English: A Global Language?

by Jeff Leiper

father - Was - your - angry?

The four words sit on the page. Jumbled, but maybe not as scrambled as the thoughts crossing the minds of three students staring at them with furrowed brows. It's a simple sentence, and Keiko, Dorothee, and Jung know it. The objective, as written in green on the dry-erase board behind them, reads: "question forming." Each raises a pencil and begins rearranging the words into something more intelligible in English. Pam, their teacher, moves from one to the other, quietly providing encouragement and the occasional hint. They spend fifteen minutes solving about a dozen such puzzles, with varying degrees of success.

I recognize the teacher's cheerful patience — scrambled words that fall into place unconsciously even as the eye passes over them. The quiet determination of the students, knowing at some level that what they are studying is important. In the popular parlance: "been there; done that."

Not quite.

Jung is 23, from Korea, studying electronic communications in university. Keiko, 20, pursues accounting in her native Japan. Dorothee, 17, is a high school student from the south coast of France. All three chose to spend their summer in Canada's capital, Ottawa. Three blocks away, their compatriots ogle the Parliament Buildings and have their photos taken with serge-clad Mounties. These three, though, are passing the dog-days of a humid summer in the classrooms of the Living Languages Institute. They're learning one of the most powerful tools in the world today — English.

The trio is in one of the school's beginner-to-intermediate classes. Their knowledge of the language is passable; I can understand their answers to the simple questions I pose. Why are you learning English? Is it hard? Does it cost a lot of money? Do your friends and parents speak English? I wonder, though, whether I'm really learning anything from them. We're using words to communicate, but not a language. They can't express things like dreams, aspirations, and hopes in a foreign tongue they don't yet know. I, like many Canadians, don't understand their language. We're at an impasse. It's a stumbling block (ownership of an English tongue allows me to glibly dismiss the problem this way) repeated countless times every day around the world. By all accounts, every day the problem is solved in the same way: the world learns English.

English, we know from our battered Norton Anthology of English Literature, is derived from the language of the Angles (whence came the name), Saxons, and Jutes. Once confined to a few barely inhabitable corners of the British Isles, it's a language that most people today will acknowledge is sweeping the planet's physical, economic, cultural, and cyber space. Hollywood, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, the hegemony of the American empire in a world battered by two global wars — English is the language of pop-culture "cool," of tourism, of markets and trade, of the lonely and curious extending their "selves" through Internet chat. It's a language the young in the developing world, the formerly powerful world, and the world yearning for democracy feel compelled to learn. It is becoming a global language unlike any other in history. English is an increasingly classless language. Perhaps this is because it's American or because it's the language of the digital world. In any case, English encompasses more than just a convenient means of communication among the globe's denizens; it's an ideological movement — even if by accident.

It's telling that English can no longer be thought of as a national language. Canadians speak English; Americans do too. So do Indians, Chinese, Australians, Kenyans, and Russians. In 1998, trying to conceive of English as the proprietary tongue of the British Empire is difficult. Think of Chinese, and one associates it with China. The same analogy holds true for Russian, Polish, Korean, German, and Vietnamese, and Swahili. Each language is associated with a nation — even in the case of a language like Arabic, which is associated with the nations of the Gulf: nations that were artificially divided in the imperialistic heyday of the early twentieth century. The English-speaking woman seated next to you at a conference is as likely from Bangladesh or the Sudan as from Washington D.C.

The numbers are staggering. In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, David Crystal draws attention to some startling figures. English is present on every continent. In over 60 countries, it is used officially or without the sanction of government and is prominent in 20 more. More than 150 million people receive English language radio shows. A phenomenal 80% of the information stored electronically around the world is in English. Crystal also says that "over 50 million children study English as an additional language at primary level; over 80 million study it at secondary level (these figures exclude China)." Finally, he notes that over two thirds of the world's scientists write in English.

Crystal's figures are from 1987, before the fall of the Wall, before the widespread advent of CNN, certainly well before academics and the military lost their grip on the network of nuclear-war-hardened computers that would become the Internet. Yet, over 80% of the world's digital traffic is still in English. The number of students learning English is as high as ever. The question is no longer "Is English the world language?" but more interestingly: "Why?" and "What does it mean?"

