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Collection Highlights

Affirming Language Diversity in Schools and Society Beyond

Linguistic Apartheid 1st Edition Pierre Orelus

Popular Culture, Voice and Linguistic Diversity: Young

Adults On- and Offline 1st Edition Sender Dovchin

Understanding the Psychology of Diversity B. Evan Blaine

Teaching English (1978) : A Linguistic Approach First

Edition John Keen
Pedagogies for Internationalising Research Education
Intellectual equality theoretic linguistic diversity and
knowledge chuàngx■n 1st Edition Michael Singh

Owen (Blue Team #1) 1st Edition Riley Edwards [Edwards

Understanding Cultural Traits A Multidisciplinary

Perspective on Cultural Diversity 1st Edition Fabrizio
Panebianco

Imperfect Triple Canopy 3 1st Edition Riley Edwards

Edwards Riley

Understanding Sustainable Development John Blewitt

Multilingualism
Also available from Continuum
Children’s Language and Multilingualism, Edited by Jane Simpson
and Gillian Wigglesworth
Multilingualism: A Critical Perspective, Adrian Blackledge and
Angela Creese
Multilingualism, Citizenship and Identity, Julie Byrd Clark

Other Books by John Edwards:

Challenges in the Social Life of Language
The Irish Language
Language and Disadvantage
Language and Identity
Language Diversity in the Classroom
Language in Canada
Language, Society and Identity
Linguistic Minorities, Policies and Pluralism
Minority Languages and Group Identity
Multilingualism
The Social Psychology of Reading
Un mundo de lenguas
Multilingualism
Understanding
Linguistic Diversity
John Edwards
 Continuum International Publishing Group
The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane
11 York Road Suite 704
London New York
SE1 7NX NY 10038

www.continuumbooks.com

© John Edwards 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval
system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

John Edwards has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

e-ISBN: 978-1-4411-9613-2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

 

For Mike and Marnie, with love and appreciation

 CONTENTS

Prologue╇ x

╇ 1 The Diversity of Languages╇ 1

The First Language╇ 1
Comparing Languages╇ 3
Languages and Language Families�╇ 6

╇ 2 Interpreting Language Diversity╇ 11

Dead or Alive╇ 11
The Problem of Names╇ 19

╇ 3 Multilingual Abilities╇ 25

Multilingualism in the World╇ 25
Individual Attitudes and Abilities╇ 29
Language as a Verb and Other Infelicities╇ 33

╇ 4 T
 he Emergence and Measurement of
Multilingualism╇ 39
The Rise of Multilingualism╇ 39
Assessing Multilingualism╇ 41
viii CONTENTS

╇ 5 The Consequences of Babel: Lingua Francas╇ 47

The Lingua Franca╇ 47
Languages of Wider Communication╇ 48
Pidgins and Creoles╇ 50
Constructed Languages╇ 52

╇ 6 The Consequences of Babel: Translation╇ 57

Translation, Ownership and Secrecy╇ 57
Voice Appropriation╇ 59
Translation in Practice╇ 61

╇ 7 Keeping Languages Pure╇ 65

Purism and Prescriptivism╇ 65
Academies╇ 69
Dictionaries╇ 72

╇ 8 Languages and Identities in Transition╇ 77

Languages in Contact╇ 77
Language Decline and Maintenance╇ 80
Future Directions╇ 85

╇ 9 E
 ndangered Languages and the Will
to Survive╇ 89
What is Language Revival?╇ 89
Maintaining Domains of Necessity╇ 92
Willingness╇ 94
 CONTENTS ix

10 L
 inguistic Intervention and the ‘New’ Ecology
of Language╇ 101
Scholarship and the Social Life of Language╇ 101
The ‘New’ Ecology of Language╇ 105

