, and some 200 years after the Irishexpedition.

Let us move on anotller 200 years.This was a very significant century forboth languages. During the third centu­ry AD the barbarian invasions beganthroughout Europe, becoming incessantin the next hundred years, and eventual­ly leading to the decline of the WesternEmpire. Classical Latin became increas­ingly an elite language, and as lines ofcommunication with Rome becamemore tenuous, so speech differences on

the ground increased. Latin began itsperiod of decline, as a spoken linguafranca.

Another 200 years in England alsobrought a turning point. We are now atthe end of the sixteenth century. Thiswas a time when the merits of English vsother languages, especially Latin, werebeing hotly debated, and tllere was muchtalk of decline. Richard Mulcaster, theheadmaster of Merchant Taylors' School,was one of tlle strongest supporters ofEnglish, arguing for its strengtlls as amedium of educated expression, along­side Latin. But even he saw that Englishcould not compete with Latin as aninternational language. Writing in 1582,he says: "Our English tongue is of smallreach - it stretcheth no further than thisisland of ours - nay, not tllere over all."And he reflects: "Our state is no Empireto hope to enlarge it by commandingover countries". There was no realliter­ature to be proud of, either, not since thetime of "Father Chaucer", as peoplewould say, 200 years before - and that,thanks to the major pronunciationchanges which had taken place in theearly fifteenth century, was becomingvirtually unintelligible.

1582. What a time to be saying such atlling. In the course of the next genera­tion, things changed totally, both in pol­itics and literature. Within two years,WaIter Raleigh's first expedition toAmerica was to set sail, and altllough thiswas a failure, the first permanent English

WORLD LANGUAGE

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of The English Language by Oavid Crystal, published by Cambridge University Press

CONCORD J A N UA RY 2 000 5

THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH

settlement was in place, in Jamestown,Virginia, in 1607. Loan words fromIndian languages into the English spo­ken there - which as a result started toturn into American English - become asignificant feaurre of contemporary writ­ing virtually immediately. Captain JohnSmith, writing in 1608, describes avacoon; totem is found in 1609; cavibouand opossum are mentioned in 1610;moccasin in 1612; moose in 1613.Reference is soon being made to the dis­tinctive sound of the American accent.

As for literamre, 1582 was also a sig­nificant year, as it "vasthe year in which ayoung man in Stratford, Warwickshire,fell in love - not with Gwyneth Paltrow(that came later) - but with AnneHathaway. Soon after - we do not knowhow or when - he moved to London,and by 1592 was already being talkedabout as a writer. Within 20 years,English literature would never be thesame agam.

Si-, hundred years into the history ofLatin, and we see the beginnings of itsdecline. Six hundred years into the lusto­ry of English, and we see the beginningsof its expansion. Some 4-5 million peo­ple spoke English late in the reign ofQueen Elizabeth 1. This had grown to aquarter of the world's population, some1.5 billion, late in the reign of QueenElizabeth n. The conU-astbetween Latinand English seems total. Or is it?

Centrifugal forces

When a language spreads, it changes.The simple fact that parts of the worlddiffer from each other in fauna and florameans that words will come into use inone area that are unknown in another, aswe have seen in the case of AmericanEnglish. But the impact of a new cultureupon English affects far more than faunaand flora alone. Think, for a moment, ofall the culmral domains which are likelyto generate new vocabulary whenEnglish comes to be used in such placesas West Africa, Singapore, India, orSouth Africa, and speakers find them­selves adapting the language to meettheir conm1unicative needs - not justnative speakers, of course, but those wholearn it as a second or foreign languageas well.

