Juergen Trabant, Linguistics Professor from the Free University in Berlin, Germany, talks about the impoverishment of languages, the tendency towards the transformation of many world languages into regional ones, and on how to conserve the culture of multilingualism in his exclusive interview for the RMF.
– Mr Trabant, you’ve authored the tenet that many languages are dying and their death is accompanied by impoverishment of the now spoken languages. What led you to this conclusion?
– Sound research reveals the growing garrulity and even chattiness of many people to the detriment of the style or content. Mankind is switching to gestures, emoticons and other mime or its written imitation, which impoverishes the language. The decline is particularly notable in the style of youth communication in the peripheral of big cities like Berlin, Marseilles, Moscow or London. Gestures are often more important than verbal communication for the youth who are unable to express their ideas in a meaningful language. Teenagers and young adults may spit to the ground to designate their territory, shove each other instead of saying “go away”, utter inarticulate sounds like whistles and yells to call their friends or frighten away a stranger, and involve their companions in communication using gestures. These numerous indirect signs testify to the fact that the languages are being simplified and impoverished in different parts of the world.
– Didn’t linguists hail the simplification of languages?
– The simplification of languages is not the initiative of scholars, but rather an objective reality of civilization evolution. As for the impoverishment… the language, rather than being the means of personal self-expression, first turns into a way of information transmission and then it is replaced with gestures in imitation of animals.
– Why does this happen?
– One of the reasons is the disappearance of multilingualism. While there were about 15,000 languages in the world of the 19th century, now their number slightly exceeds 6,000 and in 100 years from now 200 to 600 will be left. Multilingualism is being replaced by global English. Switching to a foreign language, people not only simplify it; they impoverish both their own spoken language and the foreign language they use. My compatriot Wilhelm von Humboldt always stood for multilingualism. He asserted that “languages create the world’s different frameworks which retain different worldviews.” Today these frameworks are faltering.
– Why should we mourn over the demise of the languages which do not have any writing system? Maybe mankind will be able to overcome “the Babylonian curse” with this loss?
– I’d like to bring the idea of ‘Babylonian curse’ to absurdity. Aristotle once noted, “We are silent without a language; this is universal predisposition towards understanding the world and oneself.” It so happened that we speak the languages and to date we’ve been trying to understand the world and ourselves through ideas brought home verbally. Therefore I favor multilingualism. I remind my students who understand English that they can also think in other languages and should treasure this capability. As a scholar, I feel the danger of monolingualism: the works of German, Italian, French and Russian scholars or writers that are not translated into English are not accepted in the English-speaking world. Entire libraries of accumulated knowledge are lost. But not in vain do people try to read the works of Hegel and Dostoyevsky, Montaigne or Cervantes in the original languages. Losing them, we lose the ability at multidimensional thinking which leads to better understanding of our world.
– Apart from English, what awaits other world languages: French, German, Spanish or Russian?
– Impoverishment plagues both rare and widespread languages, such as German. In the prestigious areas of information space German is ceding its positions to English even in Germany. Elites bring up their children in the English language environment that they would be part of the world aristocracy. This cripples the authority of German and spawns paradoxes. Why should migrants learn German, when Germans themselves speak it only at home? Migrants need a working language and its functions are increasingly often assumed by English. Transnational corporations operating in Germany do not employ people who do not speak English. And employees are secretly forbidden to speak German even in office cafeterias or smoking rooms. On the one hand, this is conditioned on globalization trends and, on the other hand, – on the specific German issue: having gained the painful experience in Nazism, we lost faith in our mother tongue. We feel ashamed of our language and this certainly weakens loyalty to German which does not only exist for the needs of everyday communication. The thinking and culture of one or other linguistic community is rendered verbally. It’s clear that German won’t go defunct tomorrow, given that it is spoken by 100 million people. But when the nation is ashamed of their mother tongue, this complex can first make this language non-operational and then unnecessary.
– In other words your forecast is that in some distant future the whole world will speak one language?
– Even with my propensity to draw a gloomy picture of the linguistic future I believe it would be the triumph of folly for the world to start communicating only in English. Surely the trend is that the remaining 10% of languages will gradually narrow their sphere of influence. For instance, Italian, German, Swedish are to a large extent transforming into local languages. In spite of its despondent resistance, French will sooner or later become a local language too. Spanish, Arabic, Russian and Chinese have limited chances to retain the status of regional languages, but their influence will be shrinking – this is just a matter of time, proportions and geographical areal.
– How about Russian?
– Russian is in demand in the world as the language of culture and art which makes it a powerful and influential tool. If Russia were able to offer new formats of cultural thinking to the world Russian would definitely retain its sphere of regional, mainly Eurasian influence.
– And Chinese?
– I don’t think its prospects of becoming a universal language are too bright. I don’t see it even as the second language next to English. The problem is that this language is very hard to pronounce and articulate and hieroglyphs make it very inconvenient in writing.
– How about the third “winner” – something like the resurrected Esperanto?
– I do not share this vision. Based on the world experience, Latin suits this purpose better. The wealth of literature and philosophy stand behind Latin while Esperanto could not survive because it was always a dead language.
– What do you think are the ways of multilingualism conservation?
– A superb idea of “the personal foster language” starts working in the EU in the area of teaching foreign languages. It was developed by the European Commission at the suggestion of former EU Commissioner for Linguistics, Leonard Orban. As per this concept, each EU citizen is recommended to learn his or her native language apart from English as well as another European language to get acquainted with the culture of the neighbors. In other words, both English and “foster languages” are learned at school. Is this not a good way to conserve multilingualism?
– Have you ever had any experience with the Russian experience in teaching foreign languages?
– I believe Russia will gradually come to the bilingual or trilingual model, given that it is populated by more than 120 peoples. Thus the task of reformatting the teaching of foreign languages is simplified. Apart from their native languages, some of the Russian citizens will have to learn Russian, English and one more language. I know that German is also taught at Russian schools. In 2012, the Year of Germany in Russia, our different centers offer a cultural exchange to facilitate the learning of German by Russians and the learning of Russian by Germans. I believe that as time goes by, Russians will feel the need to learn the languages of their neighbors – Chinese, languages of the Caucasus or East-European languages.
Vladimir Emelyanenko