Epilogue╇ 113
Notes and References╇ 117
Index�╇ 129
 Prologue

On 11 May 2011, as I was preparing the final draft of this

book, former American president Bill Clinton came to speak
at my university. The occasion was the opening of a new
centre, established to encourage leadership in matters of public
policy, business and health. President Clinton did not mention
language, but he made several remarks about group affiliation,
noting in particular the need to ‘overcome identity differences’.
Identity, he suggested, ought not to be defined in terms of
what you reject in others but, rather, should rest upon a more
intrinsic sense of self and self-direction. We need not always
agree with others, but we might spend more time considering
what we hold in common; we should move beyond respect
for diversity to its celebration. These identity matters, Clinton
argued, undergirded all attempts at renewed leadership and
development in the modern world. In its demonstration –
sometimes implicitly, sometimes directly – that language is a
central component in group identity and its negotiation, this
book underscores the president’s timely observations.
First published in somewhat different form, in Catalan and
Spanish editions, this book can only touch upon many important
topics that are covered more thoroughly elsewhere – many of them
in earlier works of my own, a number of which I have immodestly
noted in the end matter. It does, however, present an overview of
multilingualism that is reasonably complete, if abbreviated, and
I hope that it will prove interesting and informative for a general
readership. It may also serve as a supplementary text in language
and linguistics courses. Following the final chapter, I have
provided some referential guidance; however, in the interests of
reading fluency and ‘user-friendliness’, I have omitted reference
markers in the body of the text.
 Prologue xi

A short book requires only a short introduction. My inten-

tion in writing this one has been twofold. First, I wanted to
present a picture of global linguistic diversity, with some of its
important ramifications and consequences. Second, I wanted
to point out that the most compelling aspects of this diversity
are not linguistic at all – they have to do, rather, with the sym-
bolic and identity-marking features of language. If languages
were only instruments of communication, there would still be
a great deal to say in a world that contains several thousand
of them: why there are so many, how different they are from
one another, how they present reality in different ways to their
speakers and so on. It would also be useful, particularly for
speakers of big languages, to discuss in some detail the multi-
lingual capacities that characterize the majority of the world’s
population, the normality of multilingualism and the statisti-
cally minor category of monolingualism.1
But there is a great deal more to say when we realize that
languages are totems as well as tools. For then we enter the
highly charged psychological and social domains of group
attachments, the most powerful and the most historically
interesting categories here being ethnic and national affiliations.
Even a cursory glance at the table of contents of this book
will reveal my attempts to comment upon the intertwining of
language and group identity.
I set the scene in Chapters 1 and 2 (The Diversity of
�Languages and Interpreting Language Diversity) by touching
upon some of the early debates about the ‘first’ or the ‘original’
language, by pointing out that there are no ‘primitive’ or unde-
veloped varieties and by discussing the difficulties in ascertain-
ing just how many languages there are in the world. There are

1
╇ When discussing languages and language groups, I have not put words like
‘small’, ‘big’ and ‘large’ in the inverted commas that they really require – this,
simply to avoid tedious over-use. Readers will realize, of course, that the terms
refer to the relative scope and dominance of languages. I am saying nothing
about the size of speech communities nor, more importantly, am I making any
sort of value judgement.
xii Prologue

still many linguistic regions that remain poorly understood,

and there are problems with the categorization and naming of
dialects and languages. In Chapter 3 (Multilingual �Abilities),
I€consider the extent of �multilingualism around the globe. One
of the central themes here is the ubiquity of multilingual ca-
pabilities and the relative rarity – except, perhaps, within the
anglophone world – of monolingualism. At the same time, it is
important to realize that, for most people, a bilingual or mul-
tilingual repertoire is an instrumental response to mundane
needs. A corollary is that speakers’ different fluencies are gen-
erally quite varied in their depth and extent. Chapter 4 (The
Emergence and Measurement of Multilingualism) continues
this part of the story by discussing the circumstances in which
multilingualism typically arises and the difficulties that often
emerge when we try to assess its extent among individuals and
societies.
Chapters 5 and 6 deal with the ramifications of
multilingualism. Just as extended language repertoires usually
come about in response to real necessity, so are there obvious
and frequent requirements to transcend language boundaries.
In Chapter 5 (The Consequences of Babel: Lingua Francas),
I discuss the use of bridging varieties. These fall into three
categories: existing ‘natural’ languages that have risen to
prominence because of the socio-political clout of their users;
linguistically simple or restricted varieties – pidgin and creole
languages; and ‘artificial’ languages, purposely constructed
by their makers to be simple, regular and easy to learn. In
Chapter 6 (The Consequences of Babel: Translation), I
turn to the most immediate bridge across linguistic divides:
translation. This has always been an intriguing quantity,
despite its obvious merits and the need that it so clearly fills.
On the one hand, inadequate translations interfere with the
smooth and accurate transition from one language to the next;
on the other, fluent translation has historically been regarded
as a potential quisling, with the potential to carry details of
group narratives, the stories and myths that we tell about
 Prologue xiii

