Dr. Tariq Rahman

Book Review

Nicholas OSTLER, Empires of the Word: a Language History of the World London: Harper Collin Publishers, 2005, pp. 615. $29.95.

Reviewed by TARIQ RAHMAN

Quaid-i-Azam University,

Islamabad, Pakistan

E-mail: drt_rahman@yahoo.com

This is a pioneering work in macrohistory. However, the author, seems not to have dwelt on the pioneering nature of his work because he locates it in sociolinguistics rather than the philosophy of history. Indeed, so little is he preoccupied with the theoretical antecedents of his monumental work that it is only towards its end that he points out, and then only in passing, that it does not fall into the categories established by historical linguists. While linguists compare words, structures, sound systems and types of languages, he has ‘considered the evolving status of each language over the centuries of its career (p. 558). He calls it language dynamics or diachronic sociolinguistics of the kind which Mufwene has done for (mostly) African languages (Mufwene 2001). I would venture to suggest that, either out of modesty or for lack of awareness of other disciplines, Ostler has failed to situate his highly erudite study in the field of macrohistory albeit with language as the focus of inquiry. While the field of macrohistory is well known with great and familiar names, like that of Arnold Toynbee, coming to the mind, that of a macrohistory of language is almost unknown (for macrohistorians of whom none consider language as a focal point see Galtung and Inyatullah 1998). This book, then, is a pioneer in that it looks at the great languages of the world—great both in the number of speakers and prestige—in order to investigate the conditions of their rise and fall which is what macrohistorians do about empires or other units of civilization.

The book starts with the theoretical question: ‘What it takes to be a World Language’ (Chapter-2), and gives several hypotheses. First, that ‘world powers make world language’. However, this does not stand up to all the existing evidence. The Germanic conquerors—Franks, Burgundians, Vandals and Goths—conquered the Roman empire but learned different forms of languages originating from Latin (Romance languages) instead of imposing their own languages on these lands. Similarly, the Turkish, Mongol and Tungus—speaking Manchus who conquered China learned Chinese or, in some cases, Persian.

Another hypothesis is that economic power lies at the root of expansion. While this is true of some languages, such as English, the Phoenicians, who dominated trade in the first millennium BC, never succeeded in planting their language in their colonies. Indeed, it was Greek which remained the lingua franca of the Mediterranean.

Then there is the theory of religious significance. This does explain the persistence of Sanskrit, Latin and classical Arabic but there were many languages which were considered sacred but they are new dead.

It is a combination of factors—including learnability and script—which create the conditions of the rise of languages. However, no language remains at the top for ever since these conditions keep changing.

After these theoretical reflections the author gives detailed accounts of the major languages of the world. He starts with the civilizations which flourished in the Tigris-Euphrates area from 33000 BC. One of the first languages whose records are available is Akkadian. It was spoken by Sargon 1, the first Assyrian king, in 2300 BC in the area now known as Iraq.

Next, two centres of civilization developed writing. One was Sumer at the confluence of the Tigris and the Euphrates and the other was Elam near the Persian Gulf. Elamite could be related to Dravidian and may even be the ancestor of Brahvi still spoken in Pakistani Baluchistan. Both came to be written in the Cuneiform script. When the Sumerians were conquered by king Sargon, this vast land became dominated by Akkadian. Akkadian is a Semitic language and so the area became Semitic.

The Akkadian was replaced by the Aramaeans, again Semites, who settled down in Sumer and found the last Babylonian dynasty in the seventh to sixth centuries B C. Around the Mediterranean, however, the Phoenicians (from coastal Lebanon) had made colonies. They passed on the Semitic script to Europe but not their language.

Meanwhile, by 550 BC the Persians rose to power. They made Armaic, not Persian (Avesta), the language of their huge empire. When the Persian empire fell to Alexander the empire’s language became Greek. That is why Greek was used in the areas now known as Pakistan for several centuries. Indeed, it was in 700 that the caliph ‘Abdel Malik told his Greek adviser, Joannes Damascenus, to ban the Greek language from all public administration.

In the middle ages, carried by Islamic conquests, Arabic spread in the middle East and in Egypt. Elsewhere, however, Turkic and Persian became the languages of Islamic empires.

Two other major languages of the ancient world were Egyptian and Chinese. Both were based in countries with long periods of stable unitary government.

Egyptian comes from either the Hamito-Semitic family (from which comes Arabic). It was established in the late fourth millennium BC along the Nile. In the 7^th century BC Aramaic entered Egypt by the Assyrian invasion but it was consolidated only because the Persians conquered it and the language of administration was Aramaic. Alexander then conquered Egypt in 332 BC and for three centuries the pharos were Ptolemies (Greek). Greek and Aramaic were used at the upper level. Egyptian new survives in Coptic.

Chinese is from the Sino-Tibetan language family. There are markings on 4800-year-old wine cups and a record which is 3,400 years old. The Chinese were often defeated by Turkic and Mongol armies but the invaders settled down to learn Chinese. A huge bureaucracy which was examined in canonical Chinese texts, the cultural prestige of the language and culture and a script which united the dialects have made the language persist for so long.

