International English

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Just some random thoughts in this one...

I've noticed as I've been travelling that a LOT of people speak English throughout the world. It's the first language of the U.K., Canada, Australia, Singapore, and New Zealand. It's also the major language of the U.S. (though not many of us are abroad), and an important official language in many other countries, including the super-populous India. English is spoken pretty-much anywhere there are tourists, in diplomatic settings, and anywhere where there is a lot of international business going on.

But, we don't all speak the same English. In fact, the dialects of English are so diverse that it's a wonder we can speak to each other at all. Due to differences in accent, cadence, pronunciation, vocabulary, slang, figures of speech, and various other colloquialisms, it would be impossible for a Scotsman's or a Singaporian's everyday speech to be understood by an American, let alone by a German.

I was speaking to a German, in fact, when I really got to thinking about this. This was a stunning German girl named Nina (the second stunning Nina I've met on this trip), and we decided that the language we spoke to one-another in was really a form of "International English." This is not an English that is actually used conversationally from day to day in any English-speaking nation in the world, but is in fact a simplified pidgin English that even native English-speakers have to learn as a second language.

The traditional thought is that pidgin languages occur through the admixture of several other languages, but that is clearly not the case here. This is also nothing like the bilingual code-switching of Singlish or Spanglish or something. What it is is a simplified language with simple grammar, a simple vocabulary, and a slow, deliberate, un-accented pace. This is the language created when you strip away all the parts of English that aren't universal, leaving only the bare bones of communication.

What this implies is that even the English can't assume their speech is understandable by others (in fact, it often isn't). This also implies that the localized dialects of English found around the world are developing much faster than the universal English that we share. The conclusion that Nina and I came to is that one day there will not only be several disparate dialects of English spoken throughout the world, but there will actually be many different English-based languages (Such as American, Australian, Singaporian, etc.), much as occured when Latin developed into French, Spanish, and Portugese.

Unlike Latin, however--which was once considered a "universal language" throughout much of Europe, North Africa, and the Near East--English will not merely fade away as a dead root-language. English will carry on and develop into a legitimate international language because it will continue to be used and needed throughout our world of interconnected information and commerce. In addition to English-based languages, there will also be a universal International English that everyone will have to learn as a second language.

So, it is a fact that English is the most widely-used language in the world, but it isn't because it's the best. Unlike Esperanto, English was not developed to be the world's language; it happened on accident. It isn't the easiest to learn or to speak, or the fastest to teach. It definitely isn't the most pleasant to listen to, either (though it may be the most expressive).

If you ever get on a high horse about being a native English-speaker, just pause to think about the series of accidents that made it so easy for you to communicate with the rest of the world: the collision of Germanic and Celtic peoples on the islands of Britain, the invasion of the Romans, the Imperialist and Colonialist knack developed in Englishmen, the ruthless expansion of Americans, Australians, and Canadians across their continents, the unforseeable results of the World Wars, and the importance of commerce in the modern era.

Then remember that it won't be this easy for you and your kin forever. The new English that people will be speaking in one- or two-hundred years will be vastly different from your own, and the Asian, Africans, and Central Europeans will have just as much ownership over it as we will.

I suppose.

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