Claude Hagège, "English as Global Language: Real or Imagined Threat?” - MIT CBBS

PRESENTER: CBBS, which is the Center for Bicultural Bilingual Studies at MIT, has kindly asked me to introduce Professor Hagege to you this afternoon. And I feel extremely honored and privileged to do so.

So some of you may have listened to him last night. And if you have, and have come back, it's because you know that you are in for a treat again. And if you have not yet listened to him and heard him, you will soon find out how fortunate you are to be here and how fortunate we are to have Professor Hagege speak to us on campus.

But first let me say just a few words about him. He's an internationally renowned linguist who was born and raised in Tunis. And ever since he was a child, he told us yesterday, he was drawn to languages. And he himself speaks-- I just asked him how many languages he spoke, and he told me, I don't know. Haven't counted them. So anyway, at least 10, maybe 12. Who knows? But many. Many.

So he has written many, many books and articles ranging from very scholarly works, two about generative grammar, two works on the origins of languages as well as the social and cultural impact of language. And all this being the result of a tireless combination of theoretical research and fieldwork. And Professor Hagege is a man who never tires, he tells us, and never rests.

And since 1988 he has titulaire de la chaire de theorie linguistique au College de France. And he has received many, many awards, among which, in 1995, the Medaille d'Or du CNRS, which is a French award given to people who have given only to people who have contributed exceptionally to research and [INAUDIBLE] accomplishments.

And of course, the number of you here, the number of people here, is also a testament to that as well. Plus, you will discover, as something you may not yet know, that Professor Hagege, on top of everything else, is a thoroughly delightful man.

So his most recent book, a widely acclaimed one which is entitled Halte a la morte des langues, and which is, by the way, about to be translated in English and published by Stanford University Press, is a [FRENCH], is a call for action, if you will, a wake up call about the catastrophic-- at least that's his own word-- impact the disappearance of languages has on our overall human, social, cultural, and intellectual heritage.

His topic afternoon is English As a Global Language: A Threat or Myth? It's a topic that no doubt arouses quite a bit of interest in those who feel sometimes passionately, the way the French do in particular, that their own language is being threatened by what is often perceived as the linguistic and cultural imperialism, quote, of English.

I say quote because this is a word that Professor Hagege uses himself, and I hope you don't think it's too polemic a word to use, but you will tell us. Anyway, and I suspect that this is a topic that most of you here are interested in, since you are here.

Anyway, in his book Halte a la morte des langues, Professor Hagege writes, and I quote, in French first, then English, [FRENCH].

Feebly translated, it might be useful to ask oneself what is lost when languages die. The part of genius that is deposited within each of the languages is large enough that when some die, it can be called catastrophic, and that what disappears is forever lost to our universal well of humanity. So it is about this [INAUDIBLE] relationship between language, culture, and humanity that Mr. Claude Hagege, Professor Claude Hagege, will to speak to us today. And within the framework of the topic, is English as a global language threat-- threat or myth? Is that right?

AUDIENCE: No. [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: OK. English as Global Language: Real or Imagined Threat? I'm sorry. [INAUDIBLE] So he will speak for about an hour at most.

HAGEGE: I would say so. That's fine.

PRESENTER: And since he speaks so many languages, maybe you could ask some of these questions in Arabic, Russian.

HAGEGE: Yes. I will reply to any question asked in Chinese, Arabic, Russian, Spanish, Italian, except English.

PRESENTER: Well, anyway it is high time that [SPEAKING FRENCH] Professor Hagege.

HAGEGE: Before starting, with respect to the question you asked, I did not answer immediately. But I reflected, I thought of your question, and now I have a kind of reply.

PRESENTER: To which question?

HAGEGE: How many languages you speak. Well, so in order to answer this question of how many languages I speak, I think of my old rabbi in my childhood. He said, when someone you don't know, someone who might be a foe-- which is not your case, by any means-- asks you a question, he said with a quite Jewish, Yiddish intonation, answer with another question.

So since you asked that question, I will answer what do you mean by speaking a language? If you mean how many languages do you write, do you give talks in, do you use to write books without necessarily speaking them, and if you mean languages do you use when you are in love of someone, the answer will vary according to these different circumstances.

PRESENTER: Thank you.

HAGEGE: What's the title of this talk?

PRESENTER: Are you serious?

HAGEGE: Partly. Thank you. Oh, yes. I might make the wrong talk. Whether we monitor the veritable army of English speaking econo-technical or specialist advisors and representatives, or whether we examine the [INAUDIBLE] of English publications, films, radio and television programs, literacy programs, and educational opportunities, it is becoming increasingly clear that non-English mother tongue countries are significantly active in each of these connections. Nor is their involvement merely that of third world recipients of Western largesse.

