ENGLISH AS AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE 337 



ENGLISH AS AX INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE 



By Professor ALBERT LEON GUERARD 



STANFORD UNIVERSITY, CAL. 



OF our thousand languages, great and small, dead and living, nat- 

 ural and artificial, from Edenese to Esperanto, which is to be the 

 world-speech of the future ? " Why, English, of course ! " America 

 replies with one mighty voice, in which rings the indomitable optimism 

 of the nation. Now, I love English dearly, for having spent twelve 

 years of my youth in trying to master some of its intricacies; I love 

 America still more, for her generous hospitality, which I am at present 

 enjoying, and yet I find myself unable to join in the chorus so ably led 

 by Professor Brander Matthews. I do not believe that English is des- 

 tined to be the international language of to-morrow. On this side of 

 the Atlantic, this may sound paradoxical; across the water, it is ac- 

 cepted as a truism, even in England. Let us suppose ourselves in a 

 neutral zone, and examine judicially the pros and cons of the case. 



Faith in the future supremacy of English can certainly not be 

 lightly dismissed as a mere chauvinistic delusion. It is based on per- 

 sonal experience : we all know how eagerly the better class of immi- 

 grants take up the study of the language; how impatient their children 

 are of any other tongue; we know that, with nothing but English and 

 money at our command, we can be understood, and respectfully fleeced, 

 in all the best hotels in the world. Statistics give scientific support to 

 these individual impressions. One half of the world's commerce, two 

 thirds of its shippping, one fourth of its population, one half of its rail- 

 roads, of its newspapers, of its postal transactions, are under the control 

 of the English-speaking countries. Grammatical and literary argu- 

 ments can then be brought forward in favor of English : its grammar 

 actually simpler in some respects than that of Esperanto, its inter- 

 national quality as a strongly Romanized Teutonic language, its won- 

 derful vocabulary which can be extended in all directions without losing 

 its unity, the unrivaled freedom of its syntax, which enables it to use 

 the same word as a noun, a verb, an adjective or a preposition; last but 

 not least, its unbroken literary record, and myriad-souled Shakespeare 

 as supreme argument. 



All this has to be granted, and is granted without reluctance. No 

 one denies that English is one of the three or four world-languages, and 

 a prince among its peers. But that it will ever attain the unique posi- 

 tion once held by Greek, Latin or French does not by any means follow. 



There are three ways for a language to achieve universality : political 



