Britain is becoming increasingly complacent about its mother tongue, claims a new report from the thinktank
Demos. As You Like It, by Samuel Jones and Peter Bradwell, argues that Britain cannot continue to rely on the cultural and economic benefit of having English as its native language, and that it risks being left behind in the development of English as a global lingua franca.
Written in the inimitable Demos style, the report suggests that the dominance of English previously reflected the global reach of the British Empire, and more recently the dominance of US power. Today, the language is still worth an extra £14.5bn to the UK economy, with nearly two-thirds of the world’s top companies from anglophone countries.
But the way English is used around the world has come to reflect the changing powers of globalisation. Now there are estimated to be about 1.3 billion speakers of English, of which only 330 million are native speakers. English is now more a language family than a single language, with different forms appearing such as ‘Chinglish’, ‘Hinglish’ and ‘Spinglish’ – and, dare we say, ‘Wonklish’. Other languages, like Mandarin, Urdu, Portuguese and Spanish, are likely to rise in influence, reflecting the growing power of India, China and South America.
Britain’s attitude to its native tongue, however, is rooted more in old imperialist assumptions that are out of place in a modern world. With the global dominance of English, we have failed to concentrate on learning other languages and have missed out on the opportunities that they open up. At the same time, non-native speakers are becoming ever more proficient in using English, and ‘will be better placed to operate multi-lingually in a globalised environment’.
The report recommends a number of initiatives to overcome the UK’s disadvantage. It proposes that all government departments should develop a language strategy to look at the importance of changes in global English and the growth of other languages. It also suggests the creation of series of ‘English language ambassadors’ to promote the language as a global resource; using the status of English as a global language as an opportunity to promote ‘cultural literacy’; encouraging the learning of foreign languages from a young age; and using the opportunity of the 2012 Olympics to develop skills in language and demonstrate an understanding of the UK’s new position in the world.
The authors conclude: ‘This entails an approach by government that is on occasion directive, and on occasion more sensitive to the free market and democratic forces that English now encompasses.’ Get your mother tongue round that.
We bid a fond farewell to Nick Boles, who is stepping down as director of the Cameronite thinktank, Policy Exchange, to concentrate on securing the nomination for Conservative candidate for London mayor. Boles has scored some notable successes for the organisation that he founded five years ago, winning Prospect’s thinktank of the year award last year with the publication of its influential report on Islamism by the New Statesman’s political editor, Martin Bright, entitled When Progressives
Treat With Reactionaries. Dare we say this sums up the liberal-minded Boles own relationship with the To party rather well.
Replacing Boles as head of the centre-right thinkers is the Time’s chief political correspondent, Anthony Browne. Let’s hope he makes the transition from hack to wonk a little more smoothly than his fellow journalist, the Guardian’s Madeleine Bunting. She clocked up an impressive 45 days as director of Demos last year, before resigning in mysterious circumstances to return to her old newspaper column