Gonzalo Peralta has a unique perspective on the subject. He's the director of the Living Languages Institute at which Keiko, Dorothee, and Jung are so valiantly absorbing the everyday phrases deemed necessary to communicate. Peralta has 14 years of experience teaching English as a second language, and has witnessed its importance in the world first-hand. "I've met beggars in South America who know enough [English] to read Shakespeare" the Chilean native says. In conversation, it's clear that he has no doubts about the importance of English, or about why his students travel from around the world to study it at his school.

"English is like bread! You need it to get anywhere," he says emphatically, as though the value of the language is as obvious as the need for the pen I'm using to take notes. "English opens up doors," he adds. The majority of pupils in his institute are university students. They study English for the economic opportunities it provides. Many, he says, are young engineers who are unable to complete their courses without using textbooks that are written in English. Even after school, English is de rigeur in the global workplace.

"I am here because I need to know English in my job," says Maria, a law student; she's preparing for a career in a legal firm in her home, Venezuela.

"If you want to find a good job you need it," says Rubin from Spain who is preparing for a career as a translator.

"If I can speak English fluently, I can meet people and get more jobs," says Tets, a former machinist from Japan, and adds: "its the language of business."

Jeremy, a South Korean computer science student says, "I need it to get a job; English has the most information, especially for my courses."

"If you want to find a job, you need both languages," says Beatrice, another Venezuelan, who studies business administration.

They answer rapid-fire and I detect a hint of exasperation in their voices at being asked the question. Of course, they seem to say with their eyes, we're learning English for the sake of our careers. It's taken for granted that over the course of their careers they will be dealing with English-speaking customers, and English manuals and documentation. The information they need on the Internet will be in English much of the time. Dealing with Polish, Afghan, or Somali governments, institutions, and businesses will be facilitated through a third-party medium of communication — English. A common thread through most of their stories is the nature of their future careers. They are almost all prospective knowledge workers, grappling not with the old resources of timber, fuel, and rock, but with elusive packets of electric and photonic data, the base units of information. They will be working in the digital age, in a marketplace that is global in scope.

Peralta points out that every age had its global language. Latin was the language of government during the reign of the Roman Empire. French facilitated diplomatic discussions in the eighteenth century. Unlike English today, those languages were the reserve of the elite. Knowledge of Latin was only required of those who dealt with Roman emissaries and other officials. Local governments were able to deal with their citizens in the local tongue. In 1998, however, a newly hired computer programmer might be sent to train with his counterparts from other countries in a country hundreds or thousands of miles away. Salesmen strive to control international accounts as the pinnacle of their career. Assembly-line workers deal with machines built and manuals written a continent away. Revolutions in transportation mean parts or consumer goods ordered today can be shipped in hulking 747 cargo planes overnight to countries in another hemisphere. The marketplace has shrunk and geography is less of a hindrance to commerce than ineffective utilization of information. All but the lowest-placed workers in the knowledge economy may be called upon to interact with a colleague or customer who doesn't speak their language. If it wasn't English, it would be another language.

Globalization, made possible by new forms of transport and information processing, may explain the need for a common tool for communications, but it doesn't explain why the tool is English. The answer may lie in the inherently English nature of the very tool that has created the new possibilities for planetary trade. "Technology," says Peralta matter-of-factly, "has been created in English."

The first computers were American; the Internet is a creation of the American military-industrial complex. The arrival of graphical user interfaces eliminates some of the language barriers to using computers, but consider the early days of personal computing. Applications were written in FORTRAN and COBOL, programming languages that used English words as base commands. Users of the first Apples, Commodores, and IBM personal computers were expected to type commands like RUN, PRINT, OPEN, LOAD, and the list goes on, to perform basic tasks. The language of computing remains English. Peralta points out that "French-speaking people have to make quite an effort to say logiciel instead of program." Professor Anthea Fraser Gupta of the school of English at the University of Leeds says that "speaking" on the Internet is difficult in languages other than English. "The norms of the Internet," she writes, "are established in ASCII texts, and even now texts transmitted unaltered from (for example) Francophone keyboards may produce garbage on English-favouring keyboards. ... Most documents in languages other than English, including those in countries where English is little used internally are mirrored by English translations (e.g., the pages of the French Ministry of Culture)."

