Editorial: Talkin' la lengua loca

By the end of this century, say linguists, more than half of the world’s 6,500 languages will be extinct. In fact, the rate of language loss might be slowing given that about 5,000 languages disappeared over the last hundred years. More than 1,000 languages have vanished in the last 30 years across the Americas.

Technology has been the bane of linguistic diversity. Regions that were once remote and seldom visited are now accessible with modern transport. The miracle (or curse) of television means that people from Borneo to Bolivia can watch reruns of Happy Days. More significantly, they are exposed to the standard speech of their countries: nationalist governments and their official media encourage language conformity.

One language, English, has become the world’s second language of choice. For people in some parts of the world (including the U.S.) it became their first language through force. The all-pervading influence of English has meant that for the first time since the Middle Ages, the world has utilized a "lingua franca" (Latin was confined to Europe, North Africa and the Middle East). Even well established languages like French cannot resist the lure of English: recently, the renowned Pasteur Institute in Paris started publishing three of its most important scientific journals in English.

Having English as the world’s language is not of itself a bad thing. In an ever-shrinking world, people need to communicate with each other speedily and efficiently, and English, with its rich vocabulary of technical terms, is an ideal medium for business communication. No, the problems come when, under intense pressure from media and telecommunications, people reject their native languages and attendant cultural heritage in favor of English; perhaps adopting an alien culture in the process.
But there are signs that some languages will not just roll over and die. Increasing awareness of linguistic heritage as a means of cultural expression has meant that people all over the world are going back to their roots and reviving languages once neglected. For example, language activists in Hawaii say that their embrace of Hawaiian is no rejection of English. But they insist on their right to be bilingual because, as they put it, Hawaiian is their first language of the heart.

In fact, the very technology that helped spread English all over the world may now be the conduit for a new multilingual age as more and more languages go online. "The old premise that you have to speak and write in English to get on the Net is dead and gone," said Umair Khan, the CEO of everymail.com, an Internet site where you can compose messages in 28 different languages, including Urdu, Vietnamese and Icelandic.

As multilingualism proliferates, English may see its position as the world’s number one second language come under threat. Some experts say that Spanglish, a mixture of Spanish and English created by U.S. Hispanics, is the language of the future.
"The Hispanic world will end up speaking Spanglish," says Ilan Stavans of Amherst College, Massachusetts, author of the Dictionary of Spanglish. Examples of Spanglish include: brode (brother), culisimo (very cool), lonche (lunch) and rufa (roof). "Where two languages coexist it is natural for them to merge," added Stavans, who claims that Spanglish represents the strength of the Spanish language compared to other languages spoken by immigrants to the U.S. A world speaking Spanglish? Así es how it may be. Bueno, bye…