According to the Bible (Genesis), the whole world
at some time "had one language and a common speech".
Cheeky chappies of the world then got together
saying, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to
the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be
scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
But a jealous God is not always pleased with his supplicants.
He responded in this way, “If as one people speaking the same language they have
begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.
Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand
each other.”
Which is why our house in Stow on the Wold has been transformed. Our two grandchildren have recently arrived from
Taiwan and chatter away in English and/or Chinese. They have been joined by our
Spanish grandson who is struggling with English, but is already bilingual in
Catalan and Spanish. It is still a marvel me to converse with my three-year-old
granddaughter in toddler-English only to see her turn to her mother and enter a
conversation in Mandarin which is entirely beyond me.
Of course, the interchanges are often puerile; after
all she is only three. Recently we visited the imposing remains of Raglan
Castle in Wales. I spent some time having mock fights with my seven-year-old
grandson. At the end of one battle, we heard a call in Chinese from the top of
the central tower; it came from his sister. He responded and for a while they
shouted the same words back and forth. I asked him what they were saying. He
grinned and replied gleefully, "We are shouting 'pooh-pooh' in
Chinese."
In Spain we often think that the conversations
that we overhear in the village are quite profound. The villagers are very
intense, they gesticulate wildly their expressions graduating from solemnity to
rage. Yet when we ask someone what they are talking about it is often the price
of bread, or the ripening of tomatoes, or straightforward gossip. The language
barrier when lifted can lead to disappointment.
And of course, the language barriers are falling.
My Taiwanese grandchildren will have direct access to 1.4 billion Chinese plus
all of the English-speaking nations of the world and all of those who speak English
as a second language (the most prolific second language). My Spanish grandson
will have all of the latter plus the entire continent of America (north and
south) at his command. I envy and admire them even though, for the Taiwanese
children, bilingualism it is a natural process requiring no conscious effort on their part.
Why has English become the dominant second
language of the world - the equivalent of Latin in the middle ages? Well, it
certainly does have a simple verb structure (though I think it is more complex
than Mandarin where past present and future are all the same); but it also has grave
spelling and pronunciation problems (remember 'fish' spelled 'ghoti' from George
Bernard Shaw: 'gh' as in rough, 'o' as in women, 'ti' as in nation). I suppose
we owe the success of English to the British Empire and the global dominance of
the USA in commerce and entertainment.
Of course, the Americans have tried to improve
English by rationalising the spelling of, for example, 'plough' to 'plow'. So
sensible, yet we then lose the derivation of those words over time. What I am really
unhappy with is the dumbing down of our language by emulating the Americans,
and I am thinking now particularly of the use of 'guy' instead of man, bloke,
chap, fellow, old boy, etc. OK, I know that the term can be used as a generic
for men and women, but we already have generics such as folk, people, etc which
are asexual. So, let's get together folks and speak English-English thus
avoiding any confusion between rubbers and condoms, pants and trousers.
