History of E~,ropcon Ideas, Vol. 13, No. I/Z, pp. 131-137, 1991 Printed in Great Britain

0191-6599/91 $3.00 + 0.00 0 1991 Pergamon Press pk.

With forked Tongues: What are National Languages Good For? ed. Florian Coulmas (Ann Arbor: Koroma, 1988), 185 pp.

C.M.B. BRANN*

This stimulating, instructive, inter-disciplinary, sometimes witty, yet con- sistently weighty selection of papers on a ‘evergreen’ theme of our times, can be cordially recommended to students, aficionados and practitioners of language policy and planning no less than to linguists, political scientists and sociologists.

In the ‘lead article’

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languages of wider communication-of which English is evidently the one with the widest spread and the least ethnicity.

The essay is written in elegant, loose-limbed language, unburdened by too much linguistic terminology, but heavy with pregnant citations. Some of the felicitous phrases are themselves quotable, as ‘The monolingual state and, by consequence, the true nation state, has always been the odd exception rather than the rule. It is by no means self evident, therefore, why linguistic pluralism is generally regarded as a problem’ (p. 12) and ‘A possible answer to the national language ideology of the West and its neo-colonial implications is thus to turn the once prototypical national languages that the European colonial powers spread all over the globe into transnational languages that are no longer any particular nation’s property’. This is what we might call ‘the metamorphosis of national languages’.

The second essay To the language born: thoughts on the problem of national & international languages’ by Jacob Mey concentrates on the former, central problem in terms of national standards; the international part is an afterthought and might have been omitted. Through the transcription of an interview with an educated Norwegian woman, the author elicits the attitudes towards prestige and non-prestige dialects of Norwegian, including the question of the two separate national standards, with their roots in Norway’s history. Citing from a 1939 text as the ‘original’ version of the Vulgata (surely Jerome’s 383 A.D. text has been changed many times before it became canonical as the 1592 Clementine Vulgate!), the author compares the Biblical use of tribe/tongue/nation with Caesar’s, following the shift of meaning from ‘mother tongue’ to ‘language of state’. The subsequent discussion of the origin and significance of the national standards is entertaining, but somewhat inconclusive. It ‘debunks’ the 19th century ideology of a central standard as being a fiction, rather than a reality. This is, in fact, what is happening in some of the ‘developed’ countries of the West, whilst in the ‘developing’ countries of the South such standards are precisely sought.

In the third well-researched essay ‘Swahilias a national language in East Africa, Marilyn Merrit and Moh. Abudaziz discuss the historical origins, standardisation and spread of the language during the coastal Arab trade and subsequent British and German colonisation, in what are now Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Because of its long use as an inter-tribal and trade language, Swahili became particularly adaptable and receptive to outside influences (somewhat like English in later times), and therefore spread far beyond its original speakers of

the Coast (Swahili means coastal language). It was used as a lingua franca by the German, and as a co-official language by the British administration; but though the ‘inter-territorial’ (i.e. regional East Africa) conference of 1928 was cited, the resulting Inter-Territorial Swahili Committee was not. It was this Committee which finally became the Swahili Academy, now at the University of Dar es Salaam, which started to standardise and ‘modernise’ the language, in the direction of a language of administration and public affairs. But whereas in Tanzania, Swahili became, at independence, the sole national and official language (the Constitution of Tanzania was not published in English until some years after it had been promulgated in Swahili), in Uganda and Kenya it is one of the ‘national’ languages, and co-official with English. Yet in all three

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countries-notwithstanding the presence of many indigenous languages and cultures-Swahili has fulfilled the integrative (identificational) as well as the instrumental (communicative) role of a lingua franca. Though this is undoubtedly true, the identificational role of the language is differently developed in the three states, since Uganda has a dominant ethnolect and Kenya several major ones, which have not been absorbed by the demolect. And even though Swahili is recognised as ‘national’ in the countries mentioned, it is, above all, a regional language of wider communication in all but Tanzania. This is a carefully written and well-documented essay, which can be used for courses in language policy and planning.

