Is British English Superior to Ours?

24 February 2005

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Suppose you had the chance to record a sample of human language for aliens to listen to. What language would you choose? You don't have to make that choice, because someone has already done it: when the Voyager Space Probes were launched in 1977, they carried recordings of short greetings in 55 human languages -- including English -- for the benefit of otherworldly beings. But what sort of English did they record?

You may be thinking. Surely English today is one language: we all understand the written form of English, and the core of its grammar and vocabulary are commonly understood. But like any language, English comes in a number of flavors, and a couple of flavors dominate the rest: American and British. These two titans of English vie for world domination, and the coming decades will be crucial in determining which of the dialects is going to come out on top.

In a sense, American English already has the upper hand, and it got it by might, rather than right. Great Britain gets the credit for successfully spreading English around the world during its glorious days of empire. But the cultural and economic empire of the U.S. has pushed our own dialect to the forefront. We read of people lining up on the docks in 19th century New York to read the latest installments in the serialized novels of Charles Dickens. Today the situation is reversed: if you happen to be on the other side of the Atlantic you'll see a line (or rather, a queue) of people waiting for the premiere of the latest Hollywood blockbuster in London's Leicester Square.

American English has pretty much won the numbers game, but Brits are inclined to think that their strain of the language is the purer one: in other words, we may have won on quantity, but they're holding all the aces on quality. Is there anything to this argument? Let's look at the canon: the Brits do have things you can never take away from them: the King James Bible, Shakespeare, the romantic and metaphysical poets, the great tradition of 19th century novelists. But despite British English's impressive credentials, Americans have never shown any sign of subservience to it. American English has gone its own way from the beginning. As one 20th-century American writer observed, "Why should we permit the survival of the curious notion that our language is a mere loan from England, like a copper kettle that we must keep scoured and return without a dent?"

The Brits, of course, take a different view of American linguistic independence and innovation. As one of their writers put it: "The Americans are determined to hack their way through the language, as their ancestors did through the forests, regardless of the valuable growths that may be sacrificed in blazing the trail."

Leaving aside the questions of quality and quantity — the question that remains is this: what's the future of these two dialects of English? It turns out that the wild card in the future of English is held not by the Brits or the Yanks, but rather by those who will speak it as a second or foreign language. In a few years, native speakers of English will be outnumbered by those for whom it is a second language. And it turns out that those folks may not want any branded variety of English; they just want the kind that you can use. Consider this: in 2000, a Chinese program for steel engineers chose neither Americans nor Brits, but rather Belgians to teach them English: the Chinese saw it as an advantage that the Belgians, like the Chinese themselves, were not native speakers. The Belgians, they thought, would have a feel both for the difficulties of learning the language in adulthood, and for using it with other nonnative speakers.

Imagine, then, a conversation between a Belgian teacher of English and a Chinese engineer: if a pronoun fails to decline and there is no native speaker there to hear it, does it make a difference? The heyday of the big-brand dialects of English are probably over. In this century, the chief demand placed on English will be its ability to adapt to the needs of the millions of speakers who use it as a second language.

And what about that clip recorded for the denizens of outer space? Well, here it is — the voice of English that will greet aliens lucky enough to hear it: "Greetings from the children of Earth."

That's the linguistic thought for today, which comes from lexicographer Orin Hargraves in Carroll County, Maryland. And this is the Five-Minute Linguist at the College of Charleston, in cooperation with the National Museum of Language. If you have a question about language or would like to read more about "Who Owns English," go to our website at www.cofc.edu/linguist. And in the meantime, keep in mind that wherever you are, and whatever you do... language makes a difference.