True third world nations are themselves fostering massive efforts via and on behalf of English. On the other hand, however, equally massive programs via English are being conducted by the Soviet Union-- by the Russians, let us say-- the Arab world, and mainland China, world powers that have their own well-developed standard languages and that normally oppose various political, philosophical, and economic goals of the English mother tongue worlds.

Whereas the international and intranational rules of French also continue to be fostered, as do, to a lesser degree, such rules for Spanish, Russian, German, Portuguese, and so forth, such efforts are conducted exclusively by current francophone, hispanohablantes, and so on nations, or by countries under French, Spanish, and so on cultural, political, or economic domination. Similarly, English is massively employed particularly in higher level governmental technological and educational pursuits by countries under former or current Anglo-American domination.

However, English today has surpassed the charmed circle of Anglo-American econo-political control, and is being fostered both by its opponents and by its third parties. English has become a major medium of indigenous elites, native foreigners, of tourism, foreign foreigners, of popular media, of technical publications, of the metaphor of mastery, of teenage slang, and even of language planning models and anti-models, all of other worlds. While the omnipresence of English also adds to the opposition to English, it obviously fosters the growth of indigenous non-native varieties.

Finally, never before has any one language been so simultaneously sought after and regulated so that it would grow yet stay in its place, that is, be used only in functions for which it was authoritatively desired. Thus, if the continued spread and growth of English is one aspect of the current international social and linguistic balance of power, another such aspect is the recurring need to control, regulate, or tame their spreads.

We more or less consider that today, whatever the total number, non-native users of English outnumber the native users. The current sociolinguistic profile of English may be viewed in terms of three circles, more or less concentric circles. The so-called inner circle, as proposed by [INAUDIBLE] in research he did on this topic, refers to the traditional cultural and linguistic basis of English. It is made of either USA, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand.

Then we have a outer circle, which is made of Bangladesh, Ghana, India, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Zambia. And finally, what we call the expanding circle, which contains China, Egypt, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Korea, Nepal Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Russia, Zimbabwe.

The numerical profile is impressive indeed. Even if we use a conservative estimates of the use of English, that is, approximately 800 millions, about 57% are non-native users. The optimistic figure of two billion users, of course, increases the percentage significantly.

However, the term users is rather tricky, particularly in the non-native context. The vagueness of its use is somewhat reduced by restricting it to educated speakers, though by the use of the term two, we are opening a can of worms. The result of this spread is that formally and functionally, English now has multicultural identities. The term English does not capture the sociolinguistic reality. I will propose later another term which probably does.

Such former colonies as Bangladesh, Botswana, Brunei, British colonies, Burma, Cameroon-- British and French-- Ethiopia, Fiji, Gambia, Ghana, India, Israel, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, and many others are among the members of the Anglo English speaking world today, and of course they contribute to increase this number.

What are the phases of spread of English today in the contemporary world? Now after having studied the situation, and what I call the three circles, I am studying the phases of spread. The English language and its literature moved toward multiplicity in three broad sweeps to, first, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland; second, North America, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa; and third, Asia, Africa, the West Indies, the Pacific, and other geographical pockets.

Important for my present purpose in this rough chronology of some 500 years are the generalized factors distinguishing each movement. In the first, the language spread by arms, politics, and culture as part of an assimilative process through rearranged fiefdoms, principalities, and kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon Norman hegemonies over the Celts.

The Irish, for instance, have hardly had difficulty with the English language, only with the English regime. And lest we forget, at the setting of the sun, the greatest English wits have been Irish. Moreover, many of them live today in the America, or their descendants. The difference were part of a symbiotic relationship arising from a large measure of shared culture, if not of shared politics.

In the second movement, language and culture spread as English speakers spread. Major institutions of identity were transferred, at times replicated, and grew. Strong, constant contact with England, at times paradoxical, maintained bonds that survived such varied and chronologically separate happenings as the American War of Independence, the Boer War in South Africa, the reaction in Australia and New Zealand when Britain joined the EEC very recently, and South Africa's expulsion from the Commonwealth, also very recently.

Now if I try to reach a kind of assessment by comparing the progress of English with the progress of other cultures in the past, let me mention the case of Greek and Latin. Greek, in the period of Hellenism, carried the culture of intellectualism in science, philosophy, and art and became a must for the educated from Rome to Asia Minor.