In the fourth essay, Implementing Morocco’s Arabization policy: two problems of classification, Beverley Seckinger gives a historical and contemporary language profile of the kindgom. Though the three major Berber languages (Tarifit, Tamazight and Tashelheit) are spoken by 40-60% of the population (censuses have been chary of determining exact figures), their use is local only, as the variation between them and their dialects is considerable. Arabic also has three major forms-Colloquial Moroccan, Standard and Classical, of which the former is mutually comprehensible to most of the population, but has not been standardised, as it is not written: the well-known diglottic situation sense Ferguson. It is ‘modern’ Arabic (Standard) which is being both standardised as to its script and expanded as to its technical vocabulary. Of the three European

languages, Spanish has all but disappeared (with remnants in the North), French is still ubiquitous in the administration and higher education, whilst English is increasing as a scientific and technical reference language. Thirty years of Arabisation of the public sector, supported by considerable national, pan- Arabic and international funds, have now covered public education to the end of the secondary stream (this reviewer, who has been in Rabat in October 1988 can update the narrative of the author). However, deep lacunae are pointed out between policy and practice, in that the agents of change-the teachers-have not been able to keep up with the pace or re-educating themselves to teaching in Arabic, where many were educated through French, resulting in difficulties of expression and communication. Not only is there considerable switching of intra-Arabic codes (Colloquial and Standard), but also between the languages Arabic and French, and more recently English. Code-switching and code-mixing are sociolinguistic realities, which have to be taken into account in a profile of Morocco, and, by extension, of the Maghreb generally. The author writes ‘If sociolinguistic models are to be useful descriptive tools, they must be built up from analyses of language use in social contexts and forego Cartesian lines of classification if the data do not yield them up’. This is a valuable caveat which introduces theoretical considerations into a thoroughly researched and documented essay.

Concerning documentation, though, there are two riders: The bibliography does not yield any reference to Gilbert Grandguillaume’s 1983 Book Arabisation et poiitique linguistique au Maghreb, which is curious, as it was published two years before the workshop from which the above papers are taken. On the other hand, there is no reference in the bibliography to Bentahila 1983, which is mentioned in note 29, and should refer to Language attitudes among Arabic- French bilinguals in Morocco (Clevendon, Multilingual Matters); whilst the entry

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in the ‘references’ under Bentahila, 1979 should be attributed to Ahmed Boukous, where the entry should read ‘Le profil sociolinguistique du Maroc. BESM no 140: 5-31’. It is thus the editing and printing of the bibliographical references that seem to be at fault.

The fifth essay Modern Hebrew as a national language by Robert Cooper is a masterpiece of balance and compression and narrates the concurrence of the modern Jewish nation (Israel) with the standardisation, modernisation and spread of Hebrew in a unique effort of language planning. Whereas the author writes. . . ‘Hebrew had been abandoned as language of everyday communication about 200 CE’, one wonders whether this should not have read ‘BCE’, since it is known that Jesus of Nazareth, who lived and ministered in what is again Israel, spoke Aramaic, whilst Hebrew had become a liturgical and classical language. In the diaspora, in Egypt, even the liturgical form of Hebrew had disappeared by 200 BCE, requiring a translation of Scripture into common Greek. Whereas the writer points out that the revival of Hebrew ‘began in Palestine and in Eastern Europe in the 188Os, under the influence of European national movements, which viewed the language of a people as inseparable from its nationhood’-he might have pointed out that a similar revival had taken place 60 years earlier in Greece, where a classical language was similarly resuscitated and modernised for nation-building purposes. Though the case of Hebrew is unique, it is not as unique as it might appear. Certainly, Hebrew had been a national identifier long before any of the contemporary ‘modern’ languages of Europe (but not of the East), yet at a time when Greek also played a similar role in the city states of the Mediterranean-though the history of the two languages and cultures did not become intertwined until the Hellenistic period.

In the sixth essay 77re emergence of the national language in Ethiopa: an historical perspective, Mulugeta Seyoum condenses into 46 pages what must surely have been a thesis, as seen from the ‘select bibliography’ of some 90 entries. It is nonetheless highly readable (though why ‘indigenous’ should throughout be spelled ‘indegenous’ is a puzzle) and even exciting to read of the progression of Amharic as the Lisane Nigus (the king’s language) to the yemengist guanqua (language of government), to the Iisane sihuf (language of writing, in which capacity it replaced Geez in the 19th century) to, finally, the biherawi quanqua (national language). Though endowed by the late emperor with an Academy, i.e. with planned modernisation and though it is still used as the language of central administration, its unique ‘national’ and ‘official’ status was abrogated by the 1976 Revolution, the term ‘national’ having been awarded equally to all autochthonous languages of Ethiopia. This is, of course, because Amharic, unlike Swahili in Tanzania, is the language of a dominant nationality-the Amharas-with which the fortunes of the language is associated, even though it had acquired a supra-ethnic quality since the regaining of independence. As a language with written roots going back to early Christianity, it is unique among living African languages (if we discount Coptic, which is not ‘living’ in this sense), and is likely to survive in its central role, once its two major rivals-Tigriniya and Oromo, have been developed. This fascinating account should be made compulsory reading for language planners in Africa and serve as a caveat in states where several major languages are contesting for dominion (as, for instance in Nigeria, pace Fasold).

