History has seen many lingua francas come and go – Koine Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Old Church Slavonic or the Mediterranean Lingua Franca from where the term gets its name. Today different regions of the world still use lingua francas to facilitate communication between cultures. Mandarin, Urdu and Malay allow millions of people from different parts of the world to share a common language and conduct business across borders. However, the 21st century has seen the rise of perhaps the first truly global lingua franca in history – English.
According to Professor David Crystal, a language becomes a lingua franca for one reason. Put simply, the speakers of that language hold power – political power, scientific power, economic power or cultural power. Learning that language allows people from outside cultures to access that power by accessing education, technology and business opportunities from the dominant culture.
As the language becomes widely used by non-native speakers, it evolves in some predictable ways. Today, there are about 5 non-native speakers of English for every 1 native speaker. Professor Jennifer Jenkins has observed how the rules and usage of the language are changing. According to Jenkins, people who use English as a Lingua Franca may consciously choose not to use certain grammar (such as verb tense and conjugation) or pronunciation (such as the sounds of /θ/ and /ð/).
Such modifications to the language may first seem “wrong” to native speakers and prescriptivists, but a more nuanced view is that as long as there is communicative competence (i.e. the users of the language are able to clearly communicate the message) one needn’t be so judgmental about using the language “properly”. For example, if someone says “Yesterday I go to the park”, the rules of grammar tell us this is not correct, but functionally it is clear what happened and when.
Therefore, as English evolves for international usage, we may expect to see a move away from “speaking like a native” as the gold standard of language proficiency. In my view, this has two clear benefits. First of all, students will have more confidence to use the language they know in the way they know to express themselves without feeling shy or embarrassed because their English isn’t perfect. Second, there will be more opportunities for non-native English teachers in an industry which has for years unfairly hired teachers based less on their qualifications and more on their passports.
Despite these benefits, I also wonder about a potential drawback to such language evolution. If vocabulary and grammar become simplified, over time the language may lose it’s ability to convey nuance and accuracy. This is another type of language death in which the language doesn’t disappear but instead changes from a precise scalpel to a dull butterknife, losing the idioms, dependent clauses and subtle connotations which give it color, efficiency and exactness. But perhaps that’s unavoidable and not to be mourned. After all, nobody complains that Latin has evolved from a living breathing language to an academic lingua franca to a few fossilized remnants of scientific terminology over the course of a millennium. Without it we just communicate in ways that are different, but not necessarily worse.
But what about those who want to learn English as a tool to communicate with native speakers or explore the various countries and cultures where it’s the first language? After all, the United States is still the third largest country in the world by population and the unstoppable soft power of Hollywood, rock and roll and Coca-Cola show no signs of losing influence in the upcoming decades. Many still dream of moving to the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. For such learners, a watered down English as a lingua franca may not be sufficient to fully immerse themselves in the target culture. For this reason, I don’t see the demand for “native speaker English” disappearing any time soon.
There’s another reason that, as a teacher, I’ll still be teaching for the detailed accuracy of “proper” grammar and pronunciation – it’s what my clients and students expect. In academic circles and European regulatory bodies there may be a realization and acceptance that English is most useful as a lingua franca independent of its native speaker shackles, but my students still pay me to correct them when they forget to conjugate a verb or mispronounce a vowel sound. For the time being, I’ll continue to provide that service.
Simeon Brown 