The problem with linguae francae

[IronMike]

The world is predominantly multilingual but in fewer and fewer languages. Most of the world's languages are endangered.

Even if you define most as 51% or more, most of the world's languages are not endangered. That's not to say a large number aren't endangered. A large number of the world's languages are endangered (in the upper 40 percent), and the language lover in me finds that worrisome and sad (which is why I have a soft-spot in my heart for LCTL). But to fault individuals, most of whom are probably already multilingual, for learning what they see as a beneficial language for their personal or public life, is misdirected. This applies to Spanish or English or Arabic or Mandarin or Russian or...

English is at its deadliest in Australia, the US and Canada...

To classify English as "deadly" is to devalue what it means to those folks who now have access to a vaster array of information sources. In some of those places, the option to listen to news from "Australia, the US and Canada," for instance, gives these folks another perspective than what they might get from their own media. That's a good thing. This is why I read and listen to news in English and Russian and Croatian and Esperanto. And I'm sure many here do the same with their languages.

I would love for all languages to be strong and thriving. But one cannot force that. The language has to be useful to some group of people. If it is not, it will go into disuse and, tragically, die off. We can come in here and complain about it, or we can do what we language lovers do best: We can learn the language. We can use the language. We can teach the language. We can become that group of people who find that language useful.

[nooj]

Despite all this worry about LFs and multilingualism, the world is still predominantly multilingual, despite the efforts, apparently, of my countrymen to go out and ruin multilingualism for everyone else.

And even before the big bad wolf of (American) English, there were other LFs out there. And we still have a predominantly multilingual world.

There were other linguae francae out there, for example French in Europe. But French was the lingua franca of a certain class of people, an extreme minority. You certainly couldn't go to Spain or to Poland in the 18th century and expect an ordinary Spaniard or Pole to speak French to you. You still can't do that with English, but English is certifiably on another level to the linguae francae of yesteryear.

A closer example to English's dominance now would be Latin, which was the lingua franca of much of Europe and Africa. What is frightening about Latin is that it became powerful enough to dislodge dozens of European and African languages, stamping the Romance languages on what was presumably a very linguistically diverse continent. Apart from Basque, what remains of the pre-Romance languages in Spain? The continental Celtic languages are all dead. Etruscan? The languages of Dacia?

English has already annihilated dozens and dozens, if not hundreds, of languages in America, Canada and Australia.

We still live in a multilingual world, but that's like saying we still live in a world full of biodiversity where the oceans are full of fish and the rainforests are not under threat. It's fantasy and what's more, it's a dangerous fantasy.

[Saim]

Even if you define most as 51% or more,

I'd like to point out that that was the definition I was using, yes. Perhaps I should've said a bit over half.

most of the world's languages are not endangered. That's not to say a large number aren't endangered. A large number of the world's languages are endangered (in the upper 40 percent)

According to who, what are your sources?

We don't even have objective, universal criteria that would help us figure out how many languages there are (there could be anywhere between six and ten thousand, according to the range of estimates I've seen linguists most commonly make). And from an ecological or ecolinguistic perspective, can you be so sure that there's a substantive difference between 47% (upper 40 percent) and 52% (51% or more) of the world's languages being endangered?

Also, why minimise it? OK, language death is a necessary evil in a globalised world, a trade-off that we get for more access to information and other cultures. So what does it matter, from your perspective, if it's 20%, 'upper 40%' or even 80% of the world's languages that are in danger? Or is there a certain percentage that would mean you'd want to make substantial changes to prevent this from happening, making certain compromises in terms of what you consider to be positive aspects of globalisation? If not, it doesn't matter how many languages will die out, at least accepting the argument you've made so far without any added caveats (which you're absolutely free to add if you want).

But to fault individuals, most of whom are probably already multilingual, for learning what they see as a beneficial language for their personal or public life, is misdirected.

Who has faulted individuals for learning beneficial languages? Since this is a response to my post, I'd like for you clarify if this is something you've read into my posts and where exactly in my posts this idea comes across, because it was certainly not my intention to fault any individuals.