The English nature of the Internet is apparent. The most basic presence to which most Netizens are entitled is the Web page. You can use expensive software to create an HTML document, but the basic tags still read <CENTER> <BOLD> <TITLE>. In a global economy that relies on the engine of computerized telecommunications to confer advantage, the edge held by English speakers is obvious.

English, says Peralta, is also an easy language to learn. Compared to other languages, it conveys a lot in few words. English lacks the complicated verb tense switches of languages like French. Consider, "Hi, I am John, how are you?" Compare it to "Bonjour, je suis John. Comment-ça-va?" A single verb is used in the first — I am, you are. In the second, the verb changes — I am, how does it go for you? "French demands complex structures from the beginning," Peralta emphasizes.

Is the current popularity of English entirely a product of computerized global communications? A number of the students at the Living Languages Institute have no plans to use a second language to climb the socio-economic ladder. Instead, Dorothee, the French student, is enjoying a summer in Ottawa as a working vacation. She doesn't see English as a necessity, but as a broadening of horizons. Alberto, also a 17-year-old high school student, began studying English as a child in school. He, too, is enjoying the culture blending of a working holiday in Canada. Bhedad, in the tenth grade at home in Germany, is also learning for enjoyment's sake. It's possible to discern a difference in the class — university marks a turning point in how the students view English. At some point after frosh week, if this class is any indication, English becomes a tool, not a toy. One thing the whole group agrees on: English is "cool" in their respective countries.

The second-largest export of the United States is cultural products. Hollywood consistently produces over 80% of the world's top-grossing films internationally. Italians, Japanese, and Russians are only some of the countries to ecstatically embrace English-singing superstars like Madonna, Michael Jackson, and the Rolling Stones. Television news reports from famine-starved regions of Africa and Asia are regularly dotted with caps and T-shirts emblazoned with the logos of the Chicago Bulls, Dallas Cowboys, and other American sports franchises. The world's top superstars of sports and entertainment speak English, and English becomes, by association, a superstar in its own right. "Hollywood and the American Dream," says Peralta, "it's all there." He later adds: "It's the language of freedom — social, political, gay, straight, religion, whatever."

There's hardly a consensus, however, on whether the widespread adoption of English as the language of business and entertainment is in everyone's best interests. In her introduction to the 1991 collection, English Around the World: Sociolinguistic Perspectives, editor Jenny Cheshire writes:

In countless forums at universities and over the Internet, many people have voiced the same opinion. Linguists argue the fine details and decide who represents an English speaker. Through their debates they point out that the English of the Ottawa Valley is different from the English of Liverpool, England, which is different from the English of Kingston, Jamaica. Numerous models and schemata exist to map the prevalence of non-native English speakers vs. native speakers of English vs. primarily English speaking, and so on. Cultural imperialism takes on new definitions as academics decide that knowledge of the language constitutes a tool, or a form of oppression, or a medium that allows cultural influences to invade a society.

The question, asked of the students themselves, leaves them nonplussed. Tired at the end of a long day of instruction, and no doubt eager to enjoy the last hours of the beautiful summer day, they are reluctant to volunteer an answer. A few shuffle their feet and look past me at the clock on the wall. I ask them directly, one at a time. Most have watched American films, yes. No, they have little interest in reading English novels for entertainment's sake. Maybe the possibility of cultural hegemony is far from their minds while they remain fixed on career goals. Perhaps I am arrogant in presuming that, given the opportunity, they would abandon their own cultural background and history to become not just English speakers, but North American English in habit and thought.

Peralta, with a fervour I've gotten used to, puts it more succinctly. "There's nothing you can do about that. If you try to freeze a culture it dries up. People who lead the way, artists, they know this. The reality of it is that there is change."

Jeff Leiper is a reporter for Silicon Valley NORTH, an Ottawa-based trade paper that covers the information technology community. He's devoted to eliminating the word "solutions" from the English language.

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