ourselves, to other ears. The contemporary complaint of ‘voice

appropriation’ is relevant here. I also discuss the very real
difficulties inherent in translation exercises per se, suggesting
that every act of translation also involves interpretation and
judgement.
If language in its symbolic and identity-bearing role is
important to the group, it follows that attempts will be made
to protect it and to keep it ‘pure’. Just as translation may carry
secrets across group lines, so were linguistic influences coming
the other way often seen as foreign contaminants. Thus, in
Chapter 7 (Keeping Languages Pure), I discuss purism and
prescriptivism. Under these headings, we observe the efforts
to maintain languages in some mythical pristine state, efforts
that are generally doomed to fail because of their political
and linguistic naïveté, but efforts that are nonetheless of great
psychological and social interest. While linguists themselves
have traditionally shied away from prescriptive interference
in the life of language, leaving the field to amateurs of various
stripes, some contemporary scholars, motivated largely by
the plight of the world’s small languages, have argued for
active intervention. I also point out in this chapter that –
putting aside linguistic activism undertaken for nationalistic
and group-identity purposes – some degree of prescriptive
standardization became necessary with the advent of printing
and literacy. The obvious requirements here account for the
rise of language academies and councils around the world,
as well as the codifying efforts represented in the work of
lexicographers.
Languages and their cultures are dynamic, not static,
entities. As circumstances change over time, it is natural
to expect development and alteration. They are, as well,
constantly in touch with neighbouring varieties: they will
influence some and be influenced by others. In Chapter 8
(Languages and Identities in Transition), I pay attention to
these processes. What are the important features bearing
upon shifts in language usage, upon the maintenance of some
xiv Prologue

varieties and the decline of others? Again, I stress here the

importance of language-as-symbol. If languages were solely
instrumental in nature, it is unlikely that we would see the
emergence of such highly charged language-contact settings.
Accepting that they are much more than mere tools, however,
makes it easy to understand the lengths to which people will
go in such settings. Chapter 9 (Endangered Languages and
the will to Survive) follows up the discussion of language
dynamics with a return to some of the prescriptive and
protective emphases outlined in Chapter€7. I€consider here the
motivation behind language-revival efforts and try to make
two central points. First, the history of such efforts shows
very clearly how difficult (one might really say impossible)
it is to attempt any sort of revival in isolation from the very
social factors that have created the language crisis itself.
Second, the importance of sufficient collective will can hardly
be over-estimated, and so I give some considerable attention
to this matter.
In the final chapter (Linguistic Intervention, and the ‘New’
Ecology of Language), I continue with the theme of support for
flagging languages: why is it seen as so important, and how have
scholars responded to the situation of endangered varieties? The
most recent manifestations of concern here are found under
the heading of the ‘ecology of language’, an endeavour that
styles itself the modern, ‘green’ perspective on understanding
language contact and conflict. I try to show here that, in fact, it
is a very restricted sort of ecology – one essentially motivated
by the desire for the preservation of linguistic diversity and the
protection of small languages. There is, of course, nothing at all
wrong with such a stance, but I argue that it is disingenuous to
present it under the broad heading of ‘ecology’. My discussion
in this chapter is also meant to illustrate some of the internal
flaws and errors in this ‘new’ ecology.
Finally, a short Epilogue draws together the main themes of
this book. Overall, I hope that the treatment provided here will
prove useful for readers seeking an introduction to an area that
 Prologue xv

is of perennial interest and concern, an area that is of particular

relevance at times – like our own – of social change and political
negotiation, an area that reflects and highlights a very powerful
intersection of factual information and social passion.
John Edwards
Nova Scotia, June 2011
 CHAPTER ONE

