Ah, but the versatility of the language and its effectiveness is a direct representation of the value of the users, whose "power" derives from their intellectual processes and creative efforts rather than "power" in the traditional sense that nations have power, which was just militaristic tribal territorial found-wealth confiscating aggression.
China can't become "powerful" by having state serfs working for low wages for those who do the good stuff and use the lingua franca.
The old colonial methods are at work = I hire Americans with brains who invent good things and they hire Indians or Chinese [whoever will work for less money] to do the work extending and developing. China tries to short-circuit the process by stealing intellectual property, but theft is not a good long-run process, as one becomes persona non grata, sidelined and caged. Theft was fine in the found-wealth era when Genghis could rampage across the landscape, living off the land. Nowadays, it would be very difficult for a modern Genghis to take over.
As you say though, the power can shift. Our son has learned Japanese and lives and works in Japan, so I have been colonized and my language marginalized and devalued [in that respect though it has gained in other respects]. Which isn't surprising when one looks at the dopey ideas running New Zealand and the dramatically reduced relative wealth of the country compared with places like Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, Taiwan, and even Australia.
French was once a big-deal language too. Some of my ancestors used that, but abandoned it for English, fleeing to NZ as refugees last century.
Which is not to say that English or American is the best language. Learning it was a hideous process so it needs re-engineering, much like the imperial system of weights and measures was a hideous hodge podge of random methods and metrication was a great blessing [praise be to Napoleon, peace be upon him], as was the shift from pounds, shillings and pence to a decimal currency.
My blighted childhood would have been a breeze were it not for learning English, yards, furlongs, pounds, farthings, guineas, ounces, pounds, poundals, acres, fathoms, knots, miles, hundred-weight, gallons, quarts, bushells, barrels, etc etc.
Down with the English Empire and the crazy systems they developed. Americans still go in miles per hour and buy a gallon of gasoline [having their own gallon just as the Chinese want their own version of CDMA for some perverse reason].
Mqurice |
