Language | The Global Connect

The Decline of English – Say Hello and Wave (Goodbye)

Nicholas Ostler, a linguist and author who earned his stripes in the language world studying at Oxford’s Balliol College, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has recently published his much-awaited book The last Lingua franca: English until the return of Babel.

This work charts the rise of English over the last centuries but maps a bleak future for the lingua franca in general, citing similar deceased lingua francas, examples of which go way back in time.

A lingua franca is defined as ‘a language systematically used to communicate between persons not sharing a mother tongue’.

For centuries, English has been the world’s lingua franca. There appear to be many contributing factors to its ‘success’. During the 16^thcentury, the Reformation positioned English as the language of business; seafaring, trade and colonisation all provided the English language with a constant and growing tongue supply, which has thrived over hundreds of years.

From the 1980s onwards, the birth of the Internet meant that the English language, via the media of television and radio which started in the 1920s, together with music, began to steadily saturate the media across all corners of the world. The internet slang which developed during the 1980s gave rise to acronyms rooted in the English language, such as LOL and LMAO – many of which are used by non-English speakers.

Olster declares that ‘the main story of growth in the Internet…is of linguistic diversity, not concentration.’ Therefore, one could reason that whilst the Internet appears to propagate English dominance across many territories, it simultaneously empowers other languages, which will inevitably tip the scale back into balance in the years to come. Arabic, Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, and French are the fastest growing languages online.

Ostler is fascinated by how one language can dominate over another, to be universally accepted as a lingua franca. He is just as eager to map out how a language inevitably declines. His argument centres on the premise that the fate of all lingua francas is devolution; as simple as Newton’s adage – what goes up must come down. English will follow in the footsteps of earlier lingua francas such as Latin, Greek and Phoenician.

Ostler presents the ‘three Rs of lingua franca death: economic Ruin, political Relegation or social Resignation’. Colin Fraser, in his review, adds that Russian has been a victim of the latter; a former lingua franca in Eastern Europe, the use of Russian has almost been eliminated though social Resignation; the younger generation employ the cooler language of Hollywood and popular culture.

Hundreds of millions of people learn English as a second language, however Ostler predicts that soon they will not need to.

He presents the possibility of a “virtual” language: one that is not spoken or read itself but that would allow the user to understand what is being written or said without learning the original language. A sort of “virtual reality”, where the user can communicate without actually experiencing the language in the traditional sense of possessing knowledge of it. This ‘virtual reality’ will be borne by technology. Ostler believes that developments in machine translation technology will mean that everyone can speak each other’s native tongues at the click of a button; computers will ‘remove the requirement for a human intermediary to interpret or translate.’

This is a bold statement – given the limitations of Google Translate, Babelfish and other electronic offerings, it is hard to envisage a time when a machine could replace a human translation, with all the inference, subtleties and cultural nuances which real people necessarily impart on their translations.

Ostler maintains that the emergence of the new ‘Superpowers’ – Brazil, China and Russia – will essentially take over from Anglo Saxon power, and that as its influence diminishes, the English language will lose its currency. The new superpowers will not ‘indulge the nostalgia of their Western suppliants by speaking to them in English.’

It is not that there will be a new lingua franca to take English’s place; the concept of a lingua franca will be defunct. However, how soon English will join the family of ‘dead languages’, is wholly unclear. Fraser pronounces, ‘I doubt we will lament the loss of English’s usefulness for a good time to come’.

Ostler argues that ‘the survival of a lingua franca is always a matter of confidence and ideology as much as reasoned calculation.’ Could it be that English will not mirror the decline of Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, or Persian, based on the communication which the Internet and other technologies have afforded it?

Laura Marsh, in her comprehensive review, concludes that Ostler’s reference to Babel is meant to conjure up the ideal of the tower being rebuilt, as a ‘monument to human ingenuity and technological achievement.’ However, she argues that whilst ‘the ideal of effortless communication’ is comprehensible, it is a fallacy. In practice, a communication without language is an ‘impoverished cultural exchange’, full of ‘irritating misunderstandings’ and is dangerously dependent on technology.

This situation evokes the other message of the Babel story – that the world is catastrophic confusion when there is no shared language. Marsh argues that we should steer clear of this disorder, ‘even if the current dominance of one language seems overwhelming or unfair’.

The belief that English will maintain its status as lingua franca forever is, of course, a narrow-minded one. However, the arguments which support its decline, don’t necessarily point to a world without any lingua francas; if anything they point to the emergence of many lingua francas.