Sanskrit (composed or synthesized) contrasts with prakrit (natural) language. It is a dialect of Indo-Iranian first spoken in the N.W.F.P and the Potohar area. Later it spread with Hinduism and then by trade. That is how it was carried to Sri Lanka and South-East Asia. It survives because of its sacred charisma.

Greek, which spread by conquests, was later preserved as an academic subject and accomplishment because of its cultural prestige. However, it no longer remains in the colonies where the conquerors took it. In 325 BC Alexander conquered parts of Pakistan and the Greeks ruled Bactria (Afghanistan) for three centuries.

After considering these major languages of the ancient world, the author comes to the languages of Europe. Here, apart from Greek, the contestants for power were languages from the Celtic, Italic, Germanic and Slavic families. The first shift comes from the Celtic family to the Italic by conquests between 500 BC to 500 CE. The Gaulish raiders were overwhelmed by the Romans who brought Latin. Latin developed into Romance languages in France, Spain and Italy while Britain, which also was a Roman colony, accepted the Germanic language of its Germanic conquerors. The Slavic family spread in the Balkans.

The languages of Europe had careers of their own as world languages. Spanish and Portuguese spread to Latin America and in the Pacific. Indeed, Portuguese was established as a lingua franca in parts of India in the 16^th and 27^th centuries. Spanish is still the second most spoken language in the USA which is otherwise English-speaking.

The Dutch, who established a vast empire in the East, did not succeed in planting their language permanently except in South Africa where it exists as Afrikaans. Similarly the Germans too did not succeed in making their language develop outside the German-speaking countries.

The most successful of the modern European languages are French and English. French had tremendous prestige and it is established in Canada, and used by the elite in their former colonies. The organization that promotes it is called la francophonie.

Another European language which was carried out by colonization was Russian. As the Tsar’s empire spread in Asia, Russian came to be used in education, administration and the military. The Soviets carried out the same policy and literacy was given in this language. It is still used in the ex-colonies though they give iconic value to their indigenous languages. However, Russian is convenient and so it is used.

The real world language, of course, is English. Its power lies in the fact that it is the language of the United States with its military, economic, scientific and educational dominance of the world. The author discusses the domination of English in chapter 13 (‘The Current Top Twenty’) also. Among other things, he says that size is not the only thing which matters. Size is called organic growth. But there is also ‘merger and acquisition’. English has spread through the second means. The future of English—and of all languages—is discussed in the last chapter (‘Looking Ahead’, chapter 14). Here the answer to questions posed in the beginning of the book are teased out again. “Technological innovation, learnability, culture, political power, economic power etc are all examined. It seems that English enjoys all these advantages at the moment.

However, the author is not certain that English will dominate the world for over. The next candidates for world domination may be some other languages. He also mentions three values: freedom, prestige and learnability again. He says freedom makes little difference to language dominance. Prestige does, whether it comes from wealth, religion or culture. It is an advantage but not a necessity. Learnability refers to a grown-up learning a new language not a child learning its first language. If there is some similarity with one’s own language, the language is easier to learn and its chances to strike roots are better.

If the author had placed his tremendous intellectual achievement in the scholarly tradition of macrohistory, he could have pointed out that he has deviated in a significant way from the practitioners of that discipline. Almost all macrohistorians posit grand patterns of the movement of history through time (linear, cyclical, arc, ascending levels etc). Some link the downward movements (contractions of area of influence) with moral decay while others believe in something which is ultimately taken as a quasi-mystical item of faith ( Hegel’s “Idea”; Marx’s doctrine of the triumph of communism as the last stage of history; Spencer, Compte and Weber’s faith in ‘progress’ which modernity brings in and Fukuyama’s faith in the triumph of the liberal free market in the nineties). But Ostler is at pains to point out that there is no inevitable pattern in the linguistic macrohistory of the world nor any obvious link with morality (unless whatever works is defined as being ‘moral’). This thesis is in conformity with the post-modernist distrust of grand narratives and Ostler would have done a great service by pointing this out clearly and with some reference to his predecessors in macrohistory. He is also the first serious historian of language to point out, like Oswald Spengler (The Decline of the West 1918-1922) but unlike Toynbee (Study of History in ten volumes,1934-1961), that there is no historical law ensuring the dominance of English for ever. Such insights should have been placed in the debate on historical determinism to be a really significant contribution to historiography.

Notwithstanding this suggestion about locating the book in a different intellectual tradition than the author has placed it in, it remains a tremendous intellectual achievement by any standard. It will remain a landmark in historical linguistics (or diachronic sociolinguistics) where the author locates it but, even more importantly, in the field of macrohistory which needs to be demystified and deconstructed through evidence of the sort provided by Ostler rather than the quasi-mystical fitting in of facts to grand theories as has been the custom in that fascinating field of knowledge.

REFERENCES

John Galtung and Sohail Inyatullah.1998. Macrohistory and Macrohistorians: Perspectives on Individual, Social, and Civilizational Change London: Praeger, 1998.

Mufwene, Salikoko S., The Ecology of Language Evolution Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Toynbee, Arnold.1934-1961. A Study of History 10 volumes. Edition used. Somervell, D.C. .1946. Abridged edition, 2 vols. London: Oxford University Press.