Is English a language? Do “languages” actually exist outside of being political tools?
A language is a dialect with an army and navy
– Max Weinreich
While, to most people, the phrase “English is a language” seems quite straightforward and obvious, it is not as clear as it may appear at first. The claim that English is a language depends on both the definition of “a language” and the definition of English itself. Most people would probably broadly define a language as a vocabulary of words and a rule-set to govern them, which is accepted, spoken and written by at least several people, and which is significantly different to other tongues. However, even within this very basic definition, there are problems.
To begin with, the vocabulary of one language may cross over with another, yet both are accepted as separate languages. Norwegian, Danish and Swedish, languages which are almost entirely mutually intelligible, are regarded as being separate. English itself contains so many loan-words and borrowings that certain elements may be mutually intelligible by speakers of other languages; for example, in the Angeln area of northern Germany, it is not uncommon to hear people reamarking “die veather ist cold” and enquiring “what ist die clock?” when they wish to know the time; the dialect of German spoken there is not dissimilar to Old English (Bryson, 1990, 38). Additionally, it is difficult to know at what point someone is really “speaking English”. A Frenchman can fairly confidently travel all around France, and to former French colonies in Africa, and expect to understand the majority of speakers. In India, where English is an official language, many people believe they are speaking the English language. If the Indian variety and the variety spoken in, for example, Edinburgh, are often completely unintelligible, which is the “true” English? This is just one of the difficulties concerning the classification of English as a language.
It may be preferable to refer to Norwegian, Danish and Swedish as dialects of Scandinavian; however, this is unlikely to happen, because language is used as a tool of identity. In places such as Denmark, where the language is not widely spoken outside that country, it is a question of national pride and identity. In replying to a survey questionnaire, one Norwegian wrote: “Danish is not a language, but a throat disease”. Janet Holmes notes that the results of the survey placed Swedish as the “best” language and Danish as the “worst”; however, she believes this simply reflected the political mood of the time, when Sweden was politically most powerful, while Denmark, “the former ruling power” was at a low (Holmes, 1992, 345). This exposes the fact that “language” and “dialect” are often little more than socio-political phenomena. Similarly, those in countries where English is not prevalent - such as Japan - or where English is the language of authority, such as India, wish to be seen to be speaking and writing “English”, not simply their local variety. English, largely due to the United States, is seen internationally as the language of business, success and prosperity, and therefore the perception that someone can speak English - regardless of whether they speak “standard” English, or something completely different - carries a degree of “higher” status.
Furthermore, identity can define a language where a group wishes to retain its own identity against an incoming threat - for example, Breton and Welsh - two non-national languages - are mutually intelligible, yet are widely held to be two separate languages (Bryson, 1990, 36). Wardhaugh notes that “a demand for “language rights” is often one of the first demands made by a discontented minority anywhere in the world” (Wardhaugh, 1986, 336). Since, by the original definition, English would be a language spoken by people in much of Britain, Ireland, America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, India, and even the Netherlands, it is difficult for the single language “English” to act as an element of any national identity. It has already been successfully put to a European Union commission that Scots is a valid and distinct language, and not simply a variety of English. It is difficult to argue that American English is simply a dialect, when it has far more speakers than British “standard” English; indeed, the term “dialect” is itself very vague. Some sociolinguists have questioned whether language and dialect exist at all. If two speakers of English from two different areas of Britain are conversing, they will veer more towards what we know as Standard English, whilst two speakers from the same geographic region may speak using their local ‘dialect’. The fact that a Cockney speaker from London may be completely unintelligible to an American speaker while a Dane and a Swede may speak without hindrance is a rather serious argument against the classification of English as a single language. Indeed, in Illinois the official language is American and not English. American English differs so significantly from British English that some interesting examples of “translation” have occurred. Early American Westerns in the 1940s and 50s were brought to the British public with subtitles. More recently, the popular “Harry Potter” series has been translated into separate British and American editions -to the extent that the titles differed (The Philosopher’s Stone in the UK and The Sorcerer’s Stone in the USA). Mostly, this translation alters spelling to match the local variety (for example, “moustache” in the UK and “mustache” in the USA), but - more controversially - some changes were made to adjust to local social norms. This might be expected when translating between two “different languages” such as English and Japanese, yet American and British English are not seen by most as separate languages. Fortunately, perhaps, the emergence of transatlantic mass media means that worldwide varieties of English are unlikely to diverge much further than they already are, and will rather be guided by the dominant American and British varieties. As Bryson notes, it is more likely not “that the various strands will drift apart, but that they will become indistinguishable” (Bryson, 1990, 244).
Furthermore, the grammar of English speakers is by no means fixed. We use the fact that different regional and social groups use different variations on the “standard” grammar to assess the social status of people every day, however subconsciously (Trudgill, 1974, 34). For example, while in “standard” English, multiple negation is unacceptable, most people would not have a problem understanding a person who claimed “I never did nothing” as meaning that they “did not do anything”, and not that they “did do something”. It is therefore difficult to claim that English truly exists as a language in anything but a highly abstract form, since every person speaks their own variety based on their social group, the region where their idiolect was formed, the region where they now live, the audience at whom their speech is directed, and a wide variety of other environmental and social factors. The only true defence of a standard English may be in written English, where dialect is normally ignored and only a very small amount of variation occurs. However, even this can be questioned. Poets, such as Linton Kwesi Johnson, use dialect in their work to place particular emphasis on class and race. For example, when Johnson writes “dis is di age af science an teknalagy”, he emphasises his Jamaican dialect of English through the very deliberate phonetic spelling.
It is therefore very difficult to classify English as a true single language, because so many separate and very different varieties now exist. Different dialects of English employ different words, phrases and constructs, showing that one person’s particular version of English is used to identify them socially and geographically. The term “language” is more socio-political than linguistic, as can be seen by the fact that we term Danish and Swedish as “languages” but American English and British English as “dialects”. It could perhaps be said, then, that English stopped being a true language when the first English people left the British Isles and settled elsewhere, beginning a process of separate language development while still referring to it as “English”.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Bryson, Bill, Mother Tongue: The English Language, London: Penguin, 1990
Trudgill, Peter, Sociolinguistics: An Introduction, London: Penguin, 1974
Holmes, Janet, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, London: Longman, 1992
Wardhaugh, Ronald, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, Oxford: Blackwell, 1986
Johnson, L. K., Mi Revalueshanary Fren: Selected Poems, London: Penguin, 2002, found in an extract in New Humanist magazine, Volume 118, Issue 1.
Rowling, J. K., Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, London: Bloomsbury, 1997
Rowling, J. K., Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, New York: Scholastic, 1998