It is a point often forgotten, especiallyby native speakers, that a language whichhas come to be spoken by as many peo­ple as English has ceased to be owned byany of its constituent commmuties - notthe British, with whom the languagebegan 1500 years ago, nor theAmericans, who now complise its largestmother-tongue commmuty. The totalnumber of mother-tongue speakers inthe world, some 400 million, is actuallyfalling, as a proportion of world Englishusers, wluch probably now total some1.5 billion - a quarter of the world'spopulation. And they all have a share inthe nlture of English, first-language, sec-

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ond -language, and foreign -languagespeakers alike. Language is an immense­ly democratising institution. To havelearned a language is immediately tohave rights in it. You may add to it, mod­ify it, play with it, create in it, ignore bitsof it, as you will. And it is just as likelythat the future course of English is goingto be influenced by those who speak it asa second or foreign language as by thosewho speak it as a mother-tongue.Fashions com1t, in language, as any­where else. And fashions are a nll1ctionof numbers. It is perfectly possible for alinguistic fashion to be started by agroup of second- or foreign-languagelearners, or by those who speak a creoleor pidgin variety, which then catches onamong mother-tongue speakers.Rapping is a case in point. And as num­bers grow, and second/foreign-languagespeakers gain in national and interna­tional prestige, usages which were previ­ously criticised as "foreign" can becomepart of the standard educated speech of alocality, and eventually appear in writing.

The bulk of the new distinctiveness of

English is going to lie in the area ofvocabulary - by which I mean not justnew words, but new meanings of words,and new idiomatic phrases. This isn'tsurprising, when you tl1ink of the rangeof domains likely to generate such vocab­ulary in parts of tl1eworld where Englishis being freshly used. There is a counu'Y'sbiogeographical muqueness, which willgenerate potentially large numbers ofwords for alumals, fish, birds, plants,rocks, and so on - and all tl1eissues to dowith land management and interpreta­tion. There will be words for foodstuffs,minks, medicines, m'ugs, and the prac­tices associated with eating, health-care,disease, and death. The country'smytl1010gyand religion, and practices inastronomy and astrology, will bring forthnew names for personalities, beliefs, andrituals. Oral and perhaps also written lit­erauu-e will give rise to distinctive namesin sagas, poems, oratory, and folktales.There will be a body of local laws andcustoms, witl1 their own terminology.The culture will have its own technologywhich will have its technical terms - suchas for vehicles, house-building, weapons,clotlung, ornaments, and musical insu'u­ments. The world of leisure and the artswill have a linguistic dimension - namesof dances, musical styles, games, sports ­as will distinctiveness in body appearance(such as hair styles, tattoos, decoration).Virtually any aspect of social structurecan generate complex naming systems ­local government, £1mily relationships,clubs and societies, and so on.

So, when a community adopts a newlanguage, and starts to use it in relationto all areas of life, there is inevitablygoing to be a great deal of lexical adap­tation. This will happen in two mainways.

First, some words will change theirmeaning. Words from the variety of

English introduced will be applied tonew settings and take on different sens­es. Tlus has often happened in the lan­guage's history; for example, in theAnglo-Sa;xon period Christian missionar­ies took over pagan words (such as heav­en, hell, God, and Eastel') and gave themnew mealUngs. Today we see it in tl1eway, for example, a biological species intl1enew country sin1ilarin appearance toone found in tl1e old will often keep tl1eold name, even tl10ugh it is not the san1eentity - pheasant in South Africa is usu­ally found for certain species offrancolin.

Secondly, words will be taken over("borrowed") from the local setting ­usually, words from tl1e indigenous lan­guage or languages spoken in tl1e coun­try. An example fi'om tl1e South AfricanSunday Times: "Diplomatic indabas onlyrarely produce neatly wrapped solutionsto problems." lndaba, from the Ngmugroup of languages, was originally a trib­al conference, but has now been extend­ed to mean any conference betweenpolitical groups.

How many words will grow, in tl1eseways? It does not take long before suchword-lists and dictionaries reach severalthousand words. There were over 3,000items recorded in the Branfords' firstedition of the Dictionavy of SouthAfvican English (1978). There are over6,000 entries in David Grote's BvitishEnglish fov Amevican Readers (1992).The Concise A~tstvalian NationalDictional'y (1989) has 10,000 items init. There are over 15,000 entries inCassidy & Le Page's Dictionavy ofJamaican English.

