The Attractions of a Single Language

1. There are many examples throughout history of how western thinking considers linguistic diversity to be dangerous and divisive, including the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, which represents linguistic diversity as God's punishment for disobedience and presumption. This attitude has dominated Western thinking for centuries, and as a result many people believe that a multiplicity of languages is undesirable.

2. On the other hand, it can be argued that linguistic diversity should not be seen as a problem but as an essential resource and that there is an urgent need to reverse policies and practices that currently threaten thousands of small languages. Unless this is done, the chance to learn from the cumulative insights, successes and errors of a large proportion of the human species will be lost forever.

The attractions of a single language

3. There have been many attempts to replace the diversity of human languages with a single language. This goal was vigorously pursued by the philosophers of the European Enlightenment and, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, by the supporters of artificial languages such as Volapuk and Esperanto, which attracted millions of followers around the globe. Many Esperantists hoped not only that Esperanto would one day become a universal auxiliary language, but that at a later stage it would be the world's only language.

4. The idea of the modern nation-state also provides a powerful inspiration for those who are committed to reducing linguistic diversity: a common language is often seen as a necessary binding ingredient for new nations. Only 200 years ago, French was not the mother tongue of the majority of people born in France, whereas today, non-French-speakers living in France belong to a small and shrinking minority. What happened in Western Europe in the past is being repeated in states such as Indonesia, where Bahasa Indonesia developed from being a small auxiliary language into the country's main language and will soon be the mother tongue of more Indonesians than any other language.

5. It would be no exaggeration to say that the choice of a single national language is often regarded as a precondition for all modernisation. No matter what language is chosen - an introduced language such as English, French, Mandarin, or Russian, or a newly developed language such as Filipino - a basic requirement is that it should be fully inter-translatable, that is, capable of expressing the concepts and distinctions that are needed in the modern world. But the need for inter-translatable languages has an unfortunate side effect - the destruction of small languages as outmoded and irrelevant.