Latin is resuscitated in the Carolingian period in the eighth and ninth centuries for the necessities of ecclesiastic and mundane administration, and for seven or eight centuries, remains the vehicle of administration and of written communication in the Western world. Their chivalric culture of medieval aristocracy, rising in Provence in France, carries these languages often not clearly separable over the Western world and beyond, from England to the Crusader states.

Renaissance Italy brings us into the modern world with the educated culture who combines the two traditions of the humanist and the knight. Italian is part of this equipment. And French, again, in the 18th and 19th centuries, spreads through the innumerable courts modeled after Versailles, and the language of the court survives as the language of international diplomacy, sifting down into the bourgeoisie and remaining a distinctive mark of that bourgeoisie far beyond Europe in Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa.

Ours is a day, as opposed to all that, of American English. And you may know that as early as 780, John Adams made a remarkable statement. He proved to be prophetic when he said English-- that is, American English-- is destined to be in the next and succeeding centuries-- the next, for him, was the 19th, and succeeded by the 20th and our century. So he said English is destined to be in the next and succeeding centuries, more generally, the language of the world than Latin was in the past or France is in the present age when he wrote in the end of the 18th century.

The reason, he said, is obvious, because the increasing population of America and the universal connection and correspondence with all nations forced their language into general use. What is remarkable in Adam's statement is his perceptions, at such a pristine stage, of the history of the country. Indeed, in 1780, American English is still the underdog, still a colonial substandard.

The colonial regime reaches its end, but the linguistic class system is still vigorous. A gentleman, says Princeton's President Witherspoon in 1781, will not imitate a peasant. In this diglossia-- diglossia, which is not the same as bilingualism-- British English is the high language, the prestige language, and American language is the non-prestigious low language. Loyalty to the British tradition means, linguistically, purism.

Now, are British English and American English really different from each other? The story of spoken American English, of the American colony, is indeed one of linguistic democratization. It has been in existence from before 1700, and it survived, in principle, into our days in the prestige accorded to our relatively integrated American vernacular. I speak as if I were myself an American, which is not the case by any means.

Dr. Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence, rejects the British paradigm. He writes, "The present is the age of simplicity of writing in America." And Noah Webster, well-known Noah Webster, to whom language was national, as national as customs, habits, and governments, sensed early in 1789 a divergence of the language of North America from the future language of England. Webster was, so to speak, the discoverer of the national language of the United States.

Now to what extent can we say or maintain that British English and American English are different? Linguistically speaking, these two variants of English, British and American, are far more similar than they are different. While BE, British English, and AE, American English, each possesses its own range of local dialectical variants, educated usage is by and large sufficiently similar for easy intercommunication.

At the level of grammar, there are remarkably few differences of consequence, though there are a number of trivial differences of the type in hospital, in British English, in the hospital, in American English. The book will be published on Friday in British, and it will be published Friday in American. I suppose so, at least. I don't know if this is your collected usage.

Again, American English, I already had my breakfast. British English, I've already had or got my breakfast, which I must confess, to me, as a European, is much more elegant than American English. Or do you have your passport with you? Yes I do, in American English. British English, have you got your passport with you? Yes, I have. And so forth.

These are minor differences, I think. They cannot lead us to decide that there is a great difference between the two norms, the British and the American norm. As far as phonetic pronunciation is concerned, we have differences.

I must say that I, as a European, a Frenchman, having, as you can see, a very pro-English, did not understand the Americans at the beginning. First time when I met some, when they pronounced intervocalic t's, I mean t between two vowels, because when I heard the Americans saying a man or a woman who writes, a person who is waiting, for a thing I am referring to, I heard a writer, [INAUDIBLE] matter exactly as if they were speaking of a rider, a wedding, and a matter.

Of course, the pronunciation is in fact not a D, but what we call in our phonetic terms a one flap R. The pronunciation-- I suppose. I don't know. I can't imitate it the right way. But I suppose the pronunciation of pretty, a [INAUDIBLE], is pretty, pretty with a [INAUDIBLE], pretty. I must confess-- excuse me for this aggressiveness-- that this sounds extremely vulgar to my ear.

Pretty, which is British, is the right pronunciation, of course. Well, it's the British one. So we cannot say that we have here two different languages. At the maximum we have two norms. Although there have been many, many studies devoted to study into to what extent English and American are two different languages, there are some usages which I recall were well-known.

