John McWhorter: English Will Remain the World's Language
[McWhorter is a William Simon Fellow at Columbia University and a contributing editor at The New Republic.]
The data would seem to be in: China is poised to become the world’s economic leader within the next few decades. But there are those under the impression that this will mean a sea change in the world’s linguistic terrain as well. Certainly, any human being who seeks education, influence, or power should be learning Mandarin, right?
Wrong. The world’s de facto international language will continue to be English. The language spoken by the whole world will not be the one spoken in the country that runs it—a new and hybrid linguistic world order.
Or not. The world has long known empires running things in the language of the conquered. The Persian Empire stretched from Egypt to India, but conducted business in Aramaic, a desert tongue of the Fertile Crescent. Genghis Khan and his Mongols ruled China with no interest in spreading their language, happily leaving Chinese in place.
So it will be with China and its impending hegemony: English is astride the globe to stay...
Read entire article at Newsweek
The data would seem to be in: China is poised to become the world’s economic leader within the next few decades. But there are those under the impression that this will mean a sea change in the world’s linguistic terrain as well. Certainly, any human being who seeks education, influence, or power should be learning Mandarin, right?
Wrong. The world’s de facto international language will continue to be English. The language spoken by the whole world will not be the one spoken in the country that runs it—a new and hybrid linguistic world order.
Or not. The world has long known empires running things in the language of the conquered. The Persian Empire stretched from Egypt to India, but conducted business in Aramaic, a desert tongue of the Fertile Crescent. Genghis Khan and his Mongols ruled China with no interest in spreading their language, happily leaving Chinese in place.
So it will be with China and its impending hegemony: English is astride the globe to stay...