The Language Revolution (5 page)

With these trends in mind, can we avoid the conclusion that, left to itself, English is going to fragment into mutually unintelligible varieties, just as Vulgar Latin did a millennium ago? The forces of the past fifty years, which have led to so many newly independent nation-states, certainly suggest this outcome. English has come to be used, in several of these countries, as the expression of a sociopolitical identity, and received a new character as a consequence, conventionally given such names as Nigerian English and Singaporean English. And if significant change can be noticed within a relatively short period of time – a few decades – must not these varieties become even more differentiated over the next century, so that we end up with an English ‘family of languages'? An answer suggests itself if we examine the apparent parallel with Latin.

Latin revisited?

The parallels between the situations of English and Latin are certainly striking. During the first millennium, Latin became the universal language of educated European society – though we need to say Latins, for in Europe at that time it existed in several varieties. There was the prestige variety – the classical literary Latin written throughout the Roman Empire (chiefly in the West). Then there were the everyday spoken varieties of the language, referred to now as Vulgar Latin. Even as early as the
first century
BC,
we find Cicero commenting on the provincial pronunciation heard in the Latin spoken in Cisalpine Gaul. By the eighth century, there is evidence of considerable shift, so much so that the way of referring to the language was changing: the ‘lingua latina' was being described as ‘lingua romana' or ‘rustica romana lingua'. Certainly, by
c
.900, when we find the first texts representing the spoken language of Gaul, we can no longer talk of Latin, but must speak of Old French; and the other Romance languages begin to emerge at around the same time.

The situation facing Latin then was very similar to the situation facing English now. On the one hand, there was written Classical Latin, apparently alive and well and being taught in a standard way throughout the Western civilized world. On the other hand, there was clear evidence of emerging mutual unintelligibility among communities, with those who had once spoken Vulgar Latin in Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Romania and elsewhere increasingly diverging from each other. There may even have been speculation about the future of Latin, given these already existing trends. Would the language fragment totally? Would Latin remain as a world lingua franca? Would there be anyone still learning the standard form in a thousand years? A millennium on, we know what happened. The standard forms of these languages are now indeed mutually unintelligible. Standard Latin is still used, but only by small numbers of clerics and scholars, chiefly within the Roman Catholic Church. A body of stalwart classicists, in universities and schools, try to maintain a tradition of Latin teaching, but do not find it easy. Latin, for most intents and purposes, is a dead language now. But its daughter-languages are very much alive.

Could this scenario happen to English? Certainly, there are some noteworthy parallels. English spread around the
modern world in a time-frame not too dissimilar from that which must have affected Latin. Rome became a Republic in 509
BC,
and the First Punic War (264–241
BC)
resulted in the acquisition of its first overseas province, Sicily. Some two centuries later, Augustus established the Empire (31
BC),
which lasted in the West until
AD
476. So, basically, we are talking about a period of almost 1,000 years, with something like 750 years as the period of real expansion. Now consider English from the time of Bishop Aelfric – the first to put an English conversation down on paper (in his
Colloquy,
written around 1000). Another period of almost 1,000 years; and signs of language change very early on. During the eleventh century, a new variety of English began to develop in Scotland, much influenced by the refugees who had fled north in the years following the Norman Conquest; this Middle Scots was the basis of the very distinctive Scots English we know today. But the first overseas development was not until the end of the twelfth century, when English rule was imposed on Ireland by Henry II in 1171; the influence of Irish Gaelic on English must have been heard not long after. And from then until the twentieth century, covering the major period of English expansion around the world, we have – just like Latin – 750 years.

We can push the parallel a little further. What we consider to be the ‘classics' of Latin literature – the ‘Golden Age' of Augustus, with Ovid, Virgil, Horace, Livy
et al. –
emerged during the first century
BC,
some 400 years after the beginning of the Republic and some 200 years after the First Punic War. The first ‘classic' of English literature, Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales,
was written some 400 years after our Y1K starting-point, and some 200 years after the Irish expedition. Let us move on another 200 years. This was a very significant century for both languages. During the third century
AD
the barbarian invasions
began throughout Europe, becoming incessant in the next hundred years, and eventually leading to the decline of the Western Empire. Classical Latin became increasingly an elite language, and as lines of communication with Rome became more tenuous, so speech differences on the ground increased. Latin began its period of decline, as a spoken lingua franca. Another 200 years in England also brought a turning-point. We are now at the end of the sixteenth century. This was a time when the merits of English vs other languages, especially Latin, were being hotly debated, and there was much talk of decline. Richard Mulcaster, the headmaster of Merchant Taylors' School, was one of the strongest supporters of English, arguing for its strengths as a medium of educated expression, alongside Latin. But even he concluded that English could not compete with Latin as an international language. Writing in 1582, he says: ‘Our English tongue is of small reach – it stretcheth no further than this island of ours – nay, not there over all.' And he reflects: ‘Our state is no Empire to hope to enlarge it by commanding over countries.'
⁸
There was no real literature to be proud of, either, not since the time of ‘Father Chaucer', as people would say, 200 years before – and Chaucer's English, because of the major pronunciation changes which had taken place in the early fifteenth century, had become virtually a different language.