To classify English as "deadly" is to devalue what it means to those folks who now have access to a vaster array of information sources. In some of those places, the option to listen to news from "Australia, the US and Canada," for instance, gives these folks another perspective than what they might get from their own media.

I was talking about the autochtonous languages of those countries, that don't necessarily have their own news media, and for whom "Australia, the US and Canada" means the end of their existence as a people in at least some cases. My entire point is that the use of English as an international lingua franca is not comparable to the pressure it exerts on the indigenous peoples of these three countries. When I said "it's at its deadliest" in those three countries, I was making the empirical claim that those three countries contain most of the languages killed by, or under threat of, shift towards English (unlike India, Nigeria or Pakistan, where endangered languages are under threat from other local languages and as far as I'm aware absolutely no languages have been killed by English; although the influence of English as the language of the elite is of course part of the language ecology of these countries).

The language has to be useful to some group of people. If it is not, it will go into disuse and, tragically, die off.

Yes, that's why I talked so much about language use in my post on normalisation.

We can come in here and complain about it, or we can do what we language lovers do best: We can learn the language. We can use the language. We can teach the language. We can become that group of people who find that language useful.

We can also talk about these languages in the context of the field of language endangerment and revitalisation, or sociolinguistics, or language politics. I'm not sure that's necessarily 'complaining', but your mileage may vary.

Also, for a language to be really 'useful' in the sense that's needed for normalisation, it needs to be useful for a speech community, not random enthusiasts. We're not trying to turn all endangered languages into mini-Esperantos.

[nooj]

English is at its deadliest in Australia, the US and Canada...

To classify English as "deadly" is to devalue what it means to those folks who now have access to a vaster array of information sources. In some of those places, the option to listen to news from "Australia, the US and Canada," for instance, gives these folks another perspective than what they might get from their own media. That's a good thing. This is why I read and listen to news in English and Russian and Croatian and Esperanto. And I'm sure many here do the same with their languages.

I'm sure that the indigenous peoples of my country are so appreciative of the opportunity to use their English to 'get a different perspective' from their own media...oh wait, what media? Apart from a handful of exceptions, Australian languages are moribund, minoritised with little or no media presence or extinct.

English is deadly, lethal, toxic, mortiferous, pestilent, malignant. This is a perfectly valid description of the effect that English continues to have on my country's languages.

It is a plague that swept through Australia that was weaponised by the colonisers to breed their nativeness out of them, it is a language beamed into children's heads in missionaries and schools. You talk about languages being useful, and yet you don't address what I said before, that powerful languages make their own usefulness. When people have their lands stolen from them and are driven from their lands by war and ethnic cleansing and have their language forbidden from any political representation (if the people themselves are conceded any political rights at all), then you tell me how their languages have a fair chance to compete in the field of usefulness. English won in Australia because it made itself useful and it made all the speakers of other languages dead, marginalised, poor or persecuted.

Maybe I wouldn't have so much problem with this if it actually had a positive effect. And yet if you look at the Aboriginal peoples of Australia now, they are systematically poorer, unhealthier, more uneducated, die sooner, have more serious mental health issues, their suicide rates are off the chart, domestic abuse, drug and alcohol abuse are extreme, they are incarcerated longer, harsher and more than other Australians...what benefits exactly has English brought them?

“The Tower of Babel as told in Genesis 11:1-9 is an origin myth meant to explain why the world's peoples speak different languages. According to the story, a united humanity in the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating eastward, comes to the land of Shinar. There they agree to build a city and a tower tall enough to reach heaven. God, observing their city and tower, confounds their speech so that they can no longer understand each other, and scatters them around the world.” - Wikipedia

And, humanity’s response was ...

“A lingua franca, also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language or vehicular language, is a language or dialect systematically (as opposed to occasionally, or casually) used to make communication possible between people who do not share a native language or dialect, particularly when it is a third language that is distinct from both native languages. Lingua francas have developed around the world throughout human history, sometimes for commercial reasons (so-called "trade languages") but also for cultural, religious, diplomatic and administrative convenience, and as a means of exchanging information between scientists and other scholars of different nationalities. The term originates with one such language, Mediterranean Lingua Franca.” - Wikipedia

A Gumbaynggirr man told me this story about his region (Coff's Harbour) and Yuludarla, their ancestor. I found a version of it online:

This story shortened here was told by Harry Tiger Buchanan in Gumbaynggirr. It is similar to dreaming stories around Australia where the hero-ancestors shaped the land and gave each country its language.

