The feeling
that pervades the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
is an aspiration towards fairness. But there is little
awareness of the importance of fairness in the field
of language and of the importance of language in the
field of fairness. Society's attitude towards languages
favors inequality everywhere. In the United Nations,
while some may use their mother tongue, many are deprived
of that possibility, and there is no consideration
for their handicap. Yet, it would be easy to reestablish
fairness. It would suffice to decide that nobody in
the UN family has the right to use his or her mother
tongue. If the French, the Americans and the other
privileged nations were obliged to use the language
of another culture in all their oral or written communications,
they would realize the plight of their linguistically
handicapped colleagues and the concept of fairness
in language use would perhaps find a point of entry
into international relationships. This simple suggestion
is unrealistic in today's context. It induces a feeling
of strangeness, of eccentricity. Why? What does this
reveal, if not that, whatever the eloquent speeches
in favor of fairness among nations, there is no real
will to relate with all on an equal footing?
There is
a kind of blindness, of insensitivity, among those
who can use their mother tongue towards those who
are not so fortunate. When you are forced to use a
language which is not yours, you appear less intelligent
than you are, very often you sound ridiculous. When
I was a précis-writer at the UN in New York
forty years ago, the representative of a Member State
on the verge of economic collapse began an intervention,
speaking slowly, obviously scanning his mind for words,
by saying: "My Government sinks..." He meant
thinks, of course. Everybody laughed. What
struck me was that there was no compassion for this
man, who, like 80% of the people living on this planet
did not have the th-sound in his language and
had thus either to torture his mouth to enunciate
the simplest sentence in English or to sound ridiculous.
Or let's consider the case of Ms Helle Degn, a Danish
minister who, opening an international meeting and
wanting to apologize for her lack of familiarity with
the subject for she had just assumed her functions,
said: "I'm at the beginning of my period"
(1).
Why was she the laughing stock of the assembly? Why
was she exposed to a risk of ridicule from which representatives
of a number of countries are always free? Through
her fault? No. As most foreigners who use English
at a rather high level, she had had more than 10,000
hours of study and practice of the language. But you
never reach a level of equality with the native speakers.
The risk of ridicule is not distributed evenly.
When I
worked for WHO, there was a Japanese doctor who represented
his country at a regional body. At any meeting, he
never said more than two or three sentences prepared
on a pad. We all thought: "Well, he's not very
talkative". But then the Japanese Government
organized a meeting in Tokyo and provided simultaneous
interpretation from Japanese. This delegate's attitude
completely changed. He had a lot to say, many very
useful contributions to make to all items of the agenda.
He was freed from the handicap of having to formulate
his thoughts in a strange language. We discovered
a totally different personality.
How come
the use of language has such an influence not only
on how you are perceived, how you perform in negotiations,
but also on the simple fact of daring to ask to be
heard? How come this inequality is so seldom realized
by those who can always use their mother tongue?
Learning a language: a formidable
task
When we
acquire our mother tongue we are much too young to
understand what is going on. Learning it means introducing
in our brain and drilling into reflexes hundreds of
thousands of data, programs and subprograms that are
connected in extremely intricate patterns. That's
the reason why after 20,000 hours of complete immersion
in their language children, at age six or seven, are
still unable to express their thoughts correctly.
They will say foots instead of feet
or comed instead of came, because the
general programs have not yet been linked to the specific
subprograms that words like foot or come
should summon up. When you learn a foreign language,
you have to decondition yourself from many of these
reflexes and recondition yourself with reflexes of
the new tongue. This is a formidable task, which explains
for instance that in Hong Kong, after six years of
study with several hours per day, half the
students fail at their English exam at the age of
sixteen (2).
It is sad
that there is so little compassion for all the people
who are not part of the so-called élite and
who suffer from language handicap. Just as there is
very little compassion for the millions of children
all over the world who are forced to devote an enormous
amount of time and nervous energy to the completely
useless study of languages they will never master.
I'm thinking
of a group of refugees from Yugoslavia and ex-Yugoslavia
I've had to deal with. All the adults had had six
years of Russian, German or English at a rate of four
hours a week. Well, I can more or less get along in
those languages. But communication with these people
was incredibly frustrating. They needed a few minutes
to express an idea that would have required two seconds
in their mother tongue, and very often they simply
failed. Once, for a mother from Osijek to understand
the message "The coat for your kid will be available
next week" we needed five minutes, because she
didn't remember the right words and we had to find
all sorts of devices to reach the necessary concepts
with the little vocabulary that was left her in spite
of the considerable investment in language learning,
in terms of time and effort, she had made in school.
