Nations with too many languages falters

POST-PROPOSITION: Through the years, history has shown problems with other countries

After the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War, our colonists had the vision to call our money “dollar”, but they didn’t have the foresight to call our language “American.” The question of the use of English as the official language of courts and schools is a matter of practicality, not a matter of ethnicity.

Considering that there are more than 4,500 broadly used languages spread across the face of the globe, it’s small wonder that people understand each other. Throughout history, empire builders have always had problems with languages. Swords and bullets are adequate to conquer, and sometimes to subdue groups of people, but language differences always threaten to break them apart again. Establishing any system of order is almost impossible without the introduction of a common language. And now, with the explosive spread of electronic communication, the problem is ever more critical.

Some of us wonder why, when woman and man left the Garden of Eden, we all didn’t wind up speaking a common language. The Bible says that God had grown impatient with the sins and dalliances of the Mesopotamians, who all spoke one language.

They built the Tower of Babel as their own pathway to Heaven, ignoring the teachings of the scripture.

As punishment, the Lord decreed, “Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” We’ve had trouble understanding each other ever since.

In the effort by rulers to establish a commonly understood language among their subjects, some of whom were speaking mutually unrecognizable tongues, a family of hybrid languages came into being, and have been called “lingua franca” by linguists. The term that literally means language of commerce first came about during the Middle Ages. In more recent history, as the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics succeeded the old Russian Empire, and as it was divided into 15 constituent republics all speaking varied languages, the need for a common language of commerce became evident. Still today, Russian is the lingua franca among most of the now independent countries of the former Soviet bloc. Similarly, Latin has been the lingua franca of the Roman Catholic church, all over the world.

The most widely spoken of all languages is Mandarin Chinese, with nearly three times the speakers of our own English language. But China, too, has a language problem. There are seven other major Chinese languages, not dialects, but distinctly separate tongues, that are not mutually understandable to the others. Cantonese or Shanghainese are as distinct from Mandarin as English is from Dutch, or French from Spanish. Since the Communists took power in 1949, the government has been trying to establish Mandarin as the lingua franca, as a commonly understood method of communicating between Hong Kong and Beijing.

We face common language problems of our own. The Los Angeles school system registers 140 distinct languages among its incoming students. That makes China’s problem look easy. Proposition 227, the voter-approved iniative, orders that all immigrant children be given one year of intensive instruction in English and to read, write and speak English, then to be launched into mainstream classes, all to be taught in English. Compliance with the proposition has been spotty. The L.A. school system has achieved a 90 percent transfer from bilingual programs into immersion English. San Francisco has thus far accomplished almost nothing in the reduction of bilingual teaching.

Arguments that bilingual education must be continued in order to provide cultural heritage must be put aside. Or, to treat everyone alike, we should teach about 140 multilingual language groups. A multi-language educational system makes as little sense as a monetary system made up of dollars and pounds and pesos.

— George Sjostrom is a Simi Valley resident. His column appears biweekly in the Star.



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