The Fall of Language in the Age of English

General discussion about learning languages
User avatar
reineke
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3570
Joined: Wed Jan 06, 2016 7:34 pm
Languages: Fox (C4)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=6979
x 6554

The Fall of Language in the Age of English

Postby reineke » Fri Mar 31, 2017 6:35 pm

MUST EVERYONE WRITE ENGLISH?

"When published in 2008, The Fall of Language in the Age of English created a sensation in Japan, winning awards, becoming a bestseller, and igniting a furious online debate between its detractors and defenders. This first book of nonfiction by Minae Mizumura, whose four novels have all won national awards, was published last year in a superbly readable English translation. This powerful, insightful work analyzes the predicament of world languages and literatures in an age when English has become the universal language of science and the default language of the internet. Even for creative writers, it is the virtually inescapable medium for those desiring to be taken seriously in an age of globalized discourse...

Mizumura’s wish that her work reach readers of English implicitly acknowledges the hegemony of English among world languages, all but certain to increase in coming years. That problem, in her view, relates to a second, the debasement of Japan’s language and literature. Mizumura offers a scathing critique of the official simplification of written Japanese, the decreasing language and literature instruction in Japan’s schools since 1945, and, partly as a result of both, the impoverishment of contemporary Japanese literature. The preface to the English version includes her appeal to Japanese educators, civil officials, writers, and intellectuals...

This book was written for those who, in moments of solitude, quietly worry about the future of Japanese literature and the Japanese language. It is for those who think that what is being written in Japanese today is ultimately of little relevance but who wish, with mingled despair and resignation, that at the very least more people would read Japanese literature written in those years when it was deserving of the name....

Mizumura relates her experiences among more than 20 other foreign writers during a University of Iowa International Writing Program, then offers a version of a scholarly talk on the “fall” of French in the age of English, which she gave during a Paris symposium—her only public address in her first professional language. The Japanese novelist connects with her French audience as they consider together the subordination of French and Japanese—her second professional language—to English....

Her experiences in Iowa with more than 20 “writers writing in their own language”—including literary artists from China and Korea, Norway and Lithuania, and a poet from Botswana who writes in English—were the origin of The Fall of Language, since they raised initial questions about the challenges facing local languages and literatures. But her awareness during a bleak Iowa autumn that the Japanese have been relatively “blessed” among non-Westerners to create a major world literature reminds her vaguely of a conversation about literature in Yiddish, a minor and virtually dead language, that took place after her talk in Paris...

The Fall of Language in the Age of English concludes with somber reflections on the internet and the implications for national languages and literatures of hegemonic English, the world’s de facto universal language. But Mizumura also criticizes self-defeating public policies that have impoverished the Japanese language, and Japanese literary works that “often read like rehashes of American literature.” She calls for teaching more Japanese to younger students, and mandating that older ones read the full texts of Japanese modern classics...

She ends her rich, profound meditation on language and literature by encouraging people in English-speaking nations to consider the possibility that the advantage of fluency in our age’s universal language can also be a disadvantage:

"If more English native speakers walked through the doors of other languages, they would discover undreamed-of landscapes. Perhaps some of them might then begin to think that the truly blessed are not they themselves, but those who are eternally condemned to reflect on language, eternally condemned to marvel at the richness of the world.""

http://www.claremont.org/crb/article/mu ... e-english/
6 x

User avatar
verdastelo
Orange Belt
Posts: 202
Joined: Sun Jan 31, 2016 1:20 pm
Languages: Punjabi (N), Hindi-Urdu (near-native), English (C1+), Russian (B1+), French (A2+), Chinese (A1+), Kannada (A0+)
x 740

Re: The Fall of Language in the Age of English

Postby verdastelo » Sun Apr 02, 2017 3:24 am

A couple of points which aren't covered in the post and the article but which will provide readers a background to understand her argument.

Nowhere in the book does Minae Mizumura say that English will replace other languages. Chances are high that Punjabi, Zulu, and Quechua will survive into the 22nd century, and even beyond. Minae Mizumura's concern is the degradation of national languages in their written form.

Until 400 years ago, literature, science, law, and most prose was available in only a dozen languages; Sanskrit in India, Classical Chinese in East Asia, Persian in Central Asia, and Latin in Western Europe. Then (after the French revolution?) some local languages were elevated to occupy the place previously reserved for ancient languages. That was the era of nationalism(?). The trend caught on. By the year 1900, literature was being written in French, English, German, Russian, and Japanese, among others. Then, world's languages could be conveniently divided into two groups:

  1. Local languages (Tulu, Yoruba) that you could speak in
  2. National languages (Japanese, Russian) that you could speak and write in

The rise of English threatens to turn national languages into local languages. You will continue to speak in Japanese, Mandarin, or Arabic in your home but when it comes to writing anything of scholarly interest, it will only be in English. That is the world she dreads.

For anyone who wonders how dreadful the world will be if Minae Mizumura's prediction comes true, I will ask them to look at contemporary South Asia and Africa. Here is a recent report from the Punjabi Tribune that says 90 percent of official work at the level of state and 50 percent of official work at the level of blocks is in English and 25 percent government departments are solely operating in English. National languages (Swahili, Hausa, Hindi) are already local in these places. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in Europe where universities are slowly switching to English.

A couple of other things from the book:

  1. Skilled writers of Japanese can play with Kana and Kanji to express emotions visually on the page. For instance, hiragana for lightness and kanji for serious stuff.
  2. Most of the time the literature that's translated is the one that's easy to transmit. The irony bears out in Minae Mizumur's translation where the translator acknowledges having replaced some elements which were obvious to the average Japanese reader but not the average (to her) American. That's disrespecting to readers, methinks.
  3. She talks about a Mongolian poet who would write in Mongolian, instead of Russian or Mandarin. That is a mystery to her and us. Why will someone write in a language in which few people read?
  4. She is very clear that language alone can't bridge all gaps. She can't connect with Asians and East Europeans because they are poor. So she finds company in a Scandinavian. That's an honest admission, at least. Most people don't like foreigners because they are poor. Saudis are welcomed but Tanzanians are deported. A lot of the time, talk about cultural or linguistic compatibility is just a smokescreen.
  5. Japanese was one of the few non-European languages to possess an encyclopaedia of literature in 1926.

That's all.
5 x
The life of man is but a succession of vain hopes and groundless fears. — Monte(s)quieu


Return to “General Language Discussion”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Anya, Cainntear and 2 guests