The totals are small compared with thesize of English vocabulary as a whole;but the effect of even fairly small num­bers of localized words can be great. Thenew words are likely to be frequentlyused within the local commmuty, pre­cisely because they relate to distinctivenotions there. Also, these words tendnot to occur in isolation: if a conversa­tion is about, say, local politics, tl1en sev­eral political terms are likely to cometogether, making it impenetrable."Blairite MP in New Labour SleazeTrap, say Tories" might be a Britishnewspaper example. Six words withBritish political meanings or overtonestl1ere, in quick succession. Exactly thesame kind of piling up of foreign expres­sions can be found in areas where newEnglishes are emerging. In tl1is examplefi'om the South African Sunday Times, allthe local words are Afrikaans in origin:"It is interesting to recall that someverkran1pte Nationalists, who pose nowas super Afi'ikaners, were once bitterein­del' bloedsappe." [verkramp, bigoted;bittereinder, die-hard; bloedsappe,staunch member of the United Party,formerly the South African Party, orSAP]

You can see how tl1ings nught developnlrther. It isn't just an Afrikaans nounwhich is distinctive; in that example it

was a noun phrase. So, if a phrase, whynot a whole clause - as in English [sic]"Je ne sais quoi" or "c'est la vie". Quitelengthy sections of an originally Englishsentence might come to contain chunksof borrowed language, or vice versa. Andthis is what we find.

When people rely simultaneously ontwo or more languages to communicatewith each other, the phenomenon iscalled code-switching. We can hear ithappening now all over the world,between all sorts of languages. Butbecause English is so widespread, it isespecially noticeable there, in writing aswell as in speech. In The EnglishLanguages, Tom McArthur gives anexample of a bilingual leaflet issued bythe HongkongBank in 1994 for Filipinoworkers. The Tagalog section contains agreat deal of English mixed in. Forexample:

Mag-deposito ng pera mula sa ibangHongkongBank account, at anyHongkongbank ATM, using your CashCard. Mag-transfer ng regular amountbawa't buwan (by Standing Instruc­tion) galang sa inyong Current 0Savings Account, vvhether the accountis with HongkongBank or not.

This kind of language is often describedusing a compound name - Taglish (forTagalog-English). We also haveFranglais, Tex-Mex, Japlish, Spanglish,Wenglish, and many more. Traditionally,these names were used as scornful appel­lations. People would sneer at Tex-Mex,and say it was neither one language northe other. It was gutter-speak, by peoplewho had not learned to talk properly.Now we know better. We can hardly calla language like Taglish gutter-speakwhen it is being used in writing by amajor banking corporation. Linguistshave spent a lot of time analysing these"mixed" languages, and found that theyare full of complexity and subdety ofexpression - as we would expect, if peo­ple have the resources of two languagesto draw upon.

Mixed languages are certainly on theincrease, as we travel the English-speak­ing world; and it is important to realisethat this is happening. It is quite wrongto think of the "future of world English"as if it was simply going to be a morewidely used version of British English, orof American English. These varieties willstay, of course, but they will be supple­mented by other varieties which,although perhaps originating in Britainor the USA, will display increasing dif­ferences from them. The signs of thisperiod of diversification have beenaround a long time, but dle extent of itspresence has only recently come to beappreciated. It is not sometlling we usu­ally see in print - except insofar as a nov­elist captures it in a conversation, or itturns up in informal writing in a newspa­per. But we readily encounter it when we

travel to the countries concerned.