Ostler’s argument that the advent of a virtual language will do away with the need to speak a variety of languages is counter-intuitive; without the crutch of a lingua franca, people will inevitably fight harder to preserve their own mother tongues.

The most interesting question now, according to Marsh, is what kind of lingua franca or lingua francas will replace English?

Sources:

Laura Marsh ‘Tongues Twisted’, review for the New Republic: http://www.tnr.com/book/review/tongues-twisted

Colin Fraser’s Book review for the Scotsman: http://news.scotsman.com/features/Book-review-The-last-Lingua.6634109.jp

The language of research gears up for Web 3.0

There are exciting times ahead for language companies working in the market research sector as the industry gears up for Web 3.0 which uses technologies that can analyse the meaning of content and information.

Companies are increasing the number of languages they work with. Apple’s website, for example, has doubled the number of languages it supports to 24 in the past 12 months, while Facebook now supports more than 70 (up from 2 in under 2 years). It’s estimated that the global website of major multi-nationals now support on average 20 languages, up from a mere dozen, 5 years ago.

Now add the trend for the internet to better support non-latin scripts. Top-level domains for UAE, Saudi Arabia, Eqypt and Russia were the first to be introduced earlier this year. A further 18 countries are in the approval process including China, Korea and India. More are set to follow allowing researchers to recruit online from a pool of native speakers; a first in some markets.

The use of non-latin scripts in market research is likely to be a fast moving area driven in part by a local and regional demand for native versions of web pages and associated search patterns. In mid November, for example, registrations for the international Russia domain name in Cyrillic script opened and 100,000 registration requests were received in the first three hours and over half a million over the first 6 days.

The future growth in the internet points to a clear localisation bias as well as a shift away from English as the de-facto language of the web. “Right now, more than half of the content on the Internet is not in English” says John Yunker of Byte Level Research. “Ten years from now, the percentage of English content could easily drop below 25%”.

Fully-localised domain names and websites present an opportunity for companies to market and gain feedback on their products and services in new countries. Meta tags (the key identifiers for search terms embedded in web pages) will need to be translated for optimal search and localisation to make the site visible within the local country’s search results. Ben Taylor, Language Connect’s MD comments, “There’s a lot of feedback coming from the international travel, leisure and automotive sectors where the customer experience is paramount and where search terms might be very subjective or require precise localisation. Searching for feedback about experience at a particular hotel for example, might cover a dozen different terms for the words ‘bathroom’ or ‘cleanliness’. It doesn’t just apply to large corporates, SMEs use multilingual searching to extend their international footprint very cost effectively and achieve high search engine rankings in less competitive markets”.

So is the demand for instant, multilingual feedback going to overwhelm the research world? Will quality be substituted for quantity as people turn to machine translation software and web scraping tools?

“There is certainly a strong demand for open ended coding and analysis in the original language”, says Ben. “At the same time there is a strong requirement for really high quality interpreting services. Clients want specialist language skills, like the ability to use the same vocabulary as marketing-savvy teenagers, or the language of medical staff when working with sensitive topics with a patient in hospital. And it’s clear that technology is having a rapid impact on changing research methodologies; clients can offset the cost saving they achieve using in-language coding (saving on back translation costs) and invest any remaining budget in qualitative depth probe interviews which amplify the research findings”.

Web 3.0 is beginning to have a major impact on the structure of the market research and insight industry. There’s increasing demand from international companies to synthesise large volumes of search and research information across different languages and cultures, using technologies such as web scraping techniques to bring all the information together.

Language Connect will be discussing these and similar opportunities at the Insight exhibition in London in June 2011. Please contact us beforehand if you would like to discuss any commercial partnerships in advance.

www.languageconnect.net

Languages in Action

As part of our commitment to the Business Language Champions Scheme, Language Connect is proud to partner with the Convent of Jesus & Mary Language College, in North London. We work together throughout the year to provide the students with insight into the world of work involving languages through hosting workshops and work experience programmes.

We were honoured to be invited to attend the year 9 students’ International Business Day last week to act as judges for their multi-language marketing competition.