The Diversity of
Languages

The First Language

In the story of Babel, the divine punishment for human
temerity was the confusion of languages. But, if linguistic
diversity first occurred at this point, what was the original
language, the divine variety? For a very long time, this was
a question of greatest importance, and it generally took the
form of enquiry into the language of Eden. After all, Genesis
tells us that after God had made all the birds and beasts, he
‘brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them:
and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was
the name thereof’. Once, then, there was an original and ideal
language and, unlike all languages since, there was a mystical
but perfect correspondence between words and the things that
they named. The early speculations here are, of course, without
linguistic or historical merit, but they are of considerable
psychological and social interest because they reveal what an
important contribution language has always made to our sense
of who we are. And what could be more important than being
able to show that your language was, in fact, the very first one
(or, at least, a lineal descendant of that ‘Adamic’ variety)? The
2 Multilingualism

implications for group and individual identity, for relations

with other people and for communication – both instrumental
and symbolic – are great. The ‘winner’ here would be able to
claim both linguistic and cultural superiority. The search for
the divine language, then, is the earliest example of something
that remains of considerable importance in€ all discussions
of multilingual contact and conflict, because these almost
always involve bigger and smaller varieties of greater or lesser
social force, languages with which speakers have very close
affiliations and about which they hold very strong opinions.
Debate about the first language persisted for a long time.
Even though Thomas Hobbes pointed out in the seventeenth
century that there was no scriptural evidence for any particular
language and even though (as he added) Adam’s language was
in any event lost at the tower of Babel, enquiries were carried
out throughout the eighteenth century. The general opinion
was that Hebrew was the original language, but many others
were also suggested, including the Celtic languages, Flemish,
Danish, Swedish, Polish, Basque, Hungarian, Breton, German
and Chinese. Claims for these languages were not unrelated,
of course, to political developments and aspirations. Some
assertions were both pointed and amusing. One seventeenth-
century writer argued that God spoke Spanish to Adam, the
Devil spoke Italian and Adam and Eve subsequently apologized
to God in French. Some Persian scholars felt that Adam and
Eve spoke their language, the snake spoke Arabic and Gabriel
spoke Turkish. Even at the time, of course, there were many
who saw how ludicrous things were becoming: one satirist
suggested that God spoke Swedish, Adam spoke Danish and
Eve was seduced by a snake that spoke to her in French.
Another early approach to finding linguistic primacy in a
multilingual world involved experiments with infants. Herodotus
reports that the Egyptian pharaoh, Psamtik, arranged for two babies
to be nurtured without hearing any language. At the age of two, the
infants apparently said becos, a Phrygian word meaning bread. Early
in the thirteenth century, the Holy Roman Emperor attempted a
similar experiment, but without success, for it was found that ‘the
 The Diversity of Languages 3

children could not live without clappings of the hands, and gestures,
and gladness of countenance, and blandishments’. Later on, James
IV of Scotland put two infants with a dumb woman, and ‘some
say they spoke good Hebrew’. All of these attempts were based on
the assumption that, if left uninfluenced, children would somehow
come out with the original language. This rather bizarre idea
went unsupported, of course, not least by the naturally occurring
‘experiments’ provided throughout history by ‘wolf-children’ and
‘bear-children’. None of these feral youngsters were able to speak,
and most efforts to teach them a language were failures. Victor, the
‘wild boy of Aveyron’, discovered in€1799 aged about 11, is the best
known case here.
Putting these ill-considered speculations aside, the question of
language origins remains a puzzle. Was there one original language
(the principle of monogenesis) or did several emerge more or less
simultaneously, in different places (polygenesis)? And, in either
case, just how did language arise? We are obviously on shaky
ground here, so much so that, in€1866, the Linguistic Society of
Paris forbade all further discussions on language origins, on the
grounds that all would be fruitless. Only relatively recently has the
question been given renewed attention. Modern ideas of language
origins are embedded in an evolutionary picture in which the
development of speech had survival value. A very recent theory,
one that is of some particular relevance to group solidarity, holds
that the utility of language was originally linked to social bonding.
Gossip, the banal exchange of social experiences, is seen as a sort
of human ‘mutual grooming’. The most proficient speakers might
have improved their survival chances by being more informed
and more manipulative. The theory is controversial, but the
universality of gossip – which accounts for about 70 per cent of
everyday talk – is indisputable.

