My friend's remark, however, set me thinking and watching what are really the languages now gaining and spreading over the civilised world; it set me speculating what will be the outcome of this gain and spread in another half century. And the results are these: Vastly the most growing and absorbing of all languages at the present moment is the English, which is almost everywhere swallowing up the overflow10 of German, Scandinavian, Dutch, and Russian. Next to it, probably, in point of vitality11, comes Spanish, which is swallowing up the overflow of French, Italian, and the other Latin races. Third, perhaps, ranks Russian, destined to become in time the spoken tongue of a vast tract13 in Northern and Central Asia. Among non-European languages, three seem to be gaining fast: Chinese, Malay, Arabic. Of the doomed14 tongues, on the other hand, the most hopeless is French, which is losing all round; while Italian, German, and Dutch are either quite at a standstill or slightly retrograding. The world is now round. By the middle of the twentieth century, in all probability, English will be its dominant15 speech; and the English-speaking peoples, a heterogeneous16 conglomerate17 of all nationalities, will control between them the destinies of mankind. Spanish will be the language of half the populous18 southern hemisphere. Russian will spread over a moiety19 of Asia. Chinese, Malay, Arabic, will divide among themselves the less civilised parts of Africa and the East. But French, German, and Italian will be insignificant20 and dwindling21 European dialects, as numerically unimportant as Flemish or Danish in our own day.
And why? Not because Shakespeare wrote in English, but because the English language has already got a firm hold of all those portions of the earth's surface which are most absorbing the overflow of European populations. Germans and Scandinavians and Russians emigrate by the thousand now to all parts of the United States and the north-west of Canada. In the first generation they may still retain their ancestral speech; but their children have all to learn English. In Australia and New Zealand the same thing is happening. In South Africa Dutch had got a footing, it is true; but it is fast losing it. The newcomers learn English, and though the elder Boers stick with Boer conservatism to their native tongue, young Piet and young Paul find it pays them better to know and speak the language of commerce—the language of Cape22 Town, of Kimberley, of the future. The reason is the same throughout. Whenever two tongues come to be spoken in the same area one of them is sure to be more useful in business than the other. Every French-Canadian who wishes to do things on a large scale is obliged to speak English. So is the Creole in Louisiana; so earlier were the Knickerbocker Dutch in New York. Once let English get in, and it beats all competing languages fairly out of the field in a couple of generations.
Like influences favour Spanish in South America and elsewhere. English has annexed23 most of North America, Australia, South Africa, the Pacific; Spanish has annexed South America, Central America, the Philippines, Cuba, and a few other places. For the most part these areas are less suited than the English-speaking districts for colonisation by North Europeans; but they absorb a large number of Italians and other Mediterranean24 races, who all learn Spanish in the second generation. As to the other dominant languages, the points in their favour are different. Conquest and administrative25 needs are spreading Russian over the steppes of Asia; the Arab merchant and the growth of Mahommedanism are importing Arabic far into the heart of Africa; the Chinaman is carrying his own monosyllables with him to California, Australia, Singapore. These tongues in future will divide the world between them.
The German who leaves Germany becomes an Anglo-American. The Italian who leaves Italy becomes a Spanish-American.
There is another and still more striking way of looking at the rapid increase of English. No other language will carry you through so many ports in the world. It suffices for London, Liverpool, Glasgow, Belfast, Southampton, Cardiff; for New York, Boston, Montreal, Charleston, New Orleans, San Francisco; for Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Hong Kong, Yokohama, Honolulu; for Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Kurrachi, Singapore, Colombo, Cape Town, Mauritius. Spanish with Cadiz, Barcelona, Havana, Callao, Valparaiso, cannot touch that record; nor can French with Marseilles, Bordeaux, Havre, Algiers, Antwerp, Tahiti. The most commercially useful language in the world, thus widely diffused26 in so many great mercantile and shipping27 centres, is certain to win in the struggle for existence among the tongues of the future.
The old Mediterranean civilisation28 teaches us a useful lesson in this respect. Two languages dominated the Mediterranean basin. The East spoke12 Greek, not because Plato and ?schylus spoke Greek, but because Greek was the tongue of the great commercial centres—of Athens, Syracuse, Alexandria, Antioch, Byzantium. The West spoke Latin, not because Catullus and Virgil spoke Latin, but because Latin was the administrative tongue, the tongue of Rome, of Italy, and later of Gaul, of Spain, of the great towns in Dacia, Pannonia, Britain. Whoever wanted to do anything on the big scale then, had to speak Greek or Latin; so much so that the native languages of Gaul and Spain died utterly29 out, and Latin dialects are now the spoken tongue in all southern Europe. In our own time, again, educated Hindoos from different parts of India have to use English as a means of intercommunication; and native merchants must write their business correspondence with distant houses in English. To put an extreme contrast: in the last century French was spoken by far more people than English; at the present day French is only just keeping up its numbers in France, is losing in Canada and the United States, is not advancing to any extent in Africa. English is spoken by a hundred million people in Europe and America; is over-running Africa; has annexed Australasia and the Pacific Isles30; has ousted31, or is ousting32, Dutch at the Cape, French in Louisiana, even Spanish itself in Florida, California, New Mexico. In Egyptian mud villages, the aspiring33 Copt, who once learnt French, now learns English. In Scandinavia, our tongue gains ground daily. Everywhere in the world it takes the lead among the European languages, and by the middle of the next century will no doubt be spoken over half the globe by a cosmopolitan34 mass of five hundred million people.