The students teamed up in groups of four to create and deliver a marketing concept for a hotel of their dreams situated in the target country that they have been studying: France, Italy or Spain. Each group designed a poster and a leaflet to advertise their hotel. Some included clever details like fold-out maps, brochure pockets and tear-off discount offers. Key recurring themes included a multi-coloured tropical paradise and a heart-laden romantic city getaway – one even featuring a crèche for the kids! (We considered that perhaps the romance was a little premature considering the students’ age, but that’s a separate discussion!) The students included both English and foreign language copy on the posters; an intuitive acknowledgement of the ‘Brit abroad’ stereotype: a British tourist who doesn’t speak the language of any country they visit. Schools like CJMLC are of course fighting for a different future for the next generations.

When we arrived, the Assistant Head teacher informed us that the students had only been briefed about the project that morning and therefore had to think on their feet and immerse themselves quickly in order to invent their concept and deliver a poster and a leaflet which conveyed the hotel’s key amenities, style, and clientele using their foreign language.

My colleague Jessica and I, along with the other two judges, agreed that it was an extremely difficult decision to try and choose a winner from each language; all the work was of a really high standard. We looked at design, colour, image, and above all foreign language content. The grammar was near-perfect and we spotted several subjunctives (correctly used!). After some deliberating, we managed to agree on 1 winner per language.

The students’ hard work was displayed in the school assembly hall, a backdrop to the gentle buzz of excitement as they awaited the results with increasing anticipation.

Jess and I gave a brief talk about the importance of languages in business, and how studying a language does not only mean a career as a teacher or as an interpreter or translator, but can also open doors to many different jobs and pathways in the future. Studying and practising a foreign language develops your communication, analytical and critical thinking skills, all of which are highly sought by employers.

As the afternoon drew to a close, the 3 winning teams were announced. One-by-one, with enthusiastic whoops and applause, each group came up to the front to collect their prizes, offered by another member of the BLC Scheme. All students received a certificate for their hard work.

Language battle brews in China

As the Commonwealth Games draw to a close in India, it is interesting to note the recent ruckus in China which has preceded the Asian Games (to be held in China next month). Protests erupted in the Cantonese speaking Guangzhou province in August this year, incited by the announcement that local TV stations are to switch to Mandarin instead of the local Cantonese dialect. A bid, it would seem, to cater to the influx of Mandarin speaking visitors to the games. However, protesters viewed the Chinese Government directive as part of an ongoing campaign to ensure that Putonghua (a variant of Mandarin founded on the dialect of Beijing) is the dominant and therefore, “unifying”, language of China. A hefty task when considering that there are “160 dialects and 130 minority languages” present in China.

Reuters reports that “about two dozen people were taken away by police and detained, including eight journalists” during the Guangzhou protest. The following day a rally was held in the Cantonese speaking stronghold of Hong Kong; evidence that the 50 million Cantonese speakers in China are not alone in their fight to maintain linguistic diversity.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6710FM20100802

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/LH04Ad01.html

Is code the new language?

Dorian Sweet of True Action asks if code is our new language? Not sure I agree, machine code is a tool used on a number of levels to enable communication. For example, translating an online survey from English into Russian, you translate the content but not the code.

http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/6679-the-secret-society-of-code?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed

It’s good to type

Does anyone remember the BT strapline “It’s good to talk” from about fifteen years ago? BT was promoting the use of wireless and mobile phones, and boy, it certainly worked! Looking around at the effects that smart phones and online social media have on consumer behaviour today, we could update the sentiment with “It’s good to type”. Consumer behaviour is in a transformative phase and there is a far-reaching impact on the marketing, advertising and research industries which engage with retailers and consumers.

Web 2.0 traffic is carried out by so-called “prosumers”. The precise definition of a prosumer is debatable although the term generally defines an individual who engages in active or empowered consumption.

Prosumers are seen by many marketeers to represent a new generation of consumers; people who don’t use the net simply to purchase products, but also write about these products. They create blogs, upload pictures and use social networking to express an opinion about a consumer product or service.

An unlimited ability to share and exchange information means that consumer attitudes and expectations are changing rapidly, which can have a positive or a negative effect. On a group level, when the Northern Rock website collapsed in 2007 under weight of traffic, people who were worried about their savings turned to Twitter and other networking sites to organize demonstration gatherings. On an individual level is the man who claimed that United Airlines had broken his guitar yet refused to compensate him, who posted the evidence online for all to see.

Over a million retro-chocaholics joined the fun and persuaded Cadbury to reintroduce the Whispa chocolate bar after signing up to the Bring Back Whispa Facebook (if you go and look at this page, you’ll see that the whole Whispa community has morphed into some sort of soap opera, with Cadbury posting daily updates, gossip and games).

