Complete and Creative

Why English Is But Should Not Be the International Language (1/3)

Paris. At a cafe outside the Pantheon, I see a group of Japanese tourists, all women between their 20’s and 50’s, telling a waiter in broken English, “Something to drink, please… non-alcoholic.”

Costa Rica. Far away from any major city, I get an ear infection and have to go to the doctor, who asks me if I speak Spanish. I can chat in the language, but I couldn’t discuss my medical status in necessary detail. The doctor speaks to me in English.

View from the Eiffel Tower of some government building that was being renovated at the time.

Seoul. At Dongtaemon (which is the place to shop in central Seoul), I see an American male telling an attendant at one of the shopping malls “I’ll be back” in English. The attendant looks as if he understands.

Tokyo. At the TMG (Tokyo Metropolitan Government building) in the Shinjuku district, I see an indignant American lady asking a customer service employee why the shop only sells models of the North Tower and not the South. The lady speaks in English. The Japanese employee tries to speak in English.

Stuttgart. My German friend and I arrive at our other friend’s house early. The front door is locked. It is raining. The neighbors come home and invite us to have a seat in their house until that friend’s parents come back. I speak no German. The neighbors have no trouble switching to English.

Ho Chi Minh City. I go out with a friend who is bilingual in Cantonese and Vietnamese. I speak Cantonese and no Vietnamese. We stay at the house of one of his friends who speaks only Vietnamese. The friend tries to communicate with me in English.

I am quite annoyed when Americans tour the world expecting to be understood when they speak in English (granted, not every American is as such, but you have to admit Americans, especially teenagers and twenty-somethings, don’t have a great reputation abroad). I am probably even more irritated when I see or hear non-native speakers of English from outside of the greater English-speaking world going to a foreign country where English is not the official language and trying to get around by speaking English.

True, English comes relatively close to being spoken in every major city in the world, especially popular tourist destinations. It comes closer than Mandarin, which is the language with the most speakers in the world, but Mandarin is not widespread. It was never a colonial language on a global scale. English comes closer than French, which was a colonial language but has been losing power ever since…well…ever since America became the dominant world power. More former African colonies speak English than French now. English comes closer than Spanish, which is spoken all over Latinamerica (except Brazil), but you can’t speak Spanish in a country where it’s not an official language and expect to be understood (except maybe some areas in Brazil and Portugal). Let’s not talk about Esperanto. Most people don’t even know what it is, much less speak it.

So, if there’s an international language, English is it.

to be continued…