"Still, it seems obvious - and certainly there is a good bit of detail in my head, even though I'll never put it into print - that humanity in this imaginary universe did muddle through its present set of crises; that a more humane order of things did evolve; that English, eventually shifting enough to be called 'Anglic,' became the main international language, without suppressing the rest; and so on."
-Poul Anderson, "Concerning Future Histories" IN SFWA Bulletin, Fall 1979.
This passage has become more relevant. Will humanity get through its present crises? Also, is Anderson chauvinistic in suggesting that English/Anglic will become the main international language? No because this is plausible. Also, he shows other parts of the world becoming dominant in other future histories.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Considering how widely spread and used English has become would also encourage it being adopted as the main internationally used language.
I have seen speculations by some about the "Anglosphere," an alliance of nations sharing a common language like English and common origins coalescing into something like a true federation. E.g., the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and a few others. Such an alliance might evolved into something like Anderson's Solar Commonwealth.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
In "The Saturn Game," a "Britannic-American consortium" had launched the Chronos project. A consortium sounds more like a private enterprise than a political alliance but it might have been a first step in that direction.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Now that you mention it, it does! Perhaps a prologue leading to that first step. Analogous to the East India Company in some ways?
And there's also the Interbeing League we see in Anderson/Dickson's Hoka stories. It's origins came from the US becoming a member of the British Commonwealth.
Ad astra! Sean
The percentage of human beings who can currently speak English is larger (by a considerable margin) than that of any previous language.
This is not because of any inherent virtue of English, except very partially -- English is a "contact language" and so rather easier to learn than, say, Lithuanian, which by comparison has been fairly isolated for most of its existence.
But in any case that only really applies to speakers of other Indo-European languages.
What's mostly responsible for the current predominance of English is a series of historical accidents/contingencies.
However, note that such things become self-reinforcing.
The more people who speak a language -- and the more geographically and socially widespread it is -- the more useful it is.
And people learn languages (other than their birth-speech) because it's useful.
Eg., a lot of European universities now teach many courses that don't involve English literature or anything of that sort, in English. ecause their student bodies are multilingual, and English is the one most useful/convenient/widespread. And if you want an academic paper to get wide circulation, it more or less has to be written in or translated into English.
Likewise, if the Chinese and Indian governments negotiate, they're likely to do so in English, not Hanyu or Hindi.
Hence you get things like a third of the population of Singapore speaking English as their home language, even though virtually none of them are -descended- from English-speakers; and that increases other people's incentives to learn English; and they in turn are likely to -marry- people whose common language with them is English; which means their -children- will grow up speaking it.
Those are ideal conditions for "language shift".
The other thing to keep in mind is that while multilingualism is perfectly possible, people only do that if they have strong practical incentives for doing so -- it's the "least effort" principle.
So over time, if present conditions (easy global communications, etc.) continue, then English is likely not only to spread, but to -supplant- other languages.
Because it will be used in conditions where large numbers of people have to function in environments where no single birth-language is overwhelmingly dominant, and such situations become more and more common.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Many thanks for another fascinating mini essay, one which I think would have interested a philologist like JRR Tolkien.
Given the situation you described, it's very plausible English could become the Anglic mangled by Old Nick in the 25th century!
Latin used to be the language of international scholarship/diplomacy, before being displaced by French. And now English has displaced French, much to the chagrin of many of the French!
Ad astra! Sean
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