I suppose that, according to studies which have been written on this subject, British English says so long as you're happy, we'll stay. American English, as long as you are happy, we'll stay. Strange as it may seem in British English, as strange as it may seem in American. Shall I take it in British, should I take it in American. I wish I had done it in British. I wish I would have done it, but probably not quite true. Or try other kinds of vocabulary particularity, I think, to cater for is British, and to cater to is American. So this is a lexical difference.

Lorry is immediately identified as British, as opposed to truck, which is identified as American. Nappy and diaper, sitting room and living room, dustbin and garbage can, chemist shop and drugstore, and so on. But of course, all these are no more than details and cannot-- I also have blue movie for pornographic film, nudie for film with much nudity. They cannot suffice to make up, decide that we have to do with two different languages.

So leaving the subject of whether English and American are two different languages-- they are just two norms-- I will switch to another one which is more interesting. What are exactly the kind of situations in which people are when they are candidates to learning English? First, we can have to do with an acquisitional aspect of the problem. In acquisitional terms, we will speak our first language, second language, and foreign language. But we have also another possibility, which is to use a sociocultural parameter. And in that respect, we will speak of transplanted and non-transplanted speakers of English.

We also have a motivational parameter according to which we can speak of integrative and instrumental access to English. And finally, we have a functional parameter, according to which we have national language and international language. Such are the parameters which I would propose as useful to decide what we have to do with.

Now the non-native varieties of English. This is what I would like to treat now. I announced that it is not possible to speak any longer of English. What should we speak of? The term which has been proposed more and more by sociolinguists is a pluralization of the adjective English. They speak of Englishes, and these Englishes are the various forms that English takes, according to the country.

The non-native varieties of English-- because Englishes refers to these non-native varieties-- they furnish fertile and relatively untapped grounds for study of the processes of sociolinguistic change. These varieties have grown up in recent times as second languages in multilingual former colonies of Great Britain. Hence the alternative terms New Englishes, Third World Englishes, and also NNVE, the famous NNVE, which means non-native varieties of English.

[INAUDIBLE] NNVE, it refers to the Englishes used in many former colonies of Britain or the United States in which English is not a native language, but an acquired second language.

The last area to come under colonization whether as British colonies or as protectorates of Australia or New Zealand, were the South Pacific Islands, Tonga, Samoa, Nauru, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Tuvalu, Ellis Islands, the Gilberts, and the Solomon Islands, which were colonized in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. All are independent now, while the Cook Islands, American Samoa, [INAUDIBLE], and the [INAUDIBLE] are not yet free. They are, let us say, without polemicizing, territories under American influence. All these territories have English as a second language.

Now we can also speak of IVEs, to wit, indigenized varieties of English. And these indigenized varieties of English are more or less the same as the NNVE. And they have been neglected very long. And only recently have the linguists and sociolinguists become aware of the importance of studying these varieties.

So what I would like to do now is to propose a study of some of these variants. Let me first of all mention the Indian variants, which are among the most important number. A wide range of styles can be found in a small book. [INAUDIBLE], the 19-year-old illiterate sweeper who is the title character, often seems quite childlike in thought as well as in speech. But he represents what kind of usage many Indians, less educated Indians, have of English.

Occasionally the reader encounters dialogues such as this. "My father is ill," replied [INAUDIBLE], "so I am going to sweep the roads in town and the temple courtyard in his stead." So he uses ill, which seems probably a bit odd to a native speaker, ill. And he says also, in his stead instead of instead. He also used Indian words such as [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], which means honor, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] which means merchant caste, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], which is Indian sweets, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], which means England abroad. In fact, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] is an Arabic word which has been borrowed through Islamisation by the Indians and which refers to a country. In this particular case it refers to England. And also [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], which is an Indian word meaning native or indigenous.

This is a sample of Indian English, but of course, I might mention many other ones. Another one I take from simply the titles of newspapers in which almost 3/4 of the title are made of Indian words which are not understandable to a native English speaker of United Kingdom or United States.

For example, in the rising in Nepal in Kathmandu, 1978, "Panchayat system upholds ideals of human rights." In the Hindustan Times, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] are gas plants. In the Bangladesh Observer, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] branch [INAUDIBLE]. In [INAUDIBLE], a journal from Lahore, December 1979, "[INAUDIBLE] calls for attack."

In the Sunday Times of Singapore, Indian Muslims are [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. In the Statesman of New Delhi, GNU, [INAUDIBLE] National University, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], and so on. Of course, this is understandable only in an Indian context.

