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Images of
English
, has compiled a number of comments from contemporary
4
Hume (1767).
5
Adams (1780).
6
Grimm (1851).
74
Why English? The cultural foundation
writers which show just how the mood had changed by the 1850s.
One quotation will suffice to illustrate the prevailing opinion –
from a writer in 1829:
7
It is evident to all those who have devoted any portion of attention to the
subject, that the English language would, if proper care were devoted
to its advancement, stand an excellent chance of becoming more univer-
sally diffused, read, and spoken, than any other now is, or ever has been.
In Europe, the study of it seems to be gradually spreading. In Germany,
Russia, and Scandinavia it is esteemed an essential, in France a highly use-
ful, branch of education; in Africa it is gradually superseding the Dutch,
and becoming the medium of valuable information. In Australasia it is
not only widely spoken, as the only European language known on that
vast continent, but written and printed in an almost incredible number of
newspapers, magazines, and reviews. In Asia so great is the desire man-
ifested to learn it, that it was thought by Bishop Heber, that, if proper
facilities were afforded, it would, in fifty years, supersede Hindoostanee,
and become the court and camp language of India. In America, millions
already speak, write, and read it, as their mother tongue . . . Never before
did a language look forward to so bright a prospect as this . . .
And indeed, by the end of the century, as we have seen in
chapter 1, English had become the language ‘on which the sun
never sets’.
Then, as today, some enthusiasts were moved to speculate about
the world’s linguistic future in ways which can best be described as
fantasy. About 60 million people were speaking English around
the world as a mother tongue by the 1850s – a remarkable in-
crease indeed – but this led many writers to become very excited
about the language’s prospects. By the turn of the century, some
calculated, there would surely be at least three times as many.
And, others were predicting in the 1870s, after a further century
the grand total of mother-tongue speakers would almost certainly
reach 1,000 million – at least! Here is the editor of
The Phonetic
Journal
(Isaac Pitman) writing about the future of English.
8
He
7
Corruptions of the English language.
Gentleman’s Magazine
99 (Febru-
ary), 121–3. In Bailey (1991: 107).
8
Pitman (1873: 289).
75
ENGLISH AS A GLOBAL LANGUAGE
observes that the contemporary users of English number nearly 80
million, then uses formulae on population projections in various
countries to reach the following conclusion:
We may estimate on this basis that in the year 2000 the most important
languages will be spoken by the number of persons as under:
Italian
53,370,000
French
72,571,000
Russian
130,479,800
German
157,480,000
Spanish
505,286,242
English
Europe
178,846,153
United States and non-European
1,837,286,53
British dependencies
1,658,440,000
Such predictions were very wide of the mark, as we have seen
in chapter 2. Even the most optimistic of estimates for mother-
tongue usage in the 1990s hardly exceeded 450 million. The late
nineteenth-century writers were making assumptions which were
soon to prove false – that empire-building would continue at
the same rate, that British industrial supremacy would be main-
tained, and that those who spoke minority languages would not
fight back. Predicting the linguistic future is always a dangerous
activity.
But the general thrust of their argument was certainly borne
out, and if we include second and foreign language usage of
English in the 1990s, then the prophets were more right than
wrong. ‘English is the language of the future’, wrote William
White in the weekly
The Schoolmaster
in 1872,
9
and Pitman con-
cludes his calculations with exactly the same words. These are two
out of hundreds of quotations it is possible to find in the literature
of the time making this point. I have not found a single quotation
to suggest that a different view was held by anyone.
9
White (1872).
76
Why English? The cultural foundation
These observations reinforce the historical account given in
chapter 2, illustrating the remarkably short period of time it took
for English to travel around the world. But they do not give the
whole story. After all, when a language arrives in a new country, it
does not necessarily come to be adopted. It has to prove its worth.
And there are famous occasions where the language of the new-
comers does
not
end up replacing the language of the inhabitants –
the most famous instance, in fact, relating to English itself, in
1066. Within 200 years of the Norman Conquest, the language
of England was emerging, in the earliest Middle English literature,
as – English, not French. There was no linguistic conquest. Per-
haps, if the Normans had taken up residence in larger numbers, or
if good political relations between England and France had lasted
longer, or if English had not already been so well established since
Anglo-Saxon times, the outcome might have been different. This
book would then, in all probability, have been written about (and
in) World French.
So what was the worth of the English language, as it grew
in global stature during the nineteenth century? In which ways
did people value it? In which ways have they since come to use
it? In which situations do they now depend on it? The answers
to these questions will give us a sense of the language’s social
usefulness, which is actually more informative, in addressing the
question ‘Why World English?’ than any bare historical account of
the language’s geographical spread (such as the one provided in
chapter 2). A geo-historical survey can help us see what happened
in the past; but a socio-historical account is needed to help us
explain it; and only a cultural account can give us a sense of what
is likely to happen in the future.
The remainder of this chapter therefore reviews some impor-
tant factors in nineteenth-century social history which laid the
cultural foundation for the eventual growth of English as a world
language. Then in chapter 4 I shall examine the various cultural
manifestations of this development during the twentieth century
which will explain the stature of the language today. We shall en-
counter a series of variations on a single theme. In relation to so
many of the major socio-cultural developments of the past 200
years, it can be shown that the English language has repeatedly
77
ENGLISH AS A GLOBAL LANGUAGE
found itself ‘in the right place at the right time’.
10
No single one
of these developments could have established the language as a
world leader, but together they have put it in a position of pre-
eminence, and together they maintain it.
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