Separation of Tongue and State

I sat down in Spanish class this week and my teacher passed around the room a newspaper clipping about “Spanglish.” The article discussed not the Adam Sandler movie, but rather the phenomenon—or, as some would say, “problem”—of English’s pervasiveness in Spain. It’s true, English phrases are ubiquitous here. When young people here mean “blue jeans,” they say “blujin” instead of “pantalones azules.” “E-mail” popularly translates as—you guessed it—“e-mail.” At least partly thanks to the spread of the internet and of American technology, English words are appearing not only here in Spain but worldwide: the French “faire du snowboarding;” a Chinese teenager “yao mai yi ge DVD” (wants to buy a DVD). The globalization of English is, it seems, unstoppable. In response, political institutions around the world are attempting to halt English’s spread. The Real Academia Española (RAE)—the Spanish institution that publishes the “official” Spanish dictionary—refuses to recognize words that “rupture the linguistic system in its totality” or “endanger the language’s unity ,” i.e. American-isms. In 2002, Japan appointed a “Council on Japanese Language” to advise the government and media as to what foreign terms should be admitted into the language. The members of such institutions as these seek to protect their languages against “dilution” and eventual extinction; no one wants his language to be the next one on the 3,250-language long (according to The New York Times) Endangered Languages list.

Language, such concerned citizens fail to realize, is a living organism; languages have always grown, evolved, and eventually died out and will doubtless continue to do so. Today’s French, Italian and Spanish effectively “killed off” Latin. In mainland China, a simplified script and the phonetic system pinyin have replaced the traditional script. Modern English includes “you,” but rarely Shakespeare’s “thee” or “thou.”

The globalization of English is less a manifestation of the squashing of foreign mores than a reflection of today’s reality: a mingling of cultures. The RAE worries about English’s infiltration into Spain, but English, too, is increasingly peppered with foreign—particularly, Spanish—words. (I used “Adios!” long before I enrolled in a Spanish class.) According to the 2000 census, over 46 million people living in U.S. speak a language other than English at home. Like foreigners, Americans feel threatened. American politicians have turned whether or not English should be the U.S.’s “national language” into a political wedge issue. Fear of loss of identity through loss of language is, however, shortsighted.

Culture is often preserved even when language is lost. Many today are familiar with Greek myths; few can speak or read ancient Greek. Further, loan words in English—common words like “rendezvous” and “fiesta” that are borrowed from other languages—illustrate that English words (and the ideas behind them) don’t automatically replace foreign ones (and the ideas behind them). On the contrary, language encourages a linguistic survival-of-the-fittest. If a foreign idea is so nuanced as to not have an English translation, we English speakers will often adopt the non-English word as our own. Consider the Chinese word “Zen.” While Americans may not understand its historical origin or its literal denotation, most can and do go ahead and use it anyway without searching for an English counterpart. And, just as English words like “blujin” breathe fresh life into Spanish, so our use and understanding of “Zen” adds nuance to English.

I am no Noam Chomsky. But common sense tells me that language evolved so that we humans can communicate with one another as individuals. I, perhaps naively but nonetheless firmly, believe that the more that we intercommunicate on an interpersonal level, the better off the world will be. The important thing is not “the purity of language X” but rather: Does one’s message get through?

To politicize language—to attempt to legislate it at all—is to fight against the natural evolution of human communication and expression. Legislation that attempts to conserve the “purity” of a tongue is not only futile but also potentially harmful. It impedes intercultural understanding by turning what should be nothing more than a language barrier (and one that is likely being overcome, at that) into an ideological wall. It hampers individual creative expression by denying persons access to the words that might best convey what they mean. Freedom of expression should prevail, I say—and expression through whatever words get the point across.

So, RAE., Japanese council, and American Anglophiles, ¡Oye! Chill out. Know what I’m talkin’ about?

Justine R. Lescroart ’09 is an English and American literature and language concentrator in Quincy House, and is currently studying abroad in Granada, Spain. Her column appears on alternate Wednesdays.