The Tower of Babel

The Tower of Babel

Source: Speak Up

       A fifth of the planet speaks English competently. Another sixth is learning. 80 per cent of computer information is in English, as are Deutsche Bank board meetings.

       Yet the notion of one language for all sounds familiar. Remember Genesis, Chapter 11? Humans build the Tower of Babel up to Heaven. God doesn’t like it. He replaces the single languages that let us cooperate with today’s multilingual babble.

       Can English recapture monolingual paradise?

COCAINE GLUE

       Automated translator, like Babel Fish (this strange name comes from Douglas Adam’s science fiction comedy, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galax) seem to offer instant solutions. But here’s a typical computer translation: “I apologize for my (bad) English: I am Brazilian and as it’s know, nobody is perfect. Kindly, is it comprehensible what do I have written?” In Brazil’s Fortaleza Airport, you’ll find Bleeding jar and Cocaine Glue on the drinks menu: meaningless translations for jar of sangria and Coca Cola. Worst still, Pepsi’s slogan, Come alive with pepsi, was translated into Chinese as “Pepsi brings dead ancestors back to life.”

FALSE FRIENDS

       It’s easy to be fooled by Portenglish Anglicism. You cannot play baske or volley; the sports are basketball and volleyball. Outdoor means outside in English; big advertisements on the street are billboards. You don’t go to a shopping, but to a mall. Other nationalities have this problem, too. Italian speakers get confused with Britalian: slip is an old-fashioned English word for a lady’s under-garment, not boy’s underpants. George Pullman gave his name to the sleeping compartments for trains, not to buses. A showman, once people on TV are presenters or hosts. The French love investing nouns. Un parking is a car park, un relooking a makeover, un déstockage a clearance sale. These are not English, but Franglais.

CONFUSING MIXTURES

       US immigration has created many hybrids. Hispanic communities have producer dictionaries to help your suffer the web, deletear a document and vacuumear you carpet. There’s even a Hollywood film called Spanglish.

       The Dutch learn English in elementary school and watch undubbed films. Yet even they make mistakes. “That can instead of “That’s possible.” “I hate you welcome” for “I welcome you.” A Dutch prime minister confused undertaker with entrepreneur. The University of Delft awards a large sausage for the worst Dunglish errors. (“Worst” is Dutch for sausage.)

NEW ENGLISHES

Linguists speak of New Englishes: the healthy diversity of world English. But, as the pressure to learn English grows, these half-baked versions are proliferating. Computers can’t learn for us – not yet. With untrust worthy translation engines, dodgy internet courses, and troublesame false friends, the monolingual dream still sounds like babble of Babel.

The Tower of Babel Genesis, Charpter 11

And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech…And they said, Let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven…And the Lord said, Behold, the people have all one language; and now nothing will be restrained from them. Let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; confound the language of all the earth.