Centripetal forces

Six hundred years into tlle spread of bothLatin and English, there was a tunling­point. In dle case of Latin, it was theonset of fragmentation. In the case ofEnglish, it was the onset of expansion.But now it looks as if tlle period ofexpansion contained the seeds of frag­mentation. At the beginning of the newmillennium, can we avoid the conclusionthat, left to itself, English is going tofragment into mutually unintelligiblevarieties, just as Latin did? The forces oftlle past 50 years, which have led to somany newly independent nation-states,and a tripling of the membership of theUN, certainly suggest dlis conclusion.English has come to be used, in severalof these countries, as the expression of asociopolitical identity, and received anew character as a consequence, conven­tionally labelled Nigerian English,Singaporean English, and so on. And ifsignificant change can be noticed withina relatively short period of time - a fewdecades - must not these varietiesbecome even more differentiated overthe next century or so, so that we end upwith an English 11 family of languages "?

It is possible. But there are certainpressures working in the opposite direc­tion. Not everything is centrifugal.Alongside the need to reflect local situa­tions and identities, which fosters diver­sity, tllere is the need for mutual intelli­gibility, which fosters standardisation.People need to be able to understandeach other, both within a country andinternationally. There has always been aneed for lingua francas. And as supra­national organisations grow, the needbecomes more pressing. The 185 mem­bers of the UN are there not simply toexpress their identities, but also becausethey want to talk to each other. Andwhatever languages are chosen by anorganization as lingua francas, it is essen­tial - if dle concept is to work - foreveryone to learn the same thing, a Stall­dard form of the language. In the case ofEnglish, when people get together oninternational occasions, or read tlle inter­national press, or write books for inter­national publication, what they use isStandard English.

In fact, it isn't totally identical every­where - the differences between Britishalld American spelling are one obviouspoint - but in writing it is over 99% thesame. It is somewhat less established inspeech, where differences will frequentlybe heard identifying people as British,American, and so on. However, these arestill very few,and are likely to diminish asinternational contacts increase. It is acliche, but dle world has become a small­er place, and this has an obvious linguis­tic consequence - that we talk to eachother more, and come to understandeach other more. British people can now

THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH

watch American football on TV eachweek, and their awareness of that game'stechnical vocabulary increases as a result.When we reflect on tlle opportunities forcontact these days, the chances are tllatthe standard element in internationalEnglish will be strengthened. Satellitetelevision, beaming down Americall andBritish English into homes all round theworld, is a particularly significant devel­opment. An increasingly standardizedspoken English is a likely outcome, Ibelieve.

These centripetral forces were lackinga thousand years ago. Once the RomanEmpire had begun to fragment, therewas nothing to stop the centrifugalforces tearing spoken Latin apart. Thenumbers of Standard Latin speakersaround Europe were small, and commu­nication between groups was difficult.The whole globe now is commllllicative­ly smaller than Europe was then. It is therelative isolation of people from eachother that causes a formerly commonlallguage to move in different directions.In the Middle Ages, it was very easy forcommunities to be isolated from the restof the world. Today it is virtually impos­sible.

A synthesis

Cenu"ifugal and centripetal forces co­exist, and we want both. We want toexpress our identity through languageand we want to communicate intelligiblythrough language. We want to be differ­ent and we want to be the same. And thesplendid thing about humans using lan­guage, of course, is that this is the kindof situation the brain handles very well,because it is so multifunctional. One ofthe main insights of linguistics duringthe t\ventieth century was to demon­su"ate the exu-aordinary capacity of thebrain for language. Bilingualism, multi­lingualism, is the normal human condi­tion. Well over half of the people in theworld, perhaps two-thirds, are bilingual.Children learn their lallguages - oftenseveral languages - at extraordinaryspeed. Evidently, there is something inour make-up which promotes the acqui­sition of talk. I therefore see no intrinsicproblems in the gradual emergence of atri-English world - a world, that is, inwhich a home dialect - often very mixedin character - a national standard dialect,and an international standard dialectcomfortably coexist. It is a prospectwhich our Latin forebears would haveenvied.

David Crystal is Honorary Professor of

Linguistics at the University of Wales,Bangor and divides his time betweenwork on language and work on generalreference publishing. He is the editor ofThe Cambridge Encyclopedia of theEnglish Language and is a member ofthe English Language Council of theEnglish-Speaking Union.

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