A Goori on a hill once saw a stranger coming. He said: ‘Well! I’ve never seen anyone like that. He’s shining like the sun!’

That Goori skirted around, ran to the camp and told the others: ‘I’ve seen this awesome Goori – he looked like the rising sun.’

Several people asked ‘Where was he?’ ‘Near the sea’, the man replied. The people all went after him.

‘Let’s chase and catch him, the man like the sun!’ they cried.

But when they got near he formed a new river and made a canoe to cross it.

Some swam across to catch him but they couldn’t.

The man like the rising sun was the Father. He said:

‘Because they want to catch me I’ll mix up all their languages.

Those who have crossed the Richmond; you will talk in Bundjalung! ‘

But some of the people still followed him South. ‘Let’s chase and catch him, the man like the Sun!’ Again the Father formed a river and made a canoe to cross it.

Some swam across to catch him but they couldn’t. He said ‘Those who have crossed the Clarence, you will talk in Yaygirr!’

Some of the people still followed him south. That is why he made them all different. When he formed a new river, the mob that crossed over had to speak a new language.

So he gave the Gambalamam language to the upper Bellinger, Gumbaynggirr to the Nambucca and the Ngambaa language to those who crossed Warrell Creek. Finally he gave the Dhanggati language to the Macleay and those who crossed the river there.

That’s how the Father formed all our rivers and gave each country its language.

Yuludarla split up the peoples in order to throw them off the track, so kind of like the story of Babel, but the man who told me this story gave it a very positive spin. Each people were given a name, a land and a language to look after for perpetuity. He saw it less as a curse and more as a responsibility handed down.

National languages are the 19th century human invention to finally defeat Babel's curse, by placing uniformity and order on a threatening riotous, diversity of voices, but there is another option. And that is to be multilingual.

Prior to colonisation, Australian Aboriginal peoples were generally extremely multilingual. You can still see hints of this in the Aboriginal communities of the NT and the Central Desert, where people often speak 3, 4, 5 languages. But this was equally true of the coastal areas of Australia, by far the most populated parts, which unfortunately bore the brunt of the invasion.

[Speakeasy]

... So terribly rude! ... Any discomfort or annoyance we get from not being able to practice our language, and of course it is annoying and frustrating, can be lessened when you consider it as a give and take relationship. Instead of complaining, consider sharing what you know as a native speaker of an insanely powerful language, so that they will consider helping you out in return.

... English is deadly, lethal, toxic, mortiferous, pestilent, malignant. This is a perfectly valid description of the effect that English continues to have on my country's languages. It is a plague that swept through Australia that was weaponised by the colonisers to breed their nativeness out of them ...

Uh, er, welcome to the forum.

[aokoye]

Has anyone worried about this?

Given that I have a book on my bookshelf called Linguistic Genocide or Superdiversity?, that the first linguistics class I ever took was essentially on language endangerment and death in North America, and that I personally know at least a handful of people who have worked with different Native American tribes to help revitalize their languages, I can most assuredly say that this is something that a lot of linguists think about. Where linguist means the more typical academic definition as opposed to the governmental (language learner, translator, and/or interpreter for the government) definition.

Note that I was lucky enough to get that book at a conference directly from the publisher so I don't think I paid more than $15 for it and the ebook is actually very reasonably priced. Oh and here's that paper I was alluding to yesterday, Ethical Issues in Indigenous Language Research and Interventions.

[lichtrausch]

Maybe I wouldn't have so much problem with this if it actually had a positive effect. And yet if you look at the Aboriginal peoples of Australia now, they are systematically poorer, unhealthier, more uneducated, die sooner, have more serious mental health issues, their suicide rates are off the chart, domestic abuse, drug and alcohol abuse are extreme, they are incarcerated longer, harsher and more than other Australians...what benefits exactly has English brought them?