A much more extreme case is when syntax itself is Indian while the vocabulary is English. For example, in an example I have here, a linguist overheard a young female Fiji Indian sales clerk. She said, "Sheila, account book use [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], I think." Account book use is the reverse order as opposed to that of English, and [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] is to make. So it means, in fact, in translation, Sheila used the account book, I think. And in order to translate used, she uses the word [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] to make, and she put the object complement before instead of after, as is the usage in English. This is typical of a new syntax, a new world order, which, of course, is totally un-understandable in English of native speakers.

Now let me give you some other examples. But before I switch to the examples-- well, another one is the example of Malaysian English, in which we find such usages as this one. In an article in a newspaper, "Equally certainly, 25 authors and two editors do not know enough to write this book. And by virtue of knowledges and viewpoints, they may not provide as cohesive a book as a single author."

Another example, "Parents' eagerness to teach their six-month-old children the pre-linguistic routine, bye bye, is one evidence of their desire to show that their baby is on its way to being a socialized person." I think knowledges in the plural is un-American. And I think one evidence with one before the mass abstract noun evidence is also un-American.

To some extent, this usage is in Malaysia, a part of the world in which British English was more influential than American English, might be borrowed from British usage, in which it is possible to pluralize abstract or mass nouns, since, for example, in British journals, we find things which would probably be frowned upon in American English, such as intimidations in the plural, or other abstract word nouns used in the plural, too. These examples are mentioned here in order to show what kind of Asianization of English takes place in Malaysia.

Now let me mention examples of Africanization of English. This is taken from a letter, a personal letter to which I had access some years ago. An inhabitant of Nigeria writes to his relatives, "With much pleasure and respect, I inscribe you this few lines-- this few lines-- and with the hope that it will meet you in good condition of health." This seems to be literally translated from [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], the language of this Nigerian child.

Other examples taken from people living in Kenya and Tanzania. "Let strong football team be organized." "He won by overwhelming majority," without the article. "She gave me tough time." "I am going to cinema." "I am going to post office." Of course, these speakers have as a native tongue a language which doesn't have any article in this context. So they simply transfer their habits into their English.

"I may continue with the interview or examine few more applications." Or many other. Now another, which is taken from the southeast of Nigeria, where [? Igbo, ?] a very well-known African language, is spoken, in which I overheard this. "'You'll see red,' said the angry carpenter to the frightened boy." Another example. "To my surprise, I found him, the driver, resting on the steer and fall asleep. As a result, he lost control of the steer." Another sentence. "I ask her to dance, but she cut me." Another example. "Thy must pay the town council."

So these usages are taken from African languages, from Igbo in this particular case. To see red means it's a threats to harm or punish a person. The steer here means a steering wheel, and the verb to cut in the sentence on I ask her to dance, but she cut me means she refused to dance with me. So this is another examples of the way English is Africanized in this context.

Other examples still. "You to be careful with these been to boys." What does been to mean? Been to is a special African expression which is taken from she has been to Britain. And it refers to anyone who has traveled overseas, particularly to Britain.

Another example. "We stopped at [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] to buy some bush meat, which means game, in fact, in native English. And "I saw your my dear. I saw your my dear at the church. Your my dear [INAUDIBLE] means your girlfriends or your boyfriends, my dear being put together in order to constitute an expression which corresponds to girl or boyfriend in English.

"Ia have been going to the small room a lot, sir" means to the toilets. And "I was a tight friend of your sister." Tight friend, of course, does not correspond to anything clear for a native speaker of English, and it means a close or intimate friend. It's almost literally translated from African languages.

I could multiply the languages, but I will limit myself to some more only. [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] Swahili in Republic of Congo also have many uses which do not correspond to the English American norm. For example, "Don't drag your feet, son. Walk quick, quick." The reduplication of quick means very quickly.

"Life is a big challenge. You have to take it small small." Or "You are eating too fastly. Take your time and eat slow slow." This way of reduplicating adverbs is simply the formation in many African languages of the superlative, or intensive, which is a grammatical process, of course, unknown in English, although it's not quite unknown in spoken English. But it does not correspond to the written norm of English.

Other examples. "He's my bench man," meaning he's my crony or intimate friend. "She bluffs too much," bluff meaning here, being arrogant or trying to beguile people. Or "The fellow is too boisterous too much," the storekeeper said. Here boisterous mean bad tempered or quarrelsome.

Other examples. "I was coupled at the dance." It means I found a dancing partner. Or "Are you [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] for Nigeria yet?" Are you homesick, it means. Or "I opened the door and visualized a very familiar face." It means I saw, to visualize a familiar face. "Sorry not to have been chance to ride before." This is also an Africanism, and many other of the same type.