And all on purely Darwinian principles! It is the best adapted tongue, and therefore it survives in the struggle for existence. It is the easiest to learn, at least orally. It has got rid of the effete35 rubbish of genders36; simplified immensely its declensions and conjugations; thrown overboard most of the nonsensical ballast we know as grammar. It is only weighted now by its grotesque37 and ridiculous spelling—one of the absurdest among all the absurd English attempts at compromise. The pressure of the newer speakers will compel it to make jetsam of that lumber38 also; and then the tongue of Shelley and Newton will march onward39 unopposed to the conquest of humanity.
I pen these remarks, I hope, "without prejudice." Patriotism40 is a vulgar vice41 of which I have never been guilty.
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1 distinguished | |
adj.卓越的,杰出的,著名的 | |
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2 destined | |
adj.命中注定的;(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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3 inquiry | |
n.打听,询问,调查,查问 | |
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4 justified | |
a.正当的,有理的 | |
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5 purely | |
adv.纯粹地,完全地 | |
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6 sentimental | |
adj.多愁善感的,感伤的 | |
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7 decided | |
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的 | |
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8 mere | |
adj.纯粹的;仅仅,只不过 | |
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9 barometer | |
n.气压表,睛雨表,反应指标 | |
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10 overflow | |
v.(使)外溢,(使)溢出;溢出,流出,漫出 | |
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11 vitality | |
n.活力,生命力,效力 | |
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12 spoke | |
n.(车轮的)辐条;轮辐;破坏某人的计划;阻挠某人的行动 v.讲,谈(speak的过去式);说;演说;从某种观点来说 | |
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13 tract | |
n.传单,小册子,大片(土地或森林) | |
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14 doomed | |
命定的 | |
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15 dominant | |
adj.支配的,统治的;占优势的;显性的;n.主因,要素,主要的人(或物);显性基因 | |
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16 heterogeneous | |
adj.庞杂的;异类的 | |
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17 conglomerate | |
n.综合商社,多元化集团公司 | |
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18 populous | |
adj.人口稠密的,人口众多的 | |
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19 moiety | |
n.一半;部分 | |
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20 insignificant | |
adj.无关紧要的,可忽略的,无意义的 | |
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21 dwindling | |
adj.逐渐减少的v.逐渐变少或变小( dwindle的现在分词 ) | |
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22 cape | |
n.海角,岬;披肩,短披风 | |
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23 annexed | |
[法] 附加的,附属的 | |
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24 Mediterranean | |
adj.地中海的;地中海沿岸的 | |
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25 administrative | |
adj.行政的,管理的 | |
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26 diffused | |
散布的,普及的,扩散的 | |
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27 shipping | |
n.船运(发货,运输,乘船) | |
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28 civilisation | |
n.文明,文化,开化,教化 | |
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29 utterly | |
adv.完全地,绝对地 | |
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30 isles | |
岛( isle的名词复数 ) | |
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31 ousted | |
驱逐( oust的过去式和过去分词 ); 革职; 罢黜; 剥夺 | |
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32 ousting | |
驱逐( oust的现在分词 ); 革职; 罢黜; 剥夺 | |
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33 aspiring | |
adj.有志气的;有抱负的;高耸的v.渴望;追求 | |
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34 cosmopolitan | |
adj.世界性的,全世界的,四海为家的,全球的 | |
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35 effete | |
adj.无生产力的,虚弱的 | |
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36 genders | |
n.性某些语言的(阳性、阴性和中性,不同的性有不同的词尾等)( gender的名词复数 );性别;某些语言的(名词、代词和形容词)性的区分 | |
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37 grotesque | |
adj.怪诞的,丑陋的;n.怪诞的图案,怪人(物) | |
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38 lumber | |
n.木材,木料;v.以破旧东西堆满;伐木;笨重移动 | |
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39 onward | |
adj.向前的,前进的;adv.向前,前进,在先 | |
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40 patriotism | |
n.爱国精神,爱国心,爱国主义 | |
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41 vice | |
n.坏事;恶习;[pl.]台钳,老虎钳;adj.副的 | |
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