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The seventh essay, by Peter Lowenberg is on Malay in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore: three faces of a national language. While it accounts for the early history of Malay as a linga franca, it does not tell us who the ‘Malay’ are or were, i.e. whether Malay is a language, like Swahili, with practically no ethnic support, or whether it is the language of a people, which has spread as a trade language throughout SE Asia. Yet it is impressive to read how Malay has been groomed as a language of administration by successive colonial governments-the Dutch in 1865, the Japanese in 1942; how it became also the language of nascent SE Asian nationalism from 1928 onwards, resulting in its adoption as the national and official language of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore-in the latter as one of four official languages. Yet, so the author narrates, its functions in the three states are quite different: in Indonesia, it has become the effective unifying language of an otherwise polyglottic archipelago, with ancient, non-modernised dominant languages of culture, having completely replaced Dutch as a language of administration, education, industry, etc. In Malaysia, however, where it has a

stronger ethnic base, the presence of other strong, exogenous, ethnic and cultural groups (Chinese and Tamil) places it as a disadvantage, notwithstanding its official position. Whereas in Singapore-though it is the ‘language of the soil’, and notwithstanding its national and official status-it is, in fact, a minority language in face of the preponderant Chinese (mostly Hakka) and, above all, the growing use of English. Thus Malay, it is explained by the author, has a regional function in Singapore, rather than a strictly ‘national’ one. The dramatic growth of English is exemplified by the school enrolment in English-speaking schools, to which Singapore parents can send their children from choice: in 1980 84.5% were taught in English, inspite of the strong language loyalty of the Singapore Chinese. This might have been explained by the author as deriving from fear by the predominantly Hakka Chinese community to be pressurised into the use of Mandarin-the official language of the Republic of China and finally to be incorporated by them, as soon with Hongkong-for Singapore is a mercantilist state.

However, in both Indonesia and Malaysia there are active language-planning agencies of Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Malaysia, with the intention to harmonise the language standards (somewhat as between the German-speaking states of Europe as described by U. Ammon in this issue). Malay is therefore both a ‘national’, as well as a regional language.

In an eighth piece, Ralph Fasold’s What national languages are goodfor serves as a postscript, recalling the theoretical postulates of the opening chapter by Florian Coulmas. Based on Joshua Fishman’s distinction between ‘nationalism’ and ‘nationism’, Fasold distinguishes three main functions of national languages: nationalist/national, or identificational; nationist/official or admin- istrative and ‘communicative’. The last, presumably, means ‘communalist’ to this might have been added a fourth function, the territorial, or son-of-the-soil function. Of these, the author opines, the most significant is the identificational role, i.e. the national language as a symbol of identity. Though this is indeed the Ieitmotiv of the book, it is not particulary helpful for the recently independent states struggling for one or several ‘national’ languages, which must take into account all four criteria: territoriality, communality, representation and status.’ On p. 182 there is a curious statement that ‘Hindi has not yet become the national

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language (of India), although it was so declared at independence’. This surely is not so: Hindi is the (co-)officiul language of the Union of India, and is one of 15 national languages, so scheduled in the Constitution (Part XVII and the 8th schedule), 13 of which are themselves official languages of linguistic states, whilst two are nonterritorial (Sanskrit and Sindhi). What Mahatma Gandhi intended was to make ‘Hindustani’ the ‘rashtrabhasha’ or state language, which was to serve as a link with Muslim Pakistan. But as with English in Britain and America, India and Pakistan are ‘divided by a common language’ (Hindi and Urdu).

Maiduguri, Nigeria C.M.B. Brann

NOTES

1. I should like modestly to point out my ‘Four definitions of national language (in Africa)‘, in which I give a nomenclature for these distinctions (Oj_ficiul & national languages in Africa: complementarity or conflict? Quebec, Int. Centre for Research in Bilingualism, 1985).

On the basis of the theoretical and descriptive essays of this collection, then, one can draw up a table of the meaning(s) of ‘national language’ (Figure 1).

Figu

re

1. M

eani

ngs

of

‘Nat

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l’

Lan

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the

C

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of

With

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Swah

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Tan

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1 et

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2 de

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3 po

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4 hi

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5 te

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relig

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--/x

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- -

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X

x/

- x/

- X

- -

--/X

-

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Ara

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Col

loqu

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Mor

occo

x/

- X

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Stan

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Cla

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Am

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Heb

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Is

rael

X

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Mal

ay

Indo

nesi

a -

x/x-

- X

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x/-

X

Mal

aysi

a x/

- X

X

x/

- X

Sing

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- -/

x --

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--/x

-

X