Three times more
speakers of the Chinese language inhabit the world than native English
speakers. Yet through a combination of clever planning and happenstance,
English is the lingua franca of the business cognoscenti. But linguistic
hegemony won’t last long for monolingual British and American managers. The center
of gravity of the language of business will shift from English to Chinese and
Spanish – perhaps even Hindi -- with heavy English influences. Are you as an
international manager prepared for the change?
Barbara Walraff
wrote in her article “What Global
Language?” that “English is not sweeping all before it, not even in the
United States.” She cites that “ever-wider swaths of Florida, California and
the Southwest are heavily Spanish speaking … Hispanic people make up 30% of New
York City,” with television stations that have viewer-ships that outstrip
English-only network affiliates. She goes on to make the point that during the
1980’s the number of speakers of Chinese grew by 98%, with … “four out of five
preferring to speak Chinese at home.”
The interests of
immigrants around the world are different now from what they were a hundred
years ago: immigrants want to maintain their ethnic and cultural identities, especially
their languages. Immigrants from Asia, Latin America and from North Africa do
have a strong sense to succeed in their adopted homelands; but the sense is
just as strong for them to honor their cultural and linguistic roots. They want
enough of what the West offers by way of “economies of scale” to make life
materially satisfying; however, fewer are willing to eschew their language to
obtain the prize. The emergence now of super-ghettos that withstand the typical
immigrant cycle to absorption into the mainstream is creating vast enclaves
within Western domains in which residents don’t require English to succeed
materially. This standing wave of stubborn ethnicity now includes younger
generations of immigrants, people born on Western, post-industrial shores.
Just as many
English words have crept into the vocabularies of dominant immigrant populations
(el clutch in Spanish; hen cool! – very cool! – in Chinese), the
transfusion is also working the other way. Native English speakers will have to
adapt to words and syntaxes that leap over cultural barriers into the English
language (fin de siecle, au naturel, aficionado). And
compared to languages such as Chinese and Hindi, English is still a rather
young and impressionable language. English will absorb more than just the odd
word here and there; it’s very grammar structures will change, and the
reverberations will sound throughout the English-speaking world, native and
non-native alike. For example, on one English-speaking web-site for citizens of
India, the author was met on the home page with a large billboard ad for phone
cards that had one elderly man effusing, “I am using this service for last many
years!”
Ultimately, the
center of linguistic gravity in the world is shifting because the number of
native English speakers in the industrialized world is actually decreasing.
John Derby writes in his article “The Future of English: A mighty language and
its prospects, ” that by the end of the century “…those peoples that speak English as their first language will still do
so, but their numbers will be slipping below 5 percent of the human race,” down
from 9.8 percent in 1958. The reason for the decline is two-fold: fewer people
in the West are having babies; and more people in developing countries are
continuing to have larger families than in the West.
The international
manager whose native language is English can meet the changing complexion of
the language by engaging immigrants and foreign nationals from developing
countries. Ask questions about the use of the English language in those
countries, and listen intently to the way they use the language. Tune in
occasionally to television stations that support Spanish-language, Chinese, Hindi
or even Arab programming.
For each of the new
words and grammar structures that the English language absorbs and to which Westerners
will need to adapt, there will be business opportunities and products aplenty
to buy and sell.
William R. Dodson is Managing Partner of Silk Road
Communications, L.L.C. He has over twelve years experience as a management
consultant specializing in improving communications between individuals to
reduce the cost of doing business across cultures. He can be reached
at wdodson@/.
For further
reading on the evolution of the English language:
The
Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Way by Bill Bryson
Made
in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States
by Bill Bryson
14.031402