Voice out for voice. Discuss about for discuss. Congratulate for for congratulate on. And many others. An anecdote, of which I was myself an actor, a testimony, is one when one important personality in Nigeria, while visiting a department of linguistics, was told that this department was interested in research on Nigerian English.

He immediately commented that that was a waste of time as there was no such thing as Nigerian English, he said. But a few minutes later, he said, on being interrupted, "Let me land." And to land is the Nigerian equivalent of let me finish. So he himself, of course, spoke a variant of Nigerian English.

Now we also have Chinese English. And it began as a pidgin in Chinese as soon as the beginning of the 19th century. And this Chinese English was very different from standard English. For example, consider the following sentence, which I tried to translate. "Tailor, my have got one piece plenty handsome silk. My want you make one nice evening dress." Here the my is used for me.

And this kind of creolization, in which the possessive is the same as the personal pronoun, is typical of many Creoles. Although not universally creole, it corresponds to a regularization of the morphology. And it makes it much more clear than it is in a language such as English, in which we differentiate between word classes, which are not really necessary in terms of economy.

Another example taken from China, from Chinese. In Chinese we have examples like this one. Do some people understand Chinese? Well, may I mention in Chinese, [CHINESE].

This is a structure which is directly inspired by English. It puts the object complement in the wrong place, and it makes an inversion, which is not Chinese. But all the words are literally Chinese. So word order can be transformed by the model of Chinese even when the words themselves, the lexicon, remain something quite Chinese. This is another example of the way languages are Americanized.

Japanese is also an interesting example. Mori Arinori. Who was the first Minister of Education of the new modern Japan, claimed that "I cite our meager language, which can never be of any use outside of our islands, is doomed to yield to the domination of the English tongue, especially when the power of steam and electricity will have pervaded the land." He proposed to replace Japanese, bluntly, by English.

But the Japanese did not do that. What did they do? They are probably the one, among the countries of the world, in which the borrowed word from English are the most numerous. It is extraordinary how many borrowed term-- of course, Japanized with a the phonetic exist, in nowadays Japanese. They are English, but not identifiable, not recognizable to someone who does not know their origin.

For example, we have [JAPANESE]. [JAPANESE], which is playboy, pronounced the Japanese way. [JAPANESE], as you know, are one and the same consonant in Japanese. And also, the Japanese is a consonant vowel, consonant vowel, consonant vowel language. So it cannot say playboy. It is transformed into [JAPANESE]. And also magical power, magical power for magic power. Also, [JAPANESE] for Dutch wife. Dutch wife is an inflatable bed partner.

Other examples of Japanese English are [JAPANESE]. [JAPANESE] is love to make, as you know, in Japanese. [JAPANESE] is a well-known Japanese verb. And they take an English word, which is, in this case, the up, preposition up, and they put [JAPANESE] after, and [JAPANESE], which means it to make up, means, in fact, to improve or go up.

And we have many other such uses in Japanese today. We also have [JAPANESE], Christmas, which is Christmas. We have [JAPANESE], [JAPANESE], which is McDonald's, [JAPANESE], which is restaurant, and even [JAPANESE] nonsense, [JAPANESE], [? heretic ?] grotesque nonsense. [JAPANESE], which is ole miss to refer to a spinster. [JAPANESE], mass communication. [JAPANESE] for one piece dress. [JAPANESE] for table speech, after dinner speech. [JAPANESE] for at home. And even [JAPANESE], for I love you. These are some ways of Japanese transformation of English or Japanization of English.

Now this is all the more astonishing as Japan was never a British or American territory. Japan was never colonized by the British, who elsewhere left a linguistic legacy in the form of civil service requirements, government legislation, or a prestige language. Such factors must have encouraged people to become fluent in spoken and written English. English was never the language of the Japanese public school system, though there were intellectual incentives to acquire at least a reading knowledge.

Most important, Japan has never had the cultural and linguistic pluralism which made English convenient as a lingua franca, at least, or a national language at most. In short, English in Japan never became institutionalized. However, that developed a kind of Japanized English, of which I give you some samples.

This also reaches European languages. And since the matter is enormous, I will content myself worth mentioning German borrowing such as English words which are directly introduced in the context of an article written in German. We have, for example, hi-fi, aftershave lotion. We have brain washing for [GERMAN], spearhead for [GERMAN], climber for [GERMAN] involved for [GERMAN], and other such examples.

Let us, if you don't mind, switch now to French. French has twice been a world language itself, in the 12th century, as you may know, and again from the 17th to the 19th century. But twice it has also been on the passive end of the process-- in the 16th century, when the giant of the Renaissance, Italy, covered the west with Italianisms, and now in the 20th century, when we have the impact of Americanisms.

