Beyond English: Language in a multipolar world

[limako]

In Nicholas Ostler's recent book English, the Last Lingua Franca, he
observes that, while English is being learned more-and-more frequently
as a second language, it is not replacing native languages. This
means that each new generation will still grow up speaking one
language, and needs to choose what other languages to learn.
Currently, there is a huge economic imperative to learn English. In
an increasingly multi-polar world, however, it may make more sense for
people to choose other languages than English, such as Portuguese (to
trade with Brazil) or Chinese (for trade with China).

Ostler argues that machine translation will obviate the need for a
lingua franca and that English will decline and will not be replaced.
This seems like an overly optimistic appraisal of machine translation
to me. People have been believing that machine translation (like
artificial intelligence) is just around the corner for a long time,
but it doesn't look much closer now than it did 20 years ago. There is
much greater accessibility to crude translators, but not something
that could substitute seamlessly for a human being.

I wrote an essay recently for Libera Folio which you can read in
English translation here:
http://esperanto-usa.org/eo/node/2135

As an Esperanto speaker, I'm sensitive to the disrepute in which it
stands for many people -- especially in the United States. But I
question whether a world in which mastery of English is necessary for
the apprehension of global culture could ever lead to social justice.
The global elite speaks English, but most of the world never will. Do
we accept that? Do we put our faith in the magic of technology? I'm
interested in exploring these questions in an open-ended way via
Contactcon.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

This is a fascinating subject, and one I hope gains traction at Contact. If you can convene a meeting as compellingly as you have convened this topic, I think it stands a good chance.

At the very first Harvard Berkman Center event, I was on a panel about the net and cultural imperialism. Everyone seemed to think that because the net was "American" (which isn't really true) that it would spread American language and values - and that this might not always be a good thing. And I'm sure for every language that is saved online, there are one or two that become less learned because they're less useful in an Internet era.

But I'd also venture that social media might reverse this trend, promoting localism and nationalism over the homogenous globalism of the early net era. Egypt is just one highly nationalist movement to emerge in part because of social media.

[limako]

I came to the net early and its been interesting to watch the
transition. The early net was primarily an English-only phenomenon
where messages often needed to be written in ASCII (and later the
various mutually incompatible 8-bit character sets). And people
openly questioned whether other languages -- especially Esperanto --
were even appropriate for the Internet. Thankfully we've put those
days largely behind us: UTF-8 has simplified representing other
languages and the tools for i18n and l10n are robust and well-
developed.

I would argue that the internet now makes every language more useful,
though it still advantages some languages more than others. English,
which dominated the early internet, is now a minority: there are more
web pages, more blog posts, more tweets, etc, in other languages.
English becomes a smaller and smaller fraction of the internet every
day, although it clearly carries the most weight and authoritativeness
in terms of global science, news, and public affairs. The most
interesting question to me is who really benefits from English as the
International Language: I don't believe it's native English speakers.

The real beneficiaries of the current model are the global elites, who
have the resources to learn another national language to fluency. To
really be really fluent in English, you need to travel to an English-
speaking country and study for months or years. The elites, then,
become the gatekeepers that can straddle their own culture and the
Global English culture and can mediate between the two. The boundary
keeps outsiders out, insiders in, and empowers them to control the
information that flows between. And the effect is increasing. A
recent article showed that British applicants were disadvantaged in
competition for positions in the EU bureaucracy due to lack of
language skills: http://euobserver.com/9/31844 The US could be a
leader in language learning, but has chosen not to do this.

In 2006, I wrote a series of articles for Global Voices about the
Esperanto community: http://globalvoicesonline.org/author/sbrewer/ The
last article sketches the case for the US to throw its weight behind
building a system that could foster social justice. I thank you for
your kind words and look forward to continuing the discussion here.