At least,
eventually, we managed to understand each other. But
what if you are faced with an old woman who speaks
only Albanian, and she goes through hysterics, and
you realize that what she expresses is a saturation
of pain, distress, confusion, despair, and you know
that you could help her, that you're trained in the
techniques available to calm her down, but you can
do nothing, because you don't understand one single
detail in the story she needs to tell, of the feelings
she has to communicate to regain her balance? When
you go through such an experience, you know what it
is to be linguistically handicapped. You feel as if
you had had a stroke and your brain had been damaged,
and although your heart is full of a desire to help,
you are utterly powerless. You are not a human being
any more. Because what makes us human is relationship.
I wonder
what the price will be, for the next generations,
of all the traumas that will rebound because they
have not been dealt with at the right time, not for
lack of therapists, but for lack of the language making
the therapy possible, a therapy which, in many cases,
would be a short one. People in distress need to be
listened to and to hear from the listener that they
are understood. But this requires a linguistic means
of communication. At a time when millions of persons
have to adjust to another culture, because political
or economic constraints forced them to leave their
home, the plight of the linguistically handicapped
is an everyday occurrence, but society as a whole
has no compassion for it, although, as I'll show you
in a minute, it could be easily avoided, if there
were a will.
Discrimination and injustice
Why is
there no will? For one part, because there is no awareness.
The very concept of language handicap is alien to
most people. That sad reality is never named, and
when something is not formulated, it does not find
its place in the conscious mind. The result is that
most victims of language handicap do not feel it as
such. What they actually feel is much closer to guilt.
If I cannot make myself understood, it's my fault,
I've been too lazy or not resourceful enough to acquire
a proper means of communication. People who, because
of language, are ridiculous or unfairly treated by
the police, the judicial system or their bosses, do
not realize that society has a larger responsibility
in their handicap than they have themselves. So the
discrimination that occurs is seldom realized. Not
often do you read a sentence like the following, which
I take from The Wall Street Journal (3)
and which refers to the people, known as gatekeepers,
who sort out job applicants on the basis of interviews
in English: "The English of 'gatekeepers' is
one of the least visible, least measurable and least
understood aspects of discrimination".
Another
aspect is that those who exploit foreigners find it
useful never to be forced to take responsibility,
thanks to language problems.
A Swiss
traveler in Manila, Philippines, persuaded young E.B.
to come to Switzerland with him; he promised to finance
his studies, to provide him with accommodation and
even to adopt him legally. The fourteen year old accepted.
When he arrived, he was forced into a network of prostitution
and was also used as a slave by his master. An opportunity
to be saved arose when two policemen came to the house
where he was imprisoned, because there was some suspicion
as to what was going on. The policemen actually saw
the young man, but he spoke only a kind of pidgin
English and the policemen had no English at all. His
master discussed with them in the local Swiss German
dialect. The youngster failed to make himself understood,
and the man could explain away his utterances in a
language that was incomprehensible to the young slave,
so that he could not contest the man's assertions,
as he could have done had he not been locked up in
his language handicap.
Here in
Geneva, a man from Burkina Faso was condemned without
comprehending what was happening to him, since he
spoke only Bissa, an African dialect, and the procedure
was in French. Impressed by the police and, probably,
harboring the guilt feelings usually attached to language
handicap, he signed the police report typed about
him although he did not understand its contents. We
know of the fact only because a lawyer happened on
the right spot at the right minute and succeeded in
having the first judgment reversed. This man was almost
sent back to Africa before political asylum was considered
by the authorities, under the pretext of unlawful
facts of which he was innocent and which he had not
been able to contest (4).
One of
the aspects of the language handicap problem is the
dearth of interpreters. So the administrations call
on anybody from the relevant language area. But interpreting
while remaining objective, without introducing the
distortions due to one's political views or emotional
state, is not easy at all. Many a refugee has suffered
from this consequence of his language handicap.