It’s interesting to observe how neologisms that reflect changes in commerce and society often appear first in English before being adopted by other languages. Several commentators claim that they invented the word “prosumer” (it would make a great competition to find the coiner!).

We now have a Prosument (German), Prosumidor (Spanish) and Proconsummateur (French). The term will no doubt make its way into languages where the use of Web 2.0 and the rate of consumerisation are rapid: countries like Turkey, Poland, Japan, Korea and China.

Indonesian under grave threat

Paulina Sugiarto’s three children are fluent in English, however she is keen to keep Indonesian alive. Image taken from the New York Times

Indonesia’s official language, Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian) is becoming an endangered species. English is fast becoming the language of the growing upper and middle-classes of the fourth largest population in the world.

This demographic is opting for private education where their children are taught mostly in English, with very little time or importance given to Bahasa Indonesia.

It seems that a citizen’s command of the English language is increasingly seen as representative of their social standing. As a result, Indonesian has been relegated to second-class status.

Throughout the last century, Bahasa Indonesia played a vital role in unifying the Country. In 1928, nationalists seeking independence from Dutch rule chose Bahasa Indonesia, a form of Malay, as the language of Indonesia. Bahasa Indonesia became the preferred language of the educated.

Following the Country’s independence, Major General Suharto enforced the teaching of Indonesian and limited the use of English. This doctrine was upheld throughout his rule, up until his renunciation in 1998.

Aimee Dawis, Communications teacher at Universitas Indonesia says: “During the Suharto era, Bahasa Indonesia was the only language that we could see or read. English was at the bottom of the rung…It was used to create a national identity, and it worked, because all of us spoke Bahasa Indonesia. Now the dilution of Bahasa Indonesia is not the result of a deliberate government policy. It’s just occurring naturally.”

The Indonesian government recently announced that all private schools would be required to teach Indonesian by 2013. However, details of this law remain unconfirmed.

This is Language Connect – reporting from the front line for Business Language Champions

Language Connect recently took part in their first Business Language Champions workshop at the Convent for Jesus and Mary Language College in Willesden and I’m happy to report that it was a raging success. So much so, that now the panic I and my colleagues experienced at having to talk to a group of teenage girls has abated, I thought it would be good to let you know how it went and what we did.

Our task? To engage with sixteen native Polish speaking girls in Years 10 and 11 and demonstrate how their natural linguistic aptitude could put them on the career ladder after they finish school. Easy right?

Providing the facts about what Language Connect does was the easy part – it was the engaging with 16 teenagers that posed the most immediate problem. What if they thought we were boring and rubbish? What if they didn’t say anything? What if they didn’t want to join in?

We had a double lesson in which to perform – that’s 1 hour and 40 minutes for those whose school years are a nothing but a distant memory. We divided our time into three sections – a brief Language Connect presentation on interpreting and translation, a talk by real life interpreter Aleksandra and finally role plays (as written by the students themselves) that would be judged on content, fluency and creativity.

The first two thirds of the session were eerily quiet and my colleague Amy and I soon experienced what it’s like to die on stage at your first stand up gig. But then came the role plays and what a show! All of a sudden, the students who had previously been silent participants in the workshop became actresses and performers all. Following a brilliant example acted out by Amy, Iwona and Aleksandra (I was the director, natch) we handed the floor over to the students who had 15 minutes to write their own versions of situations either in the doctor’s surgery or a court of law.

Donning a judge’s wig or a doctor’s coat for authenticity and to help them get into character, the students acted out their scripts in groups of three with one person as the interpreter. The scripts were imaginative to say the least and we were regaled with tales of stolen one legged chickens and feisty old women going to the doctor just to put their feet up and have a chat. Whilst the drama was unfolding, the class teacher told me that she couldn’t believe what she was seeing – previously quiet and withdrawn students were literally coming out of their shells before her very eyes and she was thrilled.

It was decided that there were two clear winning groups and so duly presented with official Language Connect certificates it was almost time to go, but not before a quick fire Q and A session. Whereas before, you couldn’t squeeze a word out of the students, the questions were practically pouring forth – the most common being whether they could come and do work experience for us! An amazing result and such a worthwhile workshop – Business Language Champions is a fantastic scheme and one that Language Connect will continue to enjoy taking part in.