by Mark Fettes
Despite the many meetings, articles, and books inspired by the 50th anniversary of the United Nations, it has been rare to come across more than a passing mention of language issues, however large they bulk in the day-to-day running of the Organization. One important exception was a conference in Ottawa, Canada, organized in May 1995 by the Canadian Centre for Linguistic Rights on the theme "Towards a Language Agenda: Futurist Outlook on the United Nations". More than sixty specialists in the legal, political, social, cultural and psychological aspects of language explored the topic for three days at the University of Ottawa. The proceedings will be published in book form later this year, but a brief overview of the main themes may interest ES readers.
The first day focused largely on political and legal issues. Its unifying theme was an emphasis on language policy as an application and reflection of unequal power among social actors, whether these be states (as in the case of the UN itself, tellingly dissected by Humphrey Tonkin, University of Hartford) or different linguistic groups within a state. For instance, Helen Moore (La Trobe University) described how Australia's ground-breaking National Language Policy, with its concept of linguistic diversity as a societal and personal resource, was effectively dismantled and replaced by the anti- pluralist Language and Literacy Policy. Teresa Scassa (Dalhousie University) showed how the English-only policies of U.S. governments and institutions have served to undermine civil liberties nominally guaranteed in the Constitution. Several contributions focused on the gaps between professed ideals and actual practice within the Canadian federal system, for instance on the limited rights accorded to French speakers outside Quebec (Marc Cousineau, University of Ottawa) and the exclusion of Aboriginal languages from the official language framework (Irene Linklater, University of Ottawa). Taken together, these papers effectively argued against the likelihood of language policies, at any level, ever being applied in a rational and disinterested way.
The second day examined the problematics of language in cultural identity and economic development. Here the notion of resistance was much more prominent than on the first day, with many speakers emphasizing the durability of linguistic minorities and the increasing recognition accorded to them under international law. Didier Rouget (University of Lille) described the recent evolution of the European democracies in this regard, in particular the development of the Council of Europe's Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, while Jacques Maurais (Conseil de la langue française, Quebec) shone a sympathetic light on attempts to strengthen the national language in a number of former Soviet republics. A trenchant critique of the linguistic homogenization implicit in many development policies was provided by Robert Phillipson (University of Roskilde); this was echoed from another standpoint by Lachman Khubchandani (University of Poona), who argued that the fluid plurilingualism of South Asia is antithetical to top- down versions of language planning. On the Canadian side of the conference, alternative visions of culture and development were voiced on behalf of the English-speaking minority in Quebec, French-speaking communities throughout the other provinces, non- English-speaking immigrants, and the Mohawk and Mi'kmaq nations. This second day might be summed up as an assertion of the vitality of such alternatives and the unquenchable possibility of change.
On the third day, and in keeping with the "futurist" component of the conference theme, three speakers were invited to develop more extensive alternative visions in a plenary session. Yves Le Bouthillier (University of Ottawa) explored the historical silence on language in international legal discourse and the ever more frequent calls for certain categories of linguistic rights to be formulated in internationally binding instruments. Tove Skutnabb-Kangas (University of Roskilde), invited to speak on the promotion of linguistic tolerance, suggested that a good start would be a policy of "zero tolerance" toward the systemic linguicism that most minorities face. Claude Piron (University of Geneva) called for serious debate on Esperanto as a proven high-quality alternative to the present system of international and intercultural communication, which, he forcefully argued, is inequitable and inefficient, and carries high political and social costs.
A working group met following the conference to draft a follow-up paper. Its members hope to pursue the issues raised, in particular the rethinking of the role of language in development, at further conferences and in print.
To order a copy of the proceedings, write to: Sylvie Lèger, Director Canadian Centre for Linguistic Rights Faculty of Common Law University of Ottawa Ottawa, Ontario Canada K1N 6N5; Internet: SLeger@admin.comlaw.uottawa.ca.
In view of the European Community's attempts to encourage its citizens to learn each others' languages, the authors have taken a new look at Europe-wide experiments on the role of Esperanto in facilitating language learning.
Besides this, The authors discuss the assumptions on which those experiments were based, and argue that it is necessary to set out from a different theoretical starting point. They refer particularly to the ideas of I. Szerdahelyi, which were formulated in the 1960s. They argue that the degree of difficulty in learning a second foreign language after Esperanto depends on linguistic affinities between the mother tongue, Esperanto, and the language concerned.
On the basis of this hypothesis they present a plan for a possible experiment to be carried out on a European scale, which would measure when and to what extent Esperanto could genuinely aid language learning. In this way they hope to avoid the oversimplification which has unfortunately been all too frequent in earlier experiments. Finally they emphasize the importance of this experiment as a step towards the desirable goal of a more comfortably multilingual Europe.
There has been a great deal written on virtually every aspect of foreign language instruction in Canada and the United States, including a large literature on assessment. Curiously, though, there appear to be few published studies on the overall effects of elementary, middle and high school language classes on students' linguistic and cultural competence.
