- global communication for everyone!

Chapter 3: Thinking Globally

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It would be difficult for all people in the world to have one official language. Who would say what that language must be? How would we decide? Who would “own” the language?

Most people today speak only their one national language. This is especially true with native English speakers. They observe that many people in other countries try to speak English. So they think they do not need to learn any other language. It appears to be a gift from their God that they were born ready for international communication. Perhaps, unlike others in the world, they do not have to walk half the distance to communicate with other cultures. Perhaps English IS the place everyone else must come to. Perhaps…. All others are unlucky by birth. But perhaps there is more to the story…

It does seem English has won the competition of global communication. Although it used to give people an edge in international business, one observer now states it this way:
“It has become a new baseline: without English you are not even in the race.”

So now the competition is over. No other language could be more successful now. Why is that?

The high situation of English is now recognized because communication is now global, and happens in one second. There have been periods in history where one language seemed to have worldwide acceptance. But, in all these periods, the “world” covered by one of these languages was not the whole planet. Chinese was not known to Greeks in the time of the Roman Empire. The hundreds of Australian languages were not known to Europeans when they settled there. Japanese people did not learn and speak French in the 18th century. Then, much communication was a matter of time and distance. Now, for the first time, communication has no limits on our Earth. 200 years ago it took more than six months to get a message from Auckland, New Zealand, to London. In our global world, a message goes from Auckland to London in less than a second.

As Marshall McLuhan said in his book The Guttenberg Galaxy, this world is now just the size of a village – a “global village.” In a village, all people communicate in the language of the village. All nations now accept English as the communication for our global village.

Some people dislike that fact a lot. They want to keep their language, and even to avoid English. And, there are people who do not care at all, and they do not see what is happening or what it means. Finally, there are people who accept it, and even benefit from it. Many Chinese, Spanish and German people realize their language is not global and so they are learning English. They speak about their wonderful culture in English but they also continue to speak their first language.

We can be very confident this situation will not change. With all the people now learning English as a second language, and there will be no need to change. As in the past, people will speak more than one language as children.

Leading economic powers, such as China, Brazil, India, Russia, and Japan will have many people speaking English. No one is going to win markets now with military battles.

And no one will need to change languages, as used to happen. Now nations will try to win hearts and minds with their better, less expensive products. It is a new world now, and maybe a better one.

To communicate worldwide, these people will use varying qualities of English. But once they master “a reasonable amount” of English they will not want or need to require others to use their mother tongue. So English will certainly continue to be the most important international language. The economic winners today or tomorrow will use their English well enough so that they don’t need anything else. This “common ground” is what everybody will continue to agree on…

Still, many people will continue to learn Chinese or Spanish or Russian. They will do this to understand other cultures. But it will be of less help in doing worldwide business. In an international meeting anywhere, there will always be people who do not speak the local language. Everyone in this meeting will then agree to change back to English, because everyone there will have acceptable English.

Today, Mandarin Chinese is the language with the most speakers. After that is Hindi, and then Spanish. All three of them have more native speakers than English. But Hindi speakers talk to Chinese speakers in English and Spanish speakers communicate to Japanese speakers in English. They cannot use their own languages so they must use the most international language to do current business. That is why English is now locked into its important position the world over.

Sometimes we wonder if it is good that English won the language competition. We could argue that it is not the right language. It is far too difficult, with far too many words (615,000 words in the Oxford English Dictionary…and they add more each day.) Too many irregular verbs. The grammar is too difficult. And most importantly, English does not have good links between the written and the spoken language. Why do the letters “ough” have four different pronunciations (“cough, tough, though, through”) Why is a different syllable stressed in photograph, photography and photographer? And why is there not a stress mark? Why doesn’t “Infamous” sound like “famous?” or “wilderness” like “wild?” Why isn’t “garbage” pronounced like “garage”, or “heathen” like “heather”?

English was never expected to make sense to the ear. Pronunciation in English is a horrible experience when you have not been born into that culture. Yet it appears to sound natural to native English speakers.
Some languages, like Italian, German, and Japanese, can match written words to the way they are spoken. So it may appear unlucky for us that one of them did not win it all. Italian, for example, is a language where every letter, and every group of letters, is always pronounced the same way. When you are given an Italian document, you can pronounce it once you understand a limited number of fixed rules. In English you have to learn the pronunciation of every word. Many English words are borrowed from other languages, and they sometimes keep their old pronunciation and sometimes not. English words cannot be written so the stressed syllables are shown. All non-native English speakers know that they may have to sleep without clothes if they try to buy “pajamas.” Where is the mark to show what we stress in “pajamas?” So, the borrowed word “pajamas” would be better written as pa-JA-mas. In English you must learn exactly which syllable gets the stress, or no one understands you.

But Italian, German, or Japanese did not win the language competition. English did. Luckily, this does not mean that there are people who won and people who lost. In fact, we will show that the people whose language seemed to win did not, in fact, improve their positions. The other people won, and those non-native speakers will soon win even more. This is one of the many “Globish Paradoxes.”

Technical Words

Grammar

the structure of words in a sentence

Pronounce

to speak accurate sounds in a language

Stress

making a heavy tone on one syllable of a word

Syllable

a part of a word you are saying

Paradox

something that sounds correct but is really the opposite like: winning is really losing

Verb

the part of speech that tells the action in a sentence.

International Words

Pajamas

clothes you wear to bed at night

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