This is a misleading comparison. There's no reason to believe that indigenous Australians would be in as good of a condition as non-indigenous Australians if only English hadn't been imposed on them (or if only they hadn't been colonized). A more instructive comparison would be to look at how the condition of indigenous Australians compares to that of other Melanesian peoples.

[nooj]

I'm afraid I don't understand your response.

I have heard and read, countless times, people talk about the Australian Aboriginal peoples as if colonisation had been a good thing. "They were walking around naked and hunted their food. We gave them medicine and civilisation. If they don't like it, why don't they go back to the desert?". There is a linguistic counterpart, which is that with English or whatever other language, they have been 'gifted' an international, scientific, economic language.

My point was that these so called benefits have not trickled down. What has happened is that Europeans have forced them to give up everything (their land, their culture, their ways of life, their languages) in return for a new position at the very bottom of a tall ladder. I did not say that Australian Aboriginals would have been better off if the Europeans hadn't invaded (although we could discuss that), I'm saying that it is a verifiable fact that the Europeans invaded and then made their lives worse.

English only helped create this new world order. It did not enfranchise Aboriginals, it did not help them integrate into the society (white Australians didn't let them), it did not give them job opportunities as they saw fit, it did not allow them free travel (white Australians gave them legal protectors who limited black travel), it did not allow them fair representation in court, or in elections.

If the people who control the power don't want you to be free, then it doesn't matter the language you learn. Worse, if the people in power want to use the language as a weapon, then the very language is your enemy.

The Europeans made it so that if you didn't know English, you were automatically disenfranchised. The Europeans, by their racist attitude, made it so that if you did know English but you didn't speak it like one of them you were automatically discriminated against and this linguistic prejudice continues to this day against Aboriginal English. English made the lives of kids hell at school, because if you were caught speaking your language, you were beaten. Did that exist before the Europeans came? No. Was such a thing even conceptually possible before colonisation? No, because no Aboriginal group, as far as we know, beat their kids or the kids of other groups for the language they spoke. This at least, is something the Europeans made demonstrably worse by their coming to Australia. They set up a supremacist linguistic system that went hand in hand with a white supremacist political system, with English at the top and +300 languages at the very bottom.

The idea of a language opening up opportunities to speakers of minority languages is impregnated with mauvaise foi, because powerful languages, in order to become powerful have almost always made other languages minoritised. It is a contradiction in terms for an oppressing language to liberate!

This is why reversing language shift must entail also a societal shift. The Gumbaynggirr man I talked about is part of the language revival movement that his community is working on.

This is in a town where only a few decades before, the stench of racism was so great that Aboriginals were not allowed to use the same facilities as white people, they had to sit at the very front of the cinema well away from the white people, in the bars they had to drink out the back. When the local Aboriginal football team won against the white team, the Aboriginal mothers were barred from buying at the shops by the white shopkeepers. The white priest of the local Christian school would ring the bell as a signal for the children to hide when he saw the government official come, because mixed race children would be taken away (stolen) from their families because they didn't want the Aboriginalness to rub off on them. The sacred place that was described in the story I was told, where the Gumbaynggirr people met Yuludarla, was converted into a golf course. He wryly asked what it was with white people and golf courses, because they keep on building it over sacred sites.

And now, the language is being taught, even if only on a symbolic level, to white and Aboriginal children in the same class at school. He mused how this would have seemed impossible in another not so distant time.

English had over 200 years in Australia. During that time, it has done little more than create an ugly edifice to genocide and ethnic cleansing. This Aboriginal language on the other hand, is helping to breach the racial divide. Now there's a useful language for you!

[emk]

I have heard and read, countless times, people talk about the Australian Aboriginal peoples as if colonisation had been a good thing. "They were walking around naked and hunted their food. We gave them medicine and civilisation. If they don't like it, why don't they go back to the desert?"...

My point was that these so called benefits have not trickled down. What has happened is that Europeans have forced them to give up everything (their land, their culture, their ways of life, their languages) in return for a new position at the very bottom of a tall ladder. I did not say that Australian Aboriginals would have been better off if the Europeans hadn't invaded (although we could discuss that), I'm saying that it is a verifiable fact that the Europeans invaded and then made their lives worse.