Comparing Languages
However, wherever and whenever human language first arose,
the scholarly community is virtually as one in the assertion that
4 Multilingualism

all known varieties are of considerable complexity: there are

no ‘primitive’ languages, none is more ‘logical’ than any other,
no ‘exotic language’ full of sounds unfamiliar to the western
ear should be thought to signal any inherent neurocognitive
variation between the inhabitants of Amazonia and those of
Arizona. It is easy to point to differences – sometimes very
striking differences indeed – across languages, and history
reveals many instances in which particular variations have been
seized upon to make one sort of case or another. Language A has
no words for numbers higher than ten. Speakers of language B
have a colour lexicon that makes no distinction between green
and blue. The vocabulary of language C reveals its speakers’
belief that stones have a vital life force. Would we be right to
assume that the first group is mathematically illiterate, that the
optical rods and cones of second-group members are deficient,
and that the third-community animists are mired in dark-age
ignorance? Possibly, although further reflection might show
that the complex kinship vocabulary of the first group shows
a refinement and nuance far exceeding that found in any
‘developed’ language, that the desert-dwelling members of the
second community have separate words for dozens of subtle
shades of brown – rivalled in western societies only by the
usage of paint manufacturers and interior decorators – and
that those benighted animists have a system of tenses that puts
even classical Greek verbal complexity to shame.
The point here is a simple one: languages develop according
to the needs of their speakers. There are no ‘primitive’ forms,
but, equally, there are few languages that are ‘ over-developed’.
Why have a higher-order number system if there is no necessity
to go beyond something like ‘one, two, three, many’? Why
bother with many shades of green and blue when you live in
the Sahara? And what, in a pre-scientific society that – like all
societies – finds it necessary to understand its surroundings,
could be more reasonable than to explain the mysteries of
nature in essentially spiritual terms when no other explanations
are available? A final point here: we can be certain (because we
have any amount of evidence) that if the living conditions of
 The Diversity of Languages 5

members of groups A, B and C change, their languages will

change, too, in accordance with altered circumstances. Those
desert-dwellers will soon fine-tune their blue-green spectrum
once they’ve struck oil and moved to the south of England.
Words themselves are only indicators. The real meaning
of scholarly assertions about linguistic adequacy is that
language keeps pace with conceptual advancement, which in
turn determines the very needs of which even speakers can be
aware. While there must obviously be a finite lag between new
ideas and new terms, this lag varies inversely with the general
importance of the idea. How long did it take for ‘astronaut’ to
enter common usage? And, even while it was waiting to make
its entrance, there were all sorts of other descriptive terms to
fill the temporary void (‘spaceman’). Description, albeit rough,
is always possible.
Languages are best seen as different systems reflecting
different varieties of the human condition. Although they
may be unequal in complexity at given points, this does not
imply that some have greater overall expressive power. To
put it another way, we could say that not all varieties have
the same capabilities: different social, geographical and other
circumstances determine what elements will be needed and,
therefore, developed. All are, however, potentially functionally
equivalent. Languages differ in lexical, grammatical,
phonological and other ways, but questions of overall linguistic
‘goodness’ are simply wrong-headed.
Different languages interpret and codify the world in
different ways, and a moment’s reflection will surely lead to
the conclusion that the great variation in physical and social
environments, over time and space, would make any other
arrangement nonsensical. To repeat, however, no language
has been found which is inadequate for the current needs of
its users. To the surprise of some, acceptance of this idea has
quite a long history. In the sixteenth century, for instance,
Joachim du Bellay pointed out that ‘all languages are of
a like value … to each man his language can competently
communicate every doctrine’, and he went on to reject the idea
6 Multilingualism

that ‘diverse tongues are fitted to signify diverse conceptions’.

Historically, this may have been a minority view, but it is now
the received scholarly wisdom. The famous linguist, Edward
Sapir, thus observed in€1921 that

the lowliest South African Bushman speaks in the

forms of a rich symbolic system that is in
essence perfectly comparable to the speech of
the cultivated Frenchman … When it comes to linguistic
form, Plato walks with the Macedonian swineherd,
Confucius with the head-hunting savage of Assam.

Sapir’s phrasing here is no longer quite comme il faut, perhaps

– and there is more head-hunting now in corporate jungles than
in those of Assam – but his words are endorsed by all linguists.
That this endorsement is not shared by everyone outside the
academic cloisters is one of the many reasons why a broader
and deeper general awareness of language and languages is
always to be encouraged.