The current
lack of consciousness of the importance of language
as a factor of full human dignity leads to hidden
kinds of discrimination. A person I know in Berlin
was forced to speak German to his son in kindergarten,
because the attendant there demands to understand
what children and parents say to each other. Of course,
this is not terrible in itself, since such communications
are restricted to a few minutes every day. But the
attendant's attitude reveals the widespread idea that
language is not important, as if its function was
only to communicate ideas. This is a negation of all
the emotional aspect of language, as well as of its
role in identity feelings, which are one of the basis
of the feeling of dignity so often mentioned in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The attendant
in the kindergarten does not realize that her demand
is disparaging, that it results in reinforcing a feeling
of rejection and of inferior status. A similar, but
much more serious, interference in the relationship
between parent and child is prevalent in Turkish jails,
where a father visiting his son is forced to speak
Turkish, whereas the family language, the language
of feelings and emotions, so important in such a context
from a humane point of view, is actually Kurdish.
What can be done?
Perhaps
you're thinking: "OK, so, that's the situation,
what can be done about it?" First we have to
acknowledge that language handicap is pervasive in
today's world and that it causes much suffering, frustration
and injustice.
Then we
should analyze the causes of the problem. The main
one may be that there is no will to solve it, because
the present world language order (or rather disorder)
gives advantages to certain groups or social layers
that are reluctant to forgo their superiority. Another
cause may be that there is no real awareness of the
extent of the problem, its impact on millions of lives.
Part of this lack of awareness may be due, in turn,
to a tendency to ignore the neuropsychological aspect
of language, i.e. the amplitude of the input necessary
to acquire a language, in other words the fact that
fluency in most languages demands that hundreds of
thousands of reflexes be inserted and maintained in
the brain.
The next
step would be an approach along the lines of operations
research: a comparative analysis of all the means
available to reach the goal. The objective is clear:
to free as much as possible as many sufferers from
language handicap as possible at a minimum cost. A
comparative analysis should be undertaken of all the
systems used by humankind to overcome the language
barrier so as to determine which is the most cost
effective, the most psychologically satisfying, the
most respectful of all cultures and the optimum one
from the point of view of fairness.
At this
stage, I wish to emphasize an important point never
mentioned in discussions on language use, namely that
a huge percentage of the effort imposed on the brain
for the acquisition of a foreign language has nothing
to do with the effectiveness of communication and
thus with the removal of the obstacles that bring
about language handicap. So if there is a language
which follows the natural flow of nervous energy without
having to deviate it by conditioned reflexes, it may
offer a solution of the problem.
I mentioned
earlier my experience with refugees who had been taught
English, German or Russian for an average of twelve
hundred hours and whose language competence was so
poor that we needed five minutes to communicate an
idea that would have required two seconds in our mother
tongues. But I refrained from confessing the whole
truth, which is that after a few weeks a young worker
from Kosovo arrived. An ethnic Albanian, he had learned
Esperanto for six months. With him I had no communication
problem. With me, he had no language handicap. He
was not more intelligent or educated than the others.
But wanting to get in touch with people all over the
world, and realizing that reaching this goal was too
slow a process with the languages studied in school,
he tried Esperanto. Indeed, this is a language based
on a full use of creativity, on the possibility of
generalizing all linguistic structures without exception,
on freedom in syntax and word order, and thus a language
following without obstacles and detours the spontaneous
movement of a human brain wishing to express an idea
or a feeling. It is a fact that, on an average, one
month of Esperanto affords a communication capability
corresponding to one year in another language. So,
after six months of Esperanto you master the language
at a level which requires six years in the case of
English. Moreover, if you cease using it for a few
years, you forget it much less than other languages,
because natural reflexes are stable whereas conditioned
reflexes are not. If you have doubts about this, just
pay attention to the kind of mistakes you make in
a foreign language when you resume its use after a
few years without practice.
It is a
fact that all over the world Esperanto is being used
by networks of people who form a kind of diaspora,
in which there is no language handicap. This milieu's
experience is something like a pilot study that has
proven the appropriateness of the means with respect
to the objective. Pretending that this experience
does not exist is insulting to the millions of people
who suffer from language handicap.
I'm not
saying that Esperanto should be adopted. I'm saying
that it should be considered. All those who are exposed
to the suffering, discrimination and injustice linked
to language handicap, to say nothing of economic exploitation,
traumas to identity feelings or the lack of appropriate
therapy, deserve an objective, fair consideration
of the facts to which I have just alluded and of many
more. You cannot judge Esperanto objectively without
comparing it to the other methods of intercultural
communication for such criteria as precision, richness,
learnability for people with the most different mother
tongues, adequacy in expressing emotion and feelings,
and so forth, just as you cannot judge it without
studying its literature, its poetry, its songs, its
history, its functioning in international meetings,
etc.