This thread is beginning to drift heavily into politics, which are forbidden under forum rules. The moderators try to allow some leeway for politics that are directly related to language learning, and especially things like, "I'm about to travel to country X. Is there anything I need to know about language politics there to avoid making serious mistakes?"

For details, please consult the forum rules, which are posted here:

Religion and politics: Some families have a rule that says, "No political or religious arguments during holiday dinner." This forum has a similar rule year-round, for much the same reasons. We have people here from all over the world, with incredibly diverse political and religious views, and we all get along much better if we avoid these subjects.

If the politics or religion is genuinely related to language learning, then you have a small amount of leeway—as long as people remain respectful and refrain from fighting. But if a moderator asks you to stop, please stop. You can fight about politics and religion on almost any other site on the Internet. This site is for language learning.

Angry political discussions are to forums what kudzu is to the American south. If you let it spread, it overrun absolutely everything else. And yes, I understand that politics are important, and I personally agree that a lot of people got screwed over horribly by colonization. But this is not the place for that discussion.

[nooj]

https://abp.bzh/videos/korbell2.mp4

This is a speech I watched recently of Nolwenn Korbell, a Breton singer, who replied to some comments made by a French philosopher, Michel Onfray. I personally find it extremely moving. Here are some choice extracts:

Oui, il m'importe de parler breton, d'entendre parler breton, de le lire, de l'écrire, de le chanter, de faire en sorte à ma manière et avec mes moyens de faire sonner et vivre cette langue aussi longtemps que possible, lui répond Nolwenn. Est-ce cela que vous appelez un dispositif tribal, M. Michel Onfray ? Un instrument identitaire ? Une machine de guerre anti-universelle ? Un outil de fermeture sur soi ? Je ne m'inscris, ni ne me reconnais dans ces termes belliqueux, agressifs, barbares.

Et vous qui souriez en coin, qui vous moquez, qui crachez sur ma langue et ceux qui la portent, qui vous offusquez à l'idée de passer quatre malheureux pour cent de chansons en langue régionale sur les antennes nationales, entendez bien : ma langue me remue les tripes et le coeur car elle me relie à mes grands-mères, à mes ancêtres, à mes parents, à mon fils, à mes amis, à ma terre... qui par ses noms de villes, de lieux-dits, de rivières, de champs me parlent et me disent leur histoire et me permettent d'y inscrire la mienne.

Quand je parle breton, j'ai le sentiment de faire vivre ceux qui ont été et m'ont donné un bout d'eux-mêmes, de leur manière de dire le monde par la langue. Ils m'ont donné aussi la curiosité, l'appétit de l'autre que je ne connais pas, qui ne parle pas pareil et dont je voudrais connaître l'histoire, la poésie car il s'agit bien là d'une affaire de poésie, de respiration, d'humanité.

Onfray criticised the regional languages of France as instruments of closure, a tribal tool and a war-machine against universalism. Korbell does not critique Onfray the way I would, instead focusing much more movingly about her own personal connection to her language. For someone who criticises the languages of France as parochial, nationalistic, weapons motivated by hatred of the other, he does not seem to realise that French was the language at the spear tip of a hundred different armies throughout the centuries, the language of a colonial empire that enslaved millions and slaughtered millions more and is the language of a tribe of 60 million people, the tribe of the French nation (and what are nation-states if not very big tribes?). As far as I'm aware, Bretons did not start any world wars, even though they fought in them.

I think there were some posts in this thread that pointed out that the big powerful languages were helpful precisely in that it allowed them to contact other cultures, and motivated them to learn the languages of the people they were in contact with. I'm happy about this. Again I stress, I'm not against these languages per se. I've already quoted Spanish and French, and I'm writing in English, all three giant languages.

Unfortunately, some people twist this perfectly valid argument and use it as a weapon. I can't count the number of times I've heard that French opens you up to the world, so Bretons, Occitans, Basques, Alsaciens, Corse etc should be happy and grateful to speak a world language! And yet, as Korbell puts it, it is Breton, a language spoken by 200,000 native speakers, that has opened the world to her and made her more open to strangers with their own ways of speaking and thinking. And it has all often been French the language that has proven to be the perfect instrument of xenophobia.