1582. What a time to be saying such a thing. In the course of the next generation, things changed totally, both in politics and in literature. Within two years, Walter Raleigh's first expedition to America was to set sail, and although this was a failure, the first permanent English settlement was in place, in Jamestown, Virginia, a generation later. As we have seen, loan words from Indian languages into the English spoken there – which as a result started to turn into American English – become a significant
feature of contemporary writing virtually immediately, and reference is soon being made to a distinctive American accent. And as for literature, 1582 was also significant, as it was the year in which a young man in Stratford, Warwickshire, fell in love – not with Gwyneth Paltrow (that came later), but with Anne Hathaway (his marriage licence is dated 27 November of that year). Soon after – we do not know how or when – he moved to London, and not long after that was being talked about as a writer. Within a generation, English literature would never be the same again.

Six hundred years into the spread of both Latin and English, there was a turning-point. In the case of Latin, it was the onset of fragmentation. In the case of English, it was the onset of expansion. Some 4–5 million people spoke English late in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. This had grown to a quarter of the world's population, some 1.5 billion, late in the reign of Queen Elizabeth II. The contrast between Latin and English at this point seems total. But if history is any guide, it would appear that this period of expansion in English contained the seeds of its fragmentation. We do not talk about the ‘Latin languages', but the ‘Romance languages'. And, as we have seen, there is a book called
The English Languages.
History does seem to be repeating itself.

Centrifugal vs centripetal forces

However, history may no longer be a guide to what is happening to English today. The parallel with Latin is not perfect. One of the consequences of globalization is that through the media we have immediate access to other languages, and to varieties of English other than our own, in ways that have come to be available but recently; and this is altering the manner in which people are aware
of the language. A British Council colleague told me recently that in India he had seen a group of people in an out-of-the-way village clustering around a television set, where they were hearing BBC News beamed down via satellite. None of these people, he felt, would have heard any kind of English before – at least, not in any regular or focused way – other than the Indian variety of English used by their school-teacher. But with a whole range of fresh auditory models becoming routinely available, it is easy to see how the type of English spoken in India could move in fresh directions. And satellite communication being, by definition, global, it is easy to see how a system of natural checks and balances – also well attested in the history of language – could emerge in the case of World English. In this scenario, the pull imposed by the need for identity, which has been making Indian English increasingly dissimilar from British English, is balanced by a pull imposed by the need for intelligibility, on a world scale, which will make Indian English increasingly similar. And this could happen anywhere.

Both centrifugal and centripetal forces operate on English. Alongside the need to reflect local situations and identities, which fosters diversity, there is the need for mutual comprehensibility, which fosters standardization. People need to be able to understand each other, both within a country and internationally. There has always been a need for lingua francas. And as supra-national organizations grow, the need becomes more pressing. The 191 members of the UN are there not simply to express their identities, but also because they want to talk to each other (at least, some of the time). And whatever languages are chosen by an organization as lingua francas, it is essential – if the concept is to work – for everyone to learn the same thing, a standard form of the language. In the case of English, when people get together on international
occasions, or read the international press, or write books for international publication, what they use is Standard English.

In fact, Standard English isn't identical everywhere – the differences between British and American spelling are one obvious point – but it is very largely the same, especially in print. It is somewhat less established in speech, where differences will frequently be heard identifying people as British, American, Australian, and so on. However, these are still very few, and they may well diminish as international contacts increase. It is a cliché, but the world
has
become a smaller place, and this has an obvious linguistic consequence – that we talk to each other more, and come to understand each other more. British people can now watch American football on TV each week, and their awareness of that game's technical vocabulary increases as a result. A series on sumo wrestling on television a few years ago increased my knowledge of Japanese words in English tenfold. When we reflect on the opportunities for contact these days, the chances are that the standard element in international English will be strengthened. Satellite television, beaming down American and British English into homes all round the world, is a particularly significant development. An increasingly standardized spoken English is a likely outcome.

That is the reason why the history of Latin is no guide to the future of English. These centripetal forces were lacking a thousand years ago. Once the Roman Empire had begun to fragment, there was nothing to stop the centrifugal forces tearing spoken Latin apart. The numbers of Standard Latin speakers around Europe were small, and communication between groups was difficult. The whole globe now is communicatively smaller than Europe was then. It is the relative isolation of people from each other that causes a formerly common language to move in different
directions. In the Middle Ages, it was very easy for communities to be isolated from the rest of the world. Today it is virtually impossible.

Both centrifugal and centripetal forces exist in the modern world, and we need both. We want to have our linguistic cake and to eat it. We want to express our identity through language and we want to communicate intelligibly through language. We want to be different and we want to be the same. And the splendid thing about humans using language, of course, is that this is perfectly possible. It is the kind of situation the multifunctional brain handles very well. We
can
have our cake and eat it. One of the main insights of twentieth-century linguistics was to demonstrate the extraordinary capacity of the brain for language. One of the consequences was the observation that bilingualism, multilingualism, is the
normal
human condition. Well over half of the people in the world, perhaps two-thirds, are bilingual. Children learn their languages – often several languages – at extraordinary speed. Evidently, there is something in our make-up which promotes the acquisition of speech. I therefore see no intrinsic problems in the gradual emergence of a tri-English world – a world, that is, in which a home dialect (often very mixed in character), a national standard dialect and an international standard dialect comfortably coexist. It is a prospect which our Latin forebears would have envied.

Let me illustrate the way three levels of English work from my own background: