RE AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE

HISTORY

Once upon a time, when the world was a good deal younger, the first humans' few expressive grunts obviously had little possibility for variety.  Thus, it can be safely said that, in those early days, the whole human race more or less spoke the same language.  (n.b., According to a study by Dr. Quentin Atkinson of the University of Aukland, New Zealand,--by means of sorting the phenomes [basic vowels, consonants, and tonal sounds] within the 504 modern languages that currently exist in our world,--the world's six thousand-plus languages appear to all be descended from a single ancestral tongue developed in the southern part of Africa between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago.)  This purported unity of tongue apparently subsequently split up and developed into a very numerous quantity of idioms, as the various hunting and gathering tribes expanded and went their respective ways, eventually often not even aware of each other's existence.  Then, at about 8000 B.C., groups of these formerly highly mobile bands began to combine in their pursuit of new, more sedentary, agricultural endeavors.  These early unifications gave birth to the gradual merging of numbers of neighboring idioms into families of languages.

These early clusters of people, though fewer in quantity, continued to be largely isolated from each other.  Thus, an abundance of individual languages continued to exist and to develop.

Today, as we all know, isolation has become a thing of the past.  Homogenization of our global economy has fostered what has been referred to as a "monoculture," wherein customs, procedures, and even languages, have tended to necessarily merge with and into one another.

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Another major step in the progression of language was the leap from utilization of the hieroglyphic and cuneiform types of script to the alphabetic method.  This development transported literacy from the realm of a few specially trained "professionals" to anyone who could become familiar with and proficient in the use of twenty or thirty characters called "letters." 

As time went on, progress toward unity of language, both oral and written, came to share in the development of civilizations and cultures.  An early example is seen in ancient Greece.  There, Dorians, Ionians, and Aeolians spoke a common language, which helped them to build and share a common society.  The same can be said of the subsequent Roman ascendancy, wherein Latin became the spoken language from one end of the Empire to the other.

The emergence of national languages was said to be a natural accompaniment to the emergence of national states and its consequent birth of nationalism.  As groups of people came to unify, and to acknowledge their common brotherhood as members of a particular nation-state, and a consequent duty of loyalty and obedience to a single central monarch, they adopted and resorted to a single national tongue as their means of common communication and mutual self-identification.

Steps toward greater unity in language were urged as early as the seventeenth century by Comenius, a renowned educator of that era.  His proposal called for the adoption of but two or three international languages throughout Europe:  Russian in the East; French and English in the West.  He further asserted that inclusion of lessons in an international language in our children's educations would eventually help to cure international ills.

French had actually been in flower as early as the thirteenth century; and it was frequently lauded as "the most beautiful language in the world."  In fact, French did become the "lingua franca" among many Europeans of intellect during the Enlightenment.  It also became known as the "language of diplomats," being used almost exclusively as the language for international negotiations and other such communication from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries.  An example could have been observed at the Congress of Vienna, following the Napoleonic wars, during the early part of the nineteenth century.  At these meetings, French constituted the sole official language.  Subsequently however, during the conferences held at Versailles at the end of World War I, the badge of "official language" was jointly worn by English as well as French.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, this necessity for unity of language came to be shared among men of science as well.  Researchers and technical people suggested that progress in the various fields required unification and coordination which could best be achieved via the medium of a single language.

In recent times, the role of language as a means of reaffirming the unity of a group of persons who came together from various parts of the world, to settle in a particular place having historical significance to them, has been demonstrated in the adoption of Hebrew as the official language of the State of Israel.  Formerly a "dead" language, found only in scripture, it has now become the mother tongue of over three and a half million Israeli citizens.

 Today, many people living in places where there was no national native tongue usually speak English, French, or Russian.  In a sense, these have thus become "international languages."

During proceedings at the United Nations, unity of language is in evidence to the extant that only six languages are spoken during proceedings:  Arabic, Chinese English, French, Russian, and Spanish.

Our ongoing trend toward unity in language is further corroborated by an opposite phenomenon:  the disappearance of a number of languages spoken in more remote places by small numbers of people.  The last speaker of Manx died on the Isle of Man in 1974; the last speaker of Ubykh in Turkey in 1992; the last speaker of Catawba in Carolina in 1996.  We are told that, in Alaska, there was but one speaker of Eyak left--until her death in 2008, at the age of ninety.  And in southern Chile, there remain but twenty speakers of Kawesqar.

In fact, in this connection, linguists advise that there are currently at least 438 languages upon our globe having less than fifty speakers remaining.  Moreover, these experts predict that many more languages than these 438 are endangered (having declining quantities of speakers among the young); will soon become moribund (wherein there will remain only a declining number of elderly speakers); and finally dead (whereupon the last known speaker will pass away).  They estimate that, by natural events alone, more than half of the world's current six thousand-plus languages will have become extinct by the end of the twenty first century.

While it is sad to witness the passing of any person, living creature, or non-harmful thing, it is, in this connection, a probable blessing in disguise.  For as the world becomes more unified and standardized in virtually every aspect of business and economics, and in numerous other ways "smaller" each day, it becomes self-evident that the means of communication among us should likewise be unified and standardized.  In days gone by, when most people rarely traveled or did business beyond their immediate environs, a local idiom sufficed.  But this is no longer the case.  It thus becomes more necessary each day for all of us to be able to communicate with and understand each other clearly and easily.  This translates into an eventual need for mankind to adopt or devise a common language for use throughout the world.

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