Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World (6 page)

As it turns out, the story falls into two major epochs, which divide at 1492. This is the beginning of the worldwide expansion of Europe and some of its languages. Before this point, languages almost always spread along land routes, and the results are regional: large languages are spoken across coherent, centred regions. After this point, the sea becomes the main thoroughfare of language advance, and spread can be global: a language can be spoken in distinct zones on many different continents, with its currency linked only by the sinews of trade and military governance that stretch across the oceans.

Besides this geographical difference, it is possible to see other gross patterns which distinguish the two epochs.

Before 1492, the key forces that spread languages are first literacy and civic culture, and later revealed religion. But when a community has these advantages its language is often spread at the point of a sword; without them, military victories or commercial development will achieve little. The general mode of spread is through infiltration: whole peoples do not move, but languages are transmitted by small communities and piecemeal colonies which do. But the foundation of English, which occurs in this period, appears to be an exception to all this.

After 1492, the forces of spread are at first much more elemental: disease devastates populations in the Americas and elsewhere, and the technological gap between conquerors and victims is everywhere much starker than it had been in the era of regional spread. But once the power balance moves back into equilibrium, with the stabilisation of the Europeans’ global military empires, it becomes hard to distinguish military, commercial and linguistic dominance. At first, travel is difficult, and language spread is slow, still based on infiltration. However, with the spread of literacy and cheaper transport, the mode switches to migration, as large European populations seek to take advantage of the new opportunities. In the twentieth century, this too eases off; but new forms of communication arise, continually becoming faster, cheaper and more comprehensive: the result is that the dominant mode of language spread switches from migration to diffusion. English is once again exceptional, as it has been uniquely poised to take first advantage of the new technologies, but its prospects remain less clear as the other languages, both large and small, settle in behind it. It faces the uncertain future of any instant celebrity, and perhaps too the same inevitable ultimate outcome of such a future. This is not least because, for the world’s leading lingua franca, the whole concept of a language community begins to break down.

But once informed with the varied stories of the world’s largest languages, our inquiry can move on to ask some pertinent questions.

How new and unprecedented are modern forces of language diffusion? Do they share significant properties with language spread in the past?

How will the age-old characteristics of language communities assert themselves? In particular, can all languages still act as outward symbols of communities? And can they effectively weave together the tissues of associations which come from a shared experience? Can each language still create its own world? Will they want to, when science—and some revealed religions—claim universal validity?

These are the questions we shall want to ask. But first we must examine the vast materials of human language history.

Two Italian opinions, separated by fifteen centuries, on the value of an imposed common language:

ayu ém ilī	qereb šamě ilammad
milik ša anzanunzî	i akkim mannu
ēkšma ilmada	alakti ili apšti
ša ina amšat iblu u	imūt uddeš
surriš uštādir	zamar u tabar
ina ibit appi	izammur elī la
in pīt purīdi	u sarrap lallariš
kī petě u katāmi	ēnšina Šitni
immu ama	immš šalamtíš
išebbšma	išannana ilšin
ina ābi itammš	elš šamā ’i
ūtaššašama idabbuba	arād irkalla
ana annāta ušta-	qerebšina la altanda