The Great American Export: English

At one point in Monty Python’s Life of Brian, John Cleese is trying to rally his commandos to rise up against the Romans by asking them, “What have the Romans ever done for us?”

After a brief silence one of the commandos suggests, “The aqueduct?”

The scene is vintage Python and can be seen here. Just be sure that you watch it where you can laugh out loud.

Now, flash forward a few hundred years, or thousand if you are feeling optimistic, and ask the question, “What did the Americans ever do for us?”

Hollywood? Software and PCs? Grand Theft Auto? Diet Coke?

In all seriousness, there will likely be a strong argument that the single greatest export in American history turned out to be the English language, with an obvious and major assist from the British Empire. (In the 25th-century world of the sci fi work Altered Carbon, Richard Morgan refers to the then ancient language of Amaglish, a clever amalgam.)

Bill Bryson’s book Mother Tongue, a bit dated from its 1990 publication but still correct in its thesis, offered the following:

English is, in short, one of the world’s great growth industries. “English is just as much big business as the export of manufactured goods,” Professor Randolph Quirk of Oxford University has written. “There are problems with what you might call ‘after-sales service’; and ‘delivery’ can be awkward; but at any rate the product lines are trouble free.” Indeed, such is the demand to learn the language that there are now more students of English in China than there are people in the United States.

More recently, the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language offered: About one-and-a-half billion people spoke English at the start of the 21st century. That was one quarter of all people on earth. More than 400 million speak English as their first language. The rest speak English as a second or third language for their professional and personal lives.

The British Council estimates 2 billion English learners by 2016.

While there are still today more speakers (as a first language) of Mandarin Chinese than English, if you wish to land your jumbo jet at an airport, or practice any kind of international commerce, you’d best do it in English. Over 80 per cent of the world’s electronically stored information is in English and two-thirds of the world’s scientists read in English. English is an official language, or has a special status in over 75 of the world’s territories.

All of which leads me to my question.

The other day I was looking for a consumer electronics item on a Japanese website. The opening screen allowed me to pick my country from among several different flags.

I clicked on the American flag.

Then, much to my amazement, I was asked if I wanted to read the website in English or in Spanish.

OK--so much for the Japanese, who have no stake in the game and are undoubtedly just trying to provide good customer service.

But this morning when I withdrew money from my ATM I was offered the opportunity to view the transaction in English or Spanish. And later in the day, when I needed directory assistance, I was offered the same.

Is there something wrong with this picture?

I'm all for multiculturalism. I love the melting pot, even if it tends more toward bouillabaisse. I adore great customer service. But in the competition among nations, where bona fide competitive advantages are so hard to come by, shouldn't institutions like my local bank, or the phone company, make some reasonable effort to nurture one of the great national treasures in history--the ability to set mankind's common language?

It will be a truly bizarre day when the entire world conducts its business in English, except for the United States, where one can get by swimmingly without ever having had to learn the mother tongue.

Posted by Entrepreneur Generations

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