УРОК 4. What Makes a Global Language?

1. Why a language becomes a global language has little to do with the number of people who speak it. It is much more to do with who those speakers are. Latin became an international language throughout the Roman Empire, but this was not because the Romans were more numerous than the peoples they subjugated. They were simply more powerful. And later, when Roman military power declined, Latin remained for a millennium as the international language of education, thanks to a different sort of power – the ecclesiastical power of Roman Catholicism.

2. There is the closest of links between language dominance and economic, technological, and cultural power, too, and this relationship will become increasingly clear as the history of English is told. Without a strong power-base, of whatever kind, no language can make progress as an international medium of communication. Language has no independent existence, living in some sort of mystical space apart from the people who speak it. Language exists only in the brains and mouths and ears and hands and eyes of its users. When they succeed on the international stage their language succeeds. When they fail, their language fails.

3. This point may seem obvious, but it needs to be made at the outset, because over the years many popular and misleading beliefs have grown up about why a language should become internationally successful. It is quite common to hear people claim that a language is a paragon, on account of its perceived aesthetic qualities, clarity of expression, literary power, or religious standing. Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Arabic and French are among those which at various times have been lauded in such terms, and English is no exception. It is often suggested, for example, that there must be something inherently beautiful or logical about the structure of English, in order to explain why it is now so widely used. ‘It has less grammar than other languages’, some have suggested. ‘English doesn’t have a lot of endings on its words, nor do we have to remember the difference between masculine, feminine, and neuter gender, so it must be easier to learn’. In 1848, a reviewer in the British periodical The Athenaeum wrote:

In its easiness of grammatical construction, in its paucity of inflection, in its almost total disregard of the distinctions of gender excepting those of nature, in the simplicity of its terminations and auxiliary verbs, not less than in the majesty, vigour and copiousness of its expression, our mother-tongue seems well adapted by organization to become the language of the world.

4. Such arguments are misconceived. Latin was once a major international language, despite its many inflectional endings and gender differences. French, too, has been such a language, despite its nouns being masculine or feminine; and so – at different times and places – have the heavily inflected Greek, Arabic, Spanish and Russian. Ease of learning has nothing to do with it. Children of all cultures learn to talk over more or less the same period of time. And as for the notion that English has ‘no grammar’ – a claim that is risible to anyone who has ever had to learn it as a foreign language – the point can be dismissed by a glance at any of the large twentieth-century reference grammars. The Comprehensive grammar of the English language, for example, contains 1,800 pages and some 3.500 points requiring grammatical exposition.

5. This is not to deny that a language may have certain properties which make it internationally appealing. For example, learners sometimes comment on the ‘familiarity’ of English vocabulary, deriving from the way English has over the centuries borrowed thousands of new words from the languages with which it has been in contact. The ‘welcome’ given to foreign vocabulary places English in contrast to some languages (notably, French), which have tried to keep it out and gives it a cosmopolitan character, which many see as an advantage for a global language. From a lexical point of view, English is in fact far more a Romance than a Germanic language. And there have been comments made about other structural aspects, too, such as the absence in English grammar of a system of coding social class differences, which can make the language appear more ‘democratic’ to those who speak a language (e.g. Javanese) that does express an intricate system of class relationships. But these supposed traits of appeal are incidental, and need to be weighed against linguistic features which would seem to be internationally much less desirable – notably, in the case of English, the accumulated irregularities of its spelling system.

6. A language does not become a global language because of its intrinsic structural properties, or because of the size of its vocabulary, or because it has been a vehicle of a great literature of the past, or because it was once associated with a great culture or religion. These are all factors, which can motivate someone to learn a language, of course, but none of them alone, or in combination, can ensure a language’s world spread. Indeed, such factors cannot even guarantee survival as a living language – as is clear from the case of Latin, learned today as a classical language by only a scholarly and religious few. Correspondingly, inconvenient structural properties (such as awkward spelling) do not stop a language achieving international status either.

7. A language has traditionally become an international language for one chief reason: the power of its people – especially their political and military power.

(Crystal D. English as a Global Language. Cambridge University Press, 2003. P. 7 –9)

Задания и упражнения

1. Прочитайте текст. Выпишите все незнакомые слова и ключевые термины и переведите их.

2. Кратко изложите основное содержание текста.

3. Найдите в оригинальном тексте соответствия следующим вариантам перевода:

· причины, по которым тот или иной язык превращается во всемирный

· духовная власть римско-католической церкви

· после ознакомления с историей английского языка

· следует вначале остановиться на ней

· особая роль в религиозной жизни

· кроме различий по естественным признакам пола

· критерий простоты изучения языка

· привлекательный для международного общения

· обращают на себя внимание

· наличие большого количества исключений

· на примере классической латыни

· сложные правила орфографии.

4. Выпишите из англо-русского словаря значения следующих английских слов и объясните, в чем может состоять трудность их перевода: global, international, mystical, popular, aesthetic, religious, argument, contrast, cosmopolitan.

5. Переведите на русский язык следующие предложения:

a. The report takes a global view of the company’s problems.

b. Last week saw a number of events of global importance.

c. The crew of the ship was international.

d. In no time she became an international star.

e. Her sudden disappearance is a complete mystery.

f. It’s a popular misconception that nearly all snakes are poisonous.

g. The building is aesthetic but not very practical.

h. She washes the floor with religious care every day.

i. They followed the instructions quite religiously.

j. They got into an argument about politics.

k. He made a strong argument against accepting the offer.

l. In contrast with your belief that we will fail, I am confident that we will succeed.

m. London is a very cosmopolitan city.

n. She has a very cosmopolitan outlook on life.

6. Объясните все случаи употребления артиклей со словом language.

7. Переведите текст.

8. Сравните оригинал и свой перевод с точки зрения употребления маркеров, обеспечивающих связность текста.

9. Переведите заголовок текста.