CASTE SYSTEM INVADING NORTH AMERICA 

For Anglophones who are upset over the latest language action in Quebec, I say "relax". Time and technology is on your side. Technology has already started to organize a global, languageoriented caste system. No politician can stop it.

Here are the facts. French, like Spanish or even Japanese is a more flowery languages than English. At the height of the Gutenberg era this was often considered an advantage.

Prose and prices change. Today these languages take up more space in a computer. The input time via keyboarding, scanner or framegrabber is longer, transmission time is more expensive and the printer's paper feeder must be re-stacked more frequently. The Japanese started simulcasting their 7 P.M. evening news in both Japanese and English, now a regular feature at NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corp.) for a sound reason.

As fellow Futurist Isaac Asimov points out, "Already, English is an international language, in business, in science, in air travel, and so on, and world communication is accelerating the trend".

This is creating a caste system. Not based on occupation or even on economic status but on linguistics!

Two hundred years ago French was the literary, economic and scientific language of the world. You just weren't anybody unless you spoke French. Today French is the fasting shrinking language. Even in France! More people in North America speak Spanish than they do French. A complete reversal in just a few decades. So it's easy to see the concern of the Quebecois. Their language is on the way out. That would upset any devotee of the past.

In the Communications Age people electronically literate in English will grow with the new age. Those restricted to Latin related (how many of your friends are making a living today speaking/ teaching Latin?) languages will not participate, to the same degree and at the same cost, as English-keyboarding aficionados. In the near future when computer respond to vocal input and you are not required to feed data in physically, the computer will still accept English faster.

A language caste system will create a different division between citizens. To some it will appear as a form of "linguistic racism". If you can't see it now spend time listening to your children. They are aware of it, even if it hasn't yet become visible to your school board. Obviously those who can operate the machines of the new age faster, more efficiently and at lower cost will be the ones who rise like cream in unhomogenized milk. Others, handicapped by their culture, will fall behind in an age that communicates at the speed of light.

* * *

< previous | chapter index | next >
back to Main Chapter Listing
back to Home Page