Tuesday, August 25, 2009

At the athletics world championships Ukrainian competitors wore the national name in English but with the letter N reversed, thus - Ukraiиe. Incredible! This is the cultural cringe made official. Not only in a foreign language, but with that comic spelling beloved of anglophone media types. They didn't quite get it right though; it should have been Ukяaiиe. Maybe for the London Olympics the Ukrainian male athletes will wear cossack hats and fake handlebar moustaches.
I have this nightmare that in the near future every human being will be communicating in English. It will have to be a debased sort of pidgin English with a limited vocabulary - something like we used to hear in North Africa: "You buy Johnny?" "Jig-jig Johnny?". Though there there was a trade-off, as we incorporated some of the host nation's language into our speech; "Mafeesh floos, mucker." "Shoofti bint!"
It is estimated that by the end of this century between half and three-quarters of the world's 6,000 or so languages will have disappeared. And what will replace them? From our present standpoint it looks like English, bad English. Not only will many of the world's peoples lose their mother tongues, but we will lose ours, insofar as it will become some bastardised lingua franca, or perhaps that should be lingua hollywoodiana.

4 comments:

Bill Chapman said...

An all-English future would be a nightmare.

The only movement I know of which is working actively and practically to defend the smaller languages and oppose what can only be called linguistic imperialism is the Esperanto movement.

Incidentally,the name of Esperanto is based on the noun 'espero' meanoing 'hope'

A good starting point is www.esperanto.net

Jemmy Hope said...

Mi jam lernis paroli Esperante, Bill. I believe that the US and British governments and commercial interests have an undeclared policy of opposing the adoption of Esperanto as a mode of communication because of the advantage they derive from the current acceptance of English as a second language.

Bill Chapman said...

Bone! Mi samopinias kun vi la vidpunkto de la brita kaj usona registaroj rilate Esperanton.

Ne cxesu labori por pli bona,pli justa mondo!

Bondezirojn

Jemmy Hope said...

Dankon, amiko, alia (kaj pli bona)mondo estas atingebla. Tio estas mia kredo.