The English language has become one of the most important languages in the world through a long process of development and the cultural transformations that took place both within England and outside of it. Nowadays, English is considered the international language of business, science, and communication, among other things. It is spoken by over 1.5 billion people in the world. It is also considered the most widely spoken language after Chinese, which is spoken by more than 1.3 billion people. English has also become the most widely spoken language in international relations, diplomacy and commerce.
Those are the reasons why so many people across the world are eager to learn English, starting from their early school years all through high school and college. English is taught in most schools and colleges because it has become the vehicle with which cultural and scientific knowledge is transferred from one part of the world to the other. Modern economic and technological development is unthinkable without the use of English which serves as the language of origin through which knowledge is transferred through translations into second languages.
In many African countries, speaking English is regarded as a sign of being educated, enlightened or modernized. There is some truth in this assertion, although this does not necessarily imply that all those who speak English or French are wiser than those who speak traditional or local languages. Wisdom is not about language but something that is derived from life experience and the talent for looking at things deeper than superficially or casually.
On the other hand, members of the young generation in Africa who have a mastery of the English language or any other Western language tend to look at the uneducated and ordinary folks as “backward.” This has created an intellectual or mental division between the educated elites and the uneducated masses, who are the inheritors of rich cultural traditions that are confined within their communities instead of spreading towards the external world simply because their languages have remained long neglected.
The dictionary meaning of the term lingua franca, which means “Frankish language” in its original Italian definition, “is a language used as a means of communication between populations speaking vernacular that are not mutually intelligible.” Accordingly, each region of the world has its own lingua franca. Thus, English is sometimes described as the first global lingua franca because “it is being used as a working language by individuals of diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds in a variety of fields and international organizations to communicate with one another.”
In Africa, Swahili is considered the language used by most people, particularly in East Africa. Swahili is the second official language in Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda. It is spoken by 50 to 150 million people. In most cases, Swahili is used as a second language in those countries.
According to one definition, “a global language acts as a “lingua franca,” a common language that enables people from diverse backgrounds and ethnicities to communicate on a more or less equitable basis. Historically, the essential factor for the establishment of a global language is that it is spoken by those who wield power.” The last part of this quotation is interesting because power is an essential factor behind the assumption of the status of lingua franca by any language. This is true when we see the evolution of the English language itself, which developed first in Great Britain and then became an international language with the spread of British colonial rule in the world.
Some studies outline six reasons why English has, through time become an international lingua franca. The first factor is the expansion of the British Empire, which extended from America to Asia and Africa, engulfing in its wake hundreds of millions of people with diverse cultures speaking the same English language. The second factor is the fact that the United States, which was once a British colony, rose to global supremacy after the Second World War and led to its dominance in global culture, which is expressed in English. During the same period, English had the opportunity to spread throughout the world as the language of global entertainment, culture and literature. Literature in the English language was initially developed in Great Britain, that has produced the best writers in the language, while the US followed suit in the above-educated period by dominating the global entertainment business in the form of music, drama, publishing and cinema.
With the development of post-war capitalism and the rise of powerful economic entities, English became the language of international finance, trade and technology. The City in London, Wall Street in the US, and major financial and banking conglomerates in Europe and Asia used English as their language of transaction, further extending the reach and importance of the language.
The major news media, television, newspapers and magazines started to be presented in English and national writers assumed global importance by using English as their medium of expression to this very day. Last but not least, English is considered a fashionable language and a medium of cosmopolitan expression of new ideas and language easier to speak by the diverse populations of the world.
The combined economic, political and cultural power of Great Britain and the US has confirmed that power is at the core of English becoming a global lingua franca. However, raw power or military supremacy cannot be a factor in linguistic influence. As far as military might is considered at different points in world history, Russian should be the lingua franca of European countries in the 18th and 19th centuries, when Russian power was on the rise. By the same token, Chinese should become a global lingua franca now, at least in Asia, given the sheer size of its economic and military power nowadays.
There are many advantages to having a lingua franca at the regional or global level in Africa or in any other country or region. Lingua franca promotes cultural and economic rapprochement among the peoples living in areas where a single language is spoken. The use of English in many African countries has promoted a certain degree of integration among them. That is why we have what are called Francophone and Anglophone African countries that are doing business horizontally among themselves and vertically with foreign countries, mainly in Europe.
“Lingua franca is important to human culture because it allow groups that otherwise could not communicate with each other the ability to interact quite often for mutual benefit. The benefit can be economic, cultural, political or a combination.” If we take English once again as a tool of linguistic understanding among people speaking different languages, it is obvious that communication at grassroots levels is the most important benefit. Thus, “people can overcome language barriers by speaking English. This means they can travel, work, and interact with other cultures.”
In many developing countries, there is a tendency to look at English as the ultimate language of civilization and modernity. The educated elites in these countries are expected to speak English as the British or the Americans, as most of them were educated in the West. In Africa, English-speaking educated elites are considered privileged and highly esteemed by society because of their learning in many fields of knowledge. Together with this, there is a tendency to look at local languages as inferior to English or French for that matter, because the masses, who are largely uneducated in modern schools and colleges, do not speak the Western languages the way the elites do.
The development of modern art and literature in these countries is highly influenced by Western languages and literature because most writers and artists in Africa get their education in the famous centers of Western education such as Harvard, Yale, the London School of Economics or the Sorbonne in France. This trend was prevalent both in colonial as well as post-colonial periods, when the languages of the colonized peoples of Africa were shunned as “backward” or “underdeveloped.” However, as far as language is perceived as a tool of communication, there is no “inferior” or “superior” language as such as long as it is effectively used by the people who use it anywhere in the world. In this sense, all languages are equal.
It is however, undeniable that Africans who speak and write English or French have the added advantage of getting certain privileges like scholarships in Western colleges and universities, research centers and institutions where the latest knowledge is accumulated, although modern technology is making it easier to transfer knowledge from one language to another through translations or adaptations. As a case in point, we can look at the impressive economic development of China starting in the 1970s, when official government policy encouraged the transfer of scientific and technological knowledge from the West to China through massive translation works that were carried out by Chinese institutions. This is something African countries and their governments need to learn from the Chinese because there is hardly any chance of acquiring new knowledge without its transfer from advanced to less developed countries. Fortunately, modern technology has rendered Africa’s development challenge in this area less challenging and faster to achieve.
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD THURSDAY 11 JANUARY 2024
