'The Last Lingua Franca': A look at the role of language in linking the world

The Last Lingua Franca

English Until the Return of Babel

nolead begins By Nicholas Ostler

Walker & Co.

352 pp. $28.00

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Reviewed by Richard Lindsey

nolead ends Nicholas Ostler first came to the attention of a general readership in 2005, with the publication of the highly ambitious and thoroughly brilliant Empires of the Word - a book that aspired to be, in the words of its subtitle, nothing less than a language history of the world. In 2007, he followed this initial success with the more tightly focused but equally fascinating Ad Infinitum, a "biography" of Latin.

With The Last Lingua Franca, Ostler turns to the English language. His book does not really fall into any of the more common categories of books about English. It is not a specialized academic work. It is not a general history of English, or even a biography of English, as Ad Infinitum was of Latin. Nor is it a humorous stroll through the curiosities of the language. Still less is it any kind of guide to how English should be spoken or used.

One could even argue that The Last Lingua Franca, despite its subtitle, is not primarily a book about English at all, even though it begins and ends with sections that address English. Perhaps it is best thought of as an inquiry into "the life histories of lingua-francas" (to use Ostler's phrase), of which English is just the reigning example.

The distinction between a lingua franca (that is, a language deliberately acquired for reasons of convenience to ease communication between speakers of different mother tongues) and a mother tongue is crucial to the entire book. A language's life history as one is different from whatever life history it may have as the other.

For example, Spanish, though flourishing as a mother tongue today, is not widely used as an international lingua franca. In contrast, Latin, though dead as a mother tongue since the Middle Ages, was used as a lingua franca throughout Europe until just a couple of centuries ago (and remains the language of scientific taxonomy).

The Last Lingua Franca is divided into four main parts. Part I ("Lingua-Franca Present") reviews the current status of English, noting that it is not only a widely spoken mother tongue, but is also the world's preeminent lingua franca.

But will English continue to be the world's lingua franca? Not surprisingly, we who live in "an English-speaking bubble" tend to assume it will, for decades if not indefinitely. The Last Lingua Franca "challenges this dominant, indeed commonsense, view of English, accusing it both of memory failure and of signal lack of imagination." In fact, English is subject to many of the same forces that have led to the rise and fall of previous lingua francas.

Part II ("Lingua-Francas Past") explores how languages as different as Persian, Sogdian, Greek, Pali, Sanskrit, Aramaic, and Latin rose to become lingua francas (mainly through military conquest, commerce, or religious missions). Here, Ostler's erudition, historical awareness, and sheer enthusiasm come into full play: He has a gift for explaining how the lives of languages intersect with the lives of nations and empires.

Much of the great pleasure of reading Part II (the longest individual section of the book) comes from the plethora of unexpected linguistic or historical details. For example, I had not known that the Uighurs of southern Siberia, "uniquely in the history of the world," adopted Manichaeism as their state religion for nearly 80 years, but I am unaccountably pleased to have learned it.

Part III ("A Range of Outcomes") examines the ways in which languages either continue to be or stop being lingua francas. A lingua franca may gain new life either by becoming a mother tongue for a new population or by finding itself a new raison d'être (regeneration). If it cannot regenerate itself, it may fall from use as a consequence of one of the "three R's of lingua-franca death": ruin, relegation, and resignation.

Part IV ("Who's in Charge Here?") returns the focus to the modern world, and thus to English. Ostler surveys the "big beasts" of the linguistic jungle and finds that although growing political and economic forces may favor one or another of these competing languages, none yet seems likely to supplant English as the preeminent lingua franca. Nevertheless, he is convinced that English will eventually cease to perform this role and that there will be no replacement: English will be not only a past but also the last lingua franca.

Perhaps surprisingly, this conviction is primarily based not on predicted military, commercial, or religious-missionary developments, but on technological ones. Ostler believes that machine translation will soon progress to the point where there is no need for any lingua franca at all. At that point, "everyone will speak and write in whatever language they choose, and the world will understand."

Not all readers will find this conclusion persuasive, and certainly we cannot know yet whether it is correct. Regardless, The Last Lingua Franca is well worth reading for any language lover - for its breadth of knowledge, its command of detail, its range of outlook, and, not incidentally, its wit. Maybe the world will understand us all one day.