Shared Global Language: Salvation or Threat?

Dr. Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof was obsessed with the vision of global community and devoted
much of his life to achieving it. Born in Russian Poland in 1859, and confronted daily by ethnic
tensions among Russian, Jewish, German and Polish groups, he concluded that language
differences were a major source of divisiveness. Find a shared way to communicate, he
reasoned, and bridges could be built within the human community.
Dr. Zamenhof set out to create a universal language, publishing a small booklet - Lingvo
Internacia (International Language) - in 1887. The pseudonym he used, Dr. Esperanto (“one who hopes”), was subsequently adopted as the name of the language. His efforts – and those of the thousands of people who shared his vision – have borne fruit. Esperanto is in widespread use today, with national associations in more than 50 countries, and an estimated 100,000 speakers worldwide.
Dr. Zamenhof’s intention was that Esperanto would serve as a unifying second language, rather
than replacing a speaker’s mother tongue. If his vision is ultimately realized, it may be from an
unexpected source. English now appears destined to become the first truly global language – the
mother tongue in more than 30 countries and the second language in about 75. Approximately
1.6 billion people, or about one-third of the world’s population, use some form of English today.
In a study commissioned by the British Council to look at prospects for the language (published
as a book entitled The Future of English?) the English Company (UK) Ltd. concluded that “the
language is… at a critical moment in its global career: within a decade or so, the number of
people who speak English as a second language will exceed the number of native speakers. The
implications of this are likely to be far reaching: the centre of authority regarding the language will shift from native speakers as they become minority stake-holders in the global resource. Their literature and television may no longer provide the focal point of a global English language
culture; their teachers no longer form the unchallenged authoritative models for learners.”
The widespread use of English has its origins in colonialism, but its recent global success owes
more to the emergence of the internet and American dominance of the technology and
entertainment industries. According to the web market research firm eMarketer of New York City, some 78% percent of all websites, and 96% of all e-commerce sites, currently use English.
Approximately 70% of all websites are hosted in the United States, and it has been estimated that about 80% of the information stored in the world’s computers is written in English.
The Economist magazine reported in a December 1996 article that when French President
Jacques Chirac was asked to identify the major risk for humanity, he answered, “What the
internet may do to language.”

In a poignant story that illustrates just how far things have gone, U.S. Vice-President Al Gore
recalled a visit he had made to a former republic of the USSR. “Last month, when I was in Central Asia,” Gore said, “the President of Kyrgyzstan told me his eight-year-old son came to him and said, ‘Father, I have to learn English.’ ‘But why?’ President Akayev asked. ‘Because, father, the computer speaks English.’”

Will this dominance continue? Computer Economics, Inc. of Carlsbad, California, predicts that
non-English speaking users of the internet will predominate by 2002. By 2005, it expects the
global population of online users to reach 345 million, 57% of whom will speak another mother
tongue. The company says it has recently observed “astronomical growth” in internet use among the Japanese and Chinese.
Increased use of the internet by the speakers of other languages, however, may not necessarily
reduce their reliance on English. A search by two American researchers of the JICST (Japan
Information Center of Science and Technology), the largest online provider of science and
technology databases in Japan, found that only 2% of new records added in the decade between
1985 and 1994 were in Japanese. Incredibly, 98% of the material added during this period was
written in the English language.
While the scientific and technological community may be atypical, Japan’s intention is clear. In
January of this year, Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi released a report on the country’s goals for the 21st Century and proposed making English Japan’s official second language.
Is the role of English as a global second language, fuelled by U.S. media, popular music and the
internet, the fulfillment of Dr. Zamenhof’s dream? Or is it instead, as Jacques Chirac believed, a
Trojan horse that represents a profound threat to traditional cultures? The answer lies
undoubtedly in geopolitics, and in an emerging model of global community whose full
complexities and implications are still unknown.

by David Forrest