Languages and Language Families

How many languages are there in the world? Which are the
most widespread, and which ones have the greatest number
of speakers? It turns out that these are not easy questions to
answer. In the early twentieth century, the Académie française
identified some 2,800 different languages, and German scholars
argued for about 3,000. A British estimate, however, suggested
that there were 1,500 languages in the world. Contemporary
scholars suggest a much higher figure: perhaps 4,500 languages.
This is variability of a large order, and it obviously reflects a
lack of sufficient linguistic knowledge.
The world may be much smaller now than it once was,
but there are still areas that remain little known. In parts
of Africa, South America and Oceania, for example, the
linguistic jigsaw still lacks some pieces, while having others
 The Diversity of Languages 7

that don’t seem to fit. Consider the island of New Guinea,

for instance: it is perhaps the richest and most complex
linguistic area in the world, and is home to many groups
and languages about which we know very little. It is the
second largest island in the world (after Greenland) –
almost a continent in itself, in fact, although geologically
Australian. The history of human habitation is exceptionally
long: almost 60,000 years. New Guinea is home to many
ecosystems, ranging from mountains to savannas to rain
forests; consequently, the range of biodiversity is immense.
There is equal breadth of human cultural and linguistic
diversity: among a population that may be as high as eight
million, there are perhaps 1,000 language communities. The
size of the island, its challenging terrain, and its complicated
and often troubled history have all contributed to make our
knowledge far from precise. In some areas, indeed, we are
faced with Rumsfeldian ‘known unknowns’: we are aware
that there remain dozens of communities still designated as
‘uncontacted tribal groups’, particularly in the western half
of the island (which is part of Indonesia).
Languages are arranged in families of related varieties, about
which our knowledge is relatively recent. In€1786, Sir William
Jones presented a paper to the Asiatick Society of Bengal,
in which the British orientalist and jurist noted the obvious
relationships among Sanskrit, Greek and Latin. He argued
that the similarities were so pronounced that ‘no philologer
could examine them all three without believing them to have
sprung from some common source which, perhaps, no longer
exists’. Jones proposed the existence of an ‘Indo-European’
family, which would include Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, German
and Celtic languages. The basic idea had been current for
some time, and the term ‘Indo-European’ had been introduced
a generation earlier, but now the insistence on a source variety
linking geographically widespread languages was clearly
stated. An historical approach to language classification, with
its evolutionary tenor, was not novel in the century of Darwin’s
Origin of Species; so, as with the earlier linguistic analogues to
8 Multilingualism

herbals and bestiaries, language families were now viewed as

products and reflections of evolutionary development.
Given the difficulties of accurate linguistic determination
touched upon above, and to be further considered in the
next chapter we can understand that accuracy in placing
languages into families, and even in estimating the number
of such families, is also difficult. The idea of the language
‘family’ is further complicated when we bear in mind the ‘tree’
metaphors that imply one original-language ‘trunk’ (or possibly
a small number of such trunks: recall the note, above, about
monogenesis and polygenesis); perhaps all languages are really
relatives within one great ‘super-family’. If we move upward
and onward from an original trunk, however, it is easy to see
that there is a very great deal of room for later classification:
what one set of scholars might reasonably see as a family of
closely linked branches, another set might consider to be a
number of separate families, or perhaps sub-families. The large
Indo-European family, for instance – all members of which may
descend from an original ‘Proto-Indo-European’ trunk – has a
number of sub-families, among the most important of which
are the Germanic, Celtic, Hellenic and Italic subdivisions.
Estimates of the number of contemporary language families,
then, range widely: perhaps as few as 100, perhaps as many
as 300.
The greatest number of speakers (about 2.5 billion) is found
among the 450 Indo-European languages. The Niger-Congo and
Austronesian families are much smaller (each with about 350
million speakers), but contain much greater language diversity:
there are more than 1,500 languages in the former, and almost
1,300 in the latter. Other important assemblages include the Afro-
Asiatic and Sino-Tibetan families. Drawing on several relevant
sources a decade ago, I suggested an upper estimate of the number
of English speakers (mother-tongue speakers and all others,
considered together) to be about 1,400 million. This figure placed
English ahead of Chinese (with about 1,000 million speakers) and
well ahead of Hindi, in third place with 700 million speakers. My
figure was seen in some quarters to be too high, but later analyses
 The Diversity of Languages 9