The Italian episode, although different in certain ways from the American, is of considerable interest to us. Since it has concluded, it allows us to evaluate from a historical perspective those facets which, in the present day case of American English, are still in the midst of evolution. The impact of the Italian Renaissance hurt the French pride. It hurt what humanistic tradition labeled the Hercule Gallois, the Gallic Hercules.

In states where citizens feel a political cultural inferiority, language turns into their foremost symbol of national defense, defense phrasing-- thank you. Linguistic patriots consider borrowing anti-patriotic. [INAUDIBLE], the great sociolinguist of the times, wrote in 1549 "The same natural law which requires everyone to defend his birthplace likewise obliges us to watch over the dignity of our language. Similarly, the foreign language turns into a symbol of the foreigner himself. Since he is disliked, his language will be disliked."

Now the battle of the French intelligentsia against Americanisms is not devolved from a certain conservative political and cultural attitude. The anti-attitude symbolizes a belief in tradition and norm, in elitism, in intellectual skepticism toward technology.

This is the opinion of many English-speaking linguists. But so far, I agree. But one of them adds, "Conservatism in France, linguistic conservatism, symbolizes an anti-democratic reaction against the women, the young, and mass culture. It symbolizes anti-Americanism and a rejection of multilingualism and multiculturalism. The attitude against Americanisms, in short, reflects the struggle against the cultural and social revolution which marks the decline of the traditional French civilization. This is what [INAUDIBLE], an American sociolinguist, writes.

I must say I don't agree. Why? Because, in fact, the way many linguists and many intellectual writers and so on in France react against what they feel as an invasion of American words, or as a pure and simple substitution of English to French in many contexts, is not a reaction which is limited to right milieus. Leftists are also concerned that this attitude.

In general, what we aim at when defending French and when trying-- not only in a defensive attitude but also in an offensive one-- to promote it is to propose other models because we feel that in many cases, the domination of the world by one and the same language is not something to be recommended because it results in a world in which we have nothing to be [INAUDIBLE] about, just one language, one culture.

Of course, this is just an idealized possible future which will not, I think, take place. But it is the thing against which people who want to preserve multiculturalism, multilingualism, fight. And I think that to that extent, they are not wrong. So I will come back to this later. It was just a reflection on the way part of the French cultural world reacts to the pressure of English.

Throughout the non-English mother tongue world, English is currently associated with practical and powerful pursuits. This becomes evident with the image of French, and on the other hand, with that of local integrative languages that have been fairly recently standardized. Relative to the latter, English is viewed as less suitable for military operations. Local soldiers do not know that much English yet. For lying, joking, cursing, or bargaining-- for bargaining, English is not adapted at all-- and for unremediated prayer.

On the other hand, English is currently viewed as more suitable than local integrative languages for science, international diplomacy, industry, commerce, high oratory, and pop songs, of course. Now the image of English vis a vis French is even more revealing in that the former has risen and the latter has begun to fall in the international balance of power. In the third world, excluding former anglophone and francophone colonies, French is considered more suitable than English for only one function.

This is what Joshua Fishman, a well-known sociolinguist of Yeshiva University writes. I don't agree, but I mention what he says. French is considered more suitable than English for only one function, which is opera. It is considered the equal of English for reading good novels or poetry, and for personal prayer, the local integrity of language being widely viewed as superior to both English and French in this connection, which is obvious.

But outside the realm of aesthetics, the ugly duckling, Joshua Fishman writes, reigns supreme. French is widely viewed as more beautiful, more musical, pleasant, rhythmic, refined, intimate, pure, soothing, graceful, tender, and lovely. But English is viewed as richer, more precise, more logical more sophisticated, and more competence-related. I must say this is a widespread prejudice which, to me, is on the brink of being quite ridiculous. Even under the pen of Joshua Fishman, who is a well-known, prestigious linguist, I think this should not be written.

Let me just tackle one aspect of this subject, which is precision. You may know that professional linguists like me generally do not commit themselves in debates such as to what extent is one language more precise than the other one because the notion of precision is a relative notion. And for me, for any-- I suppose for any professional language, the most precise language is the one which is native to you, to each of you. Of course, there is no precision in itself as an abstract concept.

However, I would like to adduce an example, which I have recently discovered, which might be interesting if I proposed it to you to your thinking. And in that case, it seems that in a very politicized context, French is reacted to as much more precise than English. This refers to Resolution 242 of the new United Nations. You may know that the Arabian countries have chosen the French version of the treaties, and Israel has chosen the British, the English version. Why?

