On the Use and Abuse of English

Brad has picked up on my earlier post about the extent of 'externalities' associated with having or being an English language speaking community. Now maybe it's worth clarifying a few points here. My argument is that in the information age the principal systems of information transfer involve either a scientific language (like mathematics) or a natural one (like English). Many people in the world have to invest significant quantities of time and money in acquiring the requisite language skills, others are born with them as part of their immediate environment, this latter situation has to offer a distinct evolutionary advantage. The painful consequences which can accompany this reality may have been brought home earlier this week to those of my readers who tried to follow my link to Frans in Holland. There they will have found that Frans informs us that he has only one page in English since, among other things, he wishes to encourage the use of the Dutch language. This extremely laudable aim is, at the same time, an extreme limitation. A limitation which I imagine places Dutch bloggers at a considerable disadvantage.

But recognising this is not the same as arguing that we should not all respect each others languages and cultures: far from it. I was born in the UK, in Liverpool, in a home where my mother and all her relatives habitually conversed in Welsh. In fact all my grandparents (in an epoch now buried deep in the mists of historic time) were Welsh immigrants who had settled in a Liverpool which then was (to quote the Dubliners) the second capital of Ireland, and which was, like the Emerald Isle itself, bitterly divided by internicine religious sqabbles. I went diligently every Sunday to Chapel to learn my ancestral language, and I have never regretted the fact. Diversity is not backwardness. In a Europe of vested nation state interests we Celts form a virtually stateless continental minority, under-represented and little appreciated, but we are at the same time a constant source of creativity and imagination. That is to say difference is also valuable. Today I live in Spain, and in my home we speak both Spanish and Catalan. What I fail to appreciate is the kind of 'difference culturelle' represented by the nationalism of the major European states. As I tend to say on my (numerous) visits to France: I am sorry, I have the inconvenience of speaking one language which you probably consider too big (English) and another one which you certainly consider too small (Catalan). The irony is that since, all too often, they speak neither, I have to explain this in French. Let's forget the hypocracy shall we, and get on with building a better, more prosperous world.