Is Globalization Destroying Language? (Part II)

This post is Part 2 of a two-part series. 

In the realm of global communications, the English language has taken a central role as it has become the de facto lingua franca of business, travel, academia and technology worldwide. At the same time, according to Ethnologue and the Endangered Language Fund, of the nearly 7,000 languages in existence in our planet 473 (7%) are nearly extinct and close to half of all existing languages in the world will be out of use by the end of the century. In the island of New Guinea alone there are approximately 1,000 living languages, most of which are spoken by only a few thousand people. As Papua New Guinea and Irian Jaya (Indonesia) become more intimate with the rest of the world, the future generations of that island may well end up speaking only three languages: Tok Pisin, Bahasa Indonesia and English (all of which are official languages on the island).

In general, we can think of three different dynamics at play throughout this global process of linguistic consolidation: 1) existing languages that unite different groups will grow and survive, 2) existing languages that divide will wane and ultimately die (with few exceptions) and 3) a limited number of pidgins, creoles and linguae francae will arise to unite linguistic groups that are economically, politically and culturally related.

Within the group of languages that will survive we will have most major world languages of today, namely English, Spanish, Mandarin, French, Arabic, Russian and Hindi. All of these languages are spoken by large numbers of people that culturally identify with them and are already being used as common languages that unify different nations and regions around the world. These languages will survive precisely because they offer a higher level of efficiency in communication between peoples who more and more believe that economic and political integration are valuable. 

Within the group of languages that won't survive are all existing languages that are confined to small numbers of people, are considered divisive and are closely-related to neighboring languages (e.g. most national languages). These languages will likely go out of use, as economic, social and political impulses compel us to reinterpret our linguistic diversity as an obstacle to growth and unification. The exception to this rule will be national languages in relatively wealthy countries that are sufficiently distinct from neighboring languages and that have large numbers of speakers (e.g. Turkish and Japanese). Only these national languages will be able to survive as part of a cultural resistance before an economically-charged process of assimilation.

Finally, some parts of the world——particularly those that have high levels of linguistic diversity——will undergo a process of regional linguistic unification. Through this process neighboring countries with closely-related languages and close economic, political, cultural and social ties will either adopt a single predominant local tongue or, perhaps more interestingly, will develop regional creoles that incorporate aspects of one or several local languages.

As a result of these three major dynamics, most countries in the world will experience one of three major outcomes as linguistic unification arises at the national level or as part of a regional effort of integration: 1) the adoption of a major world language, 2) the adoption of a unifying national language or 3) the adoption of a local regional language.

Take Ghana, for instance, a country with 79 languages. In the first scenario, as a country that considers English an official language, Ghana would most likely end up becoming a truly homogenized, English-speaking country. Under the second scenario, which is admittedly least likely to occur, Ghana would create a unifying creole for all its peoples or impose one of the major local languages like Asante or Ewe in all its territory. Finally, under the third scenario Ghana and its neighbors (from Senegal to Cameroon) would witness the rise of a regional language. Unlike the adoption of English, this outcome would allow all member countries to benefit from the economic, political and social advantages of creating a broad regional linguistic community, while maintaining a sense of “localness” and ownership over the spoken language. A possible candidate on which to base such a language for Ghana could be a far-reaching, Niger-Congo language such as Fulani.

If Ghana and all other countries in the world were to adopt major world languages as their official system of speech, we would experience a major loss of cultural diversity, as most world languages are of Eurasian descent. On the other hand, attempting to save all 7,000 existing languages in the world or even just one for every country, although certainly a noble effort, would be nothing more than an unjustified, politically- and emotionally-motivated venture that would be excessively costly and in all likelihood result in failure. 

That having been said, global linguistic diversity does not have to be a thing of the past. The possibility of creating and adopting new common regional local languages that unite many smaller, related languages is a viable option (and perhaps the best chance we have) for a truly diversified linguistic future. Moreover, this alternative is not as far-fetched as it might appear at first sight: languages like Swahili, Bahasa Indonesia and Tok Pisin are just a few examples of modern languages that arose as a means of promoting regional unification. In intensely diverse linguistic contexts like Sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and New Guinea, new concerted efforts to unify closely-related languages and dialects could arise: it would be interesting to see a new language called Neo-Bantu spoken from Equatorial Guinea to Mozambique to South Africa, for instance.

What if this doesn’t happen organically? What if no African languages were to survive at all as globalization runs its course? Should we do something now to preserve at least a minimum amount of linguistic diversity? It is difficult to swim against the current and, historically, efforts to promote minority languages or promote artificial languages intended for unification like Esperanto or Volapük have been limited in scope. It is possible, however, to create linguistic policies that flow not in the direction of separatism as is the case of Catalonia and its beautiful language, but rather towards the realignment of our cultural preservationist goals with the economic, political and social realities of the day. 

The case for Neo-Bantu, in my opinion, is a particularly good one: there are approximately 500 Bantu languages in Sub-Saharan Africa, many of which are neither official nor considered national languages, and most of which are intimately related. In an effort to unite the peoples within and between countries like Botswana and Zimbabwe, for instance, it would be a more favorable outcome to create a common language that is inspired in the autochthonous Bantu languages, rather than simply promoting the use of English as a lingua franca. The same could be said for Neo-Guinean, Neo-Turkic, Neo-Fulani and other newly-created languages in Central and Southeast Asia, Europe, Nilo-Saharan Africa and the Americas.

So what will it be? A homogenized linguistic future or one characterized by limited diversity? Only time will tell, but for now we can be sure that some languages will inevitably perish despite our best efforts. We can also be certain, however, that if our efforts are aligned with the spirit of the times, we will be able to keep at least one African tongue...