Response to Easterbrook's article
Cleaning out my old mailfiles, I found this letter I wrote to TNR online in February 2005... it feels like a waste not to post it somewhere, even though it's 18 months old -- it's not like anything has changed on this issue. Anyway, here it is.
There are a few truths in Gregg Easterbook's online column ( "Word Perfect", 2005-2-21). Certainly people, as a practical matter, should be able to learn languages that will enable them to prosper in the world; and if people wish to preserve their own smaller languages, they will have to pursue bilingualism and do it largely with their own resources.
But it is indecent to suppose that, as smaller languages die out it's
all for the good.
When Easterbrook says "People who romanticize indigenous languages usually, themselves, achieved comfortable positions in life by speaking and writing one of the top ten tongues and by living in a society that has single-language cohesion." -- how does he know? It's probably true that they speak and write one of the top ten tongues -- but wouldn't that be true of most everyone on both sides of this debate? And haven't the people who trivialize the death of languages usually, themselves, achieved their comfortable positions in much the same way? Yes, for them, it is a "small price to pay for improved communication for everybody."
Easterbrook also says that cultures can survive the death of a
language, and that he wouldn't mind if English were to die out, so
long as some other tongue became a global standard. It's a safe thing
to say, I suppose, and I hope his language lessons are going well. But
would he really think that the culture of Shakespeare, and the King
James Bible -- or Lewis Carroll, for that matter -- would "live on" in
a recognizable sense if the few people left capable of reading the
original were scholars whose native tongue was Mandarin?
While walking in the stacks of a university library, a few weeks ago, I happened to pass through an aisle of Yiddish books; I know enough to distinguish them from the Hebrew books, and I could even translate one title that caught my eye, written in large, jagged letters: "Hear my cry!" It was probably a Holocaust book, judging from the artwork. I pulled it off the shelf -- it seemed that no one had done so in many
years. But the pages were largely a mystery to me beyond a pronoun and cognate here and there. It's a cry my grandparents could hear, but I can't.
There are a few truths in Gregg Easterbook's online column ( "Word Perfect", 2005-2-21). Certainly people, as a practical matter, should be able to learn languages that will enable them to prosper in the world; and if people wish to preserve their own smaller languages, they will have to pursue bilingualism and do it largely with their own resources.
But it is indecent to suppose that, as smaller languages die out it's
all for the good.
When Easterbrook says "People who romanticize indigenous languages usually, themselves, achieved comfortable positions in life by speaking and writing one of the top ten tongues and by living in a society that has single-language cohesion." -- how does he know? It's probably true that they speak and write one of the top ten tongues -- but wouldn't that be true of most everyone on both sides of this debate? And haven't the people who trivialize the death of languages usually, themselves, achieved their comfortable positions in much the same way? Yes, for them, it is a "small price to pay for improved communication for everybody."
Easterbrook also says that cultures can survive the death of a
language, and that he wouldn't mind if English were to die out, so
long as some other tongue became a global standard. It's a safe thing
to say, I suppose, and I hope his language lessons are going well. But
would he really think that the culture of Shakespeare, and the King
James Bible -- or Lewis Carroll, for that matter -- would "live on" in
a recognizable sense if the few people left capable of reading the
original were scholars whose native tongue was Mandarin?
While walking in the stacks of a university library, a few weeks ago, I happened to pass through an aisle of Yiddish books; I know enough to distinguish them from the Hebrew books, and I could even translate one title that caught my eye, written in large, jagged letters: "Hear my cry!" It was probably a Holocaust book, judging from the artwork. I pulled it off the shelf -- it seemed that no one had done so in many
years. But the pages were largely a mystery to me beyond a pronoun and cognate here and there. It's a cry my grandparents could hear, but I can't.
posted by Ted at 11:30 AM
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