Is this because the profession would rather not know (or publicize) the results? In a recent review, Ray Clifford, a former president of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, writes: "The reality of our present situation is that foreign language instruction is far from achieving excellence. Compared to other countries, foreign language instruction in the United States has yet to achieve mediocrity" (1). Expressing a similar view, Hector Hammerly, professor of applied linguistics at Simon Fraser University, observes that even Canada's French immersion program, widely touted as a model of successful language teaching, "does not result in basic linguistic accuracy, even after many years" (2).
Such claims, if substantiated, argue for major changes in educational policy. These might include, inter alia, increasing the time allotted to language instruction (Clifford's view), developing and disseminating a better-founded methodology (Hammerly's view), or introducing Esperanto as a propaedeutic in the middle school (3). Advocates of any or all of these measures have an interest in serious research on learning outcomes.
I am compiling a review of research in this area for ESF. Interested readers are invited to contact me at: Department of Educational Administration, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 252 Bloor Street West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1V6 (Internet: mfettes@oise.on.ca).
1. In Donato and Terry, eds., Foreign Language Learning: The Journey of a Lifetime, National Textbook Co./ACTFL, 1995.
2. Hector Hammerly, Fluency and Accuracy: Toward Balance in Language Teaching and Learning, Multilingual Matters, 1991.
3. See references in Section II of A. Fantini and T. Reagan, Esperanto and Education: Toward a Research Agenda, available from ESF Treasurer Jonathan Pool for $14 postpaid.
Esperanto includes six letters not found in English, nor the Latin-1 character set used as a default by most word processors and Net browsers. They are represented here as c^, g^, h^, j^, s^, and ù; in their proper form the consonants carry the circumflex and the u carries a breve (a small arc opening upwards). Although arguably the advantages of these letters are substantial, they have posed a special challenge for printers and typists over the years because the combination has not been found in commonly available type fonts. While specialists can readily produce or acquire Esperanto type fonts and equipment to use them, casual inclusion of Esperanto passages in magazine or newspaper articles, for example, has proved difficult. Zamenhof anticipated this by providing that the circumflex diacritic could be dropped and the circumflexed letter followed instead by h, in a pinch, and the breve deleted from over the u. Indeed this substitution is built into the basic rules of the language. (Interestingly, the reverse provision is included in the Pinyin Romanization scheme used to represent Chinese phonetically. A footnote in the official and most widely distributed dictionary mentions that one may convert the combinations ch, sh, and zh to c, s, and z with a circumflex over them "to save space.")
Just as Chinese have virtually never made use of the circumflex option in Pinyin, so Esperanto writers and publishers over the decades have rarely used the h option. Perhaps one grows accustomed to the traditional appearance of a word and variations are jarring.
Interestingly, the widespread accessibility of the Internet and of E-mail, still usually limited to the standard American ASCII character set, have called for some device in Esperanto other than the circumflex. What has arisen, surprisingly, is not the widespread use of the h proposed by Zamenhof, but a number of other workarounds. Confined to the ASCII character set, some Internet writers use a circumflex before or after the affected letter (including u, since a breve is not part of the ASCII character set). Most have adopted the convention of adding an x, otherwise unused in Esperanto, after the affected letter: cx, gx, etc. The same writers may use ux or may substitute w for Esperanto ù.
Striking as the resultant spellings are at first glance, one does become accustomed to them rapidly. Indeed, for many typists producing a cx involves a simpler combination of keystrokes than what is necessary to produce c^, and typing with the x (or h) convention can become quite comfortable.
Why has the x convention been adopted in place of the alternate h spellings officialized for Esperanto from the beginning? This is unclear. Perhaps because the x spellings are clearly a work-around, intended as a stop-gap measure, and do not imply orthographic reform (which has occasionally been a contentious issue in some segments of the Esperanto speaking public). Whatever the motivation, an obvious advantage of the x spellings is that the combinations produced are always unique for Esperanto words and normally unique in proper names (unless w is used for ù); therefore it is simple to replace them with standard Esperanto letters in text downloaded into a word processor. Indeed, one Esperanto word processor for Windows, Chapelilo, can automatically convert to and from the "ch," "c^," and "cx" formats (with the user's choice of ux or w for ù).
With the emergence of the World Wide Web (WWW, referred to as TTT -- Tut-Tera Teksaj^o -- in Esperanto), standard web browsers assume the full Latin 1 character set, which includes accented letters for a number of letters. Esperanto, like Turkish, is accommodated in the Latin 3 character set, but web browsers do give users a choice of display fonts, and Latin 3 fonts are available for downloading. Very little Email traffic makes use of Latin 3 so far, but web sites that assume it are increasing. The x convention may be with us for some time, especially for E-mail, but for those who find it jarring, help may be on its way.
(More information and Latin 3 fonts for various platforms can be found at http://www.cs.ruu.nl/wais/html/na-dir/internationalization/font-faq.html. Esperanto fonts (only some of which conform to the Latin-3 standard) are also available from ftp://ftp.stack.nl/pub/esperanto/fonts.dir/ and http://www.knooppunt.be/~fel/tiparoj.html.)
Esperanto Studies and Interlinguistics.
Esperantic Studies Foundation.