History always going to repeat itself…

The article by A. Suresh Canagarajah talks about changes in the English Language or, more appropriately, languages. As it is described, there more than just Australian, American, British and Canadian Englishes in the world. All world varieties, although they all started with the British English, have their own properties. These properties evolved as a result of the ways how local communities resisted colonization and changed the original language according to their own social practices (Caragarajah 588). Caragarajah also calls it the “nativization” of English (588). A historic tendency, which is described in the article, has its own direction, and it is always favors the language varieties that are not a main stream at the moment. The article supports this point by providing a prognosis about future population of the world that is going to use English as a second spoken language. The data shows that by 2050 there are going to be 30 million people more to use English as a second language and to speak some kind of the non-standard variety. Although classrooms doesn’t allow any kinds of the varieties of English into the composition at this time, the voices of World Englishes gain more power and confidence. Since the majority of the English speakers will be no longer among the sole or first language users, the rules of the language going to be influenced and changed in coming decades. Such varieties of English as Indian or Nigerian no longer going to be appropriate only for those areas and countries – they are going to be accepted and treated in the same manner as the Standard English at this time. Such limited approach to the language limits diversity and benefits from learning.

Later Caragarajah explains why “monolingual” pedagogies are not effective in the classroom. Even though they represent the language of power at this time, such pedagogies lack vitality of the living varieties (Caragarajah 591). A real life examples of the students with different backgrounds confirm that effectiveness of the narrowed and skewed approach to learning English is least effective in comparison to leaning while interacting with different language varieties (Caragarajah 591). The main idea behind these findings – to teach students how to “shuttle” between language varieties, and use them in appropriate to the social situation manner (Caragarajah 593). This approach allows to give the students an appreciation for the natural diversity together with a better awareness of the social concepts.

From this section of the article I have learned that there is a far stronger than I expected tendency to change current English by legitimization of the international or world varieties of the language. It reminded me of the historical changes inside every cultural and language community. I heard ones that history always repeats itself and goes in circles or spirals for that matter. This was a way for my history teacher in school to keep our attention and explain why we need to learn about something that is long gone. In her explanation, only history helps to avoid similar mistakes in the future. As I mentioned it in the class, what is happening with English (or any other language for that sake) is already happened to a number of the languages that we call “dead” at this time. For example, Latin language became a platform to English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Romanian languages. I am pretty sure that those languages sounded like an uneducated garble and a pile of errors in the use of the Latin to the well brought Romans when those conquered tribes changed the original language according to their local social practices. This is exactly what Caragarajah describes in the article. Because of all the spirals in the history, we, as a living generation, shouldn’t oppose and oppress these social tendencies – it is only natural for such change to occur. This change happens all over the world. In the Russian language I encountered a lot of words that originally came from a much older Turkic language. These words, to my surprise, are the same in the Iranian language – Farsi. While digging more on this topic, I discovered that such languages as Armenian, Indian and many Slavic languages all came form that same original language platform. In the future other languages that only form or emerge at the moment are going to be changed in the same manner.

Talking about future, I recalled a movie, based on H.G. Well’s novel, which tells about a time traveler, who accidently went in his machine by many million years into the future, and he found our world recovered after a collision between the Earth and the Moon. The civilization was primitive, and the protagonist struggled to understand local population. It turned out, the language that he spoke they called a “stone language”, and their present language was some evolved form of English. Well, the movie didn’t get very high IMDb score. Only 5.9, but as all Wells’ novels it is shockingly graphic in its idea of the humanity separated by the evolution into the prey and predator types. However, the idea of the dead language was pictured even there.

All together – lessons of history and fantasies about future – the tendencies point towards change in the language, and we only need to accept it as a natural order of things.