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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.
RESOURCES:
Computer Economics –
http://www.computereconomics.com
eMarketer -
http://www.emarketer.com
The English Company (UK)
Ltd. –
http://www.english.co.uk
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