The Muddle of Tongues

Sometimes I look around and feel like I'm in some kind of linguistic Twilight Zone. Ads blare four different alphabets, with sometimes every fourth word in English; some train lines have announcements in both languages; people hesitate when meeting you, unsure if the foreigner is competent enough to understand slow Japanese; companies and colleges proudly display their names in Roman letters for its connotation of international standing.

What would it be like if America resembled Japan in this aspect? The second option wouldn't be Spanish--too politically loaded outside California and higher education. Probably wouldn't be from this country, either, as with a declining population and geographically precarious location Japan's future is quite unstable. My bet would be on China or India, but the former better suits me for clarifying the Rising Sun by analogy.

So the land of the dragon takes off economically as the pundits predicted, but something else happens: the popular culture--and I'm not talking about martial arts movies--becomes incredibly trendy. "Made in China" is suddenly stuck with pride on designer clothing, technology, and Internet-based youth entertainment. What would happen linguistically if the parallel were very close?

Well, Chinese characters would be taught from elementary through high school years. Most people would pronounce their few basic greeting phrases with a strong accent but be able to read and occasionally write (skills more emphasized in languages where the proliferation of symbols leads to outright memorization) at a roughly middle-school level. University or business school students would be required to prepare abstracts and proposals in both languages so as to be ready for the job market. Immigration breaks would be granted to Chinese willing to teach in America, but the majority of instruction would be by Stateside natives with a tiny bit of practice.

This is basically the case in Japan, save that English has an unpredictable grammar system as well as a varying pronunciation system. Poor Japanese students, starting as they are from a language that has consistent and less complex pronunciation--no real distinctions between U and W or R and L, as well as ending nearly every syllable with a vowel--are starting at the bottom of a steep hill made harder by applying their rote-retention teaching methods for Chinese characters to a much more fluid tongue. I can't really criticize their system, though, without noting that America has nothing like it and no momentum to change.

One last note: the longer I stay, the less difficulty I have with words from my first foreign language (German) jumping into my mind faster than Japanese. Perhaps when I move into the international dorms and make some Berlin-based friends I will take a few more steps towards becoming fully trilingual. That faculty is possibly the strongest argument I could make for U.S. language education reform...but there are definite advantages to avoiding a national melting pot of speech. Completely understandable advertising is not one of them.