The British-- the English version says, we recommend. Probably they said, we order withdrawal immediate-- it was in 1968 after the famous Six Days War. "We recommend withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from occupied territories." This is the English version.

In English, when you have a plural term like territories, you may not use the article. So "from occupied territories" is a normal English way of saying. And "from the occupied territories" could be said. But in this particular case-- I am not a native speaker of English, I don't know-- but it seems to me that this lack of article is the more natural way of speaking.

So withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from occupied territories. In French, as opposed to that, we cannot avoid using the article. We must choose either the article or no article. So this a retrait-- retrait, withdrawal, to retract-- des troupes Israelienne-- of Israeli armed troops-- des territoires occupes. De means from the, or de territoire occupe. If I say des territories occupes, which is a choice, it means of all the territories which have been occupied by the Israelis. If I say de territoire occupe, it means of some of these territories.

And in French we have to choose. So the French version, which is the one recommended by the Arabs, has chosen des territoires occupes, which means that Israel has to withdraw his troops from all occupied territories, whereas English allows one to interpret in ambiguous terms either as from some of these territories or from all of them.

This is an example. We might mention many other ones, we met also, because, of course, this is very relative matter-- mention examples in which it is English, which is more precise. It depends on the kind of circumstance. French was-- used to be in the past, is no more now-- the language of diplomacy. I do not, as a professional linguist, make part of those who purport that French is a clear, precise language. As I said, to each of us, the clearest is the one we master most.

But what I can call your attention to is that in certain contexts, like this one, which is a very a politicized, very political context, the French version can turn out to be the more precise one. And so what Fishman writes here is, to some extent, wrong.

He adds, "English is less loved but more used. French is more loved but less used. Nature abhors a vacuum, which is a medieval expression, well-known. As the functional load of a formerly prestigious variety declines, affect rushes in to take up the slack. The non-Francophone world has nothing but love for French," he says, "and in the cruel real world, that is a sign of a weakness.

The displacement of Irish is suffused with love. The replacement of Yiddish, which is a well-known matter for Joshua Fishman, is accompanied by panagyrics as to its intimacy and authenticity. English gets along without love, without sighs, without tears, and almost without affect of any kind.

This is not true. There is an affective access to English for many speakers of it, which are not native speakers of English, but we have acquired it. So I don't agree that English is something just as unmarked as Fishman writes. English gets along without love, without sighs, without tears, almost without affect of any kind. In a world where econo-technical superiority is what really counts, the heightened aesthetic affective image of French smacks of weakness, innocence, and triviality.

This is the opinion voiced by a well-known social linguist. I am not sure that many linguists outside myself would agree with it. Now this situation which I have tried to describe, according to which English is under the form of native English, in one case-- a minority, of course-- and in another case, in the form of non-native varieties or indigenized varieties of English, or of Englishes in the plural-- this general situation is viewed or reacted to by a great part of intellectuals all over the world as something not completely acceptable.

Why? Because they sense, they feel that having a language which serves the role of being the second language for people whose language is not known to each other when they are dialoguing is not necessarily something good. When it turns out that this language belongs to countries-- Canada, United States, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa-- which turn out to be among the most powerful in the world, this makes English much less acceptable than if it were not the case that it belongs to these countries.

This, of course, is to a large extent a political matter. And as a result, people not necessarily accept such a situation. And I would like to mention a text which was submitted to me recently by an American university professor. He is American. The text will sounds very strange coming from an American. But what he says might be interesting to mention. And I received this on internet one month ago.

He says, "According to the latest figures supplied by Global Reach, English content of all internet messages worldwide dropped below 50%. It is clear that as the net goes global, it also goes multilingual. The internet was born in English, but it has become quite obvious that those who attempted to promote it through the use of English only slowed down its development rather than accelerating it.

Once again, we are discovering that localization is the key for the international dissemination of any tool, and more especially when that tool is designed to facilitate communication. It is well-known that anyone who is serious about pursuing commercial endeavors has to use his customers' language.

This policy-- which is, by the way, I add myself, that of Germany-- to a lesser extent, much lesser extent than the French, was especially pushed by firms that sought expansion through the development of international markets. In the old days, the success of firms such as IBM, as far as the Americans are concerned, rested mostly on this approach. IBM intelligently translated all technical manuals, offered seminars and training in over 20 languages. IBM went as far as translating pushbutton levels on its hardware and even coining new [INAUDIBLE] words.