06 May WHAT GLOBAL LANGUAGE?
What Global Language?
Illustration by Christoph Niemann
English isn’t managing to sweep all else before it — and if it ever does become the universal language, many of those who speak it won’t understand one another
by Barbara Wallraff
BECAUSE I am interested in what happens to the English language, over the past year or so I’ve been asking people, at dinner parties and professional gatherings and so on, whether they think that English is well on its way to being the global language. Typically, they look puzzled about why I would even bother to ask such an obvious question. They say firmly, Of course. Then they start talking about the Internet. We’re just having a conversation, so I refrain from launching into everything I’m about to tell you. It’s not that I believe they’re actually wrong. But the idea of English as a global language doesn’t mean what they think it does — at least, not according to people I’ve interviewed whose professions are bound up especially closely in what happens to the English language.
Join a discussion of this article in a special forum on the globalization of English.
More on foreign affairs in The Atlantic Monthly and Atlantic Unbound.
More on technology and digital culture in The Atlantic Monthly and Atlantic Unbound.
From the archives:
“Should English Be the Law?,” by Robert D. King (April 1997)
Language is tearing apart countries around the world, and the proponents of “Official English” may be ready to add America to the list.
“A War That Never Ends,” by Mark Halpern (March 1997)
The laws of grammar may be arbitrary, as those who would simply dismiss them assert. But arbitrary laws are just the ones that need enforcement.
“The Spirit of Cotonou,” by Cullen Murphy (January 1997)
Finally, some helpful advice to the French on how to enhance the role of their language in the world.
“Elegant Variation and All That,” by Jesse Sheidlower (December 1996)
A modernized edition of a venerable classic of English usage brings changes that are vast and controversial — and almost always sensible.
“The Decline of Grammar,” by Geoffrey Nunberg (December 1983)
“Is the English language — or to put it less apocalyptically, English prose writing — really in a bad way? How would one tell?”
Elsewhere on the Web
Links to related material on other Web sites.
“English: 1 Tongue for the New Global Village,” by Ted Anthony (The Associated Press)
“Nearly a quarter of the human population are using what is fast becoming the world’s first global language. And the language they are speaking is the one you speak: English.”
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