A Global, Community Building Language?

ABSTRACT

Although long championed, a global language has not come to fruition despite considerable efforts. Many fear that such a language would undermine the particularistic, identity-constituting primary languages of local and national communities. These concerns can be addressed at least in part by utilizing a two-tiered approach in which efforts to protect primary languages are intensified at the same time that a global language is adopted as an additional language and not as a substitutive one. Although the U.N. or some other such global organization could, theoretically, choose a language to serve as the global language, English is already (and increasingly) occupying this position as a result of the colonial period and post-colonial developments. In this respect, English is compared to the development of the railroad system in the United States, which although introduced at considerable human costs by overpowering corporations, later became an integral part of the economy and society. Whether English should be adopted as a second language, or as a third or fourth one, is heavily influenced by the level of difficulty involved—the labor to fluency ratio—in acquiring a new language.