Date : October 10, 2009

Topic : ‘ Is English Appropriate as an International Language? '

First, Jens Wilkinson gave a presentation on the status of English as a world language. Essentially, he argued that English is not suitable as a global language for a number of reasons.

Technically, it presents many difficulties for learners in terms of phonology, grammar, and vocabulary. But a question that immediately arises is, would another language be better. A number of languages were discussed, but they all have their own difficulties for non-native speakers. So English is not unique in this regard. Many European languages have grammatical gender, Chinese has a difficult writing system and tones, Japanese has long and short vowels and differences involving honorifics. Other languages have hard sounds as well.

A second problem with English is that having English as an international language imparts an unfair advantage to native speakers. At international conferences, they alone can use their native language, which makes things much easier. Of course, this would be true with any national language, so there is no easy solution here either.

Ironically, because of this problem, speakers of other languages are reluctant to allow English (or some other national language) to be used as an official international language. Because of this, the EU spends tremendous amounts of money each year translating and interpreting into more than 20 languages. In fact, with an annual output of about 1.5 million pages, the EU is the largest translation service in the world, employing some 1,750 linguists. Its translation budget is between 875 million US dollars and 1.3 billion US dollars. So this is a tremendous amount of resources.

Jens then talked about a proposed solution, a constructed language, or international auxiliary language , like Esperanto. It would be nobody's native language. There are many such languages. Esperanto is the most popular by far, but there is also Interlingua, Ido, Occidental, and hundreds of less well known languages. In fact, there are newer ones, such as Neo Patwa, designed by Jens himself.

But so far, these languages have not spread as widely as national languages such as English. There are a number of reasons, but a major one is simply that it is convenient to learn a popular language rather than a new language that few other people speak . Also, constructed languages have tended to have vocabularies that resemble national languages, and further to be biased toward Western languages.

To look for a new model, then, pidgin languages offer a new possibility for shared languages.

They are languages with simplified grammar and vocabulary, created by people who need to communicate but do not share a language. Examples include Sabir, or Mediterranean Lingua Franca, which was spoken by traders in the Mediterranean, Chinese English Pidgin, Chinook Jargon, which was used in the northwest of the US and Canada , and many others. They basically originate as trade languages. There is also Anglo English Pidgin, which was used recently in the book Sea of Poppies . And Baba Malay is close to a pidgin.

Jens then gave a brief explanation of Neo Patwa, which he designed as an artificial language based on pidgin-like principles: a minimum vocabulary, simple grammar, and easy phonology. A constructed language with pidgin like features, such as a minimal grammar and vocabulary, could be a potential world language.

Following the lecture, there were questions from the audience. There was some exchange of opinions about what language would be best. Several members said that English was probably the optimum solution (at least one because he had already gone through the trouble of learning it!), one argued that Esperanto was best, and several said they found the idea of a pidgin interesting. One said he had had to learn English for international communication, but didn't actually like it. One mentioned that she had acquired a complex about English because students from other European countries seemed to learn it so much more easily than Japanese. One participant said she remembered hearing people speak a form of pidgin in Hawaii , and found it useful. Another mentioned Singlish (Singaporean English) as an interesting choice. One participant stressed that it isn't so much the choice of the language, but the attitude of speakers: she said she wished people answering phones in English would be more sensitive of the fact that people may not be native speakers.

There was also some talk at the end of using symbols as an international language, in the way that hanzi were used in East Asia as an auxiliary form of communication. Jens mentioned the project Book from the Ground by Chinese artist Xu Bing, who uses airport signs as a new form of communication.

Neo Patwa
http://patwa.pbworks.com

Book from the Ground
http://www.bookfromtheground.com/yishu.htm