IN FAVOUR OF ENGLISH

Greymouth Evening Star, 26 November 1927, Page 3

IN FAVOUR OF ENGLISH

UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE.

Of propaganda for a universal language there seems to be no end, states a writer in the “Christian Science Monitor.” Conferences, speeches, and pamphlets, all designed to merge the tongues of mankind into a common medium of expression, arc arranged and given, wide circulation. Meanwhile, without benefit of any such campaigns, but merely by the virtue of expediency and convenience English is definitely establishing itself as a lingua franca. Those who travel, these days, in the ends of the earth are frequently met with the question: “How do you manage about the language?” The answer, if the traveller speaks English, is not difficult: “No management is necessary. I speak English and so, with few exceptions, does everyone else with whom it is necessary to have dealings.” From Capetown to Tokio, across the non-white world, the business man, the investigator, or the casual visitor, finds little need for any other tongue. In remote sections where few speak English, interpreters are always available. Credit for this fact must go, in considerable measure to the builders of the British Empire who have, necessarily, established their own language within its borders. But American missionaries, likewise,.in innumerable mission schools all the way from the bush villages of Central Africa to the Island of Hokkaido, have played a significant part. The international importance of this fact was referred to recently by John Daniels, national secretary of the English-speaking Union in the United States. In an address in New York he declared that this language unity between English-speaking races makes conflict between them “next to impossible.” That, increasingly, is an accepted fact. What is not so apparent is the further truth that the understanding,. springing out of a common speech, is extending itself through Africa and Asia where understanding, fully as much as in the Western World, is a thing to be desired. That conviction, of course, does not lead either to the advocacy of an abandonment by various peoples of their language in favour of English or to an underestimate of the importance of the study of the speech of other lands. But it does indicate that in the wide use of the English language in the councils and across the counters of the world there is a real asset foi' those who are concerned with the establishment of international goodwill.