In my opinion,
the approach should be a long term one. After all
the relevant data have been duly verified, if Esperanto
proves to afford the best way of freeing society from
language handicap, its teaching in all elementary
schools throughout the world should be organized.
It would not change much in the curricula, since ten
minutes a day for one year is enough as a first stage,
and those ten minutes can be integrated in the teaching
of the mother tongue (5).
Its teaching in elementary school does not preclude
the teaching of other languages in secondary school.
So, instead of having millions of children torturing
their minds with very poor results in an attempt to
master English considered as the means of international
communication, students would regard national languages
as something worth discovering for their cultural
value. They could choose, according to where they
live, among languages such as Sanskrit, Italian, Farsi,
Ancient Greek, Shakespearian English, Hebrew, Arabic
or whatever. Such a plan would solve two problems
at the same time for the next generation. It would
dispose of language handicap, and it would rid the
world of its tendency towards a unidimensional culture
based on American productions.
Many Governments
invest huge sums in the teaching of English with very
poor results: as an average, only one student out
of one hundred is capable of properly using the language
after six years of study, and the teachers' level
is appalling. When you hear the head of the English
training program at the University of Malaysia say
that "Many English teachers cannot converse in
English" (6),
what can you expect, especially since the same judgment
applies to many countries? And the cause doesn't lie
in laziness, poor organization or inadequate pedagogy.
It lies in the huge and incompressible amount of reflexes
necessary to acquire the language. Wouldn't it be
sensible to replace this very ineffective investment
by something much less expensive that could really
free the world from language handicap? It would not
demand more than a genuine will, and a coordination
among Governments similar to what was successfully
set up in a relatively short time for the eradication
of smallpox.
But the
will to solve the problem cannot appear without a
change in mentality. Today's World Language Order
is vertical, with hierarchized languages and English
at the top. That's where power is. So there is a kind
of gold rush situation with a lot of competition to
reach the top and no compassion whatsoever for those
who suffer from the system. Esperanto would promote
a horizontal situation, with all languages treated
as equal and the communication tool relatively easily
available to all.
Language
handicap is not a malediction that leaves us powerless.
The experience of the Esperanto community proves the
opposite. Those who advocate ignoring it under the
pretext that such a language is irrelevant, dangerous,
impossible or whatever assume a very serious responsibility,
positioning themselves as they do against objectivity
and thus against fairness. If there is a treatment
for an endemic disease, what would you think of a
public health administrator who suppresses all attempts
at promoting it, maintaining millions of people in
pain or in a weakened state, because, without a single
glance at the relevant scientific literature and at
the results of pilot projects applying it in the field,
he decided beforehand that that treatment was just
rubbish? Is such an attitude in accordance with the
spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?
Or, to take another example, is there such difference
between a person who declares Esperanto irrelevant
or useless before checking the facts and an officer
who rejects a refugee requesting asylum before hearing
him out? Practically all the rights included in the
Universal Declaration imply a linguistic means of
communication. Let's take for instance article 19
on freedom of expression which “includes freedom (...)
to seek, receive and impart information and ideas
(...) regardless of frontiers”. How can you exercise
such a right without a language appropriate to easy,
fluent, trap free communication with which you can
deal with your partners or opponents on equal terms?
Such questions deserve at least some consideration.
Thank you,
Mr. Chairman.
____________
1.
Jyllands-Posten, January 14, 1994; Sprog og erhverv,
1, 1994.
2.
Philip Segal, "Tongue-Tied in Hong Kong",
International Herald Tribune, March 18, 1998.
3.
Barry Newman, "Global Chatter - World Speaks
English, Often None Too Well", The Wall Street
Journal, Midwest Edition, March 22, 1995, p. A15.
4.
Frédéric Montanya, "Police et justice
doivent respecter les droits des accusés",
Le Courrier (Geneva) June 10, 1997.
5.
Claude Piron, "Le
défi des langues" (Paris: L'Harmattan,
1994), p. 317; see also pages 174-193.
6.
Jay Branegan, "Finding a Proper Place for English",
Time, September 16, 1991, p. 51.