Thursday December 29, 2005
Global English
By RALPH BERRY
What does “Global English” mean? Melvyn Bragg, in his excellent The Adventure of English, celebrates the rise of the English language. He also celebrates its diversity, the way in which English accepts all kinds of variations.
Here, I think, Bragg takes the argument rather far. “The more English spreads, the more it diversifies, the more it could tend towards fragmentation.” Is global English really heading towards fragmentation? In my view, no.
The English language has had a charmed life, and reached its present position through a series of historical freaks. These included wars and battles: lost (Hastings, which meant that English would fuse Norman-French and Old English), won (Plassey, Montreal, which delivered India and Canada to the British), and lost (the American Revolution, which fixed English as the language of America at the moment of its birth).
There was nothing inevitable in this. Before Plassey, Clive simply bought off the opposition. On the Heights of Abraham, the French had the bad luck to run into the only brilliant British general in the century between Marlborough and Wellington. After American Independence, the expansion of American and imperial territories took over. The outcome has been a critical mass, Anglo-American, which continues to grow and grow.
This was not foreseen. In the 19th century, liberals of great distinction thought that an invented language was the way forward for mankind. Esperanto and Volapuk were the leading instances. These experiments all failed. There is no significant literature in them. Writers write in their tongue of choice.
There’s great diversity in English. Malay brought “amok” into English, for example. Bragg says that certain words are now being used as part of Singapore Standard English, “Singlish” (pp. 307-8).
He mentions Gullah, a dialect still spoken near Charleston, South Carolina. He cites “pidgin” (a word derived from the Chinese pronunciation of “business”), a language with no native speakers, which enables people with no common language to communicate.
But what does this add up to? There are terms well-known in rural Saskatchewan that never make it to the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix. Northumberland has words which are not heard south of the county border. No doubt Antigua has terms that make no sense in Jamaica.
The needs of national communication, and still more international, force all these variants to the background. People who want to get on must add to their oral heritage. Anyone who wants to be an airline pilot will need more than Gullah. Control towers are strict in these matters.
But what about the supposed Great Divide in English, American and British? Of course, we like to play it up. Some people see it as a scene in The Lord of the Rings, with massed armies glaring at each other.
In this scenario, the Americans are looking for beachheads where they can land, consolidate, and then take over the English language, after first corrupting it. This is all nonsense.
I was amused to see a recent letter in the US edition of the Financial Times (June 30, 2005) complaining bitterly of “creeping Anglicization”. As the writer saw it, certain hallowed American expressions were being replaced by English.
Here is his list (American first):
calendar/diary, schedule/diarise, vacation/holiday, in college/at university, in the hospital/in hospital, calling/ringing, agreeing to/agreeing.
“My linguistic heritage is being eroded by what sounds like a band of escapees from Masterpiece Theatre.” That’s from a lawyer in Washington, D.C. We should remember his testimony the next time we wring our hands at the unstoppable march of American English.
Besides, the Great Divide is nothing like its reputation. Spelling is not an issue. Editors change copy to their own preferred style, treating the other style as a simple mis-spelling.
American and British English are very close indeed at the highest levels. I have just picked up a book published by Princeton University Press. I happen to know the author. He is American born and bred. I could not even guess this from his opening pages. They are written in a style that is international, good English as practised all over the world.
There is not much real difference between Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Cambridge, England (partly because the residents spend much time in the other Cambridge, to check on what the other mob is up to).
Good English is international. I have lived and worked in Kuwait and Thailand, countries that do not have a strong English-speaking tradition. Their leading English-language organs are edited to high standards and written in irreproachable English. You will find nothing to criticise in the English of the Arab Times of Kuwait and the Bangkok Post. And the move from The Times of London to The Times of India is the easiest of passages. What rises to the top is the best.
Global English is a world system. It is tolerant, easy-going in its attitude towards regional variations. There is nothing to stop Australians from developing Australian English, a language Bragg much admires for its vitality. But life is too short to explain jumbluck and billabong to outsiders, not to mention the raw prawn.
Faced with the need to communicate at world levels, diversity shrinks.
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