have borne it out. David Crystal now puts the figure at about
1,500 million, which ‘suggests that approximately one in four of
the world’s population are now capable of communicating to a
useful level in English’. Actual numbers aside, there can surely be
little disagreement with Crystal’s simple observation that ‘there
has never been a language so widely spread or spoken by so many
people as English.’
For some languages, it has proved impossible to give an
accurate classification: these varieties are known as ‘language
isolates’. This is true for ancient varieties known only because
of references in classical literature: besides the Cappadocian
to which I shall return (below), there are languages such as
Bithynian and Pontic about which we know next to nothing.
Ainu, the language of a group in Japan who are physically
unlike the Japanese themselves, is a modern example of a
variety that won’t quite fit with others, as are the languages of
the Salish and Kootenay peoples of British Columbia. So, too,
is the now-extinct language of the Beothuks in Newfoundland.
This society was ruthlessly slaughtered by Europeans, with the
assistance of Indian mercenaries from the mainland, and the
last speaker died of disease in St John’s in€ 1829. It is ironic
that this tribe should have been the one to prompt the generic
term ‘Red Indian’: when John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto) first
encountered them in the late fifteenth century, he observed and
reported their custom of rubbing themselves with red ochre.
Modern Basque is also an isolate, thought to be a relic of
pre-Indo-European Europe. Like the Ainu, the Basques are
genetically different from their neighbours, and such biological
classification provides data that supplement language-family
assessments and speculations. If the speakers of Basque were
already living in their mountains before those great immigrant
waves from the east arrived, what could be more reasonable
than to expect that they would be both linguistically and
biologically different from their European neighbours? Similar
triangulations between linguistic and genetic scholarship have
reinforced classifications of cultural communities in other
parts of the world too.
 CHAPTER TWO

Interpreting
Language Diversity
We must expand a little upon the lack of knowledge that makes
counting and categorizing languages so difficult. At the most
basic level, we find that language surveys are non-existent or
incomplete in many parts of the world. Even in ‘developed’
societies, language census information is notoriously unreliable
(see also Chapter 4). Sometimes, this means that languages
are ‘missed’ altogether and, sometimes, the scope of known
varieties becomes confused. The Canadian census of 1951
reported 14,000 speakers of Scottish Gaelic, a figure that
dropped to 7,500 a decade later, but then, in€1971, re-emerged
as 21,400. Did Gaelic fade away, only to return half again
stronger than it was 20€ years earlier? The answer is no. For
that 1971 count, all Celtic languages other than Welsh were
lumped in with the Gaelic figures.

Dead or Alive
Insufficient linguistic knowledge often falls into several, quite
specific categories. For instance, if we do not always have
accurate basic information, it follows that we cannot be sure if
12 MULTILINGUALISM

a language continues to be spoken. Languages are vulnerable

to social, political and economic changes affecting their users.
These factors take their greatest toll, of course, among small or
endangered languages and these, in turn, are often the ones we
knew least about to begin with. (I shall return to the problems
of declining languages in Chapters 9 and 10.) Sometimes, we
know more or less exactly about the last speakers of a language.
Dolly Pentreath, reputedly the last speaker of Cornish, died
more than two centuries ago. Ned Maddrell was the last native
speaker of Manx when he died in€1974. In€1985, researchers
found that 82-year-old Tevfik Esenc was the last speaker of
Oubykh (a language of the Caucasus).
A recent and very typical case is that of Marie Smith Jones, who
died in January 2008 at the age of 89. She grew up on the Copper
River delta in€Alaska, and was the last person fluent in Eyak, a
North American language related to the larger Athapaskan family.
Her death, and that of her language, was noted in the media
around the world, with the BBC and the (American) National
Public Radio network providing audio commentaries and The
Economist an excellent written one. All seemed to be galvanized
by this event – the first indigenous Alaskan language to become
extinct in recent times – although the death of vernacular varieties
is hardly uncommon. Michael Krauss, who worked closely with
Mrs Smith Jones and who has interested himself in endangered
languages generally (see below), has suggested that, on average, a
language is ‘lost’ every fortnight.
Eyak once flourished in southern Alaska, but rapidly lost
ground in the twentieth century, coming to be spoken only
in Eyak itself, a village now part of the town of Cordova. A
commonly reported pattern in the settings of language decline
involves a big language (like English) gradually ousting a
smaller one (like Eyak). In many instances, however, this
pattern is too simplistic. When Angela Sidney died, in€1991, she
was considered to have been the last fluent speaker of Tagish;
however, before Tagish had really begun to shrink under
pressure from English, it had already been threatened, largely
through trade and inter-marriage, by Tlingit. The same Tlingit
David

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